Globe Trot 10.29

Hurricane Sandy has killed 65 people across the Caribbean, most of them in Haiti. With the rest of New York City, the UN has canceled proceedings today and the trading floors of the New York Stock Exchange are closed—for the first time in 27 years for weather. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and Newsday have suspended online paywalls starting today to provide news as a public service during Hurricane Sandy.

A suicide car bomber rammed into a church in northern Nigeria Sunday, killing at least seven and wounding more than 100 worshippers at St. Rita’s Catholic church in Kaduna. After some threats of rioting over the attacks, a journalist in Kaduna told human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebes that Kaduna is calm today. But, as Ogebes observed, “Attending regular Sunday service is now an extremely high-risk behavior and there is no let up to the slaughter that has seen over two dozen churches attacked in addition to countless other attacks on innocent Christians this year alone.” Here’s the latest on Nigerians in the United States banding together to pressure the U.S. government to do more about growing violence against Christians in Nigeria.

A police commander in Tunisia is in critical condition after he was attacked Saturday night by Salafist Muslims who also attacked alcohol venders in Tunis—part of ongoing violence by radical Muslims in the country that launched the Arab Spring revolts.

Child sex-traffickers are using Facebook to recruit young women into brutal prostitution rings—27 of the 129 children reported missing to Indonesia’s national commission on child protection so far this year are believed to have been abducted after meeting their captors via Facebook.

Kidnapped American journalist Austin Tice may be held by President Bashar Assad’s forces in Syria, not rebels, according to this essay on the value of war correspondents and the risks they take, written by Terry Anderson, who was the AP bureau chief in Beirut when he was kidnapped in 1985 and held for seven years.

The pledged ceasefire in Syria fell apart, with rebels launching car bombs that killed at least 15 on the first day of the ceasefire agreement, with 10 more dead today on the outskirts of Damascus, while government warplanes bombard rebel targets in the capital’s suburbs.

With less than three months to a general election, Israel’s Likud Party will vote today on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal that the party form a temporary pact with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael-Beitenu, the ultranationalist faction. If the party goes with a secret ballot, as some are pushing, Netanyahu, who views the coalition as essential to keeping Likud in power, is likely to lose.

We’re looking at: Journalists killed in Somalia, with the news today that a 17th, a radio reporter attacked by gunmen last week, has died of his wounds.

What do overseas heads of state think of this ad put out by President Obama’s reelection campaign? Plenty of U.S. commentators (including our own Janie B. Cheaney) have taken issue with equating voting for the first time with having (promiscuous) sex for the first time—but for a president who regularly references himself at campaign rallies as “your commander in chief,” it’s interesting that targeting college women seemed to matter more than gauging reaction, say, in the Arab world, Asia, the Far Pacific, and elsewhere, where premarital sex is not only frowned upon but illegal.