Today is the anniversary of the US atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima in 1945, The attack effectively ended the World War II in the Pacific Theater. At the time, the sentiment was that it was an appropriate end to a horrific war; in retrospect, it was a war crime that eventually transformed the conduct of world politics. The world still struggles with the presence of nuclear weapons, but it is unlikely that we will ever see a completely nuclear-disarmed world. It is amazing to see how the short-term exigencies of war can lead to such dramatic long-run changes.
About 30,000 members of a minority group called the Yazidi are being besieged at the top of Mount Sinjar in Iraq by the Islamic State. The Yazidi are are one of the oldest ethnic groups in the world, but are considered devil-worshippers by the Sunni-inspired Islamic State. The prospect of the group being completely wiped out are not trivial. Kurdish forces from Kurdistan are trying to help, and American and British forces are trying to air-drop supplies to the besieged people. But many are dying of starvation and dehydration.
Another conflict has broken out in some of the former Republics of the USSR. Armenia, primarily a Christian nation, and Azerbaijan, primarily a Muslim nation, had renewed fighting over the status of Nagorno-Karabagh, an Armenian enclave completely within the state of Azerbaijan. A truce was concluded between the two states in 1994, but it has been an uneasy peace. The fighting was renewed principally because global attention has been fixated more on the dispute between Russia and Ukraine.
World Politics News 
Have there been sustained efforts toi forn a bi-national or confederal state?
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There are not many successes for either. But the most successful case is stunningly successful: the Helvetica Confederation, or, as it is more commonly known,Switzerland. The Swiss Cantons have a very high degree of autonomy and the Swiss handle three languages very well (four, if one counts English as well). Great Britain was moderately successful (England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland), but had many problems that could have been avoided if the English had been a little more flexible.
India has also been moderately successful with a multi-ethnic state, and Yugoslavia under Tito was somewhat successful (until Tito died). But homogeneous states (single nation-single state) are the most successful.
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