The city of Akra was built in the 7th century and is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. It saw many significant cultural and economic developments around the 16th century mark. Akra was under Ottoman rule until 1918.

Since 2014, Our Lady of the Fields Camp & Retreat Center in Brighton, formerly known as Camp Chaldean, has been hosting a mini-summer camp for kids from the Chaldean community of metro Detroit. It’s called “Chaldean Youth Camp” or “CYC” for short. Now in its ninth year, CYC is bursting at the seams. Enrollment for the 2022 camps opened at midnight on April 10, and within 24 hours, it was almost completely booked. That’s over 600 Chaldean boys and girls who will either spend one action-packed day at Our Lady of the Fields (OLF) or an overnight there this summer.

Michigan finds itself hurtling toward the 2022 midterm elections with a new set of conundrums to conquer. The state features a fresh Congressional map as its roster of House seats dips from 14 to 13, one further from the state’s historical high-water mark of 19. While some in Michigan are happy with the process the state used to draw the new map, the loss of yet another seat and the shifting lines caused a headache for others.

Four years ago, the world rejoiced when Iraqi forces backed by the United States and Iran liberated Mosul from the brutal rule of Islamic State. The people of this ancient city hoped to rebuild their shattered lives. Today, a different battle plays out. Taking place largely behind the scenes, from legislative halls that overlook the city’s bombed-out streets to hotel meeting rooms in Baghdad, it is a power struggle among parties, politicians, and militiamen. Some are backed by Iran. Others favor the United States.

This article is the first in a series looking deeper into the unsolved murders of Chaldeans in their place of business. If you have information about, or would like us to feature a case, please send an email to edit@chaldeannews.com. Every night around 11:15 p.m., Lamees Kassab and her young daughters would wait at the window for her father and their grandfather, Lewis Putrus, to pull into his driveway in his van. Living next door, he would wave to them, they would wave back, he would go into his house, and then she would shut the curtains on this nightly ritual.

“They say spina bifida defects are like snowflakes, since no two cases are alike,” says Lisa Azzou. Her daughter, Sophia, now 13, was diagnosed with Spina bifida when Lisa was 18 weeks pregnant. Spina bifida is a genetic birth defect that occurs during early development of the fetus when vertebrae surrounding the spine do not form properly, leaving the spinal cord exposed. This can affect nerve cell function and disable people for life. Sophia’s type is the most common – and also the most severe. By the time she was three years old, she had suffered through 11 surgeries. Now, as a bright 13-year-old, Sophia is in seventh grade at her local middle school and is the only student who use a wheelchair for mobility.

On February 2, Dr. Ulises Casab Rueda presented the English version of his Spanish book Ixtepec-Telkef: The Iraqi Christians in Mexico to a large crowd at the Shenandoah Country Club in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Many Chaldean Americans were intrigued by this barely known population that exists on the same continent. His story begins before he was born; in 1901, a man named Jajjo Haji became the first Telkipnaya (a person from the village of Telkeppe, Iraq) to arrive in Ixtepec, Mexico. When he went back to Telkeppe, young people were drawn to stories of his travels and yearned for a better life. Suddenly, life in Mexico had become a possibility for them.