By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
More than 2 million Afghans are at risk from cold, disease and malnutrition this winter as an international appeal for funds to help one of the world's poorest countries has fallen drastically short of its goal, the United Nations and several humanitarian agencies warned on Wednesday.
The United Nations has ordered all of its non-essential international staff to leave Syria, saying Monday that the escalating violence in the civil war-struck country is making it harder and more risky for humanitarian workers to do their jobs. The U.N. also plans to reduce some of its field work in the Arab state.
Kyrgyz lawmakers are considering stricter regulation of international adoptions after officials have been accused of “selling” orphans as thousands of children languish in poorly funded state-run orphanages.
The Syrian prime minister who defected to the opposition said Tuesday that President Bashar Assad's regime was near collapse and urged other political and military leaders to tip the scales and join the rebel side.
Syria has agreed to allow humanitarian workers and supplies into four of its provinces hit hardest by violence, a promise of some relief in a nation where 1 million people need aid urgently as a result of the fighting, officials said Tuesday.
Syria's government has agreed to a written deal with the United Nations and other international organizations that would allow aid workers and supplies to enter four hard-hit provinces, U.N. officials announced Tuesday.
Two months of typhoons and heavy monsoon rain have flooded Southeast Asia, killing nearly 500 people and forcing thousands - including prison inmates and hospital patients - to flee. Fresh storms drenched the region Thursday.
Security forces have arrested a top commander of a radical Muslim sect who is accused of orchestrating attacks in the country's northeast that have left police, clerics and others dead, a governor said Wednesday.
Africa's newest nation of South Sudan is only 3 days old, but it already is facing a humanitarian crisis, with about 1,000 people a day crowding into the dusty capital of Juba straining under the population crush.
