Friday News Roundup - International

Stories of fights against militants dominated international news this week:

• In a significant blow to ISIS, U.S.-backed forces say they’ve retaken the northern Syrian city — and de facto ISIS capital — of Raqqa. But it’s not yet time to declare victory, reports the Los Angeles Times

Col. Ryan S. Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq, told reporters at the Pentagon that Raqqa is about 90 percent freed, but more fighting will be required to fully liberate the city.

• In Somalia, nearly 300 people were killed in a truck bombing in Mogadishu.
• And the U.S. continues looking for answers as it investigates the deadly ambush in Niger earlier this month.

In other headlines, the Spanish government is cracking down on Catalonian autonomy in response to pushes for independence. And a journalist who covered corruption in Malta was killed in a car bombing attack.

We’ll look into these stories with a panel of international journalists on this week’s International News Roundup.

GUESTS

Anne Applebaum, Washington Post foreign affairs columnist; professor of Practice at the London School of Economics; author of a new book, “Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine”; @anneapplebaum

Tom Bowman, Pentagon correspondent, NPR; @TBowmanNPR

Rosiland Jordan, U.N. correspondent, Al Jazeera English; @RosJordanAJE

For more, visit https://the1a.org.

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