Syria’s new government is facing backlash after announcing changes to the school curriculum, including introducing what some critics say is an Islamist slant to teaching.

The changes, published in a list of amendments on the education ministry’s official Facebook page, include changing the phrases “path of goodness” to “Islamic path,” and “those who have are damned and have gone astray” to “Jews and Christians” – which pertains to an ultra-conservative interpretation of a verse in Islam’s holy book, the Quran.

The modifications also redefine the word “martyr,” from someone who died for the homeland to someone who sacrificed themselves “for the sake of God.”

Some chapters were removed entirely, the list shows, including a chapter on “the origins and evolution of life.”

It is not clear yet whether the amendments have yet been rolled out, but they would apply to all students from ages 6 to 18.

While some changes renouncing former President Bashar al-Assad’s regime were welcome to those reacting online, the religious chapter modifications sparked outrage on social media.

The newly appointed ministry assumed its role last month after Assad was toppled by rebels led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), a group that emerged out of a former al Qaeda affiliate. Its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has in recent weeks sought to distance HTS from al Qaeda, touting a new government that thrives on tolerance and inclusivity.

Before he was ousted Assad led the Baath Party, a secular, nationalist party that had been in power in Syria since a 1963 coup d’état.

Some social media users questioned why an interim government is making amendments to the curriculum, while others rejected what they perceived as attempts to “erase” parts of the country’s history.

“The current government is a caretaker government that does not have the right to make these amendments to the curricula,” one user commented on the ministry’s Facebook post. “The curricula must be amended in accordance with the new constitution.”

Others criticized what they viewed as an Islamist slant to some of the language.

Amid the backlash, the ministry sought to play down the changes saying, “the curricula in all schools across Syria remain unchanged until specialized committees are formed to review and audit them.”

A statement issued on behalf of education minister Nazir Mohammad al-Qadri said that the ministry “only instructed the removal of content glorifying the deposed Assad regime and replaced images of the regime’s flag with those of the Syrian revolution’s flag in all textbooks.”

The ministry said its announcement pertained to the correction of certain “inaccuracies” that were present during the Assad regime in the Islamic education curriculum, “such as the misinterpretation of some Quranic verses.”

The new education minister has previously said that Syria’s school curricula will not change beyond the removal of references to the former ruling Baath party.

In an interview with Reuters last month, al-Qadri said that both the Islamic and Christian religion will continue to be taught as subjects in school, and that primary schools will remain mixed between boys and girls. Secondary education will stay largely segregated, he told Reuters, as they were during the Assad era.

The HTS-led cabinet is meant to be an interim government until the country holds elections, which de facto leader Al-Sharaa has previously said may take up to four years to organize.

It remains unclear how the caretaker government will hand over power after previously saying it would only stay in office until March 2025.

The Dominican Republic deported more than 276,000 Haitians in 2024, the country’s Immigration Directorate said Wednesday.

In the last three months of the year alone, over 94,000 people were deported under a new operation aiming to remove up to 10,000 undocumented Haitians per week, ordered by the Dominican Republic’s National Security and Defense Council headed by President Luis Abinader.

Dominican authorities also deported 48,344 Haitians during the January-March quarter, 62,446 between April-June, and 71,414 from July to September, according to the statement.

Government spokesman Homero Figueroa told reporters in October that the government ramped up deportations to address an “excess” of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic, which shares an island with Haiti. The two countries have long seen an informal flow of people across their shared border.

Haiti’s then-Foreign Minister Dominique Dupuy condemned “brutal scenes of raids and deportations,” and demanded justice for “dehumanizing acts” against her compatriots. Dominican authorities maintain that the deportations are carried out in compliance with human rights.

In October, Reuters footage captured dozens of migrants crammed into caged Dominican Republic law enforcement trucks heading to Haiti. Aid organizations have rushed assistance to the Haitian side of the border to assist the thousands of deportees.

The mass deportations come amid worsening political and social crisis in Haiti; gangs are estimated to control more than 80% of the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

South Korean investigators have entered the home of impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol to enforce an arrest warrant for him, Yonhap News Agency reported on Friday morning local time.

The embattled president is wanted for questioning in multiple investigations, including accusations of leading an insurrection – a crime punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty – after he suddenly declared martial law in early December.

A court on Tuesday approved the warrant for Yoon – the first time such a move has been taken toward a sitting president, deepening a dramatic showdown between investigators and the president. In response, the presidential security team said that “(s)ecurity measures will be taken in accordance with due process for matters related to the execution of warrants.”

