French officials unleashed a strict crackdown on many Muslim organizations on October 16 following the brutal murder of school teacher Samuel Paty for showing offensive caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Read MoreOn October 15, the head of the World Health Organization in Europe called for restrictive measures after a major increase of coronavirus cases throughout the continent, reports The Associated Press.
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A total of nine people in France were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the brutal beheading of a teacher on Friday, October 16. The victim was 47-year-old Samuel Paty, a geography and history teacher at a school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb of Paris. According to the Washington Post, the assailant was shot dead by French police and later identified as Abdoulakh A., an 18-year-old Moscow-born immigrant of Chechen descent.
Read MoreOn Monday, October 5, Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuelan government won its appeal in a lawsuit filed against the Bank of England concerning access to more than $1 billion in gold bullion. With this judgement, the England and Wales Court of Appeal has reversed a lower court’s decision to block Maduro’s government from accessing its gold bullion reserves housed at the Bank of England. The BBC reports that while this is an auspicious turn of events for the Maduro government, the verdict will only grant access to the bullion pending another review of the case.
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Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Ersin Tatar unveiled his plan to reopen the infamous abandoned Varosha beach, just days before the 2020 Northern Cypriot presidential election, reports Al Jazeera. The plan was criticized by Tatar’s opponents, calling it an interference by Turkey to sustain his nationalist base in the Turkish-occupied zone of Cyprus.
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As if straight out of an episode of HBO’s The Young Pope, the Vatican has recently erupted amidst a vast financial scandal and political intrigue within the Church. On September 25, Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, a high-ranking member of the clergy who headed the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, resigned from his position upon Pope Francis’s request.
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According to CNN, Belarusian security forces arrested 33 Russian mercenaries on charges of terrorism and destabilization prior to the country’s contested election in August. The mercenaries work for Wagner, a private military firm known to be the righthand of the Russian military. Wagner is believed to be sponsored by St. Petersburg businessman and oligarch, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The BBC reports that the firm is also believed to be covertly overseen by Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU.
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On September 27, Swiss voters rejected an initiative to limit the free movement of people from the European Union (EU). According to USA TODAY, 62 percent of voters rejected the proposal, while 38 percent were in favor of it.
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On Tuesday, September 8, the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos was the site of a massive fire that displaced thousands of its residents. As The New York Times reports, the fire on September 8 displaced a vast majority of the 12,000 residents, and a smaller fire that broke out the following night displaced another 1,000.
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On September 4, 2020, Serbia and Kosovo agreed to normalize economic ties as part of U.S. brokered talks that include Belgrade moving its Israel embassy to Jerusalem and mutual recognition between Israel and Kosovo, CBS News reports.
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