Victory over Russia!

Britain, the United States, France and Ukraine blocked a Russian proposal at the United Nations to blacklist Syrian rebel groups Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham for links to Islamic State and al Qaeda militants, diplomats said on Wednesday.
Russia made the proposal late last month and the U.S. mission to the United Nations had signaled it would oppose the move, saying it would undermine attempts to get a sustained halt in the fighting in Syria.

That'll teach those rascally Russians to fight against freedum!

Ahrar al-Sham is an ultra-orthodox Salafist group and has fought as part of a military alliance including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which was not part of a cessation of hostilities agreement brokered in February.
Ahrar al-Sham, whose late leader fought alongside Osama bin Laden, last year denied sharing al Qaeda's ideology or having organizational ties to the group.

So how did these Freedum Fighters celebrate today? By sacking a village, of course.

Ahrar al-Sham, an ultraconservative Sunni militant group, led the assault on Zaara, along with the Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s Syrian franchise, which often fights alongside opposition factions. The Observatory, which covers both sides of the conflict through a network of local activists, said families disappeared from Zaara after the militants took over.

This is what Freedum Fighters look like.

That's OK. Turkey will fix it.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened Thursday to take stronger military action inside Syria to halt relentless Islamic State rocket attacks that have brought life in parts of one Turkish border town to a standstill.

I'm sure the Kurds will pay for this somehow.

Boots on the ground in Somalia

U.S. Special Operations called in an airstrike on Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia Thursday when a mission to help Ugandan forces the American troops were accompanying turned into an unexpected battle.
The incident occurred west of Mogadishu, according to U.S. military officials familiar with reports from the scene. No U.S. troops were wounded in what quickly turned into a firefight between Ugandan forces and Al-Shabaab militants.

Yes, it's bad in Yemen. But it may be about to get a lot worse.

With ongoing violence and peace talks on fragile ground, Yemen’s population faces a new threat: the World Food Programme has warned that a funding shortfall may soon force it to halt operations in the country.
“We are on the edge,” WFP’s country director in Yemen, Purnima Kashyap, told IRIN. “By July we will have no resources available and will not be able to deliver [food] starting in August.”

Ukraine will teach those newsie types.

A Ukrainian website’s release of the personal information of more than 4,000 individuals from domestic and international media outlets who operated in the country’s restive east was ‘irresponsible’ and ‘ill-advised’, the International Press Institute (IPI) said today, condemning the move.
On Tuesday night, a Kiev-based website with apparent links to Ukraine’s security services released a list of names, email addresses and phone numbers of journalists who allegedly sought accreditation from the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic”, accusing them of co-operating with terrorists.

Piracy. The hot new trend in Vietnam

Southeast Asia is rising as the new epicenter for ocean piracy, according to a new report.
Attacks on shipping by pirates in Southeast Asia are on the rise and the region is now responsible for about 60 percent of worldwide attacks, according to an Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty piracy study, as reported by Hellenic Shipping News.
Vietnam’s waters are the most dangerous in Southeast Asia, according to The Allianz report, accounting for 147 or 55 percent of attacks last year, up from 37 percent in the previous year.
The southern port of Vung Tau in Vietnam was the site of more than half of the hijackings that took place in 2015.
Piracy along Indonesia’s sea border with the Philippines is another concern, with Indonesian authorities said to be worried that pirate attacks could reach recorded Somalian levels.