Yoon, himself a former prosecutor, has refused to answer three summonses by investigators in recent weeks asking for his cooperation, according to South Korea’s Corruption Investigation Office (CIO).

A large police presence could be seen around the presidential residence in Seoul on Friday, many officers wearing jackets and face masks in the cold weather while flanked by police vans. Retractable gates were also set up, blocking pedestrians from entering the area around Yoon’s home.

The leader was stripped of his presidential powers last month by a parliamentary vote to impeach him, which came after some members of his own ruling party turned on him following his refusal to resign over his short-lived decree.

But the suspended president has remained defiant in the face of investigations and an impeachment trial underway by one of the country’s highest courts, vowing to “fight to the end” for the country.

The statement, which was shared with supporters gathered outside his residence earlier this week, was his first public comment in weeks after largely staying away from public light in the fallout of his widely condemned decree.

Yoon declared martial law in a surprise late night address on December 3, claiming opposition lawmakers had “paralyzed state affairs” and that the move was necessary to “safeguard a liberal South Korea” from the threats posed by “anti-state elements.”

Members of the National Assembly, including some of Yoon’s own party members, voted to reverse the martial law some six hours later. Yoon’s order faced fierce backlash from the public and lawmakers across the political spectrum, reviving painful memories of the country’s authoritarian past.

In the weeks since, the country has been embroiled in political disarray with parliament also voting to impeach its prime minister and acting president Han Duck-soo, just weeks after it voted to impeach Yoon. The finance minister Choi Sang-mok is now acting president.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

It’s many years since ISIS, also known as Islamic State, held sway over much of Syria and northern Iraq a time when it spawned affiliates throughout Africa and Asia and organized a series of deadly terror attacks in European cities.

But as a terror group it remains active in more than a dozen countries – and has inspired and supported individuals and cells in Europe and Russia in recent years.

ISIS is far from moribund, even if it is now a loosely linked network rather than a self-declared caliphate controlling sizeable cities.

The most high-profile attack claimed by ISIS in 2024 was the devastating assault on a Moscow shopping mall in March, which left at least 150 dead and more than 500 injured.

It thrust ISIS back into the spotlight, as have events in Syria. US officials are concerned that instability following the collapse of the Assad regime may allow ISIS to expand from its remote desert strongholds, nearly six years after the “caliphate” fell, and also regain a foothold in Iraq.

There is also the perennial concern among Western security services that individuals inspired by ISIS will launch low-tech attacks – such as stabbings, shootings and driving vehicles into crowds. Such plans are notoriously difficult to detect.

Vehicle attacks in the name of ISIS in the last few years – including in Nice, Barcelona, Berlin and New York – have killed more than 100 people.

After Wednesday’s attack in New Orleans, FBI assistant special agent in charge, Alethea Duncan, said an ISIS flag was located on the trailer hitch of the suspect’s vehicle. FBI investigators are now searching for anyone who may have worked with the suspect – Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas man and Army veteran – to plan or execute the assault, Duncan said.

“We do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible,” she told a news conference Wednesday. “We are aggressively running down every lead, including those of his known associates.”

US President Joe Biden said late Wednesday that he had been told by the FBI that the driver had posted videos on social media “mere hours” before the attack “indicating that he was inspired” by ISIS. The suspect was killed in a firefight with police officers.

The ‘lone wolf’ threat

ISIS and al Qaeda have repeatedly called on sympathizers to carry out “do-it-yourself” attacks. The Boston marathon bombers in 2013 used a “recipe” from an online al Qaeda publication to build their devices.

Events in the Middle East have pushed already radicalized individuals to violence, according to Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence, a non-governmental organization that monitors terror groups,.

She notes that since Israel’s assault on Gaza began in October 2023, there has been a resurgence of “lone wolf” plots in the name of ISIS: a mass stabbing at a festival in Solingen, Germany; an alleged plot against Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna; and the stabbing of an Orthodox Jewish man in Zurich. In that instance, a 15-year-old boy, a Swiss national of Tunisian descent, declared his allegiance to ISIS in a video, saying he was “responding to the call of the Islamic State to its soldiers to target the Jews and Christians and their criminal allies.”

ISIS sought to exploit the situation in Gaza within days of the October 7 attacks by Hamas.

In January last year, ISIS spokesman Abu Hudhayfah al-Ansari called on Muslims to “hunt your prey — the Jews, Christians, and their allies — in the streets and alleyways of America, Europe, and the world,” in a speech cited by SITE Intelligence.

