THE BAD OLD DAYS MAKE A COMEBACK: StrategyPage’s Wars Update. This is Jim Dunnigan’s semi-annual assessment of armed conflict on the planet. Full disclosure: I’ve been a contributing editor at StrategyPage since 1999.

This is the lead, which may be difficult to believe but the stats back it up:

The post-Cold War trend towards less violence is resuming after a brief interruption. In 2014 over a decade of declining violence was temporarily reversed because terrorism deaths were up by about 20 percent that year and nearly as high in 2015. This was mainly because of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) in Syria and Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Scroll down to read updates on major trouble spots, from Afghanistan to Yemen.