‘Death before capture’
Shiite Turkmen in Amerli town say they will choose death over capture by ISIS, which considers them apostates. A government employee named Mehdi:
In every three to four houses we have dug graves. If the Islamic State storms our town everyone will be killing their wives and children and they will bury them.
He says the minority’s wives agree to death rather than being used as spoils of war, as ISIS have done with Yazidi minority women:
They say ‘we don’t want to end up in the hands of the Islamic State, being enslaved like those in Sinjar mountain….We don’t want the Islamic State to lay their hands on us.’
Beauty salon owner Fatima Qassim, who has been airlifted to Baghdad:
All the women will kill themselves – either shoot themselves or use kerosene and burn themselves to death.
She says her brother is fighting to defend the town and has remained behind with his wife and six children.
He put eight bullets in his rifle and he said if ISIS enters the town then I will kill my children one by one and then I will kill my wife and myself.
CMA Fest interview
Afterbuzz interviews Bryant during CMA Fest 2014.
This is my first CMA Fest as a signed artist.
‘Could reach America in two months’
King Abdullah says terrorists could reach America within months if left unchecked:
If neglected, I am certain that after a month they will reach Europe and, after another month, America. Terror knows no borders and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East.
He adds that ISIS’s beliefs are against Islam and must be opposed:
I do ask you to transmit this message to your leaders: Fight terrorism with force, reason and speed. These terrorists do not know the name of humanity, and you have witnessed them severing heads and giving them to children to walk with in the street.
Billboard cover
Diplo appears on the cover of a August 2014 issue of Billboard magazine. He talks about texting Madonna, getting drunk with Madonna, and a track that he is working on with her.
That song is on like version 20. It went from a piano ballad to a ‘Turn Down for What’-style song, which I didn’t like. Now it’s somewhere in the middle.
Miami Herald interview
Cena talks to The Miami Herald about his potential match with Hulk Hogan and young talent in WWE.
I do what I love, so when you wake up everyday, it’s not a job… A dream opponent for me would be Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan and Sting. I’m not sure if I could ever get in the ring with any of them, but you have heard Hogan say in the past, if he had one last match, he would want it to be against me. I say as a Hulk-a-Maniac growing up that would be the biggest honor I’ve ever received.
New York Times interview
Branson is interviewed for the New York Times magazine. On a Virgin employee who stole from him but later went on to discover Boy George:
We hire a lot of ex-convicts, and not one of them has reoffended. They’re just human. I messed up with the tax man when I was a teenager, and I was given a second chance then. If I hadn’t had that second chance, there wouldn’t be 60,000 people working for Virgin today. We wouldn’t be going to space in a few months’ time. Second chances should be allowed. But, I mean, not always.
He is not worried that the $250,000 ticket price for Galactic flights turns space travel into a luxury purchase:
Not at all. If you go back to the 1920s, when aviation started, it cost the equivalent of about $200,000 to cross the Atlantic. Over the years, the price has come down. You’ve got to start somewhere.
‘It would be an honor to join ISIS’
Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, sends a letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi asking to be made a ‘citizen soldier’ of the self-described caliphate:
I formally and humbly request to be made a citizen of the Islamic State … It would be an honor for any believer to be an obedient citizen soldier to a people and its leader who don’t compromise the religion of All-Mighty Allah to get along with the disbelievers.
Aaron Paul interview
Paul and Kimmel discuss the unusual birth on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
I was born a month early, my mother gave birth to me on the bathroom floor. She cut the cord herself.
Rolling Stone cover
Rolling Stone devotes its cover to Williams. A tribute from Tom Hanks to Williams’s start in television:
The legend is true. In 1978, word came from the set of TV’s Happy Days. That week, Fonzie’s ultracool was threatened by a stranger from another world. The guy playing the alien was hilarious.
‘Oilfields earn millions a day’
Luay al-Khateeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar, estimates ISIS is earning $2 million a day in oil revenues in Iraq and much more in Syria. The Iraqi fields are only producing half of the 80,000 barrels a day they are rated at, black-market crude is selling at $25-$60 a barrel:
From Syria they could be making double or even triple that.
