“Jim: The James Foley Story” premiered at Sundance on Jan. 23. It will premiere on HBO starting Feb.6 at 9 p.m. EST.

“Jim’s story is important for so many reasons, most notably it speaks to the silent crisis faced by families if a loved one is taken hostage,” his parents, Diane and John Foley, said in a statement. “It also shows the world the risks that are undertaken by freelance journalists to tell the frontline stories our nation depends on. We could not be prouder of our son and we are grateful to Brian Oakes for creating a film that captured these issues so poignantly.”

Sting wrote a song, “The Empty Chair,” for the film.

“It’s a very devastating film and at the end I had to be picked up off the floor… this movie is the antidote to the nonsense that we see going on in the world now,” said Sting while performing for a live audience at Sundance.

In August 2014, Foley was beheaded by the Islamic State after being held hostage in Syria for more than 600 days. His parents founded the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation to carry out his legacy, including supporting American hostages and their families, advocating for greater safety measures for freelance journalists and creating educational opportunities for disadvantaged youth.

Pointing to a verse in the Qur’an that condemns violence, Firas explains that ISIS goes against the teachings of the religion. “They never represent Islam,” he said. Firas and Rehab don’t want photos taken that could identify them for fear of violence against family still in Syria. (Kat Lonsdorf/MEDILL)

Sitting in a modest apartment in Chicago’s northern Rogers Park neighborhood, Firas Jawish, 35, thought back on the 10 months he spent detained underground by the Assad regime in Syria.

“We had no idea if it was day or night,” he recalled. “But usually the torture was in the mornings–so then we knew.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that it would have seemed like light conversation to a passerby.

The sparsely decorated apartment is the most reliable home Firas and his wife Rehab, 29, have had in more than three years. For their 3-year-old son, Hasan, it’s the first permanent place he’s ever lived.

The young family moved to Chicago in late September, joining the more than 150 Syrian refugees that have resettled in Illinois since the start of the Syrian civil war in March 2011.

Before the war began—or at least before it came to them—the newly married couple lived near Damascus in the northern suburb of Harasta. Firas was an anesthesiologist working in two different ICUs. Rehab, then pregnant, was going to school to become a textile mechanical engineer.

In 2012, as the unrest of the civil war began to spread, the Assad regime started weekly bombings in Harasta, forcing Firas and Rehab to leave their home and all their brand-new wedding gifts behind. They moved in with family in a nearby suburb, taking only belongings they could carry.

Meanwhile, Firas coped with the bombings the only way he knew how—by helping injured civilians in his neighborhood when he wasn’t working at the hospital. It was this that eventually led to his detainment.

“Even if someone is injured and goes to the regime hospital, they will kill him there, or he will just disappear forever,” Firas recounted last week in Rogers Park, explaining that the government considered anyone trying to alleviate the situation an enemy.

The couple didn’t want any identifiable photos taken for fear of the safety of family members still in Syria, but they did allow audio. Listen below to hear Firas describe his time in detention.

On the floor nearby, Hasan sat playing with a remote control car, oblivious to the dramatic tale unfolding in the living room.

When Firas was finally released in October 2013, he had been underground for 10 months. Hasan was now walking and talking, but he didn’t recognize his father.

A few days later, the couple decided to leave, fearing that Firas would again be arrested.

With little savings left, they sold their car and got on a bus to the northern city of Aleppo. From here, they took a bus to the Turkish border and then walked across, becoming part of the now 4.6 million Syrians who have fled the war-torn country.

They rented a room in Antakya, Turkey, a city about 20 miles from the Mediterranean Sea toward Cyprus. Rehab worked for a Danish refugee organization, while Firas tried to run a clinic for other refugees out of their cramped home using the only medical equipment he brought with him: his stethoscope.

Each stop on the Jawish family’s journey from Damascus to Chicago. (Kat Lonsdorf/MEDILL)

The family applied for refugee status with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in early 2014.

“After a while they asked us, ‘Would you like to go to the United States?’” Firas smiled big remembering, laughing a little. “Well, yeah. Sure, of course. Who wouldn’t?”

