Blog

13Sep By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

Russian Strikes Ukraine Steel Plants, Killing Two, Injuring Six

Russian strikes Ukraine steel plants hit overnight into Saturday, killing two contract workers and injuring six others as missiles tore into two of the country's largest metallurgical complexes within hours of each other. The attacks hit the Zaporizhstal plant in Zaporizhzhia and the ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih complex in the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to statements from both companies. Neither plant was producing weapons or military hardware, the firms said, describing themselves as civilian industrial sites caught in a widening pattern of strikes on Ukraine's manufacturing base. How the Russian strikes on Ukraine steel plants unfolded At Zaporizhstal, four ballistic missiles slammed into the site early Saturday, wounding four employees and tearing into the plant's blast furna...

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12Sep By HCN Editorial1 Comment

Politics

Trump Irish Reunification Comments Spark Backlash After 2026 Dublin Visit

Trump Irish reunification comments, made during a Saturday visit to Dublin, broke with decades of American neutrality on one of the most sensitive constitutional questions facing Ireland and the United Kingdom, and triggered immediate pushback from unionist politicians in Belfast and London. Trump's 48-hour visit formally began with separate meetings in Dublin: first with Irish President Catherine Connolly at her official residence, Áras an Uachtaráin, and then with Martin at the government's Farmleigh state guesthouse. He also addressed American and Irish business leaders at the U.S. ambassador's residence before heading west to Doonbeg, County Clare, where his Trump International Golf Links course is hosting the Irish Open. It is the second European Tour event held at a Trump-owned pr...

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12Sep By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Sports

Ben Shelton Beats Tiafoe in Historic All-Black-American Semifinal, Faces Zverev for US Open Title

The Shelton vs Zverev US Open final is set for Sunday, after Ben Shelton outlasted fellow American Frances Tiafoe 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 7-5 in Friday night's semifinal at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The No. 8 seed's win sends him into his first Grand Slam final against top seed Alexander Zverev, who beat Karen Khachanov earlier the same day, according to ESPN. No American man has lifted a Grand Slam trophy since Andy Roddick at the 2003 US Open, and Shelton now stands one win from breaking that 23-year wait. A set down, then in complete control Tiafoe, the No. 11 seed, was the better player early. He broke Shelton's serve late in the first set and closed it out 6-4, putting the younger American on the back foot in front of a packed Ashe crowd. Shelton had made 14 unforced errors in that opening se...

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11Sep By HCN Editorial1 Comment

News

Angela Murray Evicted Big Brother 28 in 3-2 Vote Shock

Angela Murray evicted Big Brother viewers by surprise Thursday night, when a divided house voted 3-2 to send her to the jury house instead of fellow nominee Dee Valladares. The live eviction, broadcast September 10 on CBS, made Angela the season's tenth houseguest out and the second member of the jury that will decide the eventual winner. The vote came down to Devens, Taylor and Yash choosing to evict Angela, while Drew and Melody sided with keeping her and voting out Dee instead. It was close enough, and unpredictable enough, that neither outcome would have shocked longtime viewers of the season. How Angela Murray evicted Big Brother rumors started building earlier in the week Speculation that Angela might be on her way out had been circulating among live-feed watchers since Wedn...

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11Sep By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

Pavlohrad Shopping Center Strike Kills 4, Wounds Over 60

The Pavlohrad shopping center strike was the deadliest of several Russian attacks across Ukraine on Thursday, September 10, part of a wave that also hit a mall in Sumy for the second time in two days, a US-owned food plant in Dnipro, and residential areas of Kramatorsk. By evening, authorities had confirmed at least eight people killed and more than 80 wounded nationwide, with several tolls still rising as rescue teams worked through the debris. A drone struck a shopping center in central Pavlohrad, a city in Dnipropetrovsk region roughly 75 kilometers from the front line, around midday, when the surrounding streets were full of shoppers. Ukraine's State Emergency Service confirmed by early evening that four people had been killed and 62 injured, including two rescuers hurt while respon...

