Globe Trot: A story of forgiveness goes viral in the Arab world

IRAQ: I’ve been three weeks on the road, including time in Iraq among those displaced by ISIS and those fighting ISIS, or Islamic State. Reports to come in WORLD Magazine.

ISLAMIC STATE: Videos of a 10-year-old Iraqi displaced by Islamic State and of a brother of two Egyptians beheaded in Libya voicing forgiveness for ISIS have gone viral, watched by more than a million in the Arab world.

The Vatican’s top UN diplomat has called for the use of force to stop ISIS aggression.

AFGHANISTAN: The United States is slowing withdrawal plans for Afghanistan—likely the result of looking at the unravelling in Iraq since the hasty 2011 withdrawal.

PAKISTAN: Bombings at two churches in Lahore have left at least 14 dead and 70 wounded.

VANUATU: Cyclone Pam has destroyed or damaged 90 percent of buildings on the Pacific island nation, but aid agencies are just reaching it for further assessment. New Zealand coastal areas braced for storm surge from the monster typhoon.

SIERRA LEONE: Three more American aid workers are due to arrive in the United States today for monitoring after their exposure to Ebola.

Back from Liberia, missionary physician Scott Myhre recounts his time under American quarantine. Without the global headlines, Myhre and his wife Jennifer battled the 2007 Ebola outbreak in Uganda, treating more than 100 cases with 34 deaths, including a fellow physician, in their clinic in Bundibugyo.

SWEDEN’S government last week scrapped an arms deal with Saudi Arabia and stood by Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom’s pointed comments about the country’s poor human rights record—prompting Saudi Arabia to withdraw its ambassador from Sweden.

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