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Afternoon Shift#296: All the news
With Chechnya on everyone’s mind, we speak with Johns Hopkins University’s Frederick Starr about the troubled region. We get updates on the flooding and the latest from Springfield . Christopher Swift of Georgetown tells us how the seemingly far away war in Chechnya has now come to America.
Storified by · Fri, Apr 19 2013 12:12:19
Understanding Chechnya: Boston and parts of the surrounding area remain on lockdown. Two ethnically-Chechen brothers have been identified as suspects. The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was shot earlier this morning after leading police on a chase that left an MIT security officer dead. Nineteen-year-old Dzhokhar remains at large. Worldview host Jerome McDonnell and Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and a professor at Johns Hopkins University, join Niala to talk about the turbulent politics of Chechnya, a majority-Muslim Russian republic of 1.3 million. Ahmed Rehab, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Chicago chapter, also joins to talk about perceptions—and misconceptions - of European Muslims.
Tentative plan: @WBEZWorldview’s Jerome McDonnell will join me for the first hour of the #AfternoonShift, pending other breaking news.Niala
Flooding: Afternoon Shift gets an update on the region’s most flooded areas. Governor Quinn has declared 38 counties in Illinois disaster areas. The Village of Lisle is among the hard-hit areas. Niala talks to mayor Joseph Broda. And, WBEZ reporter Tony Arnold was out in the Western Suburbs earlier today. He describes what he saw.
Spring into spring the right way! #ughLogan Jaffe
Springfield: WBEZ statehouse reporter Tony Arnold sticks around to update Niala on the concealed weapons measure backed by gun rights proponents that the state House defeated last night. Springfield faces a court-enforced deadline to pass a new concealed carry law.
Illinois House defeats less restrictive concealed carry billSPRINGFIELD - The Illinois House tonight defeated a concealed weapons proposal favored by gun rights advocates, a setback that could spur…
Chechen insurgency: Christopher Swift, a professor of national security studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service has spent the last 15 years studying the insurgency in Chechnya and Dagestan. In his article for Foreign Policy today, he says the fact that for the first time Chechens have attacked any sort of U.S. target is a “big deal,” as their focus has been on Russia. He explains why he thinks this attack indicates the conflict in the Caucasus has now “metastasized into a kind of globalized jihadist theatre.”
Chechnya’s war just arrived in the United StatesBy Christopher Swift Best Defense bureau of Chechen affairs I’ve done fieldwork on the insurgency in Chechnya and Dagestan and have studi…