‘Unprovoked attack’

IRAN: The debris field from the U.S. military drone shot down by Iran is in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz, not over the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan, as Iranian officials claimed. Iran deployed its locally made Khordad 3 short-range missile system, with an altitude range of 81,000 feet, to bring down the RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drone. Pentagon officials called it an “unprovoked attack,” coming just days after other attacks on U.S. Reaper drones by Iranian-backed forces. President Donald Trump in a Thursday morning tweet said Iran “made a very big mistake.”

GLOBAL: American pastors say little about the growing persecution of the global church, writes Open Doors leader David Curry, violence they would not ignore were it happening in the United States.

BURKINA FASO: “There is no Christian anymore in this town,” said a resident in Arbinda, where the latest in a string of attacks on churches in the area left at least 19 people dead. About 49 Christians have died in six attacks in the past two months, Barnabas Fund reports, and as many as 82 pastors, 1,145 Christians, and 151 households have fled from Islamist violence.

SWITZERLAND: The global population of people displaced by conflict reached 70.8 million last year, up from a little more than 43 million a decade ago, according to new figures from the UN refugee agency in Geneva. “We have become almost unable to make peace,” said Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, as unresolved conflict drives displacement. More than half the refugees displaced in 2018 were children.

EGYPT: The UN called for a “thorough and transparent investigation” into the death of former President Mohamed Morsi, as thousands of people throughout the Middle East paid their respects to Egypt’s former leader. Morsi brought his Muslim Brotherhood to power for one year in 2012-2013, suspending the constitution and granting himself unchecked power until he was ousted in a military coup led by current President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi. Held in prison since that time on charges of espionage, Morsi collapsed in court Monday and died. Numerous politicians are calling his death deliberate, and Egyptian scholar and Hudson Institute senior fellow Samuel Tadros said there is “an element of Greek tragedy” in it:

“Many will be expecting something to happen in Egypt as a result of his death in prison. I have serious doubts. The [Muslim Brotherhood] is broken and has no ability to harm the regime. And it’s not as if terrorists are waiting for Morsi’s death to start bombings, they are doing it anyway.”

NETHERLANDS: Investigators announced murder charges against four suspects linked to the Russian government in the 2014 shoot down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. The plane crashed in Ukraine, killing all 298 on board.

CANADA: Activists filed a legal challenge to Quebec’s new law banning public employees from wearing religious symbols, including hijabs, kippas, turbans, and crosses.

CUBA: You probably forgot that the military trial of the five defendants charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is still underway at Guantanamo Bay, and there’s a new judge presiding.

IRELAND: Below is Queen Victoria, in actual film footage shot in 1900, and she is wearing trendy sunglasses.