The over 18-month-old civil war in South Sudan is being fought in remote areas of a vast country.

There's no reliable death count, although the numbers of displaced have already reached the level of abstraction, with over 600,00 South Sudanese fleeing to neighboring countries on top of another 1.6 million made homeless within the borders of the world's newest independent state. 

The depths of the country's poverty — the result of a policy of punitive underdevelopment during South Sudan's six troubled and mostly war-torn decades as part of the Republic of Sudan — is difficult to grasp. And the causes of the civil war, a manifestation of arcane decades-old rivalries within the ruling Sudanese People's Liberation Movement, can be confounding even when examined at ground-level. 

Consequently, one of the more jarring visualizations of the country's dire situation is an airline route map.

The United Nations World Food Program is one of the world's most important humanitarian organizations, providing food aid and other forms of assistance for 80 million people in 82 countries in 2014. 

Its logistics are so complex that it needs its own passenger airline to facilitate its operations, since the WFP and its over 14,000 employees usually work in areas that are poorly served by commercial air transport.

Here's a detail of UNHAS's South Sudan route map around Bentiu, a town that's become one of the civil war's most frequent flashpoints:

South Sudan is a chronically under-developed country, and the UNHAS route map, from March of 2015, gives a vivid idea of what that means in reality.

It's clear from this map that the air travel infrastructure isn't all that developed in South Sudan, even if the country's needs force the WFP to fly to as many destinations as it possibly can. And it offers other, even more ominous insights into where the war-torn country might be heading.

A huge task

In 2014, the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service(UNHAS) moved 240,885 passengersbetween 258 destinations in 20 countries on 50 chartered aircraft, while also air-dropping some 36,381 tons of food.

Its passengers are typically WFP employees, non-government organization-affiliated aid workers, researchers, experts, and various other humanitarian professionals.

As the markers for each location on its South Sudan map suggest, the size, length, and composition of each runway within the country is different; a pilot is never landing under the same conditions twice, and none of the runways are actually paved. 

None of them are long enough or developed enough to accommodate a large cargo plane, and few of them have refueling or service facilities.

The map communicates a more subtle problem as well.

Aircraft are highly mobile but not terribly efficient, and actually have far less fuel economy than all forms of road transportation, at least in developed countries.

In South Sudan, highly developed UNHAS routes correlate with abysmal or nonexistent ground infrastructure — which in turn makes it difficult and expensive for organizations to deliver high volumes of aid, personnel, and observers to the areas most affected by the conflict.

And if it's costly, time consuming, and perhaps impossible to address a populated area's humanitarian needs by air, it's even harder to reach villages 10 or 15 miles away from the nearest airstrip or unpaved road. 

The conflict has only compounded South Sudan's existing infrastructural problems, jeopardizing the country's oil fields and pipelines, devouring the state's already meager budget, and inviting international sanctions on key leadership. 

And in turn, the country's utter lack of infrastructure has likely protracted the conflict. It's immobilized each side's forces, denying the sides any possibility of absolutely victory and giving the rebels a redoubt in the country's difficult-to-reach periphery.

As a result, some 2.5 million out of the South Sudan's estimated 12 million citizens are categorized as being in a state of "food emergency," and the country is teetering on the edge of famine.

But perhaps the most immediately interesting thing about the map is the sheer number of destinations served. UNHAS reaches small towns and large cities, an indicator of both general humanitarian need and a near-lack of passable roadways.

UNHAS reaches into parts of the country that have seen relatively little actual combat, like Northern Bar el-Ghazal state:

UNHAS's coverage inside South Sudan also wasn't that much different before the civil war broke out.

The country had dire national-level humanitarian needs before the country disintegrated — and its infrastructure is still in too rudimentary a state to support nationwide trade, or even to efficiently transit humanitarian aid and expertise.

The UNHAS map hints at the consequences of South Sudan's underdevelopment, factors that will likely make its humanitarian and political catastrophe tragically difficult to remedy.

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An ominous photo that an American soldier took during the Iraq War is shaping up to be one of the conflict's most iconic images for the members of one US Army squadron, according to two veterans writing in The New York Times.

The photo shows Lt. Col. Rod Coffey holding a flag his unit captured after clearing insurgents from a location in Iraq's Diyala Province.

The flag is almost identical to the one now widely known as the banner of the Islamic State militant group (also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh).

"Colonel Coffey stands with the flag in his right hand, his trademark cigar dangling in his left and the look of a man resolved to defeat militants whose barbarism today is ever so disturbingly documented by the media," Joe Myers and Tim Hsia write in The Times.

"There is little doubt in our minds that the enemy our unit fought and defeated that winter would eventually become part of the Islamic State."

Coffey's unit lost soldiers in Diyala Province; capturing the insurgent flag "was gratifying to him and a fitting tribute to his fallen brethren," Myers and Hsia wrote.

Their column highlights why ISIS' rampage across Iraq and Syria is especially gut-wrenching for many veterans. Some of the territory ISIS has seized in the Middle East was once liberated from jihadist insurgents by American soldiers, and at a high cost.

ISIS began as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), a brutal jihadist insurgent group that steadily gained power after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Al Qaeda's central leadership became increasingly uncomfortable with AQI's tactics, which included frequent massacres and suicide bombings, along with sectarian attacks on Shia civilians. Al Qaeda central expelled ISIS from the global terrorist organization in February 2014.

