Globe Trot: Greek elections give new life to Spain's radical left

SPAIN: Thousands of supporters of the radical left Podemos party marched in Madrid over the weekend, in a bid to emulate the success of leftists in Greece and force the eurozone to roll back austerity measures. Like Syriza in Greece, Podemos openly takes its cues from the socialist mantra of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

JAPAN: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed “to make the terrorists pay the price” following the apparent beheading of journalist Kenji Goto by Islamic State militants. Two videos released within a week showed the killings of two hostages from Japan, which has remained on the sidelines of the war on terrorism. Their violent deaths have galvanized Japanese horror—and perhaps new resolve for a country that has avoided international confrontation since World War II.

IRAQ: What happened to the homes of Christians forced out of Mosul and Nineveh Plain? The Islamic State has declared all of them property of the militant group. Some have been turned into stores for weapons and factories for making explosive devices. Others have become homes for its “newly married members”—captive women and girls forced to wed ISIS insurgents.

EGYPT: President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is serious about cracking down on terrorism, and yesterday he told a group of public leaders: “I would not handcuff the hands of Egyptians to avenge the martyrs of Egypt who have been killed in cowardly terrorist acts.” An Egyptian court upheld death sentences for 183 Muslim Brotherhood supporters convicted in a 2013 attack on a police station in Cairo that killed 11.

In an unprecedented appearance, al-Sisi attended a church service in Cairo last month, and also challenged Islamic clerics, saying the Islamic community “is being lost by our own hands.”

BULGARIANS put to rest their country’s first non-communist president, Zhelyu Zhelev, who died Friday. Zhelev, 79, was a dissident who became Bulgaria’s first democratically elected president, and led the country between 1990 and 1997. He took a backseat but important role in negotiating peace in the Balkans and calming ethnic divisions in Bulgaria, which has a sizable Muslim population.