A boat that departed from the Marshall Islands was stopped by patrol boats on the 28th of April in the Straight of Hormuz and taken to Bandar Abbas. It was detained due to a dispute between the Danish company Maersk and a private Iranian firm. Maersk explained that the dispute dates back to 2005, when it delivered containers to Dubai and the cargo was disposed of by the UAE. The ship was supposed to get to Jebel Ali, in the UAE.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32621300
Saudi Arabia has been conducting strikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebel group, which seized the capital of Yemen and forced the country’s president to flee.
The aim of the Houthis is to restore President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to power, and the Saudis are attempting to stop them from achieving this.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32572408
The U.S. Wants to arm the Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq. Iraqis are suspicious of US intentions because of a history of mistrust and Western intervention.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/ethiopian-israelis-protest-police-racism-150501043050655.html
Ethiopian Jews staged a protest in Israel saying, “In Europe they kill Jews because they’re Jews, here they kill Jews for being black.”
“The United States Navy sent a destroyer toward the Persian Gulf on Tuesday after Iran took control of a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship it accused of trespassing in territorial waters, American military officials said.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/world/middleeast/iran-cargo-ship-us-navy.html?ref=middleeast&_r=0
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32479263
A spokesman from Israel said the targets were planning and preparing for an attack on Israeli military personnel. Israel reacted with a ‘decisive response’. Shortly afterwards, there were claims that Israel bombed missile batteries operated by Hezbollah.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/150426-islam-muslim-quran-middle-east-ngbootalk/
This article shows the different perspectives of Islam from a National Geographic journalist who spent time with a madrassa-trained scholar and researcher at Oxford University, ShaykhMohammadAkramNadwi. I thought this article was interesting and related to our class because it illustrates the actual viewpoints of a sheikh who has studied Sharia law, which we are not often exposed to. This article and her book are neat because they provide knowledge on Islamic societies and frustration with “stereotypes of Islam we are encouraged to think of in the West.”
Masoumeh Ebtekar, the Environmental Protection head in the Iranian administration has been sanctioning the murder of stray dogs across Iran. This has sparked a series of protests in order to combat the practice of morality practice sanctioning these killings in order to downsize the western practice of keeping dogs.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2015/apr/23/iranian-video-showing-stray-dogs-killings-sparks-protests-in-major-cities
“An American and an Italian held hostage by al-Qaida, as well as two Americans working with the terror group, were inadvertently killed by CIA drone strikes early this year, the government revealed Thursday.
President Barack Obama said he took full responsibility for the counterterror missions and offered his “grief and condolences” to the families of the hostages, Warren Weinstein of Rockville, Maryland, and Giovanni Lo Porto.”
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/american-italian-hostages-killed-in-us-drone-strike/ar-AAbzkZA?ocid=SNYDHP
Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has been sentanced to 20 years in Prison for the torture of protestors in December of 2012. Morsy was Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
www.cnn.com/2015/04/21/africa/egypt-mohamed-morsy-verdict