Western forces in Iraq significantly diminished AQI by the end of the US-led campaign in Iraq. Many Sunnis aligned with US forces to combat AQI, a Sunni terror group, in the "Awakening" movement in 2007, a development that enabled the US "surge" strategy that stabilized the country. But Iraq's sectarian divide persisted.

But many promises of Sunni inclusion ultimately weren't fulfilled after the US campaign in Iraq ended, something that alienated Sunnis from both an increasingly despotic government in Baghdad and their former US partners.

AQI eventually rebranded as the Islamic State of Iraq, then the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Shams (ISIS), a title that includes the Arabic name for the geographic region that includes Syria. The group regained strength as Syria deteriorated and fighters flowed into newly available havens across the border.

The Iraqi state wasn't in a strong position to protect itself after US troops withdrew in 2011. ISIS thrived in the power vacuum that was left behind, leading to an ongoing region-wide crisis.

Read the full story at The New York Times >

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Turkey is now in the fight against the Islamic State, and it's unclear what happens next.

Despite the vast number of foreign fighters traveling between Turkey and Syria, the Turkish side of the border had remained relatively peaceful until July 20, when a suicide bomber affiliated with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, killed 33 activists in the southeastern town of Suruc.

Turkey subsequently launched its first airstrikes against ISIS militants in northern Syria as well as Kurdish militants in Iraq — and consequently lost control over fragile peace with two violent groups.

"Now that Turkey has hit ISIS, it won't be able to control the intensity of their future exchanges," geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer told Business Insider by email.

"ISIS will find ways to retaliate, and Turkey will have to respond," Bremmer said. "You don't strike a group like ISIS and maintain perfect control of the extent of your engagement — not when your country shares borders with Iraq and Syria."

Bremmer added that the fights with both ISIS and the Kurdish PKK "could easily expand and become more intense, and you could see a more concerted push for independence from Kurds inside Turkey, Iraq, and Syria."

Meanwhile, Turkey houses almost 2 million Syrian refugees, among whom ISIS sympathizers can hide.

"The ground is dry, and Erdogan has decided to light a match," Bremmer added.

"It's a big risk."

The relaxed border policies Turkey adopted between 2011 and 2014 enabled foreign fighters to travel to Syria and enter the fight against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

As the conflict progressed, the fighters taking advantage of this loose border enforcement became more and more radical, but they largely refrained from attacking Turkey given the country's willingness to turn a blind eye to their illicit activities.

Turkey officially ended its open-border policy last year, but not before its southern frontier became a transit point for cheap oil, weapons, and foreign fighters.

In facilitating the militants, Turkey inadvertently allowed them to build a network within its borders — a network that will most likely remain intact because of gaps in Turkey's legal system that make it difficult for the police to detain foreign fighters.

"It's a dangerous game they have always been playing," Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider recently.

That game stopped being politically useful for Erdogan after the Suruc bombing, and he was quick to capitalize on the resulting surge in nationalist sentiment.

Now, Erdogan and his ruling AKP party are betting the president's political future on annihilating the PKK — the biggest perceived threat to Turkish sovereignty — in northern Iraq.

"The AKP needed the Kurdish angle to sell the war to ultranationalists inside Turkey," whose main priority is to curb Kurdish territorial gains along Turkey's southern border, Schanzer said.

The strategy could indeed lift the AKP and help Erdogan regain his party's absolute majority in parliament if coalition talks fail and new elections are called, Bremmer said.

But the AKP is already witnessing the consequences of ending its two-year peace treaty with the PKK: Several Turkish soldiers and police officers have been killed recently in the worst PKK-sponsored attacks on Turkish soil since 2013.

Moreover, Erodogan's gambit may anger the US-backed Kurdish YPG — the most effective fighting force against ISIS on the ground in northern Syria — and further complicate Ankara's relationship with Washington.

Turkey granted the US strategic use of the Incirlik airbase in its southeast, which "was a major win for the Obama administration," Michael Koplow writes in Foreign Affairs.

But Ankara's recent anti-terror sweep — which has resulted in the arrest of 847 suspected PKK members, compared with 137 suspected ISIS sympathizers — and the intensity of its bombing campaign in northern Iraq has made it clear that Turkey's main goal is not to prevent the consolidation of the Islamic State, but to halt the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state along its southern border.

And if Turkey keeps going after PKK while not trying to provoke ISIS, "it will leave the US without a Syria strategy," Bremmer said.

"Access to Incirlik airbase matters, but the additional bombing it enables will only help contain ISIS, not roll it back," Bremmer added. "And it will leave Washington without the improved relations with Ankara that the Obama administration is hoping for."

SEE ALSO: Turkey is 'playing a dangerous game' with ISIS — and what comes next could make it worse

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President Barack Obama on Wednesday raised the stakes of the Iranian nuclear deal, saying the multinational nuclear agreement Iran is "the most consequential foreign-policy debate" that the US has had since the decision to invade Iraq.

At a high-profile speech at American University on Wednesday, Obama said that anti-nuclear deal sentiments were expressed by the same people who supported the war in Iraq.

"If the rhetoric in these ads and the accompanying commentary sounds familiar, it should," Obama said. "For many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal."

Obama repeatedly attempted to illustrate similarities between opponents of the current deal and supporters of the war in Iraq, which he opposed in the Senate.

"Those calling for war labeled themselves strong and decisive, while dismissing those who disagreed as weak, even appeasers of a malevolent adversary," Obama said, referencing the march to war in the early 2000s. "More than a decade later, we still live with the consequences of the decision to invade Iraq."

