Pressure is mounting to stop construction of a proposed six-lane highway through a Nigerian rainforest that is home to hundreds of thousands of people and vulnerable wildlife. The road, locally referred to as a superhighway, is planned in southeastern Nigeria’s Cross River state and would be 162...
Texas reported a locally transmitted case of the Zika virus on Monday, making it the second U.S. state believed to have mosquitoes that spread the disease. Lab tests confirmed last week that a woman who lives in Brownsville, Texas, was infected with the virus, state health officials said in a statement...
Several thousand snow geese may have died after landing in a former open-pit copper mine in Montana that is now filled with highly acidic water. A Nov. 28 snowstorm forced the migrating geese to take refuge in the Berkeley Pit, a 900-foot-deep pit lake of heavy metals and other dangerous chemicals...
The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, but it would look dramatically different if its 50 states were organized according to income instead of geography. If that were the case, residents of the poorest state in the union would have a median household income that’s just...
War, conflict and persecution have forced about 60 million people worldwide to flee their homes, overwhelming the global humanitarian aid system designed to help them and exposing its shortcomings. Haphazard organization, inefficient spending and a lack of coordination in delivering aid are among...
South Sudan became independent on July 9, 2011. In December 2013, a power struggle within the government led to internal conflict and widespread civilian displacement. The conflict added to an economic crisis linked to the falling price of oil and a drop in exports by pipeline through its former...
Outbreaks of yellow fever in central and southwest Africa have not reached the level of a global emergency, but a stronger response by affected nations and the international community is needed to prevent the spread of the deadly disease, the World Health Organization said Thursday. An expert committee...
As leaders from around the world gather in New York for what many are calling the most important summit on illegal drugs in two decades, one thing is clear: The world has a serious drug problem.Worldwide, about 246 million people use illicit drugs, and 1 in 10 of these users suffer from disorders...
At what is being billed as the most significant high-level gathering on global drug policy in two decades, the stage will be set for world leaders to discuss what would have once been unthinkable — reversing course in the war on drugs. The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the...
Negotiators from nearly 200 countries wrapped up two weeks of talks Saturday vowing to press ahead with the fight against climate change — with or without the help of the next U.S. president. The election of Donald Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax” and has threatened to “cancel” U.S....
There has been good news and bad news presented at the climate talks wrapping up in the Moroccan city of Marrakech on Friday. The United Nations’ climate agency confirmed what scientists have been warning for months: that 2016 is “very likely” to surpass 2015 as the hottest year on record. Moreover,...
Secretary of State John F. Kerry took the stage at United Nations climate talks in Morocco on Wednesday, seeking to reassure nervous negotiators that a groundbreaking agreement to fight global warming will survive with Donald Trump in the White House. The Republican president-elect has called climate...
Plant hundreds of millions of trees. Drastically reduce the burning of fossil fuels for electricity and transportation. Perfect and employ new technology to capture and store carbon. These are among the aggressive steps that U.S. officials outlined Wednesday as probably necessary to limit the worst...
Every day across sub-Saharan Africa, 13.5 million women spend hours searching for water and carrying it back to their families. The water they find is often contaminated with bacteria or viruses that can cause diarrhea, which kills more of the region’s children than any disease. The women suffer...
The U.S. government is funding a project to train giant rodents to help in the fight against illegal wildlife trafficking in Africa. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the African giant pouched rat is being tested to see whether it can help detect illegal shipments of hardwood timber,...
A bitter wind blew across Sewell’s Point on a recent afternoon as ocean waves crashed against a concrete pier where two black attack submarines were tied up for the day. Pier 3 was taking the last hits of a severe storm that had roared ashore a few days before. It flooded four buildings, tore up...
Germany’s Interior Ministry appears willing to change the country’s open-door policy toward migrants in favor of seeing refugee boats intercepted at sea and returned to northern Africa. The Interior Ministry said Monday it wants to discourage migrants from making the dangerous journey across the...
The landmark climate accord reached in Paris in December was ratified with uncommon speed, entering into force last week after it was approved by countries accounting for nearly two-thirds of planet-warming emissions. But world leaders acknowledge that much remains to be fleshed out if countries...
The township was burning. A mob of protesters sprang up quickly that wintry June day in Atteridgeville, outside Pretoria, South Africa. Ahmed Hashe was serving a customer in his small grocery shop when he saw them surging down the street, and he knew they were coming for him. They were carrying...
Donald Trump looked out at the crowd of supporters at a rally in Ohio last month and ticked off the troubles he said plague black America: “The violence. The death. The lack of education. No jobs.” This, he said pointing in the imagined direction of an inner-city “ghetto,” is a place where “you...
They call it the “Hot Tub of Despair.” The underwater lake, discovered 3,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, is a pit of super-salty water and dissolved methane that kills any critter unlucky enough to fall inside. The discovery was made last year by a San Pedro-based research vessel,...
The crowd convulsed and parted when a medic commanded, “Make a path! Make a path!,” as he and his colleagues pushed a gurney through the narrow emergency room entrance of the Razi hospital. His shouts rose above the shrieking of the woman running behind him. “Save my son! Please save my son! He’s...
The day before a major protest was planned against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday said a commission would investigate corruption allegations against the premier, whose children’s offshore financial holdings were listed in the leaked documents known as the Panama...
The day after Diwali, the annual Hindu festival of lights that Indians typically celebrate by setting off smoky fireworks, residents of New Delhi awoke Monday to a thick gray smog and some of the poorest air quality readings in memory. Already ranked as the city with the world’s dirtiest air, New...
One morning in September, Shawkat Ahmed Dar told his father he was going to pluck apples in a neighbor’s orchard — and disappeared. For weeks, as demonstrators in the Indian-ruled portion of Kashmir rained stones on security forces and troops fired back with tear gas and lead pellets, Dar had stayed...
It is billed as President Obama’s signature trade deal — a 12-nation pact that would relax tariffs among the participating countries and set higher standards for hours and wages, working conditions and environmental protection, among other provisions. But the future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership,...
They fled Syria while she was pregnant with her second child, a small family trying to escape, like so many others, the civil war ravaging their country. They landed in a one-bedroom apartment in Amman, the Jordanian capital, where their only furniture — two beds and two storage closets — was...
On the final day before authorities begin to dismantle the Calais refugee camp known as “the Jungle,” dozens of young people headed to a small sanctuary amid the chaos: a graffiti-fronted, one-room cafe — made of plywood and a tarpaulin roof — that has become a regular fixture in their otherwise...
Since the inception of the International Criminal Court more than a decade ago, only Africans have been brought to trial. That fact has led to frequent accusations of bias by the first permanent tribunal set up to prosecute the worst atrocities on earth — war crimes, genocide and crimes against...