Globe Trot: Karachi airport reopens after brazen Taliban attack

PAKISTAN: The Karachi airport is open again after terrorists orchestrated a brazen five-hour siege—the largest-scale attack at the nation’s busiest airport. Reportedly 28 have been killed and dozens injured. The Pakistani Taliban (or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) has claimed responsibility.

BORDER SECURITY: A recent report suggests Middle Eastern men are using Texas courts to obtain new identities with Hispanic surnames:

The Texas Department of Public Safety informed the San Antonio Division Joint Terrorism Task Force that individuals of Middle Eastern descent are obtaining new Texas driver’s licenses with Hispanic surnames.

Approximately 20 individuals of Middle Eastern origin are utilizing the Travis County (Austin, Texas) District Court each week to change their names and driver’s licenses from Middle Eastern to Hispanic surnames.

NORTH KOREA: 56-year-old Jeffrey Edward Fowle is the third American detained in North Korea, arrested allegedly for leaving a Bible in his hotel room. The father of three from Ohio was a tourist, and his attorney said he was not there as a missionary. At least three U.S. citizens are detained in North Korea, including Kenneth Bae, a Christian missionary who was sentenced last year to 15 years of hard labor on charges of trying to overthrow the government. Matthew Todd Miller was taken into custody two months ago.

WORLD CUP: With 1 billion TV spectators expected, a paraplegic wearing a robotic exoskeleton will take the first kick at Thursday’s opening of the World Cup in Sao Paulo.

BELGIUM: Thirty minutes south of Brussels, the fairy-tale like Blue Forest awaits.

RUSSIA: Profiles of 15 young people living in post-Soviet states show how they and their countries diverged after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the diversity of their concerns and lifestyles today.

AFGHANISTAN: A former chief policy adviser to President Hamid Karzai says the exchange of five Taliban leaders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl demonstrates President Barack Obama’s “moral confusion, strategic naiveté and political incompetency.”

According to US documents, at least two of the five men are accused of committing war crimes, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and torture. As a former professor of law, Obama should know the U.S. is legally bound to put them on trial since these crimes have universal jurisdiction.

HONG KONG: Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church launched a campus in Hong Kong last fall with more than 800 attendees, and this month baptized 14 with perhaps one wannabe shown here.

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