Globe Trot: U.S. embassies reopen but drone strikes continue

Shuttered U.S. diplomatic posts around the world reopened on Sunday, except for the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. Heightened alerts—and a barrage of U.S. drone strikes—continue there. Here’s a recap of the drone war restart with uptick in attacks on Yemen. And a re-link from last week to Dronestream, where journalist and web developer Josh Begley is keeping track.

A wave of car bombings across Iraq on Saturday killed at least 80, with seven more Iraqis killed in a bombing Sunday. The attacks appeared aimed at the country’s majority Shiites and timed to mark the end of Ramadan. The Islamic State of Iraq—a merger of al-Qaeda affiliates in Iraq and Syria—claimed responsibility for the coordinated attacks, helped by the al-Qaeda-linked jailbreak in Baghdad last month.

Ramped-up al-Qaeda forces in Syria and Iraq are also making havoc in Syria’s northeastern province, Hasaka, likely to become a key battleground in Syria’s civil war. Earlier this year we at WORLD covered Hasaka with a breakdown of rebel groups the Obama administration wants to aid.

Increasingly Syrian rebels, al-Nusra Front fighters, government forces, Kurds, and Turks are all fighting each other—and resident Christians are suffering. They report their property stolen, homes confiscated, and possessions sold by jihadists, who threaten them with death if they don’t comply with Islamic law and convert. (This part of the upper Euphrates valley, it should be noted, is home to Jewish scholars from the Eastern dispersion dating back to 500 B.C. and some of the oldest Christian centers of learning, dating to the first century.)

Three U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan over the weekend, the first NATO combat deaths this month.

Afghan Special Forces are taking over the work of NATO forces in carrying out raids on Taliban hideouts, and here’s a video of how it’s done.

Flash floods killed at least 22 Afghans over the weekend, as eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan are getting hit hard by monsoon rains.

Twice victimized by China's one-child policy: These grieving parents tell the story of losing an adult child, when you have no other.

Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, imprisoned in China for trying to shed light on the brutality of China's one-child policy, has been ostracized by U.S. academic elites who’ve tried to align him with pro-life “zealots” in the United States.

Laszlo Csatari, a 98-year-old Hungarian who topped a list of alleged Nazi war criminals, died on Saturday in Budapest. Csatari was believed actively involved in the deportations of thousands of Jews to death camps during World War II from a town in present-day Slovakia. He evaded subpoenas and a life imprisonment sentence given in absentia from Slovakia.