"The same mindset, in many cases offered by the same people, who seem to have no compunction with being repeatedly wrong, led to war that did more to strengthen Iran, more to isolate the United State than anything we have done in the decades before or since."

Obama said the invasion of Iraq had destabilized the Middle East and empowered Iran, creating conditions for the Islamic State terror group to emerge and eliminating Saddam Hussein, a longtime Iran foe. 

Obama has long touted his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq as a way to demonstrate his foreign policy credentials. Opposition to the war in Iraq helped launch Obama's national political career, and provided him with political ammunition in his battle against Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary.

The speech on Tuesday came as Obama is attempting to sell the deal to a skeptical Congress, which has until September 17 to either approve or vote to disapprove of the deal.

If Congress rejects the plan, Obama is almost certain to veto the rejection. At that point, opponents would need a significant amount of Democratic support to overcome the veto: if Republicans unanimously reject the plan, they need 13 Democratic Senators and 44 Democratic members of the House in order to overcome Obama's veto.

For their part, Republicans who supported the war in Iraq were quick to condemn the president's speech.

In a joint statement, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) blasted Obama for trying to tie the deal to the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. 

"It is particularly galling to hear the President try to defend his nuclear agreement with Iran by claiming that its critics also supported the war in Iraq,"the statement said. "Having presided over the collapse of our hard-won gains in Iraq...the President should not throw stones from his glass house."

"What we object to is the President's lack of realism – his ideological belief that diplomacy is good and force is bad, which has repeatedly resulted either in failed deals or bad deals."

It's looking less likely that opponents will have the votes to block the deal as more skeptical Democrats announce their support for the deal.

On Tuesday, a trio of Democratic Senators announced that they would vote for the deal, though some more high-profile Democratic leaders have remained silent about whether they'll eventually come out in favor of the deal. 

Obama is also attempting to curb the influence of Israeli opponents, who have attempted to persuade allies in Congress to vote against the deal. The administration announced on Wednesday that Obama will visit Israel to sell the deal in person.

Watch highlights from the speech below:

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While the US is spends far and away the most on defense annually, US contractors the government buys from are increasingly looking outside of the US for sales. 

Defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman have increased the amount of revenue they bring in from outside the US by nearly 10% in the last 6 years, according to RBC Capital Markets.

In 2008, contractors made an average of 15% of their revenue from international contracts.

By 2014, that number had increased to 24%.

Raytheon, the maker of missile systems like the Tomahawk, told Reuters after they reported earnings this quarter that 44% of their current backlog is from international orders and the company expects between 32% to 35% of annual orders to come from non-US buyers.

This also comes on the heels of a request last week by the Saudi Arabian government to purchase $5.4 billion of missiles from Lockheed Martin and a separate $1.6 billion purchase of missiles by 5 international governments also from Lockheed Martin. 

According to RBC, these companies may be turning to the international market in part due to the flatlining — and potentially shrinking — percentage of the US federal budget being put towards defense.

While the government does still spent about $581 million, about 36% of all global defense spending, the requested budget from the Department of Defense actually decreased from 2014 to 2015. 

RBC also notes that the Office of Management and Budget projects the percentage of federal outlays going to defense to start sliding over the next few years.

This could change, however, depending on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

So while its main customer starts to draw down the amount of defense spending, these contractors are looking outside of the US for sales.

SEE ALSO: 2016 could be a great year for defense stocks, especially if a Republican wins

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Russia is under US and EU sanctions over its aggressive policies in Ukraine, and budget pressures have forced the Kremlin to radically scale back its production of high-end weaponry.

But from August 1 to 15, Russia will still get to showcase its military might. 

The International Army Games, which are taking place outside of Moscow, are Russia's way of strengthening military cooperation with 16 countries during a time of increased international isolation for Moscow, while also showcasing the country's sizable arms industry.

Given the frosty relations between Russia and the West following the Ukraine crisis, the list of the countries participating in the games are not entirely surprising, as they're mostly Russian neighbors, traditional allies, or states with notably independent-minded foreign policies. 

The countries invited to the International Army Games include: Azerbaijan, Angola, Armenia, Belarus, China, Egypt, India, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Serbia, Tajikistan, and Venezuela. 

Here are some of the most impressive images from the military games.

One of the main events of the International Army Games is the Tank Biathlon.

The biathlon took place across varied terrain in order to simulate a number of battle scenarios.

Here, an Indian tank emerges from the water during the biathlon.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A suspect wielding a hatchet and a gun inside a Nashville-area movie theater died after exchanging gunshots with a SWAT team that stormed the theater, police said Wednesday.

The suspect, who was not identified, was armed with a gun and a hatchet at the Carmike Hickory 8 theater in Antioch, said Don Aaron, a spokesman for Metro Nashville police.

It was not immediately clear if anyone was wounded. Aaron said one person may have suffered a hatchet wound, but fire department spokesman Brian Haas said the agency had not treated anyone for any sort of injuries.

Aaron said an officer came into the theater and was fired upon by the suspect. The officer shot back, then backed off. After that, a SWAT team came in, and there was another exchange of gunfire. The suspect was then found dead.

The suspect had two backpacks, which are being checked by authorities.

Video from the scene showed a heavy presence at the theater, with local, state and federal officers setting up a perimeter in the parking lot. A wide area was roped off with yellow police tape, and at least one ambulance was outside the theater. Many officers were heavily armed.

