Experts slam report on U.S. reaction to Syrian genocide

SYRIA: On the eve of its release, the U.S. Holocaust Museum yanked back a major study set to exonerate the Obama administration’s policy toward Syria after prominent genocide experts protested.

“The first thing I have to say is: Shame on the Holocaust Museum,” Leon Wieseltier, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former New Republic editor, told Tablet, a Jewish news website. Wieseltier slammed the museum for “releasing an allegedly scientific study that justifies bystanderism.”

In a state-run spectacle that’s a cross between sick and sweet, Syria’s national soccer team survived its first match with Iran to continue its bid for World Cup qualification.

HURRICANE ALLEY: Hurricane Irma slammed islands in the Caribbean on Wednesday, making landfall at Barbuda before hitting St. Barts and St. Martin. The Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba are all in its path before what’s being called “the most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history” reaches the U.S. mainland.

INDIA: Church leaders are cautiously optimistic with the appointment of a Christian member of Parliament to the Cabinet, a first for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

SUDAN: Christian refugee children from South Sudan are being forced to recite Islamic prayers to receive food, according to an aid group working with the approximately 700,000 South Sudanese refugees in Sudan.

BRITAIN: The Enigma code-breakers at Bletchley Park gathered for a reunion last weekend. Look at their 90-year-old-plus faces in the photo above, and remember the world would be different if they hadn’t cracked the infamous Nazi code.

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