As Turkey continues to bomb Kurdish anti-ISIS fighters in Iraq, violence is quickly spreading within Turkey itself. Two assailants—apparently both women—opened fire on the US consulate building in Istanbul on Aug. 10, fleeing the scene when police shot back. One of the assailants was captured in a building where she took shelter. She has been identified as a member or the armed-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C). (Hurriyet Daily News) Elsewhere in Istanbul, an officer was killed in clashes after a car-bomb attack on a police station. In southeastern Sirnak province, four police officers were killed by a roadside bomb and a soldier died as gunmen fired on a military helicopter. (BBC News)

Following weeks of mounting protests over economic conditions and corruption, tens of thousands took to the streets of Baghdad Aug. 7, filling Tahrir Square to demand basic services including electricity in the midst of a crushing heat-wave. The protest had the support of all Iraq's Shi'ite factions—in a challenge to Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi from his own constituency. Even parliament speaker Saleem al-Jubouri called on Abadi to dismiss of a number of ministers accused of corruption related to a budget-cutting package that just passed, under pressure from fallling oil prices. Large protests were also reported from across Iraq's Shi'ite south, including in the cities of Basra, Najaf, Karbala and Nasiriyah. A week earlier, secular and left-wing groups held a smaller protest in Tahrir Square. But the leftists also had a contingent at the Aug. 7 march, chanting "Secularism, secularism, no to Sunni, no to Shia." (In Defense of Marxism, Aug. 10; AP, Aug. 7)

Peru's army on July 30 announced that it had rescued 39 people—the majority indigenous Asháninka and 26 of them underage—who were being held captive in Sendero Luminoso camps in the Apurímac-Ene River Valley (VRAE). Some had apparently been held for up to 30 years. The children, aged 4 to 13, were reportedly malnourished and suffered from skin diseases. Reports said soliders were led to the camps by two youths who had been born in capitivity and deserted. But reports also said that some of those "rescued" were reluctant to leave, and even "resisted." No shots were fired in the raids, which were carried out along the Rio Tambo in Sector Five of Pangoa district, Satipo province, Junín region. One of the "rescued" women was pregnant, and may have been held in sexual slavery. The children and adults alike worked cultivating coca leaf. Anti-terrorism police commander Gen. Jose Baella said that some of the adults were abducted between 20 and 30 years ago from Puerto Ocopa and nearby towns in Junín, back when the rebel movement was still strong. Deputy defense minister Iván Vega said Sendero is believed to hold at least 200 more captive in the VRAE. (El Correo, Aug. 6; AP, AFP, Aug. 1; La Rioja, July 30; El Comercio, July 28)

In late July, Peru's Ministry of Culture announced a "Care Plan" for a band of Mashco Piro indigenous people believed to be living in voluntary isolation in a remote area of Madre de Dios region in the southern Amazon basin. Ministerial Resolution No. 258-2015-MC stated that the Vice-ministry of Inter-Culturality, through its General Directorate of Rights of Indigenous Peoples, would implement the plan, which emphasized establishing peaceful coexistence between the Mashco Piro and other indigenous communities in the area. The plan was sparked by increasingly frequent sightings of the band and two fatalities in confrontations between band members and communities on the edge of its territory. Encroachments on the band's territory by illegal loggers is believed to be pressuring the group to seek new lands. But government plans to initiative "contact" with the group immediately drew harsh criticism from indigenous rights advocates. "We are extremely worried about this situation and its possible disastrous consequences," said Francisco Estremadoyro, director of Lima-based ProPurús, a nonprofit that seeks to protect the peoples and environment in the area.

Just weeks before President Obama announced details of his climate change action plan, federal officials approved a deal to allow expanded mining of coal on Navajo lands and its continued burning at the Four Corners Power Plant near Farmington, NM. The deal extends the lease on the plant by 25 years, and allows for an expansion of the Navajo Mine that supplies it. It came less than a month after operators of the Four Corners plant (chiefly Arizona Public Service) agreed to settle a lawsuit by federal officials and environmental groups that claimed plant emissions violated the Clean Air Act. Under the settlement, operators agreed to spend up to $160 million on equipment to reduce harmful emissions, and to set aside millions more for health and environmental programs. The regional haze produced by the plant and others ringing the Navajo reservation has long drawn protest. Under pressure from the EPA, the plant in 2013 shut down the oldest and dirtiest three of the five generating units to help the facility meet emission standards. But many locals are not appeased. "Our Mother Earth is being ruined," said Mary Lane, president of the Forgotten People, a grassroots Navajo organization. "We don't want the power plant to go on. It's ruining all the environment, the air, the water." (Navajo-Hopi Observer, July 21)

The UN on Aug. 5 said that a new report (PDF) shows a significant increase in the number of women and children being hurt or killed in Afghanistan's war with the Taliban and other insurgents. The number of total casualties in the conflict rose by approximately one percent in the first half of this year, but the number of women casualties has risen by 23% and the number of child casualties has risen by 13%. The director of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Danielle Bell, stated that she believes the increase in casualties is due to ground fighting, and attributed 70% of the deaths to insurgents. Out of the over 4,900 civilian casualties in the first half of 2015, there have been 559 women casualties (164 deaths and 395 injuries) and 1,270 child casualties (320 deaths and 950 injuries).

An Aug. 7 account on Daily Beast reports that young Yazidis—including women—are returning to the Mount Sinjar area of Iraq from which they were "cleansed" by ISIS last year, and fighting to reclaim their homeland from the jihadists. They also hope to rescue hundreds of Yazidi women and youth who remain in ISIS captivity. They are organized in a militia called the Sinjar Protection Units (YBS), which the article portrays as trained by and in the political orbit of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Young Yazidi fighters are quoted saying they feel betrayed by the Peshmerga of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government, which they say abandoned them to ISIS. But we've noted before the problemetic nature of Daily Beast's reportage on Syria and Iraq, and this is no exception. The PKK is called a "Marxist and allegedly terrorist organization" (the word "allegedly" apparently having been added after publication, to go by the cache as it appears on Facebook). It states that the PKK was "[b]uilt on Marxist-Leninist ideals and Kurdish nationalism," without stating that it has in recent years moved away from both towards an anarchist-influenced politics.

Egypt formally opened an expansion to the Suez Canal on Aug. 6, amid pomp and spectacle. The first ship passed through the new waterway only after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, clad in a military uniform, made his entrance by sailing in on the same yacht that was used at the inaugural bash when the canal first opened in 1869. Performers dressed as pharaohs blared patriotic songs from the shore, as demonstrators filled Cairo's Tahrir Square to celebrate. Among the dignitaries in attendance for the lavish ceremony were King Abdullah II of Jordan and French President Francois Hollande. "The Egyptian people are rewriting history," said the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, Adm. Mohab Mamish. "If the people long for life, then destiny must respond." The project, built in just one year and hailed in the national media as "Egypt's gift to the world," is projected to boost revenues from the Suez Canal from $5.3 billion in 2014 to $13.2 billion in 2023.