The theater in Antioch is near Global Mall, a shopping center in a middle-class neighborhood.

The latest shooting comes about two weeks after a gunman opened fire inside a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, during a screening of the film "Trainwreck." Police said John Russell Houser killed two people and wounded nine others before fatally shooting himself.

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Congress may end up voting against President Barack Obama's landmark nuclear deal with Iran by passing a resolution of disapproval, putting the legislative branch on record as opposing perhaps the biggest foreign-policy initiative of Obama's presidency.

But chances remain very low that deal opponents will be able to muster the votes needed to override a presidential veto, which would be likely in the event of a resolution of disapproval. 

Opponents need support of two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in order to override that potential veto and prevent the president from suspending US sanctions against Iran, something that would almost certainly scuttle the nuclear agreement signed last month.

It's unlikely they can get to that point. Assuming every Senate Republican other than potential agreement supporter Jeff Flake votes against the deal, opponents will still need to recruit 13 Senate Democrats to their position. 

That doesn't seem likely, especially in light of Obama's escalating rhetoric over a potential Congressional fight — something that hints at the potential political consequences of crossing him. During a Wednesday address at American University, Obama extensively compared deal opponents to supporters fo the Iraq war.

"Between now and the Congressional vote in September, you are going to hear a lot of arguments against this deal, backed by tens of millions of dollars in advertising," Obama said. "And if the rhetoric in these ads and the accompanying commentary sounds familiar, it should, for many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal. "

He also said that Iranian hardliners were in a de-facto alliance with deal opponents in the US. "It's those hardliners chanting 'Death to America' who have been most opposed to the deal," Obama said. "They're making common cause with the Republican Caucus."

Top-ranking Republicans quickly criticized the comment, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) calling on Obama to "retract his bizarre and preposterous comments."

"Members of both parties have serious and heartfelt concerns about the Iran deal," McConnell said in a statement. "These Democrats and Republicans deserved serious answers today, not some outrageous attempt to equate their search for answers with supporting chants of ‘Death to America.'"

One one level, the rhetorical escalation is puzzling: Obama is raising the stakes and risking additional ill-will around an issue that's essentially been settled. The UN Security Council has already endorsed the Iran agreement and began the process of removing sanctions authorizations related to the Iranian nuclear program.

And the veto override was always a longshot. The current model of congressional review is on terms that even the administration realized were favorable to it: when the bipartisan-sponsored Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act was passed in May, Obama signed it partly in order to stave off other, far less certain congressional approval mechanisms.

But there is always the possibility that events intervene in a way that won't favor the administration. From the administration's perspective, the biggest danger of the Review Act is that it gives Congress a 60-day period to consider the agreement. And a lot can happen in 60 days.

On Wednesday, CNN reportedthat in July, an Iranian warship had aimed its weapon at a US helicopter in the Gulf of Aden, near Yemen.

The event recalls other unexpected security incidents involving the US or neutral vessels in and around the Persian Gulf: In April, for instance, the Iranian Navy commandeered a Marshall Islands-flagged ship in the Strait of Hormuz, leading to the US Navy briefly having to escort vessels through the world's most important oil chokepoint. Also in April, the US Navy helped blockade a Yemeni portin order to prevent a suspected Iranian weapons delivery.

The nuclear deal was signed by one segment of Iran's political leadership. But president Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif are hardly the only center of power in a compartmentalized and often secretive Iranian regime. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps control significant aspects of the country's economy and foreign policy. And perhaps inconveniently for the nuclear deal's signatories, the IRGC oversees much of the Iranian nuclear program, and important facilities, including the Fordow enrichment site, are located inside of IRGC bases. 

A surprise event involving US or allied vessels in the Straight of Hormuz or the Gulf of Aden — something that could expose Iran as erratic and untrustworthy, or cast additional doubt on the prudence of entering into this specific nuclear agreement with the country's current leadership — represents just about the most realistic chance for deal opponents build up enough opposition to the agreement to override Obama's veto. 

Such an event remains unlikely. But it's clear after today that Obama isn't taking any chances with the passage of one of his presidency's most significant legacy items. If outside events do intervene, he wants support to be solid — even if it still seems far from likely that the deal will be defeated in Congress.

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The Guardian has uncovered arrest records revealing that 82% of the more than 3,500 Americans detained at a secret police facility in Chicago over the past decade were black.

About 8.5% of those held at the site were white. According to the 2010 census, Chicago's population is 45% white and 33% black.

In February, The Guardian reported that the Chicago Police Department was holding US citizens for days on end at the facility known as Homan Square. Suspects had no contact with the outside world and were treated and interrogated like terrorists at so-called US black sites.

The records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that those held at the facility were "disproportionately minority citizens," who were accused of drug possession. Some, however, were held for infractions as minor as traffic violations and public urination.

Additionally, most of the arrests have happened while Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been in office. Emanuel has unequivocally denied any wrongdoing at the Homan facility.

"That's not true. We follow all the rules ... Everything's done by the books," Emanuel told "Chicago Tonight" about the report.

Lawyers have compared the off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago's Homan Square neighborhood to the CIA's so-called black sites offshore that are used to interrogate suspected terrorists.

Police officers at the site in Chicago reportedly carry heavy military gear, and huge armored tanks are parked outside.

"There are usually questions about whether these arrests are justifiable or constitutional,"Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, told Business Insider in February. "Suspected criminals are just picked up and thrown into the back of unmarked cars by police officers wielding assault rifles and wearing bulletproof vests. Describing the process as highly militarized would be fair."

