Globe Trot: Turkey seizes churches old and new

TURKEY: Authorities seized six churches—one 1,700 years old and another built in 2003—in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir. Unlike state-funded mosques, Turkey’s ancient church buildings, many of them predating Islam, have been managed, historically, by church-owned foundations.

ICELAND: Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned barely 24 hours after millions of linked documents from a Panama law firm revealed he and his wife had set up a tax shelter company in the Virgin Islands. Revelations contained in the Panama Papers implicate dozens of world leaders in criminal activity. The takeaway, from The Wall Streeet Journal’s Bret Stephens (subscription required):

“Nobody can be surprised by any of this. And nobody should look away from the central lesson of the scandal, though they’re trying. To wit, the story here isn’t about tax evaders and offshore accounts, deplorable as they may be. It’s about public policies and incentives that make a career in politics an expedient route to personal enrichment.”

KENYA: Kenyans marked the anniversary of the day al-Shabaab attacked the university campus in Garissa, where 147 mostly Christian students were killed, with worship services—and a marathon.

SOUTH KOREA: The Yakult yogurt sellers of South Korea are delivering their tiny bottles via new refrigerated carts.

BELGIUM: The European Commission unveiled an asylum overhaul proposal that mostly would centralize more the EU’s borderless entry system. French and Belgian law enforcement are tracking at least 22 Islamic State fugitives believed to be part of a network behind the attacks in Brussels and Paris.