Tag Archives: people

Eminent radio personality and proud Arab American Casey Kasem passed away early on Sunday at the age of 82, his daughter Kerri Kasem confirmed on popular website Facebook. Kasem had been hospitalized for the past two weeks in Washington. Kasem had Lewy body disease, the most prevalent kind of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. His agent Don Pitts confirmed the news …

Clashes between Shi’ite Huthi groups and government forces in Northern Yemen have led to the deaths of several dozen people in the past 24 hours after a ceasefire between both parties had collapsed, military and tribal sources said. According to sources, the fighting began on Sunday, and continued intermittently on Monday near the Jabal al-Dhine region, a mountainous area around …

Two McMaster graduate students were wrapping up a community presentation on mental health when members of the audience began approaching them, in tears. The audience had just experienced an eye-opening discussion in which some had learned that symptoms they had battled privately were in fact the hallmarks of recognized conditions such as depression and anxiety, and that treatment was readily …

More than 6,000 people in the past week have fled the northeast Nigerian state of Borno due to Boko Haram violence, the nation’s main relief agency said. On Wednesday, The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said that it had registered exactly 6,227 internally displaced people (IDP) in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno, the past week. “Most of them came in …

Militants in Mosul attacked the Turkish consulate in the city on Wednesday, kidnapping 48 people, one of whom was the head of the diplomatic mission. Only a day earlier, the Turkish consulate in Mosul said that members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had captured 28 Turkish truck drivers; it was on a day when jihadists, …

32 people were killed in attacks across Iraq on Monday, including 28 people killedin northern Iraq police checkpoint by roadside bomb and a truck rigged with explosives detonated by a suicide bomber. According to Local official Shallal Abdul Baban, the blasts at a police checkpoint in Tuz Khurmatu killed 28 people and wounded 148 others, causing “great destruction”. The checkpoint …

On Monday, Syrian President Bashar Assad announced “general amnesty” for all “crimes” committed to a date, state television said. The amnesty decree, announced only a week after the controversial election he won amid raging conflict across the country, for the first time extends amnesty to those accused to be terrorists under the controversial July 2012 anti-terrorism law. The Syrian government …

Hundreds of villagers from four villages in northeast Nigeria are feared dead in suspected Boko Haram attacks, in the latest increase in violence that is claiming the lives of an increasing number of civilians. According to local sources, Tuesday’s death toll due to attacks in Gwozo district in the state of Borno could be as high as 500; however, the …

Twin suicide bombs targeting the Shabak minority and clashes between militants and security forces in the northern province of Nineveh in Iraq on Friday left 33 people dead, officials said. Mosul, Ninevah’s provincial capital, is one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq, with militant groups involved in near-daily attacks. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in vehicles in Al-Muwaffaqiyah, …

On Thursday, militants launched an offensive on the Iraqi city Samarra, killing six people, in the latest display of aggression and weakness of the security forces. The militants were travelling in several dozens of vehicles, some of them equipped with anti-aircraft guns. They attacked a major checkpoint to the southeast of Samarra, killing security forces guarding the border and burning …