"It's a black hole," Hill added.

Suspects brought in for questioning don't get read their Miranda rights, according to The Guardian, which also reported that they don't get access to lawyers. People are reportedly shackled for hours on end at the facility before being taken to a police station, booked, and formally charged.

Hill said that when arrests were questionable, the police would often take suspects to Homan Square instead of to a police station to avoid having a record of an arrest ever being made.

The Chicago police have repeatedly denied reports that Homan Square is a secret facility housing undocumented arrests.

"There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is no different at Homan Square," the police asserted in a March statement.

Around the time of the original report, CPD told The Guardian that only three arrestees received visits from lawyers between 2004 and 2015. If, as Emanuel and CPD say, everything went according to procedure, then anyone held at Homan should have received a visit from a lawyer or be allowed to waive their right to one.

Either nearly all of the more than 3,500 people reportedly held at Homan waived their rights to a lawyer, or there is a serious discrepancy.

If arrestees held at a site were denied access to an attorney, it could be a serious civil-rights violation.

Numerous lawyers and police officers told The Guardian that lack of access to a lawyer after an arrest, before booking, and especially during an interrogation jeopardizes a suspect's rights.

Lorenzo Davis, a former police detective and attorney who commanded a unit at Homan, told The Guardian that even when the police explain arrestees' rights to them, arrestees tend to incriminate themselves without a lawyer present.

Davis was not surprised at the racial makeup of those at Homan Square.

"Most of the gangs in Chicago are black," Davis said. "Being on the West Side in the 15th [district], you had numerous black gangs and they were all engaged in the dope traffic. A lot of their customers were white … occasionally you arrest the customer, but not too often.

"When I was a detective, occasionally I would arrest a white person, and the white detectives would be overly interested in why I was arresting someone white."

The Guardian's report is extensive, detailing numerous first-hand accounts from inside the facility as well as the various legal battles that have followed. In the months since the initial report, The Guardian has interviewed a raft of former Homan detainees, activists, lawyers, and former police officers about the site.

Check out The Guardian's full report here»

Additional reporting provided by Natasha Bertrand.

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Vladimir Putin enjoys an incredibly high approval rating at home in Russia.

For the month of July, his approval rating was up at 87%, following an all-time high of 89% in June, according to polling from the Levada Centre. (By comparison, Obama's approval rating is around 46%, according to Gallup.)

However, the Russian president's popularity doesn't quite translate.

A new poll from Pew Research Center suggests that out of the 39 nations (excluding Russia) surveyed, not too many see Putin in a positive light.

"A median of 58% around the world hold a negative opinion about Putin. His strongest critics are in Spain (92% no confidence), Poland (87%), France (85%) and Ukraine (84%)," according to the report.

"Three-quarters or more in Western Europe and North America are also critical of Putin, as are majorities in the Middle East."

Still, there were two countries where more than half of the public had confidence in Putin: Vietnam (70%) and China (54%).

Check out all the data below.

Check out all the data at Pew Research Center here.

SEE ALSO: Here's how voter demographics have changed in the last 30 years

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Exactly one year after construction began on an expansion of the Suez canal, authoritarian-minded Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi is about to throw a party celebrating its completion, Bloomberg reports. 

Despite the festivities, and the speed at which the project was completed, many experts are questioning whether the $8 billion undertaking will really bring any of its promised economic benefits.

And it might be politics, rather than economic necessity, that's driving the biggest expansion to the canal since its opening in 1869.

Sisi is a former Army general whose promises of political stability won him enough support to lead the overthrow of an elected Muslim Brotherhood-led government in July of 2013.

But an ISIS-affiliated jihadist insurgency in the Sinai and other frequent security incidents throughout the country undermine his major claim for leading the country.

Sisi he might believe an impressive but possibly unnecessary infrastructure project is the surest way of securing his rule during an uncertain time.

Amr Adly, a scholar with the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, told Bloomberg that the expansion of the canal is being used as a tool to prop Sisi's regime. 

“Al-Sisi is trying to gain legitimacy through his government’s achievements,” Adly told Bloomberg. “[The new canal] shows the government can deliver, it can commit to something and get it done." 

The Egyptian Army supervised construction of the expansion. For one year, 400 private companies and 25,000 workers were mobilized. They extracted over 260 million tons of sand, built a new 35-kilometer channel, and widened and deepened 37 kilometers of the original canal.

The upgrades will allow two-way traffic and reduce transit time from 18 hours to 11, Bloomberg reports.

But one expert told Bloomberg that there was little apparent economic necessity for this huge of an undertaking.

“From a shipping industry point of view, this initiative to expand the Suez canal was a bit of a surprise,” Ralph Leszczynski, the Singapore-based head of research at Genoese shipbroker Banchero Costa & Co, told Bloomberg. “There was no pressing need or requests for this as far as I’m aware.”

The project may still have some economic benefit for Egypt. The Suez upgrade is partly aimed at keeping pace with another major canal: French newspaper Le Monde notes that expansion work on the Panama Canal is set to finish next year. 

According to Bloomberg, the investment bank Pharos Holding reported that Egypt’s economy grew at over four percent in the nine months before March 2015. According to the bank this expansion is mainly due to infrastructure spending related to the canal upgrade.

Egyptians also seem to be support the project, whatever its merits.

