Globe Trot: Britain declines to call ISIS actions genocide

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GREAT BRITAIN: Parliament defeated a bill to recognize Islamic State (ISIS) genocide against religious minorities in Iraq and Syria by a vote of 148-111 less than a week after the United States made its genocide declaration.

BELGIUM: Of the churches and ministries we’ve connected with in Belgium following yesterday morning’s terrorist attack in Brussels, no one was reported killed or injured—though there were near misses.

One Belgian churchgoer told me of texting prayers and Bible verses back and forth to a teacher with her classroom on lockdown. That same churchgoer reports his small church (of under 100) growing with its outreach to refugees to host five services. The attacks, he said, confirm “more strongly than ever that we have to reach out to the immigrants in Belgium and bring them the gospel of eternal personal peace of a loving but just God.” Said Najafabady, who leads a Farsi-language church that started in Mollenbeek (the neighborhood of captured Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam), was on the subway just minutes from Maelbeek station yesterday morning when the bombing took place, and his train was halted by police. Said told me, “Now is the time to stand strong and united because the children of the devil are at work and nothing can stop them unless the children of the Most High God are alert!”

BELGIUM, MORE: Police have identified two suicide bomber suspects who hit Brussels’ airport and subway system. Both Belgian-born, they are Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, and his brother Khalid, 27, whose apartment in the Schaerbeek neighborhood was raided by police last week and contained fingerprints also of Salah Abdeslam.

The collated tweets of The New York Times’ Rukmini Callimachi are an insightful summary of what’s happened. Suicide bombers are made, not born. Ligonier has a good overview from 2007 of Islam and how its ideology is feeding mass terrorism.

CUBA: President Barack Obama completed his Cuba trip after a key speech in Havana, where he said, “I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas.” The president traveled on to Argentina amid beefed-up security following the Brussels attack.

VIETNAM: Prominent Vietnamese blogger Nguyen Huu Vinh today received a five-year jail term on “anti-state charges,” launching widespread protests in Hanoi.

RUSSIA: After a two-day reading of its guilty verdict against Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, the kangaroo court trying her is likely to turn her 22-year sentence for murder into a prisoner swap.

UNITED STATES: Defense Secretary Ash Carter has named as new commander for U.S. Northern Command Air Force Gen. Lori J. Robinson. If confirmed by the Senate, she would be the first woman to lead a U.S. combatant command. Northcom, based in Colorado, secures U.S. territory, Mexico, and Canada.

Mindy Belz

Mindy, a former senior editor for WORLD Magazine, wrote the publication’s first cover story in 1986. She has covered wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Africa, and the Balkans and is author of They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run From ISIS With Persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Mindy resides in Asheville, N.C.

@MindyBelz