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U.S. Issued Travel 'Warning' for 3 Popular European Countries

U.S. Issued Travel 'Warning' for 3 Popular European Countries

Yahoo27-05-2025
If you're planning a trip to Europe this summer, you may want to check out the latest travel advisories from the United States Department of State.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of State issued a Level 4 warning for Somalia due to an increase in terrorism and civil unrest. There are also health-related concerns plaguing the country.
"Do not travel to Somalia due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest, health, kidnapping, piracy, and lack of availability of routine consular services," the U.S. said. "Due to security risks, U.S. government employees working in Somalia are prohibited from traveling outside the Mogadishu International Airport complex where the U.S. Embassy is located. The U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu maintains normal staffing."
Although a Level 4 warning wasn't administered to a European country this week, a few countries have been put on notice.
The U.S. Department of State has officially issued a Level 1 travel advisory for Switzerland. This is the lowest advisory level for safety and security risk. That means Americans should exercise normal precautions before visiting there, such as reviewing the Country Security Report.
On May 22, the U.S. Department of State issued a Level 2 warning for Belgium. Anyone traveling there in the near future should exercise increased caution due to the risk of terrorist attacks.
Italy has also been tagged with a Level 2 warning due to terrorism. That's a huge concern considering Italy is a hot spot for travelers in the summer.
According to the U.S. Department of State, terrorists in Italy have been targeting the following places:
Tourist spots
Transportation centers
Shopping malls and markets
Local government buildings
Hotels, clubs and restaurants
Religious sites
Parks
Sporting and cultural events
Schools
Airports
Public areas
The full list of travel advisories issued by the U.S. can be seen here.
The U.S. government could always alter its travel advisories in the blink of an eye, so make sure you stay alert over the next few weeks.
U.S. Issued Travel 'Warning' for 3 Popular European Countries first appeared on Men's Journal on May 27, 2025
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Newly released MLK files: What's in them and what's left out?
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Newly released MLK files: What's in them and what's left out?

Historians assessing the trove of newly released documents are cautioning people against the idea that they contain any groundbreaking information. Among details included in a newly released trove of documents related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.: assassin James Earl Ray took dance classes and had a penchant for using aliases based on James Bond novels, according to researchers. But likely not among the nearly a quarter million pages released by the National Archives and Administration on July 21 is anything that changes the narrative cemented when Ray pleaded guilty to King's murder in 1969, historians say. "The idea that there's some sort of secret document showing that J. Edgar Hoover did it is not how any of this works. Part of the challenge is getting the American public to understand it's nowhere near as exciting," said Michael Cohen, a University of California, Berkeley professor and author of a book on conspiracies in American politics. 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"Unless they want to write about the investigation, I don't know that this will have an impact on the scholarship." Noteworthy in the files, Barrett said, are details concerning how the FBI connected Ray to King, how they found him and extradited him back to the U.S. from the United Kingdom, where he had fled. "It does take weeks to go through these, so there might be some important revelatory things but I doubt it," said the political science professor. "It's not exactly what people were hoping for and not what the King family was fearing." Many of the files are also illegible due to age and digitization. Archives officials said the agency was working with other federal partners to uncover records related to the King assassination and that records will be added to the website on a rolling basis. 'Now, do the Epstein files': MLK's daughter knocks Trump over records release What's not in the King files? 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What does the FBI have to hide? Hoover's recordings might also prove a double-edged sword for the FBI, according to Cohen: "Will these files contain things that will upset the King family? That's possible. But they'll also likely reveal just how massively the FBI violated King's civil liberties." FBI agents began monitoring King in 1955, according to researchers at Stanford University. Hoover believed King was a communist and after the Georgia preacher criticized the agency's activities in the Deep South in 1964, the original FBI director began targeting King using the agency's counterintelligence program COINTELPRO, Stanford researchers said. COINTELPRO was a controversial program that a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation slammed, saying: "Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity," the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities said in its final report. "The Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association." The agency went so far as to send King a recording secretly made from his hotel room that an agent testified was aimed at destroying King's marriage, according to a 1976 U.S. Senate investigation. King interpreted a note sent with the tape as a threat to release recording unless King committed suicide, the Senate report said. MLK assassinated in Memphis, April 4, 1968 The official story of how King died is that he was killed on the balcony outside his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. He stepped outside to speak with colleagues in the parking lot below and was shot in the face by an assassin. James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped fugitive, later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. But Ray later tried to withdraw his confession and said he was set up by a man named Raoul. He maintained until his death in 1998 that he did not kill King. The recanted confession and the FBI's shadowy operations under J. Edgar Hoover have sparked widespread conspiracy theories over who really killed the civil rights icon. King's children have said they don't believe Ray was the shooter and that they support the findings of a 1999 wrongful death lawsuit that found that King was the victim of a broad conspiracy that involved government agents. Department of Justice officials maintain that the findings of the civil lawsuit are not credible. Read the MLK files Looking to read the MLK files yourself? You can find them on the National Archives' website here. Most of the files are scans of documents, and some are blurred or have become faint or difficult to read in the decades since King's assassination. There are also photographs and sound recordings.

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