It only took 10 days for the state to raise over $8 billion to fund the canal upgrade. More than 80% of that total came from the Egyptian public's purchase of state-issued bonds. 

But it's still unclear whether the opening of the canal expansion will produce any actual economic benefits. The government certainly seems to think it will, since it expects canal revenues to more than double from the current annual $5.5 billion to $13 billion by 2023.

But there's reason to doubt this projection. The expansion won’t actually allow larger vessels to use the route. And if anything, gridlock along the canal has actually lessened in recent years: The number of ships using the Suez is 20% lower than before 2008.

There would have to be a 9% increase in traffic for the canal to deliver on its economic benefits, but according to a report by Capital Economics, it's "unlikely" the canal will be able to deliver.

There could always be a huge bump in global shipping that could radically increase canal traffic: According to the Suez Canal Authority, around 8% of the world’s cargo currently passes through the canal.But such an increase doesn't appear to be imminent. And even then, greater infrastructure would need to be built around the canal to absorb additional shipping traffic.

“‘Build it and they will come’ is not enough,” Simon Kitchen, a strategist with Cairo-Based investment bank EFG-Hermes told Bloomberg. 

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The exposure of regular prisoner abuse at Los Angeles' jails has lead to a reform of the system, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

The New York Times reports that the settlement between the LA County Sheriff’s Department and the Justice Department will aim to improve how mentally ill prisoners are treated and crack down on physical, mental, and sexual abuse by deputies in the country's biggest jail system.

“This is one of the few times in my career that I’ve seen reform on such a big scale,"Margaret Winter, the associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, told The Times.

"Not that there aren’t still significant problems, but this is a major, real thing.”

The settlement came after the LA County Sheriff's Department disclosed a number of problems in the jails, which eventually led to the indictment of over a dozen Sheriff's Department staff.

Some of the changes announced are meant to reduce suicides and implementing more investigations into all suicide attempts, as well as better assessing the mental health state of of the inmates. Other changes include more crisis intervention training for jail employees and will require inmates to spend more time outside of their cell.

The settlement also addressed the use of force in jail and expanded on a previous settlement announced in December 2014, which implemented new policies presided over by a three-person panel that would address the culture of systematic abuse.

According to lawsuits against sheriff's deputies, guards would award each other points for breaking prisoners' bones and inmates were also regularly racially insulted and at least one was sexually assaulted.

Other changes in the settlement focus on the better treatment of mentally ill inmates, and more mental health professionals would be added to work at the prison. The changes also include training for jail staff on how to work with mentally unstable prisoners.

The Times notes that as many as 4,000 mentally ill prisoners are housed in the county’s jails each day, according to LA County sheriff Jim McDonnell.

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Released from B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m. (Japanese time), the world entered the unprecedented atomic age with the deployment of the most powerful weapon known to man.

Born from the Einstein-inspired Manhattan Project, the first nuclear weapon used in war fell for 44.4 seconds before unleashing approximately 12,500 tons of TNT over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Code-named "Little Boy," the bomb killed 140,000 people and destroyed 90 percent of the city.

Three days later, the US dropped another bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing about 40,000 people instantly; thousands more would die of radiation poisoning.

Eight days later, Japan informally surrendered to the Allied forces, effectively ending World War II. 

SEE ALSO: An unsettling picture of a US physicist cheerfully holding the 'Fat Man' atomic bomb's core

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At a time of heightened tensions throughout the Middle East over the Iran nuclear deal and the spread of ISIS, the US will be forced to recall its aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf, Navy officials told CNN. 

In the fall, the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier will return to the US for scheduled maintenance in October. However, the Roosevelt's replacement, the USS Harry S. Truman, will not arrive in the region until the winter of 2016 — leaving a period of approximately two months in which the US will not have a carrier in the Persian Gulf. 

"Overextending the Navy in 2010 to 2013 caused our need to recover maintenance and readiness that caused this gap," an unnamed Navy official told CNN.

"The increased frequency and extension of carrier strike group deployments increased wear on the force, which led to increased maintenance and repair requirements and lengthened maintenance availability periods. That recovery time is now upon us."

However, officials assured CNN that the lack of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf will not affect US military capabilities in the region. As a stop-gap measure, the Air Force can move more land-based aircraft to military bases throughout the Persian Gulf and the wider region. 

Naval officials have also told the Navy Times on background that although the absence of an aircraft carrier in the region will be a setback, it is necessary for the Navy to continue to operate with a decreased budget. 

"As a result of meeting increased [combatant commander] demand in previous years, sequestration's impact on our shipyards, and having a force structure of 10 (rather than 11) carriers, the Navy is not scheduled to provide a continuous carrier presence in some operating regions in fiscal year 2016," Navy spokesman Commander William Marks told the Navy Times. 

The US fields more aircraft carriers than any other nation earth, with 10 commissioned nuclear powered fleet carriers. Each of these carriers can function as a mobile mini-American air base, which allow the US to project power far away from its own shores. 

As the after effects of sequestration and a declining Naval budget are continued to be felt, the cost-benefit of fielding a constant carrier presence in multiple parts of the world may become a more open question. 

SEE ALSO: Why a US aircraft carrier is a dominant force, in 41 pictures

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In Northwestern Spain, the small village of Catoria along the Ulla river is home to 3,500 people, but on the first Sunday of every August, it is invaded by Vikings.

The tradition has been alive in the region since 1961, when a group of intellectuals from around Catoria responded to decades of oppression from the Francoist government of the time by creating a festival that celebrate the rich history of region. 

