Current World Issues (Hov.)

Yemen’s complicated war just got more complicated Yemen's southern coastal city of Aden has been gripped by days of fighting after armed separatist forces - backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - moved against the internationally recognized government. Fighters from the Southern Resistance Forces (SRF), the armed wing of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) - a political movement demanding secession for southern Yemen - clashed with the Yemeni army and were able to wrest control of a key military base in Aden's Khormaksar district and capture scores of soldiers. The STC is said to have precipitated the crisis by handing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government an ultimatum last week to either dismiss Prime Minister Ahmed bin Dhagr and his cabinet or face an overthrow. The group accused Hadi's government of "rampant corruption" resulting in a "deteriorating economic, security and social situation never before witnessed in t...

Turkey battles Syrian Kurds 'on two fronts' in Afrin Turkey's operation in Syria's Afrin: The key players Turkish troops have taken control of 11 Kurdish positions and created "safe zones" in neighbouring Syria's northwestern region of Afrin, according to Turkish media. Reports on Tuesday said the army, aided by Free Syria Army rebels, is pushing towards the southern part of the Syrian region with fronts on the west and the east. The Turkish army, which launched the Afrin operation on Saturday, captured the villages of Shankal, Qorne, Bali and Adah Manli, as well as the rural areas of Kita, Kordo and Bibno and four other hills in Afrin, Turkish daily Hurriyet reported. State-run Anadolu news agency said that the forces launched a second front towards Afrin from Syria's Azaz on Monday to squeeze the People's Protection Units (YPG) - a Syrian Kurdish force - from both west and east in order to advance on southern Afrin. Turkey sees the...

Why are Indian officials banned from Sikh Gurdwaras? by Shafik Mandhai  Sikh religious organisations in Canada, the US, and the UK have banned Indian officials from making formal visits to temples in response to the arrest of a Sikh activist in India and what they call interference in their affairs. The ban started in Canada and spread to temples in the US and the UK, with more than 100 places of worship now involved. Davinder Singh of the Sikh Federation UK, one of the organizations supporting the campaign, said that the ban would apply to official visits but not personal trips to temples. The November arrest of British Sikh activist Jagtar Singh Johal by Indian authorities and "interference in Sikh affairs" by Indian officials had led to the move, he told Al Jazeera. Johal was detained in the northern state of Punjab and accused of involvement in the killings of prominent Hindu figures. His family has rejected the allegations against him, explaining that he w...

US: Muslims to become second-largest religious group Muslims are expected to become the second-largest religious group in the United States after Christians by 2040, according to a new report. There were 3.45 millions Muslims living in the US in 2017 representing about 1.1 percent of the total population, a study by Pew Research Center found. At present, the number of Jewish people outnumber Muslims as the second-largest religious group but that is expected to change by 2040 because "the US Muslim population will grow much faster than the country's Jewish population", the report said.  American Muslims will total 8.1 million, or 2.1 percent, of the population by 2050. The number of followers of Islam in the US has grown at a rate of about 100,000 per year because of the migration of Muslims and higher fertility rates among Muslim Americans, Pew Center found during its demographic and survey research. "Since our first estimate [2007] of the size of the Mu...