Globe Trot: Militants target tourists in Egypt

EGYPT: The bombing of a bus carrying South Korean tourists in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, which killed at least four, could signal a return to targeting tourists and foreigners in the region. Insurgent attacks have focused on police and other internal opponents (like Christians) since the 2011 revolution began.

NORTH KOREA: Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea is committing systematic and appalling human rights abuses against its own citizens on a scale unparalleled in the modern world.

SYRIA: A fews years back, physicist Stephen Hawking said God is not necessary for the universe to exist, but in contemplating Syria’s war he sounds nostalgic for divine authority. “What’s happening in Syria is an abomination, one that the world is watching coldly from a distance. Where is our emotional intelligence, our sense of collective justice?” Hawking wrote Friday in a provocative Washington Post op-ed. “The universal principle of justice may not be rooted in physics but it is no less fundamental to our existence. For without it, before long, human beings will surely cease to exist.”

MIDDLE EAST: Yesterday marked the second anniversary of the death of American journalist Anthony Shadid in Syria, and The New York Times has a page of remembrances and links to articles from his Mideast reporting spanning three papers. Shadid’s posthumous House of Stone is a worthwhile read chronicling his family home in Lebanon.

LIBYA: Today marks the third anniversary of a revolt that ousted Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, but the country continues to struggle for stability.

MEXICO: This week President Barack Obama travels to Mexico to participate in a North American Leaders Summit. It will be the first time Obama has conferred with North American leaders since 2012.

RUSSIA: In case you missed this in your weekend Facebook feed, the snowboarding bird on a rooftop in Russia—not new but going viral in sync with Sochi coverage—is not to be missed. It brings to mind a Chesterton quote:

“It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”