(BBC) -- A Swiss military court has sentenced a former soldier for fighting against the Islamic State group in Syria. Johan Cosar used his military training to recruit hundreds of men to defend Christian groups from IS. He was found guilty of undermining Switzerland's neutrality and security by joining a foreign army - and given a three-month suspended sentence and fined 500 francs (£383; $500).
Upon request from the Hon Ray Williams MP, Minister for Multiculturalism and Minister for Disability Services and The Hon Tanya Davies MP, Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Women, and Minister for Ageing, to meet with leaders of the Assyrian community.
It took way too long. It shouldn't have required any heavy political lifting. Little noted in the media, at the end of the last Congress the House and Senate passed, and the president signed, a new law that specifically authorizes the State Department and the U.S.
Israeli historian Benny Morris doesn't do things by half. The footnotes of his new book on the 30-year genocide of Christians by their Turkish rulers, cowritten with his colleague Dror Zeevi, take up more than a fifth of the 640-page work. "It was nine years, a long haul," he admitted to me this week, with an audible sigh over the phone.
Shamiram Issavi's appeal against her five-year jail sentence for "acting against national security" was postponed after a hearing today at Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. The new presiding judge, Ahmad Zardar, appeared visibly confused at the details of Shamiram's case and ruled that her appeal would next be heard in conjunction with that of her husband, Pastor Victor Bet-Tamraz,...
A senior adviser to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad on Tuesday flatly rejected the idea of giving Syrian Kurds a measure of autonomy. The Kurdish-led authority that runs much of north and east Syria has presented a road map for a deal with Assad in recent meetings with Russia.