Black Hawk Down or the Battle of Mogadishu was a military incident that took place on October 3-4, 1993 between United States and African Union (UNISOM) forces and Somali militias under the leadership of General Mohammad Aideed. The battle was named for the two American Black Hawk helicopters shot down by Aideed’s militiamen. The military operation to rescue the downed servicemen led to the death of 18 American troops, one Pakistani and one Malaysian soldier, as well as hundreds of Somalis, both combatants and noncombatants. Public...

Boko Haram is a militant Islamist organization whose main target is the secular Nigerian government, although its victims are largely Muslims in Nigeria's north. Boko Haram means “Western Education is forbidden” in the Hausa language, reflecting a teaching of the early Boko Haram leader Muhammad Yusuf, who maintained that western-style education and holding government jobs are religiously forbidden under Islam. The group’s Arabic name is Ahl al Sunna li al Da’wa wa al Jihad, which can be translated as “Salafis/Sunnis for Calling People to Islam and Engaging in Jihad.”

Though Buddhists make up less than 1% of the French population, the Buddhist community is represented by various ethnic groups with a French convert minority. The presence of Vietnamese and Cambodians Buddhists in France reflect the French colonization of those nations and the resultant cultural affinity, as well as refugee populations that arrived in France during the 1970s during the reign of the Khmer Rouge and during the Vietnam War. However, Chinese migrants represent the largest segment of French Buddhists. Zen Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism are the most common traditions practiced...

The Burma Citizenship Act of 1982 granted citizenship to individuals residing in Burma who could trace their family residency to prior to 1823, that is, the year of the first British military campaign on Myanmar and with it, a wave of immigration from India and China. The law was deeply problematic, as for many families of various ethnic groups, transnational ties were common and there was rarely documentation to prove whether a person had deep roots in Myanmar.

The law was part of a series of actions taken by the nationalist Burmese government meant to shore up Burmese ethnic...