And as in years before, ISIS urged followers to “direct your actions at the easy targets before the difficult, the civilian targets before the military, and the religious targets such as synagogues and churches before anything else.”

Ten years ago, the then-head of Australian intelligence, David Irvine, said that his “recurring nightmare… has been the so-called lone wolf, often radicalized over the internet and who has managed to avoid coming across our radar.”

In that respect, little has changed.

Global image

Katz said at the time of the Moscow attack in March that “ISIS’ global support rests in no small part on its image as a capable organization, and this devastating massacre in Russia will only feed into that image.”

Investigators are still probing how the suspect in New Orleans became radicalized but there is still plenty of pro-ISIS content to be found online.

The Islamic State’s most potent branch – IS Khorasan (ISIS-K) – has global ambitions and a sophisticated online presence in multiple languages, including English.

The fact that Tajik nationals were charged after the Moscow attack indicated ISIS-K was responsible. US officials also said there was evidence ISIS-K carried out the attack.

Based in Afghanistan, ISIS-K has grown in strength since the US withdrawal from the country in 2021 and also tapped into radicalized populations in central Asia. The commander of US Central Command, Gen. Erik Kurilla, assessed early in 2024 that ISIS-K “retains the capability and the will to attack US and Western interests abroad in as little as six months with little to no warning.”

ISIS-K’s most infamous attack was the suicide bombing at Kabul airport in 2021 that killed nearly 200 people, including 13 US soldiers guarding the airport. But it has since expanded its orbit.

Amira Jadoon, who has written a book about the group, said that over the last three years ISIS-K “has grown more ambitious and aggressive in its efforts to gain notoriety and relevance across South and Central Asia.”

ISIS-K has also attempted to target western Europe and the United States, as well as Russia. In July 2023, seven men were arrested in Germany suspected of planning high-profile attacks and being in contact with ISIS-K planners. All the suspects were from central Asia.

In March last year, two Afghan citizens were detained in Germany, accused of plotting to attack Sweden’s parliament in retaliation for a spate of Koran burnings in the country.

Fitton-Brown said ISIS also benefited from “ambient rage” among radicalized individuals at the scale of deaths in Gaza, and the release of some former jihadis from European jails after serving their sentences.

Syrian vacuum

The US is concerned that should a security vacuum emerge in Syria, ISIS will regroup and expand there. On the day Bashar al-Assad fled the country, US Central Command hit more than 75 ISIS targets in Syria. Kurilla said there “should be no doubt – we will not allow ISIS to reconstitute and take advantage of the current situation in Syria.”

Analysts with the non-profit Soufan Center calculated that ISIS attacks in Syria tripled in 2024 compared to the previous year, hovering around 700. “They have also improved in sophistication, increased in lethality, and become more dispersed geographically,” they said.

One risk is that as beleaguered Kurdish forces fend off Turkish-backed militia in northern Syria, they will no longer secure the compounds where thousands of ISIS operatives are held.

Kurilla recently warned ISIS planned to “break out of detention the more than 8,000 ISIS operatives currently being held in facilities in Syria.”

Were ISIS fighters able to escape and begin terror attacks in neighboring Turkey or even travel to western Europe, the image of the group among like-minded lone wolves would only be enhanced.

A huge red-hot object fell from the sky into a Kenyan village on Monday afternoon according to local residents cited by Kenya’s National Broadcaster, prompting an immediate investigation by the country’s national space agency.

The object has since been identified as a “fragment of a space object,” Kenya’s Space Agency (KSA) said in a statement Wednesday.

KSA said it has taken custody of the object that landed in the remote Mukuku Village, describing it as apparent space junk measuring 2.5 meters (about 8 feet) wide and weighing 500 kg (about 1,100 pounds).

“The Agency wishes to clarify that the object, a metallic ring measuring approximately 2.5 meters in diameter and weighing about 500 kg is a fragment of a space object,” KSA said.

Preliminary assessments suggest it is a separation ring from a rocket, KSA said, noting that space debris more typically falls into the ocean or burns up before entering the earth’s atmosphere.

The fallen object is likely an isolated case and is still under investigation, KSA also said.

Julius Rotich, Mbooni Sub County Police Commander told Kenya’s National Broadcaster that the object was still hot when officers arrived Monday, and that residents had to be cordoned off from the area until it cooled down.

The broadcaster showed images of police tape wrapped around the ring that had fallen into some trees and brush, as residents gathered around.

KSA is analyzing the object and working to confirm where exactly it came from, it said.