They decided on a reenactment of the defeat of King Ulfo's viking invaders by Archbishop Gelmírez’ troops near the Ulla river where two ancient towers still stand.

Today the tradition lives on with a week of musical and theatrical performances, which culminates in feasting, a mass at the Chapel of St. James, and finally pipers walk the streets leading festival goers to the river banks where the real Viking festivities take place.

Here are some pictures of the revelers in action:

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The invasion starts on the first Sunday in August, after a night of feasting, fireworks, and speeches the Saturday night before.

If you're low on battle gear, a medieval market surrounds the scene and helps provide context for the mock battle.

Source

Though horned helmets may not be historically accurate, Viking attire is required to participate in the festival.

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In the early 1980s, Cold War tensions were at their post-Cuban Missile Crisis height, and the US was looking for any strategic advantage it could get against its Soviet adversary.

Although submarine-based missiles were a well-established leg of the nuclear "triad" (along with ballistic missiles and strategic bomber aircraft) the US realized the strategic applicability of stealth for vessels at sea. Specifically, US military researchers wanted to test the viability of making nuclear-armed submarines invisible to sonar.

This effort resulted in Lockheed Martin's experimental stealth ship, a razor-like surface vessel called the Sea Shadow. 

First acquired by the US Navy in 1985, the Sea Shadow remained secret until it was unveiled to the public in 1993. The ship continued to be used for testing purposes until 2006, when it was removed from service. 

Built with help from DARPA and funding from the US government, Sea Shadow was designed to test if it was possible to construct ships that could be invisible to Soviet satellite detection systems and X-band radar.

Additionally, the ship was more highly automated than previous vessels, and the Sea Shadow was partly aimed at testing how well surface ships could perform under the command of a very small crew. 

First acquired in 1985, the Sea Shadow was never intended to be mission capable. 

Instead, the ship was built to test stealth and automation technology. The sharp angles on the ship reflect designs that had previously proven successful for Lockheed's stealth Nighthawk attack aircraft. 

The Sea Shadow's raised hull builds upon older technology that is widely used in ferry design for enhancing stability. The Sea Shadow was designed to be able to withstand 18-foot high waves. 

The Sea Shadow was small and cramped. It was only 160 feet long, could only fit 12 bunks, and only had a small microwave, refrigerator, and table for the crew. 

Although the Sea Shadow was taken out of service in 2006, it still influenced later classes of ships. Its low radar cross section, for instance, informed the design of subsequent US Navy destroyers. 

SEE ALSO: This incredible wave-cutting stealth ship could be the future of naval warfare

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A group run by a high-profile Republican on Tuesday an intense advertisement taking aim at presidential candidate and US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) over his comments about the threat Iran poses to the United States.

The 30-second ad— released by the group run by former United Nations ambassador John Bolton — attempts to link Paul's past statements about Iran to a possible nuclear attack.

As a happy family sits down for dinner in the video, a nuclear bomb explodes. The ad then cuts to a video of Paul saying in 2007 that "our national security is not threatened by Iran having one nuclear weapon."

The video ends with text appearing over a mushroom cloud: "It only takes one."

The group isn't the first to slam Paul over his past comments about Iran. Earlier this year, another conservative-leaning group ran a similar ad linking Paul to President Barack Obama using Paul's quote.

The comments used in both videos came during a speech in that Paul made while campaigning for his father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), during the 2008 Republican presidential primary.

Rand Paul — who questioned Iran's threat to the US multiple times during that campaign — attributes his past skepticism to the state of Iran's military capabilities then, which he maintains were far less advanced than they are now.

“These ads are from statements made eight years ago. I think events do change. I think Iran has always been a threat, but I think they are increasingly a threat,” Paul said in April, according to MSNBC. “So I’m not sure that it’s, my view has changed on whether Iran is a threat, I think Iran has become more of a threat over the past eight years.”

Iran has become a major campaign issue following Obama's push to gain supportfor a multinational nuclear agreement with Iran.

Paul has faced criticism from some of his Republican presidential rivals over his past foreign policy positions. GOP presidential rival and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) said last month that any prominent politician, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, could've made a better nuclear deal with Iran that Obama.

"Except maybe Rand Paul,"he said.

Paul's campaign didn't immediately return Business Insider's request for comment.

The attack ad on Paul is at least the second major ad in the 2016 cycle to use the threat of nuclear annihilation to sway voters. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) released a video last month implying that a nuclear deal with Iran could lead to an attack. 

Watch the video below:

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Seventy years ago, the US Air Force's "Enola Gay" B-29 Superfortress bomber dropped a 15-kiloton nuclear bomb, code-named Little Boy, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

The blast, which was the first detonation of a uranium-based nuclear device in history, instantly killed 70,000 people, while the lasting effects of the radiation brought the toll up to 140,000.

Hiroshima, a city of 310,000, was almost completely annihilated.

The nuclear chain reaction unleashed by a mere two pounds of concentrated uranium atoms, created when two hemispheres containing a total of 140 pounds of highly enriched uranium slammed into one another about 1,900 feet above Hiroshima, created an over 1,000-foot fireball, ended tens of thousands of lives, and vaporized an entire city.

It's impossible to truly grasp the enormity of an atomic blast like the one that leveled Hiroshima, but The Nuke Map is an invaluable attempt at it.

