Kicking Qatar around on a long weekend: If you’re into thrillers and crime capers, go read Jon Gambrell’s fantastic “Qatari pays USD 2 mn to try to free royals abducted in Iraq,” which uses US Justice Department documents to “shed new light on the opaque world of private hostage negotiation in the Middle East in a case that now involves hackers, encrypted internet communication and promises of millions of dollars in ransom payments.” Near center stage: A Greek shoe salesman. If you prefer your dose of anti-Qatar sentiment straight up, head over to the Toronto Star, where Mohamed Fahmy (of ‘Marriott Cell’ fame) writes of terrorist financiers who are “strolling freely in Qatar’s malls and posting photographs of their expensive cars flanked by rare falcons and tigers.” Their social media handles, he notes, are @binomeir ‎and @khalifasubaey.

Why stop with Qatar? Here’s a kick for Turkey, too. The New York Times takes a deep dive “Inside Turkey’s purge,” explaining that “as the ruling party expands the ranks of its enemies, life in a fragile democracy becomes stranger and stranger.” The opening character in the drama: A medical doctor arrested at 6am and dragged off to detention for the crime of having opened a bank account at the wrong bank down the street after moving into a new neighborhood.