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President Barack Obama’s reluctance to intervene in Syria has occasioned yet another round of soul-searching on America’s role in the world.

“Nation-building at home” is the newest term of art, and even the dreaded I-word is making one of its periodic comebacks. Bill Keller of The New York Times sees a “new isolationism” creeping across the land

More than 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan — more than when Obama took office in early 2009. T

Very high national fertility rates have not disappeared, but they are now mostly concentrated in a single region: sub-Saharan Africa. Last year, all five countries with estimated total fertility rates (the average number of births per woman) at six or higher — Niger, Mali, Somalia, Uganda and Burkina Faso — were there. So were nearly all of the 18 countries with fertility rates of five or more (the exceptions were Afghanistan and East Timor).

Sub-Saharan Africa also makes up a substantial portion of countries with estimated fertility rates between three and four: Notable exceptions include Iraq, Jordan, the Philippines and Guatemala

In reality, slower population growth creates enormous possibilities for human flourishing. In an era of irreversible climate change and the lingering threat from nuclear weapons, it is simply not the case that population equals power, as so many leaders have believed throughout history. Lower fertility isn’t entirely a function of rising prosperity and secularism; it is nearly universal.

The World Health Organization has confirmed an outbreak of polio in Syria, the country’s first since 1999

Though health groups still say polio could be eradicated entirely by 2018, recent outbreaks in Pakistan and Somalia are making this more likely. (The threats of violence against health workers in Pakistan aren’t helping matters.)

Polio also isn’t the only disease being kept alive by political violence. Guinea worm, a painful parasite once common in Africa and Asia, was thought to be on the verge of eradication, but health workers warned earlier this year that violence in Mali could hamper efforts to eliminate it entirely.

Egyptian authorities detained a team of journalists working for the Al Jazeera English news channel on Sunday, including an Australian correspondent and the channel’s Canadian-Egyptian bureau chief, accusing them of broadcasting illegally and meeting with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that the Egyptian government classified a terrorist organization last week.

The arrests appeared intended to further isolate the Brotherhood by deterring journalists from interviewing its members or reporting on its continuing protests.

The ministry accused the journalists of broadcasting “false news” to the Qatar-based channel and possessing materials that promoted “incitement,” including information about campus strikes by students who supported the Brotherhood — another topic widely covered in the press.

Three bombs exploded within an hour outside a hotel frequented by government officials in a heavily fortified district of the Somali capital on Wednesday, killing at least 11 people.

The attacks on the Jazira hotel, one of the securest places in Mogadishu, underscore the security challenges facing President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, whose election by lawmakers last year was hailed by many as a way to end two decades of conflict

The first two bombs came in quick succession and were followed by heavy bursts of gunfire by Somali security forces

Pentagon Says ‘Jihadi John’ Was Probably Killed in Airstrike

in a debate that paralleled the criticism over the Obama administration’s decision to target and kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric and a United States citizen, in Yemen in 2011.

The leader of this network was Bilal al-Berjawi, who was stripped of his British citizenship in 2011 after he went to Somalia to join the Islamist group known as the Shabab, and was killed by an American drone strike the next year.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's eastern Shiite heartland prepared to hold a funeral service Thursday night to honor the executed Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr.

However, an Associated Press reporter who reached the site just after the announcement saw no visible damage to the building.

Iranian protesters responded by attacking the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad.

Recently liberated Ramadi citizens are telling media the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) tortured them and used them as human shields when Iraqi forces moved into the city.

The Islamic State forced out Iraqi forces in Ramadi in mid-May 2015. The militants stole weapons and captured the military headquarters. They then murdered anyone “loyal to the government.”

As Iraqi forces moved in during December, the Islamic State grew paranoid and used the civilians as human shields. One man said the militants forced people to remain in their houses and could only leave with permission.

Geography is, in part, destiny for Italy: The country will always be a bridge between Africa and Europe, as the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean so starkly shows.

A surge of refugees this year, usually transported by smugglers on overcrowded vessels, has sought to reach Europe via the Libyan coast. A boatload of 900 migrants who embarked from Libya are now feared dead in the latest sinking. Over 10,000 were rescued off the coast of Italy in the last week alone. European leaders are scrambling to deal with this emergency.

Many of the refugees involved in recent disasters come from some of Italy's former colonies in North and East Africa, namely Eritrea (occupied from 1890-1941) and Somalia (1908-1941). As migrants, Libyans are fewer in number, but Libya (1912-1941

That idea — a small tax on high-volume goods and services — is among those proposed by an independent panel appointed by the United Nations to figure out how to pay for the staggering humanitarian crises facing the world today

Aid for the millions of people affected has sharply risen, but it has not kept pace with demands.

The world needs $40 billion each year to meet the needs of those affected by wars and natural disasters and already faces a shortfall of $15 billion for this year. Those needs are expected to grow; as the report stated bluntly, “Never before has generosity been so insufficient.” Already, food aid has been repeatedly slashed for refugees fleeing conflict in places like Somalia and Syria.

