Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (Rep.) surprised the U.S. Senate on Thursday when he proposed to amend an unrelated bill about clean water to move the U.S. to declare war against ISIS. No film cameras were taking the event because the move was so unexpected. Arizona Senator John McCain (Rep.) remarked that the proposal was “ludicrous” and lacked strategy. Some have speculated that Senator Paul proposed this to gain a favorable public image before running for presidential election in 2016.

The Islamic State extremists (also known as ISIS or ISIL) publicly executed a female human rights’ lawyer after removing her from her home in Mosul and torturing her. Samira Salih al-Nuaimi was accused of “apostasy” after Facebook comments critiquing the terrorist group’s destruction of religious sites.

Demonstrations across the U.S. received new inspiration this week as a New York grand jury refused to indict Daniel Pantaleo in the wrongful killing of Eric Garner—this coming after the now-famous decision to not indict Darren Wilson after his killing of Michael Brown, a St. Louis teenager. These incidents have served to further ignite public critique on the racist misconduct of white police officers vs. minority citizens.

Hundreds of South African government officials, liberation war veterans, members of the Mandela family and countless others gathered outside the South African parliament buildings in the capital of Pretoria to honor the one year anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death. His legacy of spending 67 years fighting racism and other forms of oppression in South Africa and the world made him an enduring figure of civil rights activism. Graça Machel, widow of Mandela and a prominent African feminist called on the world, declaring “It is up to each one of us to take the stage and do what you think you can afford to honor his legacy.”

Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad has announced that there have not been any effective differences made in the fight against ISIS by U.S. airstrikes that began last September. Al-Assad has made it clear that he believes ground forces will be needed to defeat ISIS. However, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry disagrees and publically announced that he believes that ISIS momentum has been halted. The West is largely caught between backing Al-Assad’s regime to fight ISIS and opposing it for its brutal human rights violations. In the largest school board protest in history, 700 Jefferson County high school students in Denver, Colorado walked out on their classes in opposition of new policies and guidelines that would reward teachers for promoting “positive” aspects of U.S. history while discouraging conversation of topics found to be promoting, among other things, “civil disorder.”

The International Monetary Fund has released new figures that show that China has just surpassed the U.S.  as the largest economy in the world. This new ranking ends over 140 years of the U.S.  having the world’s largest GDP. In terms of the total value of goods and services, in 2014 China  produced $17.6 trillion while the U.S. produced $17.4 trillion. Yet economists criticize these figures for a few reasons: among them that Chinese officials may be inflating the reported statistics, and that the Chinese government often engages in unsound economic tactics like funding the creation of buildings with no practical purpose other than boosting China’s GDP numbers.

Sources: CBS News, CNN, dailytimes.com