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9Sep By HCN Editorial1 Comment

Climate & Earth

Nepal Demands Climate Compensation From Top Polluters as Families Bury Effigies for the Missing

Climate compensation is now Nepal's official demand of the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters, after a flood disaster that has killed more than 1,350 people while families in the hardest-hit valleys are still holding funerals for relatives whose bodies have never been found. Foreign Minister Shishir Khanal said this week that China, the United States and India bear outsized responsibility for a warming climate that Nepal did almost nothing to create. Nepal's government has asked the United Nations' loss and damage fund for financial help, and separately submitted a climate compensation claim to major polluting nations, arguing the disaster is a matter of justice rather than aid. In the same week, Nepal's disaster authority raised the confirmed death toll to 1,355, with nearly 5,000...

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8Sep By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Climate & Earth

UK’s Hottest Summer on Record Is Costing Small Flower Growers Their Livelihoods

The UK flower growers heatwave of 2026 has done what no single bad season usually does: it has pushed working farms out of business in real time. Britain just recorded its hottest summer since national weather records began in 1884, and for a small, largely invisible corner of the country's agricultural economy, that record has translated directly into lost income. Independent flower growers say the heat destroyed entire crops this year, leaving some with nothing to bring to the London markets that make up their livelihood. The story has circulated in the UK mostly as a seasonal weather curiosity. It is, more precisely, a story about small businesses absorbing a climate cost with no safety net to catch them. Met Office provisional figures confirm summer 2026 as the UK's warmest on recor...

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8Sep By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Business

Amazon Cargo Jet That Killed Five in Miami Renews Scrutiny of Its Contract Carriers

The Amazon cargo plane crash in Miami happened Sunday afternoon, when a Boeing 767 flying under the Prime Air brand overran a runway at Miami International Airport, tore through airport equipment and struck two vehicles before coming to rest near a parking lot in flames. Five people died. All five were on the ground - inside a company van and a passenger SUV - not aboard the aircraft, whose two pilots survived and had to be pulled from the cockpit by rescue crews. The jet, operating as Flight 7598, was not flown by Amazon. It was flown by 21 Air LLC, one of several outside cargo airlines that Amazon contracts with to move packages across its delivery network. That distinction - a household e-commerce brand painted on the fuselage of a plane it does not operate, staffed by pilots it does...

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6Sep By HCN EditorialNo Comments

World

Opinion: The Flood That Made Headlines and the War Nobody Watches

A tunnel in Nepal collapses, and within hours the world has a name, a face, and a countdown clock. A war in Sudan enters its fourth year, and most people could not say how many have died, been displaced, or gone hungry because of it. This is not a coincidence of timing - it is a pattern in how Sudan crisis media coverage compares to disasters like the Nepal floods, and it says less about the scale of suffering than about what kind of suffering the world has learned to watch. Two Disasters, Two Very Different Spotlights The Nepal floods that struck on August 26, 2026, were catastrophic by any measure. A glacier collapse above the Langtang valley sent flash floods and debris tearing along a stretch of the Trishuli River, killing more than 1,342 people in Nepal alone and leaving nearly ...

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6Sep By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Crisis

Nine Days Underground: Inside the Nepal Hydropower Tunnel Rescue

Sanjay Sah's first words after nine days trapped in the dark had nothing to do with the flood, the mud, or how close he had come to not making it out at all. Carried out on a rescuer's back, muddy and blinking in the daylight, the 30-year-old mechanical foreman asked a single question: "What day is it?" Nine days earlier, he and dozens of colleagues had been working inside a hydropower tunnel in Nepal's Rasuwa district when a wall of water, rock and glacial debris tore through the valley and buried the entrance behind them. This Nepal hydropower tunnel rescue - carried out on September 4 - became one of the few moments of relief in a disaster that had, by then, mostly stopped looking for survivors and started recovering bodies. The Flood That Swallowed a Mountain The disaster bega...

