Iraq and Syria are failed states - it’s splashed all over the headlines. Armed militiamen hold power in Yemen, where government authority is also flailing. The remaining gaps in world news (between the battle for Kobani and George Clooney’s various wedding parties ) are filled with the looming Gaza rebuild. But today’s biggest untold story is unfolding in north Africa. Western powers now worry that Libya will soon collapse completely if its weak central government can’t manage the competing militia vying for political control. Media have declared the Islamic State ...

New York City joined the list of cities grappling with Ebola when Médecins Sans Frontières confirmed on Thursday that one of their doctors was infected with the deadly virus. Dr. Craig Spencer had just returned to the United States after volunteering with MSF in the West African nation of Guinea. Back home, he self-monitored for symptoms, and when a fever spiked on Saturday he checked into hospital isolation. Officials immediately retraced his recent city travels, quarantined his fiancée and sought to quell public panic with a consistent media chorus of ...

Suarez during El Clasico

In the wake of Wednesday’s Ottawa Parliament shooting , it might be time to show that it’s not just the men who go to extremes, but the women too. There is a strange phenomenon trending on world news as teenage girls from around the planet swap schoolbooks for semiautomatic weapons and head to Syria to marry terrorist men. It’s a psychotic twist on the classic fairy tale. Step aside White Knight! Now vulnerable girls-cum-terrorista teens pursue violent guys, acting on a major delusion that is crossing global zip codes. This ...

It’s been almost a month since we started paying attention to Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish town along the Turkish border, where peshmerga forces are just barely holding off Islamic State militants from taking control of the city. A refresher: Turkey has only just said it would open the border for Kurdish fighters and refugees . The United States wants Turkey to go even further, and consider ground support for besieged defenders. For now however, Turkish soldiers are sitting in their tanks just across the border. Turkey wants the United States ...