Kashmir on lockdown

INDIA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday revoked semi-autonomous status for the Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir region, locking down the territory. Authorities placed local political leaders under house arrest. They also cut phone and internet service, closed schools, and ordered “no movement of the public.”

UNITED STATES: Authorities are treating Saturday’s Walmart shooting in El Paso, Texas, that left 20 people dead as an act of domestic terrorism, and the FBI said it has made 100 arrests in the last nine months related to incidents like the weekend shootings in Texas and Ohio. The shooters’ “twisted motivations” may be too convoluted to sort into clear ideology, but tracking and rooting out the white supremacist bent of “semi-ironic lost boys floating around the ether” is overdue.

The founder of 8chan, the site where multiple mass shootings have been announced this year, called for taking down the site.

CHINA’s central government has intensified its crackdown on Christians, pressuring local officials to keep a tally of citizens who believe in God and to monitor them, according to a new report.

IRAQ: Supporters of Iranian-backed militias blocked the main highway between Mosul and Erbil, threatening further conflict. Iraq said it will replace the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) militia with Iraqi army units after the United States last month announced sanctions against two PMF commanders and others.

IRAN seized another tanker in the Gulf, an Iraqi ship it said was smuggling fuel perhaps as retaliation for Iraq’s bowing to U.S. interests.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence demanded Iran free a 65-year-old Christian woman sentenced to a year in prison for “propaganda against the system.”

TURKEY said it will carry out military operations in northern Syria, threatening an area controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. The border area it plans to occupy as a “safe zone” includes Christian, Kurdish, Yazidi, and other communities long under threat.

ISRAEL: Lawmakers used a procedure normally reserved for urgent measures to approve construction of 715 housing units in the West Bank, part of what many believe may be an annexation plan—with U.S. approval—ahead of September elections.

COSMOS: Baking chocolate chip cookies aboard the International Space Station is full of risks.

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