Two brothers rationed protein drinks to survive under the rubble of a collapsed building in the city of Kahramanmaras in Turkey, wrote the New York Times. In the northern Syrian city of Afrin, hospital staff named a new-born baby girl Aya, Arabic for “a sign from...
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As their fellow citizens battle the Russian army on the eastern front, Ukrainian authorities recently displayed the mounds of cash, luxury watches and cars that a corrupt chief tax collector in the capital of Kyiv acquired as he overlooked $1.2 billion in taxes, CNN reported. The...
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Police in Zimbabwe recently arrested more than two dozen members of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) opposition political party during an “unsanctioned gathering.” It was the latest example of “a wave of politically motivated violence against opposition supporters,” reported Reuters. That wave is likely due...
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The Peruvian city of Juliaca recently felt like a warzone. “Burning pyres of rubbish and bullet-pocked walls … troops holed up in the airport with AK-47s and riot shields, waiting for a truce that has no date to come … a mayor holding court behind the...
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André de Ruyter launched investigations into corruption and organized crime at South Africa’s state-owned energy company, Eskom, where he was CEO. Soon after he tendered his resignation in December, he says someone slipped cyanide into his coffee, Quartz reported. He survived the alleged attempt on...
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French-speaking Canadians concentrated in the province of Quebec have long sought more autonomy from the central government in Ottawa and the rest of the mainly English-speaking North American country – to the point of wanting to secede from the union and create a new, independent...
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A Russian company that makes materials for oil fracking, Fores, is offering more than $70,000 to the first Russian soldiers who capture or destroy any of the tanks given to Ukraine by the US and Europe. The announcement of the bounty came around a week after...
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Since Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melted down in 2011 after an earthquake and tsunami knocked out its power generators, officials have been running water through the nuclear fuel in the damaged reactor, then storing the irradiated water in more than 1,000 tanks at the...
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Late last year, Serbia and Kosovo, the former Serbian territory whose majority ethnic Albanian citizens declared independence in 2008 less than a decade after a bloody war to achieve just that, looked as if they were on the verge of conflict again, the Economist wrote. The...
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Workers in Cyprus went on a three-hour strike recently. The demonstration was a warning to the government and business elites on the Mediterranean island that public sector workers, educators, and construction workers could bring the Cypriot economy to a halt unless the bosses fulfill their...
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Under the conservative government of President Guillermo Lasso, Ecuador’s economy grew 3.2 percent last year, inflation today is relatively low compared with the region, employers have hired 500,000 people and 750,000 fewer Ecuadorians now live in poverty. In an interview with the Washington Post, Lasso said...
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Two years ago, Myanmar’s generals staged a coup that ousted the Southeast Asian country’s civilian leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Recently, in a show of force to prove that he is firmly in control, Prime Minister Senior Gen. Min Aung...
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Muscovites recently have been laying wreaths of flowers, stuffed animals, photographs and other mementos at the feet of a statue dedicated to the early 20th century Ukrainian writer, Lesya Ukrainka. The makeshift memorial, appearing after a Russian missile hit a residential building in Dnipro in...
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Moroccan lawmakers recently voted to “reconsider” their North African country’s relationship with the European Union. The origins of the diplomatic shift began with Morocco’s alleged persecution of journalists, as Reporters Without Borders recounted. The triggering event, however, was the European Parliament’s decision to urge Morocco...
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Almost everyone ranks the Amazon, the Sahara and Siberia as among the world’s greatest, most gigantic and most remote wildernesses. Many might forget to add one of the planet’s vastest untouched regions, though – the Australian Outback. The Outback covers nearly two million square miles of...
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The war between Ukraine and Russia has understandably garnered much attention over the past year. While that carnage has unfolded, however, another bloodbath recently was to end in the Horn of Africa. Approximately 600,000 people died in the two-year-long war that pitted Ethiopia’s central government in...
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In the 1990s, many world leaders failed to understand the threat that cyberattacks posed to their governments, societies and economies, argued journalist Matt Potter in a recent interview with ABC News. Today, the war between Russia and Ukraine has demonstrated how cyberwarfare is inextricably linked...
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In Mongolia, Dulamsuren Demberel worries about her family’s budget. The price of coal has increased by 40 percent in recent months as post-pandemic inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have roiled energy markets. Nomadic herders like her live in tents that use coal stoves...
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Three years after the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, officials in Brussels, London and Dublin still haven’t fixed the rules governing the border between Northern Ireland, a member of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland in the south. Recently, both sides...
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Sprawling, landlocked, relatively lightly populated Botswana enjoys a higher gross domestic product per capita than neighboring continental economic powerhouse South Africa. As the South African newspaper the Daily Maverick explained, Botswanans earn around $9,200 on average annually, compared with South Africans who make $7,200. That achievement...
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