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6Sep By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

2 Palestinian Teens Killed in West Bank Village Raid

By dusk on Wednesday, September 2, the narrow lanes of al-Mughayyir were already familiar with soldiers and settlers moving through them. By nightfall, two of the village's sons - a teenager about to start 11th grade and a young man who had just graduated top of his class - were dead. Their killing, during a West Bank village raid that began as a dispute over stolen sheep, has become the latest flashpoint in a summer of escalating settler and military pressure on Palestinian communities northeast of Ramallah. Timeline of the West Bank Village Raid According to the Palestinian health ministry and local officials, the two victims were Omar al-Nassan, 19, and Khalil Abu Alia, 16. Accounts differ slightly on spelling and exact ages, with some outlets citing the surname al-Naasan, or Sheh...

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2Sep By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

Al Shifa Hospital Strikes Test Gaza’s Fragile Ceasefire

The Al Shifa Hospital strikes that unfolded this week in Gaza City are the latest sign that a formal truce has not stopped the wounded from arriving at the enclave's largest medical complex. Doctors there spent Tuesday receiving casualties from a burst of Israeli air and ground activity in the nearby Al-Katiba district, a reminder that the hospital remains on the front line of a conflict a ceasefire was supposed to have ended. A woman and two children were killed and eight other people were wounded, according to the hospital's director, while a separate incident east of Deir al-Balah left another child dead from gunfire, medical sources told the Wafa news agency - details corroborated by The National's on-the-ground reporting. The bloodshed unfolded on September 1, roughly eleven months...

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2Sep By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

Israeli Raid in Gaza City Kills 4, Truce Frays

Gaza City, September 2, 2026 - An Israeli raid in Gaza City aimed at detaining a senior Hamas commander triggered a barrage of airstrikes on Tuesday that left at least four Palestinians dead, including two children, according to Gaza health officials and multiple international news agencies. The operation, and the bombardment that followed it, unfolded against the backdrop of an increasingly fragile, nearly year-old ceasefire that has yet to deliver on promises of reconstruction or a broader Israeli withdrawal. Timeline of the Israeli Raid in Gaza City According to accounts gathered by Reuters and corroborated by Gaza's Hamas-run government media office, an undercover Israeli unit entered western Gaza City on Tuesday with the specific goal of capturing a high-ranking Hamas figure. Th...

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31Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Climate & Earth

Nepal-China Border Flood Toll Passes 750, Thousands Missing

Rasuwa, Nepal - The Nepal-China border flood has now killed more than 750 people, with an additional 3,000 still unaccounted for on both sides of the frontier, ten days after a wall of water and rock tore through the mountains along the frontier, according to figures released Sunday by Nepali police and Chinese state media. Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority has recorded 734 deaths and 2,498 missing within its borders from the Nepal-China border flood, while officials in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China have confirmed 16 deaths and 546 missing in Gyirong County, on the Chinese side of the crossing. Some victims' bodies have been recovered as far as 240 kilometers downstream in neighboring India, carried there by the force of the flood. What Triggere...

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31Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

Kyiv Drone Attacks Hit Day 4 as Russia Fires 2,000 Drones

Kyiv, Ukraine - Air raid sirens have barely stopped in Kyiv this week. The Kyiv drone attacks that began Wednesday stretched into a fourth consecutive day on Saturday, part of a bombardment President Volodymyr Zelensky said involved nearly 2,000 attack drones, more than 1,600 guided bombs and 31 missiles fired at Ukraine over seven days, according to a Telegram post he published on August 30. The toll from this round of Kyiv drone attacks is no longer abstract. A Russian drone that slammed into a military ammunition depot in the village of Myla, just west of the capital, has now killed at least 38 people - the deadliest single strike on Ukrainian soil this year, according to Zelensky and confirmed separately by Al Jazeera and the Kyiv Independent. Four people remained missing as of Sund...