A controversial plan by the Ethiopian government to expand the capital, Addis Ababa, is set to be scrapped after a key member of the ruling coalition withdrew its support.

Rights groups say that at least 150 protesters have died and another 5,000 have been arrested by security forces. Similar protests in May 2014 left dozens of protesters dead.

Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn had vowed on 16 December that his government would be "merciless" towards the protesters, who he described as "anti-peace forces".

The United States has been at war continuously since the attacks of 9/11 and now has just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories.

While the number of men and women deployed overseas has shrunk considerably over the past 60 years, the military’s reach has not. American forces are actively engaged not only in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen that have dominated the news, but also in Niger and Somalia, both recently the scene of deadly attacks, as well as Jordan, Thailand and elsewhere.

There are traditional deployments in Japan (39,980 troops) and South Korea (23,591) to defend against North Korea and China, if needed, along with 36,034 troops in Germany, 8,286 in Britain and 1,364 in Turkey — all NATO allies. There are 6,524 troops in Bahrain and 3,055 in Qatar, where the United States has naval bases.

President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order placing a 90-day ban on people from six mainly Muslim nations.

Iraq - which was covered in the previous seven-nation order - has been removed from the new one after agreeing additional visa vetting measures.

Citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, the other six countries on the original list, will once more be subject to a 90-day travel ban.

Germany Calls for 10 Billion Euro Permanent U.N. Crisis Fund

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Development Minister Gerd Mueller, citing hunger crises in eastern Africa, said the United Nations should create a permanent 10 billion euro ($11.19 billion) crisis fund, with contributions to be based on a country's financial strength. "The catastrophe is already upon us," Mueller said in an interview with the German newspaper Passauer Neue Presse, published on Saturday. He pointed to dire conditions in countries such as Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Ethiopia. Mueller said the United Nations estimated the financial needs in eastern Africa alone amounted to $4 billion to $5 billion. Creating a fund that would be continually restocked would make it easier to respond to recurring humanitarian crises, he said. "We need to accomplish this as a world community," he said.

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officials are vetting hundreds of potential airplane passengers and beefing up airport security as officials amplify warnings of violence before the presidential inauguration from extremists emboldened by the Capitol attack last week.

The extremists “remain a concern due to their ability to act with little to no warning, willingness to attack civilians and soft targets, and ability to inflict significant casualties with weapons that do not require specialized knowledge,” federal officials wrote in the bulletin obtained by The New York Times.

Commercial airlines have tracked an increase in passengers checking in firearms on their way to airports in the Washington area, according to a separate bulletin from the Justice Department.

As a child, I saw my birth country of Somalia descend from relative stability into civil war, overnight. The spaces where people felt most secure—their homes and workplaces—suddenly became battlegrounds, torn by gunfights and bombings. Violent targeting of political leaders—once unheard-of—became commonplace.

I never expected to experience a direct assault on democracy in the United States, one of the oldest, most prosperous democracies in the world.

if there is any lesson we can draw from the past four years, it is that it can happen here. If we are to address the root causes of this insurrection, we have to understand, deep within ourselves, that we are human beings like other human beings on this planet, with the same flaws and the same ambitions and the same fragilities

to the dismay of many on the left, and to the continuing disbelief of many on the right, Obama never dramatically departed from the approach of presidents who came before him. There’s a simple reason: Barack Obama is a conservative.

his constant search for consensus, for ways to bring Blue America and Red America together, sometimes led him to policies that used Republican means to achieve more liberal ends.

Though cast as a “dithering” peacenik who led “from behind,” he stuck with his thesis that the imperative “to end the war in Iraq is to be able to get more troops into Afghanistan,” and he prosecuted a drone war in Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

At least 600 civilians were killed during an attack in northern Ethiopia in early November because of their ethnicity, a state-appointed human rights commission said Tuesday.

the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said an informal group of Tigrayan youths, aided by local officials and police, "carried out door-to-door" raids, killing hundreds they identified as ethnic "Amharas and Wolkait."

"The unimaginably atrocious crime committed against civilians for no reason other than their ethnicity is heartbreaking," said EHRC chief Daniel Bekele in a statement. "It is now an urgent priority that victims are provided redress and rehabilitation, and that perpetrators involved directly or indirectly at all levels are held to account before the law."

A long history of mercantile trade along the eastern shores of Africa left its mark on the DNA of ancient Swahili people.

A new analysis of centuries-old bones and teeth collected from six burial sites across coastal Kenya and Tanzania has found that, around 1,000 years ago, local African women began having children with Persian traders — and that the descendants of these unions gained power and status in the highest levels of pre-colonial Swahili society.

long-told origin stories, passed down through generations of Swahili families, may be more truthful than many outsiders have presumed.