The work of Alex Wellerstein, a historian of nuclear technology at the Stevens Institute of Technology, the Nuke Map lets users detonate bombs of various yields over any point on earth and then calculates potential casualties, fatalities, and fallout. 

The tool gives a jarring perspective on the Hiroshima bomb by allowing users to superimpose Little Boy's blast radius over a variety of familiar locations. In each map, the inner circle indicates the fireball created by the nuclear reaction's release of energy. The next circle denotes the "air-blast radius" where rising air pressure would crush most buildings and kill or injure nearly everyone. The green circle indicates the area where radiation will be lethal it goes untreated within a period of hours or days. The two outer lines are the air blast and thermal radiation limit of the explosion, respectively.

In Washington, DC, a 15-kiloton bomb, with an explosive yield equal to 15,000 tons of TNT, would kill 126,000 people and injure over 190,000 more:

A 15-kiloton nuclear weapon has a fireball radius of over 500 feet, giving the most destructive section of the explosion a width of more than four Manhattan blocks.

If detonated over 20th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the air-blast radius of Little Boy-sized device — a zone where increased air pressure would crush most buildings and where the casualty rate would be in the 100% range — would span from the East Village to the southern edge of midtown Manhattan. The bomb would kill an estimated 445,000 people.

Another look:

The bomb's enormity can also be glimpsed by dropping it on midsized cities. Little Boy would irradiate the entirety of downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, and kill 32,000 people out of a population of around 500,000.

The examples of Hiroshima and the attack on Nagasaki three days later convinced the world of the bomb's destructive potential and created a still vital sense of urgency among diplomats, politicians, military planners, and activists for ensuring that atomic devices are never used in war.

But there are still nearly 16,000 nuclear weapons on earth, many of which have far higher explosive yields than Little Boy. It's been 70 years since the last nuclear strike. But if that streak ever comes to an end, the cost would be unimaginable.

The bombing of Nagasaki ended up being the last nuclear strike in history — but only so far.

SEE ALSO: 70 years ago today: The moment the US deployed the most powerful weapon known to man

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A Russian cyberattack around July 25 against the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff's email has resulted in the mail system being offline for almost two weeks, US officials told NBC.

The attack affected around 4,000 personnel who work for the Joint Chiefs.

Although the attack did not result in the loss of any confidential material, the scope of the breach led to the Pentagon shuttering the entirety of the email server until it could be secured (likely by the end of the week).

The breadth of the attack has led officials to tell NBC that they believe it "was clearly the work of a state actor."

However, officials have not yet determined whether the attack was carried out by agents within the Russian government or by other individuals outside the Russian government. The hack resulted in large quantities of data being shared automatically to thousands of various websites across the internet.

In response to the attack, the Pentagon has spent days entirely cleaning out the system to ensure that it would be secure once it goes live again. The Daily Beast notes that the Pentagon is also sharing the results of investigations into the hack with the rest of the US government to help improve cybersecurity.

Earlier in the year, hackers that may have been working for the Russian government accessed an unclassified Pentagon network, according to CNN.

These hacks against military networks and emails follow a series of Russian hacking attempts against government servers. Within the past year, Russian hackers gained access to the email system of the US State Department. According to CNN, the hack only affected unclassified information but still necessitated that the State Department take the email system offline for repairs in November 2014.

Also in 2014, Russian hackers gained access to the White House's unclassified email system. Although the emails were unclassified, hackers still had access to President Obama's personal emails, which contained exchanges with ambassadors, diplomats, and policy questions.

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Democratic US Senator Chuck Schumer is opposing the nuclear deal with Iran. The Huffington Post reported his intention to oppose the deal on Thursday. Shortly after that report was published, Schumer confirmed his opposition in a Medium post.

A pro-Israel lawmaker who is a high-ranking Senate Democrat, Schumer is considered pivotal to the Iran deal's future.

Congress may end up voting against President Barack Obama's landmark nuclear deal with Iran by passing a resolution of disapproval, putting the legislative branch on record as opposing perhaps the biggest foreign-policy initiative of Obama's presidency.

In the Medium post, Schumer stated that he would vote for the disapproval measure. He included a lengthy justification for opposing the agreement, casting doubt on whether the accord would actually prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He also came out against aspects of the deal that don't pertain to limitations on the nuclear program, such as the lifting of sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities and the removal of arms and ballistic missile restrictions: "When it comes to the non-nuclear aspects of the deal, I think there is a strong case that we are better off without an agreement than with one."

He also argued that the Iranian regime could not be trusted to uphold the agreement. "[I]f one feels that Iranian leaders will not moderate and their unstated but very real goal is to get relief from the onerous sanctions, while still retaining their nuclear ambitions and their ability to increase belligerent activities in the Middle East and elsewhere, then one should conclude that it would be better not to approve this agreement," Schumer wrote.

But chances remain very low that deal opponents will be able to muster the votes needed to override a presidential veto, which would be likely in the event of a resolution of disapproval. 

Opponents need support of two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in order to override that potential veto and prevent the president from suspending US sanctions against Iran, something that would almost certainly scuttle the nuclear agreement signed last month.

It's unlikely they can get to that point. Assuming every Senate Republican other than potential agreement supporter Jeff Flake votes against the deal, opponents will still need to recruit 13 Senate Democrats to their position. 

Schumer did not state in the Medium post whether he would vote to override a presidential veto of a resolution of disapproval. 

His colleague from New York, US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, announced her support for the deal on Thursday. 

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