Islamic State militants punched through Kurdish lines in northern Iraq in early August. Among the throngs of refugees—a hundred thousand people from the Yezidi religious minority.

Militants pursued the terrified civilians, killing any men they caught and raping the women—before killing them, too. Matt Cetti-Roberts talked to some of the survivors.

“My two female cousins who were behind us in a car as we left were captured,” Resaleh Shirgany said. “One of them was pregnant and with her husband and her brother-in-law.”

“They were stopped in the middle of the street,” Shirgany continued. “They raped them in front of the people that were with them and I could see it from the back window of the car. Suddenly everyone was gone. They took them away.”

American air strikes helped halt the Islamists’ advance—and Kurdish troops and Iraqi special forces began to push them back in the north and in Tikrit near Baghdad.

“After months during which Islamic State seemed invincible, the commandos’ small victory in Tikrit at least inspires hope that Iraq—eventually and at great cost—can defeat the militants,” Jassem Al Salami wrote.

On Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Missouri, white policeman Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was unarmed. Angry residents took to the streets. And in response, the county police staged an amateurish—but brutal—military-style assault on the town, even tear-gassing reporters and people in their own yards.

The violence came after a decade of police militarization in the U.S., fueled in part by the Pentagon’s bad habit of dumping excess military equipment into law enforcement agencies that don’t need it.

The cops in Ferguson “also are taking the wrong lessons from the military” when it comes to crowd-control, Robert Beckhusen wrote. “The Army cautions that using force can make the situation worse.” Even in a full-blown riot.

Amid mounting tension over Russia’s support for Ukrainian separatists, Moscow hosted Chinese and Belarusian fighter pilots at the Aviadarts aerial war game—Russia’s version of America’s Top Gun. “For Russia, this kind of alliance-building is useful at a time when its leaders increasingly are ostracized in the West,” Thomas Newdick explained.

A Chinese Su-30 attending Aviadarts is depicted in Stanislav Bazhenov’s photo at the top of this story.