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Nearly six million people in Somalia, almost a third of the country’s population, need humanitarian aid this year, the United Nations said Wednesday as it launched a $1.43 billion funding appeal. The Horn of Africa nation is one of the world’s poorest, enduring decades of civil war,
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For 30 years, Shemsi Gara operated a giant digger in a Kosovo coal mine, churning up toxic dust that covered his face and got into his airways. Home life wasn’t much better: the power plants that the mine supplies constantly spew fumes over his village. Gara died on Sunday
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French authorities Wednesday arrested another Algerian social media influencer as tensions soar between Paris and its North African former colony, the interior minister announced. Rafik M. had “called on Tiktok for the carrying out of violent acts on French territory,” said Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau on social media, without saying
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Syrian security forces destroyed seized drugs Sunday including around 100 million pills of the amphetamine-like stimulant captagon — whose production and trafficking flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad, an official said. A 2022 AFP investigation found that Syria under Assad had become a narco state, with the $10-billion captagon industry dwarfing
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Donald Trump’s incoming US presidential administration plans to launch a large immigration raid in Chicago the day after he takes office, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing four people familiar with planning. The raid, expected to start on Tuesday, will last all week, the newspaper said, adding
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Los Angeles firefighters braced for high winds overnight into Tuesday, gusts that could fuel two monstrous wildfires that have already leveled entire neighborhoods, killed at least two dozen people, and burned an area the size of Washington, D.C. Dry, dangerous Santa Ana wind gusts reached 30 to 50 mph
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Fires ripping through the Los Angeles area have killed at least 16 people, displaced thousands of others and destroyed more than 12,000 structures while burning through an area larger than the city of San Francisco. The blazes started last Tuesday, fueled by fierce Santa Ana winds that forecasters expect
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Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founder of France’s main postwar far-right movement, was buried Saturday in a private ceremony in his native Brittany amid tight security. His funeral followed a mass in his hometown of La Trinite-sur-Mer in the western region. The funeral was attended by his daughter Marine Le Pen,
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After being largely reduced to ashes by wildfire, Altadena was being patrolled by National Guard soldiers on Friday. For residents of this devastated Los Angeles suburb, the arrival of these men in uniform is too little, too late. “We didn’t see a single firefighter while we were throwing buckets
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Sweden granted the lowest number of residence permits to asylum seekers and their relatives on record in 2024, a boost for the right-wing government which pledged on Friday to keep bringing the number down further. Sweden’s minority government and its backers, the far-right and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, won the
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Massive wildfires burning in the Los Angeles area have filled the air with a thick cloud of smoke and ash, prompting air quality adviseries across a vast stretch of Southern California. Three major fires broke out Tuesday amid dangerously high winds, killing at least five people and destroying more than
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Fighters in southern Syria who helped topple President Bashar Assad are reluctant to disarm and disband as ordered by the country’s new rulers, their spokesman told AFP. An Islamist-led offensive ripped through Syria from the north and into Damascus on December 8, bringing to a sudden end five decades
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More than 30 million people, over half of them children, are in need of aid in Sudan after twenty months of war, the United Nations said on Monday. The UN has launched a $4.2 billion call for funds, targeting 20.9 million people across Sudan from a total of
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The Biden administration has informally notified the US Congress of a proposed $8 billion arms sale to Israel that includes munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters, Axios reported on Friday, citing two sources. The deal would need approval from House and Senate committees and includes artillery shells and air-to-air
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About half of school-age children in Syria are missing out on education after nearly 14 years of civil war, Save the Children said on Monday, calling for “immediate action.” The overwhelming majority of Syrian children are also in need of immediate humanitarian assistance including food, the charity said, with at
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Asma Assad is suffering from leukemia and has been given a “50/50” chance of survival by doctors, the Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday. The British-born wife of ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose family sought asylum in Moscow this month, is being kept in isolation to prevent infection. Her