The whole process took about two years. There was a medical check, and a security check. Many security checks, he said. “They don’t tell you anything about how to travel, or when to travel,” Firas remembered. “You’re just waiting.”

The family got 10-days notice that they would be moving to Chicago, a city Firas said he knew about from movies.

“But we didn’t know the weather,” he said. “No one told us that it’s very cold. And I didn’t hear about the Lake Michigan—it’s just like a sea, actually, but it’s a lake. It’s very beautiful.”

Chicago’s large immigrant population, especially in Rogers Park, made resettling relatively smooth, the couple said. Their next door neighbors are Iraqi. Their local supermarket has recognizable products.

“Chicago is traditionally a welcoming hub for refugees from all over the world,” said Suzanne Akhras, executive director of the local aid organization Syrian Community Network. She referenced the resolution passed unanimously by Chicago’s aldermen in reaction against an attempted ban on refugees by Gov. Bruce Rauner late last year.

Ending up in the United States is not a typical outcome for Syrian refugees. The U.S. has only accepted 2,660 Syrian refugees since 2011, according to the most recent State Department numbers. That’s much less than one percent of the total number of Syrian refugees seeking relief from the conflict.

Illinois Syrian Refugee Resettlement 2011-2015

The number of Syrian refugees resettled in Chicago, Illinois, and the United States as a whole per year since the civil war began in 2011. (Kat Lonsdorf/MEDILL)

“It’s not sufficient,” Akhras said of the United States’ resettlement efforts. “Of course you can’t resettle everyone, we understand that, but why we’re not accepting more is beyond me.”

Instead, Congress introduced a bill late last year to make it harder for refugees from Syria and Iraq to come to the United States. The bill already passed in the House without amendment in November, after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris left many U.S. lawmakers worried that ISIS was gearing up to infiltrate the country via an influx of Syrian refugees. It headed to the Senate this week for a vote.

President Obama has said he will veto the bill if it comes across his desk.

“This legislation would introduce unnecessary and impractical requirements that would unacceptably hamper our efforts to assist some of the most vulnerable people in the world,” he said in a statement shortly after the bill was introduced.

For Rehab especially, the transition to a new life has been lonely, mainly because of the language barrier. But Firas just accepted a new job in data entry at a nearby clinic, and the couple is especially looking forward to Hasan’s future in America.

“We really find that American people are very nice people, and open-minded,” Firas said. “A lot of American people here that we’ve met say, ‘We know you’ve been through very hard situations.’ We didn’t expect that.”

Medill Professor Ellen Shearer, who is a member of the ACOS executive committee and is also co-director of the Medill National Security Journalism Initative, said the standards represent a crucial move to ensure that journalists, especially freelancers, do not go into dangerous reporting situations without protections under the impression that editors and news directors expect the exclusive stories that lead to unnecessary risks.

The murders of American journalists last year by the Islamic State, notably the beheading of Medill alum and GlobalPost reporter James Foley, were the catalyst for the creation of the principles.

WASHINGTON — Islamist terror groups’ violent relationship with media goes beyond the killings they have shown the world on YouTube, a Reporters Without Borders study has found.

The report (https://en.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/rapport_daech_en_web.pdf) released on Jan. 4 by the advocacy organization shows a direct targeting of journalists from groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaida, as well as the strict rules and regulations these terror organizations have for theirs own media.

Modern terror groups rely heavily on intimidation—which they try to achieve by capturing and ransoming or murdering journalists—and the wide dissemination of their messages through social media as well as through reports on video channels and magazines that they control.

“IS exists above all on – and thanks to – the Internet, via which it wages most of its information war,” the report said.

Public targeting of reporters, which al-Qaida did in 2013 on the cover of one of its magazines, is part of that war.

So is controlling the media.

Islamic State controls more than five television stations, a radio station and a magazine, the report says. In Somalia, al-Qaida affiliate Al-Shabaab took over 10 radio stations in 2010, censoring their content along religious lines. Al-Qaida publishes multiple magazines in multiple languages.