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31Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

2 Killed, Including Toddler, in Deir al-Balah Strike Near Bakery

Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip - A three-year-old boy and a Palestinian man were killed on Sunday when the Deir al-Balah strike hit close to a bakery in the center of the Gaza Strip, according to health officials who spoke with Reuters. The strike, which also wounded several bystanders, adds two more names to a death toll that has climbed steadily in the ten months since a ceasefire was meant to end the killing - a toll HCN has tracked climbing past 1,280 in recent days. The child, identified by medics at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital as Tayyem Hamdan, and the man, named as Hussam Nusair, were confirmed dead by Gaza's health authorities on the day of the Deir al-Balah strike. By the afternoon, Hamdan's mother and other relatives had gathered at the hospital in Deir al-Balah for his funeral; photo...

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28Aug By HCN Editorial2 Comments

Crisis

Nepal-Tibet Flash Flood: What Caused the Disaster That Killed Over 390 People

Before dawn broke fully over the Himalayas on Wednesday, August 26, a slab of ice perched more than five kilometers above sea level let go of the mountain beneath it - and within hours, a Nepal-Tibet flash flood had killed more than 390 people and left over 1,400 others unaccounted for on both sides of the border. What began as a geological event nobody saw coming has since exposed a harder truth: the region's flood-warning systems, built and refined over four decades, were never designed to catch a threat like this one. How the Collapse Happened Satellite imagery reviewed by scientists shows that a large section of the lower Langtang Lirung glacier sheared away at roughly 5,200 meters and fell close to 1,200 meters down the mountainside, picking up rock and loose sediment as it went...

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28Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Crisis

Gaza Ceasefire Point of No Return: 3 Dead, Urgent Warning

Three Palestinians were killed in separate Israeli attacks across Gaza on Thursday, among them a man sheltering in a displacement tent. The deaths came just hours after the United Nations' top envoy for the territory warned the Security Council that the fragile truce is edging toward what he called a Gaza ceasefire point of no return. Nickolay Mladenov, high representative for Gaza on the US-backed Board of Peace, delivered the warning during a briefing on Wednesday. He told diplomats that a collapse of the ten-month-old agreement would leave the enclave with no framework left to salvage. A Warning Delivered to the Security Council Mladenov's message to diplomats in New York was blunt: the ceasefire is technically holding, but it is not yet reaching the people it was meant to prot...

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27Aug By HCN Editorial1 Comment

Conflict

Gaza Ceasefire Point of No Return: Urgent Alert, 1,280 Dead

NEW YORK - Ten months after the guns fell silent over Gaza, the official Washington put in charge of preserving that quiet told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that the process is approaching a Gaza ceasefire point of no return. Nickolay Mladenov, high representative for Gaza on President Donald Trump's Board of Peace, said a full collapse of the truce would not be a stumble the process could recover from - it would be, in his words, "a point of no return for everyone." The warning landed against a grim backdrop. Gaza's Ministry of Health has now tied at least 1,288 deaths and 4,290 injuries to Israeli fire since the ceasefire took hold in October 2025, according to figures cited by Al Jazeera - a toll that has climbed steadily even as the wider war has, on paper, been over for nea...

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26Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Crisis

Nasser Hospital Journalists Killed: One Year, No Answers

One year has passed since the world watched footage of a "double-tap" strike tear through Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, and the families of the Nasser Hospital journalists killed in that attack are still waiting for a single clear answer. No officer has been named. No court has ruled. No formal accountability has followed - only a one-line description from Israeli officials calling it a "tragic mishap." On August 25, 2025, two Israeli strikes hit the hospital compound within minutes of each other. The first hit the fourth floor, where surgical units and doctors' quarters are located. The second struck a stairwell and balcony area that journalists regularly used to film and broadcast live from Khan Younis - a location rescuers and reporters had rushed to after the first blast. In total...

