Part of metropolitan Detroit is in a total state of emergency, and barely anyone is paying attention.

Thunderstorms on Monday flooded major sections of the suburb of Warren, just miles from downtown Detroit. It’s pretty bad — in some places the water reached five feet high, while Warren Mayor Jim Fouts told WWJ Newsradio 950 that 1,000 cars had been abandoned to floodwater. Thousands of residents, as well as the city hall and police department, have flooded basements. One person has died and hundreds of others have been rescued by police in canoes.

"This is probably a 200-year rain. I’ve never seen anything like this." | Follow micdotcom

• The prime minister of the Central African Republic and his cabinet have resigned.
• Clashes in CAR are threatening last month’s ceasefire deal.
• Libya’s congress has called for a UN-backed ceasefire.
• Egypt signed a $3m per year lobbying contract to help keep the US-Egypt relationship on good footing.
• Fighting along the border between Sudan and South Sudan is threatening to merge two conflicts.
• Human Rights Watch says that atrocities in South Sudan amount to war crimes.
• In photos: Gaza after the bombardment.
• In Israel, to be anti-war is to be ostracized/vilified/threatened…
• The cease-fire in Gaza has ended and not been renewed. Rockets were launched from Gaza and Israel has resumed airstrikes. Talks are not progressing in Cairo.
• Atef Abu Saif’s eight day war diary from Gaza shows the minutiae of life under the shelling.
• Amnesty International calls for an investigation into evidence that Israel is actively targeting health care workers.
• Foreign Policy reports that European powers have drawn up a plan for a UN mission to oversee the end of the blockade on Gaza and the destruction of Hamas’ tunnel system.
• A horrifying dispatch from the scene of a barrel bombing in Aleppo.
• The Syrian civil war continues to threaten Lebanon.
• ISIS stormed one of the Syrian government’s last bases in Raqqa.
• President Obama has authorized limited airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq.
• ISIS has trapped 50,000 Yazidis in the mountains of northwestern Iraq, creating a terrible humanitarian crisis. Who are the Yazidis?
• Bahrain convicted nine opposition activists of “public security charges,” stripping them of citizenship.
• Major General Harold Greene was killed in a green-on-blue attack in Afghanistan this week — the first US general officer to be killed in either the war in Iraq or Afghanistan.
• The US system of tracking weapons shipments to Afghanistan is faulty — failing to the extent that it isn’t known how many weapons are missing.
• An Indian soldier who accidentally crossed the border has been detained by Pakistan.
• RFE/RL explains the ongoing conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
• A female journalist has written a blunt and damning essay about her recent rape in Ukraine by a “Very Respected Journalist.”
• "Has Russia invaded us yet?" — the slow invasion of Ukraine.
• Russia bans food imports from the US and EU.
• Edward Snowden has been given permission to stay in Russia for at least another three years.
• Former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili is being prosecuted for human rights violations and abuse of power, but his allies (like Sen. John McCain) are standing by their man.
• Two Khmer Rouge leaders have been sentenced to life in prison by the UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia.
• The New York Times will now use the word “torture” to describe… well, torture.
• Troop charity Move America Forward is outed by ProPublica for its fundraising fakery and funneling proceeds into PACs and political consulting firms.

America’s police forces are becoming more and more militarized, and it’s costing money and lives.

A new report from the America Civil Liberties Union dives into the deployment of SWAT teams by local and state police agencies, and the results aren’t pretty. Out of 818 SWAT raids carried out in 11 states from 2010 to 2013, seven ended with civilians dying because of the raids. There were also 46 civilian injuries.

While SWAT teams were originally meant for riot control and active shooter situations, the study found that 62% of missions were actually drug searches, with 79% of raids involving private homes. Only 7% of raids lined up with how SWAT teams were intended to be used.

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america.aljazeera.com

Darius Robinson is working on his image. He recently had a sleeve on his right arm finished at his favorite tattoo parlor near his alma mater, Clemson University, in South Carolina.

But until recently — when Robinson graduated and finished his college football career — his image was not entirely his own.

In order to receive a scholarship to play defensive back for the Tigers, Robinson said, he had to sign away his right to profit from his name, image or likeness. That stipulation is part of the guidelines for amateur athletes set forth by the NCAA.

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More guns means more gun violence. It’s an intuitive relationship — so why can’t we seem to grasp it?

This world map, created by Reddit user phillybdizzle using 2012 data from The Guardian, shows just how high the rate of firearm ownership is in America — 88.8 guns per 100 people, by far the highest rate on the planet. (The second-highest, Yemen, has 54.8 guns per 100 people.)

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america.aljazeera.com

Lawmakers and activists from over 100 different countries gathered in London on Tuesday for the start of a high-profile conference aimed at combating sexual violence in war zones and eliminating what experts have called a “culture of impunity.”

The four-day summit, which is expected to draw hundreds of dignitaries including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, was organized by British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, who is also a special envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

america.aljazeera.com

Attempts to revive the spirit of the Tiananmen Square movement have been made before. In the quarter-century since Chinese security forces killed hundreds, if not thousands of pro-democracy supporters many have tried to evoke the events of June 4, 1989 to inspire defiance anew.

A new report from the Treatment Advocacy Center says over 10 times as many mentally ill inmates are languishing in the nation’s prisons as are receiving treatment in American hospitals and mental health facilities. In 2012, a combined 35,000 patients were being treated or held in state psychiatric hospitals. But 356,000 of the mentally ill were in prison or jail. Forty-four of the 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, have at least one jail that holds more inmates with severe mental illness in a correctional facility than they do in a treatment program.

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