In 2015, 54 journalists were captured, according to the report. Local journalists are particularly vulnerable if they do not comply with Islamic State rules and can be “arrested” and executed, the report indicated.

Abducting journalists is as much a hope for ransom money as it is a display of power.

In 2014 Islamic State released a list of 11 “commandments” that itemize how journalists function under its authority, the first of which requires swearing allegiance to leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Journalists are allowed to work with Islamic State, but under last-word censorship.

Conversely, journalists who report on these terror groups or in areas that the groups control can be victims of government suspicion.

VICE News journalist Mohammed Ismael Rasool was one of those captured. He was released on bail from a Turkish prison last week. The Iraqi journalist was held for 131 days on terrorism charges while reporting.

The golden hour evolved over more than a decade of conflict, but only recently has the concept been verified through a long-term study conducted by the United States Army Institute of Surgical Research, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and the Center for Translational Injury Research at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. The study found that over the course of the conflict in Afghanistan, median transport time of traumatically injured patients improved from 90 to 43 minutes. The study also found that, because of this dedication to rapid transport, the fatality rate for traumatically injured troops went from 13.7 percent to 7.6 percent.

According to Brig. Gen. Kory Cornum, Air Mobility Command Surgeon of the Air Force and an orthopedic surgeon, the golden hour rules is one of a number of tools and medical practices developed during combat that have proven useful in and out of the war zone, throughout history.

During World War II, according to an analysis done by Dr. Kendall McNabney in 1981, it took roughly 10 hours to transport an injured soldier to definitive treatment. With each war, the time decreased.

McNabney credited use of helicopters as ambulances as well as better blood programs, staffing, facilities and organizational structure as factors contributing to the survival of injured troops in Vietnam.

According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, R. Adams Cowley was the first to popularize the term “golden hour.”

During the Vietnam War, the Army sponsored Cowley to study shock trauma in patients. Through his study, the idea of the golden hour became a theme in successfully treating trauma patients.

The Medical Center quoted Cowley as saying, “There is a golden hour between life and death. If you are critically injured you have less than 60 minutes to survive. You might not die right then; it may be three days or two weeks later — but something has happened in your body that is irreparable.”

According to Cornum, tourniquets and blood therapy are two other tools that started with the military but moved to civilian medicine.

According to Cornum, massive bleeding – known as hemorrhage – kills most people with traumatic injuries. However, tourniquets – used to limit blood flow to an injured and bleeding limb, for example – were not routinely used in civilian or military trauma centers until about two decades ago.

“Twenty-five years ago, we all were taught – in Girls Scouts and Boys Scouts and in first aid training in the military and you name it — that a tourniquet was only to be used as a last resort,” Cornum said.

Tourniquets were a last resort when medical transport was less efficient because applying a tourniquet for a long period means no blood, and with it oxygen, is being delivered to tissues below the tourniqut. This eventually kills all tissue below where it is applied; in the past, amputations were the result.

“Now everybody in their combat lifesaving kit…  there’s a couple of tourniquets in there,” Cornum said.

The Medal of Honor began in 1861. The majority of the medals awarded are to Civil War military men according to the Congressional Medal of Honor official website.

This year, President Barack Obama awarded the medal to Capt. Florent Groberg. He moved a suicide bomber away from military personnel in Afghanistan by grabbing him and throwing himself on the man seconds before the explosion.

While on a mission with Afghans, Groberg noticed a man walking backwards towards his group. He approached the man and discovered that he was wearing a vest with explosives. That is when Groberg took the man away from the soldiers and threw him on the ground. The bomb detonated and Groberg was severely injured.

“Flo was thrown some 15 or 20 feet and was knocked unconscious,” Obama said.

Groberg’s family and friends accompanied him at the ceremony. Among those present were the families of two of his friends who were killed in another attack in the Middle East.

Groberg stood in front of the crowd and fought back tears as the president shared his story.

“Flo says that was the worst day of his life,” Obama said.

