Globe Trot: Newly released emails show Clinton Foundation efforts to influence State Department

NIGERIA: Emails released this week show a senior Clinton Foundation employee asked the Hillary Clinton–led State Department to help a top foundation donor. Gilbert Chagoury, a prominent Nigerian businessman of Lebanese descent, surfaced as the “key guy there” in just-released emails dating to 2009. Chagoury donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, and in 2009 he pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative. In that same time frame, Secretary of State Clinton overruled the pleas of top advisers to designate Boko Haram a terror group in Nigeria, preempting financial monitoring and restrictions on Nigerians like Chagoury.

Chagoury made his fortune working black market oil deals with American fugitive financier Marc Rich, who was pardoned for a 65-count tax evasion indictment on President Bill Clinton’s last day in office.

At least 13 Christians were killed in Muslim extremist attacks in Nigeria this week.

UNITED STATES: Superiors at U.S. Central Command doctored defense intelligence analysts’ reports to present “a more positive depiction of U.S. antiterrorism efforts [against ISIS] than was warranted by facts on the ground,” according to a news release about a congressional panel report issued Thursday.

CUBA: Fidel Castro will celebrate his 90th birthday on Saturday, and thanks to Pokémon Go his heavily guarded home near Havana is no longer a secret.

FRANCE: At a water park near Marseilles, “burkini” day is off.

PHILIPPINES: More than 600 people have died in shootings since Rodrigo Duterte took office as president in June, promising a vigilante-style government to eliminate suspected narcos.

GREAT BRITAIN: The long-standing Rotherham child sex abuse ring, despite pledges by public officials, continues.

BANGLADESH: Wildlife officials tracking a lost elephant finally rescued the beast after its exhausting 600-mile journey.

BOOK UPDATE: Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul kidnapped and killed by Islamic extremists in 2008, for years paid protection money to al-Qaeda in Iraq. An associate revealed Rahho “was pushed to pay jiyza monthly for Christians who lived in Mosul. They used to send Archbishop Rahho a list of names of priests and how much they wanted for them.”

For years Rahho bridged Muslim and Christian communities in Nineveh Province, I report in my book They Say We Are Infidels, and his death in 2008 was a point of no return, forcing thousands of Christians to leave Iraq.

ISIS is preparing to use civilians in Mosul as human shields, observers believe, as it prepares for an Iraqi army-led invasion to retake the city.