Estimating the Syrian revenues is difficult since most of the oil is sold to the Bashar al-Assad government, which doesn’t disclose oil use figures, but the regime’s struggle means consumption is likely very high:
It’s a war of survival for the Syrian regime and they have no choice but to buy the oil — even though they know the money is going into ISIS hands.
Child soldier ‘witnessed atrocities’
A former ISIS child soldier now located in Turkey tells CNN he attended children’s training camps from the age of 13:
My friends and I were studying at the mosque, and they taught us that we should enrol in jihad with the [Islamic State] … I wanted to go, but my father did not allow me to.
He is allowed to go after the group threaten to behead his father for preventing him:
For 30 days we woke up and jogged, had breakfast, then learned the Quran and the Hadith of the Prophet. Then we took courses on weapons, Kalashnikovs and other light military stuff.
The children are forced to witness atrocities:
They used to bring young [kids] to the camp to lash them,” Mohammed says. “When we go to the mosque, they order us to come the next day at a specific time and place to [watch] heads cut off, lashings or stonings.” “We saw a young man who did not fast for Ramadan, so they crucified him for three days, and we saw a woman being stoned [to death] because she committed adultery.
Emmy tribute criticism
Some viewers criticize the Emmys tribute to Williams for including a clip of a joke about an Iranian woman that they consider racist. In the gag, Williams covers his face to simulate an Islamic headscarf, and says:
I would like to welcome you to Iran… Help me!
The person putting together the Robin Williams segment for the Emmys decided to use his racist material.
— hannah story (friend to all) (@hannahmstory) August 26, 2014
Vatican: Pope threat ‘nothing serious’
The Vatican downplays the possibility of ISIS posing a threat to the Pope, following a report by Il Tempo newspaper that the pontiff is being targeted by the militant group as the world’s most prominent Christian leader. A spokesman:
There is nothing serious to this. There is no particular concern in the Vatican.
Steve Austin Show interview
Heyman is a guest on The Steve Austin Show to discuss John Cena, Brock Lesnar and business philosophy.
If you can’t afford the tape recorder, if you can’t afford the microphone, if you don’t have the means to put it out on a platform then you don’t have the money for your podcast. If you don’t have financing, there’s no promotion.
Jennifer Aniston interview
Aniston and Kimmel discuss new babies and breast milk on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
It’s like the one milk you don’t have to worry about drinking. It’s sweet, It’s almost like coconut milk.
Andi Dorfman, Josh Murray interview
Seacrest interviews Dorfman and Murray during On Air With Ryan Seacrest and questions them on how many children they would like to have in the future. Murray:
At least four.
Dorfman:
After the first one, I think I’ll give a good answer. I don’t know yet. I would like a lot, but I don’t know how the first one goes.
Ariana Grande interview
Seacrest interviews Grande during a On Air With Ryan Seacrest and asks her questions about Nicki Minaj’s VMA wardrobe malfunction.
I don’t care. That was amazing. She’s such a pro for coming on, holding her [stuff] together like that and just, like, living and rapping and keeping it together. That was amazing. I thought she did incredibly well, especially given the circumstance.
She also reveals her next album’s title, My Everything.
I felt like A), it was one of my favorite songs on the album, and B), it was just all-encompassing. I felt like it really sort of embodied the work. And yeah, it just felt right, really.
The Swerve interview
Morgan talks to The Swerve about advice he recieved from Vince McMahon.
He asked me how big I was, and my name. And I told him I was a huge fan of what the guys do, and I asked “Could you give me some guidance on what do I do to become a professional wrestler?” He gave me Jim Ross’s card, and he gave me Tom Prichard’s card. So I started annoying Tom from that moment on.
‘Iraqis responsible for their own security’
Obama says that any security gains made by the U.S. against groups like ISIS will be temporary, and that lasting improvements to the situation will need to be domestic:
The idea that the United States or any outside power would perpetually defeat Isis, I think, is unrealistic. We can rout Isis on the ground and keep a lid on things temporarily, but then as soon as we leave, the same problems come back again. We’ve got to make sure Iraqis understand that in the end they are responsible for their own security.
‘We don’t have a strategy yet’
Obama says that his administration hasn’t yet developed a strategy to combat ISIS, as speculation mounts that the U.S. will bomb ISIS in Syria. To reporters:
I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet. I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggests that folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at than we currently are.