infrastructure

President Donald Trump threatened new strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island oil hub unless Tehran halts attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, a warning that raised the stakes for global shipping and oil prices amid a war already disrupting energy supplies. Trump coupled the ultimatum with a social media post saying the United States had “totally obliterated” military targets on Kharg, which handles roughly 90% of Iran’s crude exports and sits about 483 kilometers northwest of the strait. He said U.S. strikes did not hit oil…

Iran threatened to target U.S.- and Israeli-linked economic assets — including banks — in a warning that underscores the risk of the conflict spilling from the battlefield into financial and digital infrastructure across the Middle East and beyond. The scope, timing and method of any potential action were not immediately clear. The statement signals that economic targets, such as banking networks and associated services, could come under pressure, heightening concerns about cyberattacks, sanctions-related retaliation, or…

Israel launched a new wave of strikes on “regime infrastructure” in central Iran on Monday, hours after clerics in Tehran named Mojtaba Khamenei as the Islamic Republic’s new supreme leader, escalating a regional war already spilling across the Gulf and the Levant. The Israeli military said its forces had “begun an additional wave of strikes on Iranian terror regime infrastructure in central Iran,” a rare public description of targets inside the country. The announcement came shortly after Israel reported strikes on…

A digital lifeline for Somalia’s children: Inside Mogadishu’s experiment with an electronic immunization register On a bright morning in Kahda, a district on the southern edge of Mogadishu, a young mother stands at the immunization desk without the small, creased card that once governed her child’s medical future. For years, that paper card—easily misplaced during eviction, flood or displacement—was the only proof a child had been vaccinated. When it disappeared, health workers guessed which doses had been given, repeated…

On a bright morning in Kahda, a fast-growing district on the southern edge of Mogadishu, a young mother steps to the immunization desk without the small, creased card that once governed her child’s medical future. Nurse Naima Muse turns from a crying toddler, taps a number into a desktop computer and summons the child’s vaccination record in seconds. “Before, if a mother lost the card, we had nothing,” she says. “Now, we just search.” The change is powered by Somalia’s Electronic Immunization Register, or EIR, a digital…

Russia launched one of its largest recent aerial barrages against Ukraine overnight, firing waves of drones and missiles at power plants, substations and rail lines across multiple regions, injuring dozens and setting off fires, officials said. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia sent 420 attack drones and 39 missiles — including 11 ballistic missiles — in a coordinated strike aimed at the country’s energy sector and other critical infrastructure. “Last night, Russia once again waged war on critical infrastructure and…

MOGADISHU, Somalia — On a warm afternoon in the capital, 23-year-old Abdirahim Ali Mohamud Shuriye refreshed a website that did not exist a year earlier: the Somali National Job Portal. The page was stark—search bar, vacancy list, live counters of job seekers and employers—but to a recent SIMAD University graduate who had spent months chasing scattered job posts on Telegram, Facebook and WhatsApp, its simplicity felt like a breakthrough. For years, Somalis applied for work through a maze of ministry notices, radio…

UN urges Russia to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid as fresh barrages kill civilians, cripple heat and water supplies The United Nations on Thursday called on Russia to stop its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure after another nationwide barrage killed two people and plunged parts of the country into darkness and subzero cold. “The relentless attacks by the Russian Federation on energy infrastructure across Ukraine are depriving an already long-suffering civilian population of adequate warmth, water and…

Russia launched its most powerful barrage of the year against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight, Ukrainian officials said, knocking out heating for hundreds of thousands as temperatures plunged below minus 20 C and ahead of a new round of talks aimed at halting the four-year war. The strikes hit as an arctic cold snap gripped the country and damaged the base of Kyiv’s iconic Soviet-era Motherland monument, adding a symbolic wound to widespread utility outages. “Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to…

Gaza’s Reconstruction, Between Vision and Reality: Why Rebuilding Will Take Decades Mountains of rubble, thousands of unexploded munitions and a gutted web of water, sewage and power lines define Gaza’s landscape today. More than 80% of structures are damaged or destroyed, according to United Nations assessments, and the price tag to rebuild runs to more than $70 billion over several decades. Against that backdrop, a glossy vision of a “New Gaza” rising in three years—skyscrapers, beach tourism and data centers—has landed…