Beheaded bodies of two girls found in IS camp

The beheaded bodies of two Egyptian girls were found yesterday in a sprawling camp in northeastern Syria housing tens of thousands of women and children linked to the so-called Islamic State group, an opposition war monitor and local officials said.

The bodies of the girls were found in the sewage system of the camp days after they went missing, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The group said the girls had been beheaded. It was first such crime in weeks in the facility.

An official at the camp who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals said the girls were aged 11 and 13.

Siamand Ali, an official with the Kurdish-led Us-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, confirmed the killings.

Such grisly crimes in the camp are usually committed by members of terrorist sleeper cells, especially against women who resist abiding by the group’s extreme ideology. The Observatory, Mr Ali and the official at the camp all blamed IS.

The killings are the first since Us-backed Syrian fighters concluded a 24-day sweep at al-hol in mid-september during which dozens of extremists were detained and weapons were confiscated in the operation. The operation came after sleeper cells committed crimes inside the camp.

Georgia: A judge has overturned Georgia’s ban on abortion starting around six weeks into a pregnancy, ruling that it violated the US Constitution and US Supreme Court precedent when it was enacted.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert Mcburney’s ruling applies statewide. The ban had been in effect since July.

It prohibited most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” is present. Cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in cells within an embryo that will eventually become the heart as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

That means most abortions in Georgia were effectively banned at a point before many women knew they were pregnant.

Judge Mcburney’s ruling came in a lawsuit that sought to strike down the ban on multiple grounds, including that it violates the Georgia Constitution’s right to privacy and liberty by forcing pregnancy and childbirth on women in the state.

The lawsuit filed by doctors and advocacy groups in July also argued that Georgia’s abortion ban was invalid because it violated the US Constitution and US Supreme Court precedent when it was enacted.

Austria: Climate activists in Austria attacked a famous painting by artist Gustav Klimt with a black, oily liquid and one then glued himself to glass protecting the painting’s frame.

Members of the group Last Generation Austria tweeted they had targeted the 1915 painting Death And Life at the Leopold Museum in Vienna to protest against their government’s use of fossil energies.

After throwing the liquid on the painting, one activist was pushed away by a museum guard while another glued his hand to the glass over the painting’s frame.

The group said that they were protesting against “oil and gas drilling” which they called “a death sentence”.