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26Aug By HCN Editorial1 Comment

Crisis

Qalandiya Training Centre Seized: 5th Raid Since May

The Qalandiya Training Centre was stormed and seized by Israeli forces on Tuesday, August 25, shutting down the last operational UNRWA facility in occupied East Jerusalem and forcibly removing its staff. The centre sits between the Kafr Aqab neighbourhood and the Qalandiya refugee camp. It has provided vocational training to Palestinian refugee teenagers from across the West Bank since 1952. Ahead of the operation, Israeli forces shut the nearby Qalandiya checkpoint - the main crossing point between East Jerusalem and the northern West Bank. Heavy military reinforcements then moved into the surrounding neighbourhoods and refugee camp. According to a statement from UNRWA, at least four armored vehicles and more than 50 personnel entered the Qalandiya Training Centre compound at around 10...

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26Aug By HCN Editorial2 Comments

Health

The Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in DRC Has No Vaccine of Its Own

Three months after a surgical team in a small hospital in northeastern Congo began dying one after another, the country is now living through the deadliest Ebola outbreak in DRC's history. More than 5,500 confirmed infections and upwards of 2,600 deaths have been recorded, with no end yet in sight and no vaccine built for the virus driving it. The World Health Organization reported 5,514 confirmed cases and 2,642 confirmed deaths as of August 22, with 808 patients still in isolation, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control's latest tracking of the crisis. That puts the crude fatality rate near 48 percent - meaning roughly one in two confirmed patients has died, a toll unusually high even by Ebola's grim standards. Why This Has Become the Deadliest Ebola Ou...

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26Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

Gaza Desalination Plant Strike Adds to Ceasefire’s Mounting Toll

Seven people were killed and several more wounded across the Gaza Strip on Monday, August 24, after Israeli forces carried out strikes on a mosque, a warehouse of aid supplies, tents sheltering displaced families, and a Gaza desalination plant strike that knocked out one of the territory's few working sources of clean water. The dead included two children, according to accounts gathered from the Palestinian news agency Wafa and reported by Al Jazeera and Democracy Now.The attacks unfolded in at least four locations. Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said the Israeli military had marked these sites with forced displacement orders shortly before the strikes began. Among the sites hit were the water desalination facility, a mosque, and a warehouse ...

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25Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Business

Canadian and U.S. Workers Caught in Escalating Tariff Dispute

A trade relationship built over three decades unraveled further this weekend, when Washington and Ottawa let a negotiating deadline pass and instead reached for tariffs. The Canada-US tariff dispute entered a sharper phase on August 22, when a 50% U.S. duty on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods took hold. Canada's own countermeasures are now set to land on September 8. Behind the trade figures sit steelworkers in Ontario, dairy farmers on both sides of the border, and small shop owners recalculating price tags - the people economists agree will ultimately carry the cost of this Canada-US tariff dispute. How the Latest Escalation Happened Three days of talks in Washington collapsed late on August 21, just hours before a deadline U.S. President Donald Trump had set for a new trad...

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25Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

Zelensky Peace Plan: 3 Bold Ideas Agreed With the US

The Zelensky peace plan took clearer shape on Saturday, when President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine had reached agreement with its American and European partners on a set of "key ideas" for ending the war with Russia. The framework centers on a ceasefire and a mutual troop withdrawal that would create a buffer zone in the east. The announcement, made during a briefing with journalists in Kyiv, is the latest step in a diplomatic process that has produced several drafts and counter-drafts over the past year without a signed deal. What's Actually in the Zelensky Peace Plan According to Zelensky, discussions with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have been consolidated into a single working document laying out what he described as realistic options for ending the fighting. "...

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25Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

Gaza Stabilization Force: Uganda’s Critical Bid Amid Crisis

Delegations from Uganda and Burundi traveled to Israel last week for talks on joining the Gaza stabilization force, the multinational mission the Board of Peace hopes will eventually field 20,000 troops across the territory. Uganda's parliament has already cleared the way for roughly 1,200 personnel. Burundi has sent senior officers to explore participation but has not yet signed on. The talks come at a moment when the broader coalition behind the Gaza stabilization force is still assembling itself piece by piece, nearly a year after the ceasefire it is meant to protect took hold. Two African Nations, Two Different Stages of Commitment The distinction between the two countries matters. Kampala's process is largely administrative at this point. With legislative approval secured ear...

