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AJ McCampbell, Democrat state representative from Alabama's 71st district, calls on U.S. president Joseph R. Biden to "pick a side" on voting rights and the filibuster before a march in downtown Washington, D.C. from the African American History Museum to the White House on Wednesday, August 4, 2021.
Hard Numbers: Biden is losing Black voters, Southern Brazil gasps for air, Turkey strikes Kurdish militants, Vultures vanish from the skies of South Asia
62: A new poll finds that just 62% of Black Americans are “absolutely certain” they’ll vote in November, down 12 points since June 2020. Overall, American interest in voting dropped by four points. That’s bad news for President Joe Biden who – like all Democrats for the past half-century – has relied heavily on Black American voters at the polls. But the study, conducted by the Washington Post and IPSOS, shows Black voters, particularly younger ones, aren’t happy with his handling of the economy, criminal justice reform, or the war in Gaza.
75: At least 75 people have been killed and more than 100 reported missing after massive floods swept through the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul over the weekend, washing away roads and bridges, knocking out power and water, and causing deadly landslides. The local governor said rebuilding will require “a kind of Marshall Plan.” Trivia: You probably know a famous person from Rio Grande do Sul – supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
16: A Turkish airstrike on a camp across the border in northern Iraq reportedly killed at least 16 members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, aka PKK. The PKK, which has waged a decades-long armed insurgency against the Turkish state, has long had a presence in Kurdish-controlled regions of Northern Iraq and Syria. It is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US, and the EU. Allies of the PKK, however, have helped the US to fight against ISIS.
2: The Parsis, a tiny religious minority in South Asia who follow Zoroastrian burial rites in which dead bodies are left atop “towers of silence” to be picked clean by vultures, have a big problem: a vulture shortage. In Karachi, a city of 20 million, the 800 remaining Parsis have just two towers of silence left. In recent decades regional vulture populations have been decimated because of an anti-inflammatory drug in cattle that is lethal for the scavenging birds.A bomb disposal expert works at the scene after a bomb attack in Ankara, Turkey.
NATO battles: US shoots down Turkish drone in Syria
The US military on Thursday shot down a Turkish drone in northeast Syria, a remarkable development pitting two NATO states with an already complicated alliance against one another.
The Pentagon said that it warned Ankara several times beforehand that its hardware was too close to US troops stationed there, and that it made the decision to strike when the Turkish drone came within 500 meters of US personnel.
How’d we get here? As part of its decade-long mission to abolish the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the US still has 900 troops operating in northern Syria. They work mainly with the Syrian Democratic Forces – a ragtag group of anti-regime militias including many Kurdish fighters.
Turkey, for its part, has long considered the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, to be a terror group and has regularly launched operations in northern Syria aimed at rooting them out. What’s more, in recent days, Ankara has launched a fresh bombing campaign against Kurdish forces in Syria after a recent suicide bombing outside Turkey’s security headquarters in the capital – attributed to PKK members trained in Syria – killed two people.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said this week that PKK infrastructure and energy facilities in Syria and Iraq are “legitimate targets,” but the Pentagon came to believe that Turkey’s bombardment was imperiling US troops.
Washington is trying to de-escalate. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Thursday that he’d spoken to his Turkish counterpart and emphasized that Washington understands Ankara’s “legitimate security concerns.”
The US, along with its EU partners, has been pushing in recent months for Ankara to give the greenlight to Sweden to join NATO. But Turkey says that’ll only happen when the US agrees to sell it F-16 fighter jets, something the US has so far refused to do in part because of disagreements over relations with Russia and … conflicting operations in Syria.
Relations between the US and Turkey were already very messy, particularly since 2019, when Ankara purchased Russian S-400 missile defense systems. This event will only generate more bad will.
Police officers secure an area near the Interior Ministry following a bomb attack in Ankara, Turkey, on Oct. 1, 2023.
Turkey retaliates for terrorist attack
Turkish warplanes on Sunday destroyed 20 suspected targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq following a suicide bombing of the Turkish Ministry of Interior Affairs in Ankara for which the PKK claimed responsibility. Two police officers were injured and one of the bombers was killed in the assault.
The attack happened hours before Turkey’s Parliament was set to return from its summer recess. The legislature opened as planned, and a defiant Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the bombing “the last stand of terrorism” and vowed that “the scoundrels who targeted the peace and security of the citizens could not achieve their goals and they never will.”
The PKK, which is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union, has conducted a number of attacks in Turkey together with the Islamic State group.
Erdogan also reiterated Turkey’s plans to create a 20-mile safe zone along its border with Syria to secure the area from attacks.
This Turkish parliamentary session is notably supposed to ratify Sweden’s membership in NATO, but Erdogan has not yet indicated when that is likely to take place.