Groberg is the 10th living recipient who served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

House Speaker Paul Ryan orders flag to be lowered to half-staff in light of Paris attacks. (Sara Shouhayib/Medill NSJI)

But Beirut, nicknamed the “Paris of the Middle East,” didn’t receive nearly as much attention the previous day when more than 40 people were killed and hundreds were injured in twin bombings in the Burj el-Barajneh area, located off a main highway leading to Beirut’s airport, for which the Islamic State also took credit.

This was also the case in Baghdad on Friday, the same day as the Paris attacks, when 26 people died in a roadside bombing and a suicide bombing carried out by ISIS, another name for the Islamic State.

“I think Western media are naturally inclined to cover events in the West more than events outside the West,” said J.M. Berger, a fellow in the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution and co-author of the new book, “ISIS: The State of Terror.”

“The Paris attack was obviously more deadly, and more unusual than the attack in Beirut, but in my opinion, the Beirut bombing deserves more attention than it has received,” he said. “That said, many Western news outlets have been covering it.”

As a Vox.com article by Max Fisher noted, “The New York Times covered it. The Washington Post, in addition to running an Associated Press story on it, sent reporter Hugh Naylor to cover the blasts and then write a lengthy piece on their aftermath. The Economist had a thoughtful piece reflecting on the attack’s significance. CNN, which rightly or wrongly has a reputation for least-common-denominator news judgment, aired one segment after another on the Beirut bombings. Even the Daily Mail, a British tabloid most known for its gossipy royals coverage, was on the story.”

However, the widespread coverage of Beirut was delayed. It wasn’t until bloggers and independent social media users started noting that Beirut wasn’t getting enough attention that news media increased their coverage.

The series of attacks in Paris at a soccer stadium, concert venue, restaurants and a bar, although not independently confirmed, have been claimed by the Islamic State, just like the attacks in Baghdad and Beirut.

Berger noted that Friday’s carnage in Paris “ is the first such attack of this type and scale we’ve seen in Europe since the Madrid bombings in 2004, and of course, the first such attack from ISIS,” which did argue for major media attention.

Earlier this year, al Shabab, an al-Qaida offshoot based in Somalia, staged an attack at Garissa University in Kenya, killing 147, but the social media reaction was not nearly as widespread.

Profile pictures on Facebook were not widely stained in the colors of Kenya’s flag as they have been for France.

Many took to Twitter when House Speaker Paul Ryan had the Capitol flag flown at half-staff “out of respect and solidarity … in honor of the victims of the Paris attacks” to ask why the Baghdad and Beirut victims were not being recognized as well.

However Monday, the UN Security Council did observe a minute of silence in tribute to all terrorism victims.

The most popular trends on Facebook in regard to Paris in addition to the tri color photo stain of the French flag, are the Eiffel tower peace sign and statuses reflecting sympathy while using hash tags such as “#parisattacks” and “#prayforparis.”

President Barack Obama, during a joint White House news conference with French President Francois, Hollande, noted that refugees entering the United States go through a rigorous screening process, a reference to claims that at least one of the terrorists involved in the recent Paris attacks entered that country hidden among Syrian refugees.

“Nobody who sets foot in America goes through more screening than refugees,” Obama said. “As Francois has said, our humanitarian duty to help desperate refugees and our duty to our security—those duties go hand in hand.”

Keeping Syrian refugees out of the U.S., on grounds that they could be ISIS terrorists, has been a big subject for 2016 presidential candidates. However a House bill that passed last Thursday to suspend a refugee program for Syrian and Iraqi refugees garnered 47 Democrat votes as well. Many are concerned about the vetting process, while others cite the need to prioritize which refugees to admit, such as persecuted Christians in the Syrian region.

“We have to be concerned about the safety of the people of the United States,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher , R-Calif.,, during a recent joint Homeland Security Committee hearing. “If it means prioritizing and making sure that we do differentiate and say the Christians that are now the most vulnerable are the ones that are going to have the most priority, let’s go for it.”

Obama has said he would veto the bill.

The New York Times recently released an easy-to-read infographic detailing the vetting process for refugees into 20 steps. It consists of multiple security checks, interviews, referrals and fingerprint screenings.

