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After three consecutive dry years, a full 58% of California is experiencing what is known as an exceptional drought. California, like most states west of the 100th meridian, is arid, with average annual rainfall around 30 inches or below. But the term “average” is misleading, as rainfall varies dramatically not only from the northwest corner of the state to the southeastern desert, but from one year to the next. And in years with little snowfall or rain, drought strikes hard against California, the state that supports the largest population and economy.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, sometimes called ISIS) is a Sunni jihadist group. It branched off from al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in early 2013 with the goal to create an Islamic state (caliphate) that straddles Iraq and Syria. Syria has been engaged in a civil war since 2011, while Iraq is a young and fragile democracy with considerable sectarian strife.

In April 2014, the Muslim extremist group Boko Haram abducted more than 200 Nigerian girls from a boarding school in the northeastern state of Borno. Boko Haram can be translated as “western education is forbidden;” its opposition to western education is only part of its larger goal, however, which is to create in Nigeria an Islamic state, ruled by the Koran’s Shari’a law.

The current crisis unfolding in Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula have deep roots that extend well before the Cold War, to a period when this region was in the control of different empires and nations. Beginning in the mid1400s, Crimea existed as a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire until Katharine the Great annexed it to Russia in 1783. Poland held control over western Ukraine until 1793, when much of modern-day Ukraine was integrated into the Russian Empire.