Weeks earlier, Nadia Murad had been ripped from her village by Islamic State (ISIS) fighters who murdered her family and took her captive. Along with other young Yazidi women, she was transported to Mosul, in northern Iraq. Ms. Murad, just 21 years old at the time, had already attempted escape once, through an open window.

“It is high time the world made an all-out effort to stop the ongoing pogrom against Myanmar’s minority Rohingya...,” writes Mohammad Amjad Hossain. “The pogrom resembles those crimes perpetrated against Jews.... The military junta of Myanmar torches Rohingya villages, stops aid to Rohingya camps, and restricts Rohingyas’ movement.... [The United...

Regarding the Aug. 21 Monitor Daily story “Home prices, and a thought shift, give ‘small living’ a boost”: Interesting concept. My friend has done it, downsizing and living in a tiny apartment. Decluttering would be a two-month, full-time job, which I haven’t been willing to devote myself to at this point.

As he considers what to do about the 2015 international agreement with Iran that he disdains, President Trump may be about to lob the ball into the international community’s court. Rather than pulling the United States out of the deal as he has long threatened, Mr. Trump may instead agree to stick with it at least for the coming months – and...

Setting aside years of increasing Turkey-US hostility, President Trump’s introductory remarks for the cameras were glowing as he met Turkey’s controversial President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan one-on-one, winding up a flurry of bilateral diplomacy on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s annual opening in New York. Recommended: Think you know...

Corinne Cannon remembers well an especially challenging night when her first child, Jack, was an infant. The evening prompted Ms. Cannon to consider her own situation in the context of other mothers’ circumstances: She had support from her husband and the money to support her son. With the intent of helping other mothers in her community, Cannon...

Polls of Americans consistently show they put more trust in the Supreme Court than in the two elected branches of government (Congress and the presidency). Now a new poll may explain why the high court still enjoys legitimacy as the nation’s final arbiter of constitutional principles. The poll, conducted for Penn State’s McCourtney Institute of...

Back in 2013, I was in Mexico City for a work trip when the light fixtures started swaying in a ground-floor hotel restaurant. In the United States, we’re taught to find a sturdy table to crouch under, or a doorframe to stand in when the earth starts to tremble. So, I did just that, throwing my hands up against one of the hulking doorways of the...

It’s been seven years since WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange threatened to drop an information bombshell on the Kremlin that would show Russians the inner workings of their government and business world. WikiLeaks went on to publish hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables and, more recently, a huge trove of emails from the Democratic...

In camps for internally displaced persons and in the war-torn towns and villages of western Iraq, there is one legacy of the so-called Islamic State’s brutal reign whose magnitude experts and authorities are only beginning to understand: traumatized children. From the stateless children of ISIS members, to child soldiers and the tens of thousands...

In a surprise move that seems at odds with Washington’s threatening stance toward North Korea, the government of South Korea announced Sept. 21 that it plans to resume humanitarian aid to its neighbor. It also seems to contradict the ratcheting up of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council against the Kim regime in Pyongyang. The $8...

Baruch García stood at an intersection Tuesday afternoon after a deadly earthquake, trying to direct traffic away from a road cutting through La Condesa’s lush Parque México. On the other side of the park, hundreds of volunteers – from a young boy in a yellow soccer uniform, to a woman in slacks and ballet flats, and a man wearing an apron from a...

Russia fought two bloody wars in its Caucasus republic of Chechnya, ostensibly to crush an emerging threat of Islamist extremism on its own soil. Mr. Kadyrov is imposing sharia (Islamic law) on his population – and lately, even defying the Kremlin's foreign policy – with an apparent eye on a global, Islamic stage. “He has introduced politicized...

One of the defining challenges in the 21st century has been how to balance demands for independence by certain peoples with the sanctity of national borders. Just in the coming days alone, two regions with distinct identities, Catalonia in Spain and the Kurdish area in Iraq, plan to stage referendums on independence. The two votes are an echo of...

Yes, a shadowy Russian firm with ties to the Kremlin bought about $100,000 worth of Facebook ads intended to sway voters during last year’s presidential campaign, the social media giant disclosed earlier this month. The problem is, those Russian-bought online spots might be just a hint of a darker, undetected flood of attempts at influence,...

Omar Chavira grew up near the rolling foothills of this state capital, coming of age when the US, Mexico, and Canada first signed the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mr. Chavira had already dropped out of high school and soon married his wife, Soledad, who halted her education before junior high. “Back then, there weren’t many incentives to...

President Vladimir Putin watched through a cool drizzle in Russia's far western reaches Monday, just 70 miles from his country’s border with the European Union, as Russian tanks and paratroopers battled fictional extremist groups. The confrontation was just one part of “Zapad 2017,” a huge military exercise involving both Russia and Belarus that...

U.S. That’s us,” said MSNBC host Rachel Maddow in a segment devoted to the devastation hurricane Irma wrought across the United States Virgin Islands. Ms. Maddow’s report highlighted how hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm, transformed the once green and leafy paradise in the southeastern Caribbean to a dull, brown mess.

Two weeks after hurricane Harvey, Soni Herrera is trapped at her home – a home she and her family cannot yet live in. Like many of the tens of thousands of Houstonians flooded out of their houses, Ms. Herrera, her husband, Jaime, and their four children benefited from the indiscriminate bravery of her community during and immediately after the...

South Sudan’s largest city needed a new bridge, and a Japanese aid agency was going to build one. “The way the city was growing was unbelievable,” says Justin Tata, the head of the department of architecture and urban planning at the University of Juba. Every day, a huge portion of the country’s economy rattled over the 45-year-old bridge’s two...