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Sundus AbdiSaturday April 25, 2026 Ifrah F Ahmed turned to Somali community members around the world to research her book, Soomaaliya: Food, Memory and Migration. Photograph: Khadija Farah On a video call from Brooklyn, with a book tour stretching between cities, Ifrah F Ahmed sips ginger-root tea. The aroma pulls her back to a childhood kitchen where her mother would often bake fragrant cardamom cake. “That’s a core childhood memory for me,” she said. For Ahmed, food has never been only about eating. It carries memory,…

Ukraine was hit by one of the war’s most devastating overnight assaults as a huge Russian drone and missile attack killed at least 19 people in cities across the country, more than four years after the invasion began and with efforts to halt the fighting still at a standstill. Explosions boomed across the capital through the night, while towering columns of black smoke rose over central Kyiv at first light. More than 100 people were injured in the strikes, which tore into apartment blocks while residents slept. "The impact…

High in the mountains above Beirut, in the village of Aintoura, a former school has taken on a very different purpose. Classrooms no longer hold lessons; they now hold families driven from their homes. Inside, Omar Toni Azar works alongside his mother and father to manage the shelter they set up there. It resembles a family enterprise in one sense only: they do the work without pay. "There are around 160 people here now," Omar told RTÉ News. "I hope there will not be more, because some rooms are divided between two, three,…

Live Israeli military warns people in Iran to steer clear of trains Middle East

Monday March 30, 2026 Mogadishu (AX) — Fresh fighting and mounting tensions in Somalia’s Southwest State have driven an estimated 45,000 people from their homes, pushing already strained families into areas where access to basic services and humanitarian aid is thin, the United Nations said Friday. In a statement released in Mogadishu, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cited Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia George Conway as voicing serious alarm over the worsening crisis, especially for…

An estimated 259,000 people die from meningitis each year worldwide, according to a large new study released after the disease sparked fresh concern in the UK. The research found that children made up roughly a third of those deaths, with many occurring in Africa—an outcome the authors described as the most extensive global assessment of meningitis to date. The new findings arrive after meningitis was thrust into the spotlight following an outbreak in southeast England believed to have spread through a nightclub earlier this…

Russia launched a barrage of missiles and drones across Ukraine overnight, killing 12 people and wounding more than a dozen, authorities said, as strikes hit apartment blocks and critical energy and rail infrastructure from Kharkiv to Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia fired 29 missiles and 480 drones, several of which targeted power and railway facilities. He urged Kyiv’s allies to sustain military support, saying, “Russia has not abandoned its attempts to destroy Ukraine’s residential and critical…

WASHINGTON — The United States and Israel this week launched Operation Epic Fury on Iran, a move that has coincided with the conflict spreading throughout the Middle East and prompted European officials to warn that this is a dangerous moment for the continent. The operation, announced as tensions mounted across the region, has raised urgent questions about how far the confrontation could widen and what it means for security beyond the immediate theaters of conflict. The widening scope across the Middle East underscores the…

East Africa’s new drought surge pushes millions toward hunger as water prices soar and livestock die Friday March 6, 2026 MOGADISHU — A failed rainy season has deepened drought across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, thrusting nearly 26 million people into extreme hunger, accelerating livestock deaths and sending water prices soaring, Oxfam warned in a report released this week. The crisis arrives less than three years after the Horn of Africa’s longest and most severe drought on record, when five consecutive rainy seasons…

Paediatric HIV cure research is yielding cautious optimism: very early antiretroviral therapy (ART) can, in some children, produce periods of ART-free remission — a state in which the virus remains undetectable without ongoing medication — but it has not delivered full viral eradication, researchers say. The long quest for a cure has been complicated by HIV’s capacity to mutate and hide in long-lived viral reservoirs, a challenge that has confounded scientists for more than four decades, reports Sethi Ncube for allAfrica.…