Trump to announce a ‘path forward’ in Afghanistan

AFGHANISTAN: U.S. President Donald Trump will announce his “path forward” in Afghanistan during a prime-time televised address Monday night (9 p.m. EDT). A good review of the 16-year war, America’s longest, is important in light of the rise of the Taliban and al-Qaeda there.

SPAIN: A 2007 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid warned, “There is little doubt that the autonomous region of Catalonia has become a prime base of operations for terrorist activity.” Ten years later, Spanish police set up 800 checkpoints across the region on Sunday in the hunt for a suspect in last week’s Barcelona attack that killed 15 and injured more than 120. Police believe the jihadist cell plotting the attack intended to hit major sites, including Sagrada Familia, the renowned Gaudi basilica.

PAKISTAN: Flags flew at half-staff and mourners gathered for a state funeral—a first for a Christian—to honor the life of Ruth Pfau, the “Mother Teresa of Pakistan.” The German-born Pfau, 87, died Aug. 10 in Karachi after working successfully to eradicate leprosy. Baptized as a Protestant, she later joined the Roman Catholic Church and became a nun. She set out for India in 1960 but was waylaid in Pakistan with a visa problem and began her lifelong work there.

IRAQ: How did a young Iraqi priest protect ancient manuscripts from Islamic State? Threatened with capture by militants at Mar Benham monastery, Yousef Sakat built a fake wall at the back of a storeroom, hid books in tin barrels there, and then covered the new wall with brooms and shovels. ISIS destroyed much of the Mar Benham complex and defaced iconography, but Sakat recently discovered the manuscripts unharmed.

NIGERIA: President Muhamadu Buhari returned to his country after spending more than three months in London for medical treatment of an unnamed condition. He pledged to continue the fight against the terror group Boko Haram.

ITALY: Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich went to class last week to learn how to be an ambassador’s spouse. The instructions included lessons on decorating the official residence, that is, if the Senate confirms his wife Callista as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

NORTH AMERICA: At least once a solar eclipse ended a war.

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