Globe Trot: Why won't U.S. admit ISIS genocide against Christians?

IRAQ: The U.S. State Department is poised to declare ISIS actions in Nineveh Plains and other areas of Iraq a genocide—but against Yazidis only. The finding is likely to leave out Iraq and Syria’s Christian minority. An array of religious scholars, church leaders, and dignitaries are petitioning Secretary of State John Kerry to reconsider, based on the evidence:

“We have extensive files supporting a finding that ISIS’ treatment of Iraqi and Syrian Christians, as well as Yazidis and other vulnerable minorities, meets [the genocide] definition. They include evidence of ISIS assassinations of church leaders; mass murders; torture, kidnapping for ransom in the Christian communities of Iraq and Syria; its sexual enslavement and systematic rape of Christian girls and women; its practices of forcible conversions to Islam; its destruction of churches, monasteries, cemeteries, and Christian artifacts; and its theft of lands and wealth from Christian clergy and laity alike.”

For more background, this 2013 House testimony and this report give evidence of ISIS tactics to eliminate Christians, beginning in Syria.

ISIS: The current U.S.-led air war can’t defeat ISIS, which will take teaming up with Kurdish and other ground forces, plus providing some of the tactical heft ourselves. Pentagon brass seem to be catching on.

VENEZUELA: After winning a super majority in Sunday’s national assembly elections, Venezuela’s opposition leaders and young workers forced out can’t leave the Hugo Chavez era fast enough:

“The situation became so drastic that many made a business out of the chaos to survive: They’d queue overnight to get their hands on a milk carton and resell it for three times the original price.”

INDIA: Hindu nationalist leaders are blaming Christians and Muslims for a decline in “bharatiya” or traditional Indian faiths.

TATOOINE: Scientists and engineers find real-world application modeling some of their research on Star Wars technology.