Syrian forces seize key supplies for Eastern Ghouta

SYRIA: With more than 670 people dead, including at least 150 children, in the Syrian regime’s two-week siege on Eastern Ghouta, the UN called for a 30-day cease-fire and the United States called on Russia to support it, warning the White House “will not tolerate the atrocities of the Assad regime.” But as President Bashar al Assad’s forces stepped down today to allow humanitarian aid into the Damascus suburb, reporters covering the convoy say heavy firing continued and Syrian forces seized up to 70 percent of aid, including trauma kits and surgical supplies.

UNITED STATES: “I like chaos,” President Donald Trump said of the prevailing White House staff churn in a mocking Gridiron speech on Sunday. His national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, looks like the next one headed for the door. His likely departure and others, ironically, leave in place cooler national security and foreign policy heads who’ve often been at odds with Trump, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

VENEZUELA: An estimated 3 million Venezuelans have left their country since the start of the Hugo Chavez regime in 1999—about one-tenth of the population. These photos capture an escalating mass migration from what once was the leading oil producer in the world and a founding member of OPEC.

CHINA: The staggering number of mostly indigenous Uighurs, who are Muslims, incarcerated in a vast new system of western “re-education camps” is 800,000. In northwest Xinjiang province, “every resident of the region has been affixed with the label ‘safe,’ ‘normal,’ or ‘unsafe,’ based on metrics such as age, faith, religious practices, foreign contacts, and experience abroad.”

MAURITANIA is a needy country with a population that’s 99.75 percent Muslim. But I recently met a sunny underground Christian pastor who showed me how his team is transmitting gospel teaching via cell phone SIM cards.

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