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24Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Business

Global Youth Unemployment Crisis Deepens as ILO Warns of Vanishing Entry-Level Jobs

Two years after youth joblessness touched its lowest point in two decades, the trend has reversed. The global youth unemployment crisis now stands at its worst point since 2023: the global youth unemployment rate climbed to 12.4% in 2025, leaving 67 million people between 15 and 24 without work, according to the International Labour Organization. The finding comes from the ILO's Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026: Back to the Future, released in Geneva on August 11, 2026. The report's headline number looks modest - a 0.1 percentage point rise since 2023. But the figures beneath it describe something closer to a structural shift than a blip. Unemployment among young people worsened or held flat in eight of the world's eleven subregions between 2023 and 2025. 105 countries recorde...

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24Aug By HCN Editorial1 Comment

Health

DRC Ebola Outbreak Tops 5,000 Cases, Becomes Second-Largest Ever

Three months after it began in a single health zone in eastern Congo, the DRC Ebola outbreak has overtaken every epidemic of the disease except one. As of 20 August 2026, the Democratic Republic of the Congo had recorded 5,290 confirmed cases and 2,516 deaths, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, citing national health authorities. Those figures make this the largest Ebola outbreak the country has ever reported, and the second-largest anywhere since the virus was first identified in 1976. Only the 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic, which killed more than 11,000 people, remains larger. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the organization's Emergency Committee on 18 August that the DRC Ebola outbreak was still gaining speed rather than slowing...

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22Aug By HCN Editorial1 Comment

Crisis

8 Million Children Out of School in Sudan’s Forgotten War

More than three years into Sudan's civil war, roughly eight million school-age children remain outside a classroom. In Darfur alone, nearly three-quarters of school buildings have been damaged, destroyed, or put to other uses, the United Nations said this month. The figures mark one of the largest and least-covered education emergencies now unfolding anywhere in the world. Children out of school in Sudan are facing a fight for their future that most of the international press has largely stopped covering - echoing other overlooked emergencies this outlet has followed, from the missile strike that leveled a small Ukrainian village few outside it had ever heard of to the earthquake that quietly pushed Indonesia's death toll past 70. UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed delivered ...

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20Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Climate & Earth

Flores Earthquake Death Toll Rises to 70 as Aid Reaches Isolated Villages

Five days after a magnitude-7.7 earthquake tore through Indonesia's Flores Sea, the Flores earthquake death toll stood at 70 as of Wednesday, August 19, with disaster officials warning the number could still climb. Crews are cutting their way into the last isolated communities of East Nusa Tenggara province. More than 40,000 people remain in tents and evacuation shelters, and relief convoys are only now reaching villages that landslides sealed off for days. What Happened on August 15 The quake struck at 5:58 a.m. local time on Saturday, its rupture centered roughly 68 kilometers north-northwest of the coastal city of Ende, at a depth of about 10 kilometers. That shallow depth, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is what allowed the shaking to hit the surface with far more for...

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19Aug By HCN EditorialNo Comments

Conflict

Pechenihy Declares Days of Mourning After Deadly Missile Strike on Town Center

The Pechenihy missile strike has left a small town in Ukraine's Kharkiv region mourning its dead, after Russian forces hit the settlement's center on Tuesday morning, killing at least 10 people as they went about the ordinary business of starting their week. Pechenihy, a settlement of a few thousand residents roughly 48 kilometers southeast of the city of Kharkiv, was struck at around 8:40 a.m. local time on August 18, when two Banderol-type missiles hit the intersection at the heart of the town. It is the kind of place that rarely appears on a map of the war: no strategic value, no front-line significance, just a post office, a café, a small shop, and the homes clustered around them. On Tuesday, that ordinariness is precisely what made the strike so devastating – the missiles landed as...

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