Syrian refugees undergo additional steps, including review by a Citizenship and Immigration Services refugee specialist. While France is preparing to take in 30,000 Syrian refugees, it is widely reported that the United States has taken no more than 2,000 Syrian migrants since the civil war started in 2011.

A visual explanation of the process can provide sound information and clarity to Americans who have opinions on allowing refugees into the country but who don’t know what current restrictions are.

White House Press Secretary discusses national security after Islamic State attacks. (Sean Froelich/Medill).

WASHINGTON — White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that no amount of U.S. military power will solve the chaos in Syria.

Earnest answered questions regarding President Barack Obama’s recent and upcoming meetings with world leaders to discuss how the Syrian civil war and threats posed by the Islamic State are being confronted.

Earnest assured reporters that international resources are being funneled together in order to meet the current U.S. plan of “degrading and defeating ISIL.”

“The success of this mission is dependent on 65 nations coming together, recognizing the common interest they have here and dedicating significant resources,” Earnest said.

Obama meets with French President Francois Hollande Tuesday as part of the international outreach.

Reporters asked Earnest about the ongoing efforts to snuff out terrorist threats in Belgium, which is currently on high alert against potential attacks following the massacre in Paris.

Earnest was mum on safety procedures in Belgium to ensure their secrecy, but suggested that security improvements Europe can make it easier for those allies to better defend their own national security.

Earnest said it is important to expand intelligence sharing within the European Union and with the U.S.

“That is certainly something we are committed to,” Earnest said. “And we are committed to helping our allies in Europe deal with this rather urgent threat.”

Congress voted last week to increase the security measures for Syrian refugees coming into the U.S. due to GOP fears that Islamic State operatives would sneak into the country.

“I think those who voted to further encumber the refugee process are accountable for their vote…it’s not likely to do much to improve the national security of the United States.”

Vimeo / Medill Reports – via Iframely

Video: Askar and Asef Askar talk about how they got into MMA and how they hope to destroy the negative stereotypes cast on Arabs and Muslims (Michael Bacos/Medill)

CHICAGO — Askar Askar and his brother Asef were teenagers when they came to the United States from Palestine in 2001 to reunite with their father.

They were bullied in school because of their ethnicity. So Askar’s dad enrolled him in tae kwon do in Chicago, while Asef decided to bulk up by lifting weights until he decided to take a tae kwon do class, too.

Then one day, when walking home from the class, they stumbled across an LA Boxing gym and decided to take up MMA.

“We went in and got our asses whooped the first day,” said Askar. “It was a straight-six-month period of getting destroyed.”
The brothers decided to quit, but one of the coaches berated them, inspiring them to give it another shot.

Years later, they have moved on from beating bullies.

Now, they are moving into the professional ranks.

Askar racked up a 7-2 record in the amateur MMA ranks and won his first professional fight Saturday in Michigan City, Indiana. On the same card, Asef improved to 4-0 as an amateur and retained his Hoosier Fight Club featherweight title.

Being Palestinian, Asef said, is great preparation for MMA.

“Palestinians go through wars everyday,” he said. “We’re some of the toughest people out there.”

Askar has experienced his share of racism during his first few fights for Hoosier Fight Club.

“Every time I walked out, I got booed,” said Askar. “You get that one guy that’s pretty racist and starts yelling, spitting and being judgmental against us. The biggest thing is, you ignore it and prove them wrong in the cage.

“Just because you think a guy with a long beard, long hair and a turban blows up stuff doesn’t mean it’s all of them. I want to prove everyone who thinks we’re a terrorist wrong.”

The Palestinian community in Chicago has thrown its support behind the Askar brothers –including an estimated 500-1,000  fans at their fights in Indiana.

They hope to become so popular that Palestinians will fly to the States to watch them fight.

“Sports helps you fit into American culture,” says Asef. “It shows that just because we’re Arab, we’re doing what everyone else is doing. It’s not like we stick to one thing because we’re from a certain culture or background.”