Dubai: Nearly a decade into Yemen’s brutal war, some 4.5 million of its children are not attending school, the charity Save the Children said Monday.
The figure underlines how precarious daily life remains in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, despite relative calm since an April 2022 ceasefire.
“Two in five children, or 4.5 million, are out of school, with displaced children twice as likely to drop out than their peers,” the group said in a report.
“One third of families surveyed in Yemen have at least one child who has dropped out of school in the past two years despite the UN-brokered truce,” it added.
The conflict in Yemen began when Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa in September 2014, prompting Saudi Arabia to lead a coalition to prop up the internationally recognized government months later.
Economic insecurity amid the war has plunged two thirds of Yemen’s 33 million inhabitants below the poverty line, the charity said, while also displacing about 4.5 million people.
“Displaced children are twice as vulnerable to school dropouts,” Save the Children said.
“Nine years into this forgotten conflict, we are confronting an education emergency like never before,” said Mohammed Manna, Save the Children’s interim country director in Yemen.
“Our latest findings must be a wake-up call and we must act now to protect these children and their future.”
The report said 14 percent of families interviewed by the aid group pointed to insecurity as the reason behind their children dropping out.
But a larger majority — some 44 percent — pointed to economic reasons, in particular the need to support family incomes. Some 20 percent said they were unable to afford regular school costs.
“The impact of the education crisis on Yemen’s children and their future is profound,” the charity said.
“Without immediate intervention, an entire generation risks being left behind.”
Singapore made the Israeli embassy in the city-state take down an “insensitive” social media post about the Palestinians over the weekend after warning it could inflame tensions, the interior minister said Monday.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza and deepening humanitarian crisis in the besieged strip since October 7 have divided opinion across the world.
The post reportedly said Israel was mentioned 43 times in the Koran but Palestine — the name Palestinians give to what they hope will become their independent, sovereign state — was not, according to local media.
Minister for Home Affairs K. Shanmugam said he asked Singapore’s foreign ministry to tell the Israeli embassy to remove the post made on Sunday after learning about it, which the mission immediately did.
“That post on the Israeli embassy social media page is completely unacceptable. I was very upset when I was told about it,” Shanmugam told reporters, according to a transcript.
“It is insensitive and inappropriate. It carries the risk of undermining our safety, security and harmony in Singapore.”
Shanmugam said the post had been taken down.
“Posts like these can… inflame tensions, and can put the Jewish community here at risk. The anger from the post can potentially spill over into the physical realm,” he added.
The Israeli embassy was not immediately available for comment.
Singapore has condemned the Hamas attacks on Israel but has also said that Israel’s military response “has now gone too far”.
The health ministry in the Gaza Strip on Sunday put the total death toll in the territory at 32,226, most of them women and children.
McDonald’s stores across Sri Lanka shut Sunday after the US fast-food giant launched a legal battle with its local franchise holder over allegations of poor hygiene, court officials said.
The Commercial High Court of Colombo ordered the closures until April 4, after the parent company accused the local franchise holder of failing to meet international hygiene standards.
“The closure was ordered pending an investigation,” a court official said.
He said lawyers for McDonald’s told the court that they had terminated a franchise agreement with local company Abans last week. The hearing is to resume in early April.
There was no immediate comment either from McDonald’s or Abans, who has held the franchise with 12 outlets since the US firm’s entry into Sri Lanka in 1998.
Notices were seen outside McDonald’s outlets on Sunday saying they were “closed” and there was no indication if or when they may reopen.
When a technology hitch disrupted ordering at stores across much of east Asia last week, Sri Lanka’s McDonald’s stores were unaffected.
Washington (AFP) – The revelation that Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, has cancer prompted a swift backlash over a torrent of lurid social media speculation around her health, including by those positing she was secretly dead. But the somber news has not stopped the seemingly endless churn of conspiracy theories.
Kate Middleton, 42, received an outpouring of global sympathy after her video message on Friday revealed she was undergoing preventative chemotherapy, seeking to put an end to a maelstrom of unfounded claims circulated amid her monthslong absence from public life.
The manipulation of a royal photograph the palace released to the media, as well as the British monarchy’s culture of secrecy, had fueled much of the online speculation.
But the proliferation of evidence-free theories on social media –- including posts peppered with skull emojis claiming the princess was dead or in an induced coma — illustrates the new normal of information chaos in an age of artificial intelligence and misinformation that has warped public understanding of reality.
The speculation took a serious turn last week when the British police were asked to probe a reported attempt to access her confidential medical records.
“Kate has effectively been bullied into this statement,” writer Helen Lewis wrote in US magazine the Atlantic.
“The alternative — a wildfire of gossip and conspiracy theories — was worse.”
Britain’s Daily Mail tabloid also lashed out, asking: “How do all those vile online trolls feel now?”
If social media posts are to be believed, they are not too sorry.
‘Cruel grifters’
Many on X, formerly Twitter, and TikTok claimed Kate’s video message was an AI-enabled deepfake.
Some users posted slowed down versions of the video to support the baseless claim that it was digitally manipulated, asking why nothing in the background — a leaf or blade of grass — moved.
Others scrutinized her facial movements and speculated why a dimple, as seen in previous images, wasn’t visible.
“Sorry House of Windsor, Kate Middleton (and) legacy media — I’m still not buying what you’re selling,” said one post on X.
“Actually not sorry – you’ve all read ‘The Little Boy That Cried Wolf’ right?”
And then there was misinformation about cancer itself, with posts falsely claiming that the disease was not fatal while comparing chemotherapy with “poison.”
And how could anti-vaccine campaigners be left behind?
Many of them jumped on the conspiracy bandwagon, baselessly linking Kate’s diagnosis to “turbo cancer,” a myth linked to Covid-19 vaccines that has been repeatedly debunked.
“There is no evidence to support the ‘turbo cancer’ lie,” said Timothy Caulfield, a misinformation expert from the University of Alberta in Canada.
Conspiracy theorists “are cruel grifters marketing fear (and) misinformation,” he added.
‘Seed of doubt’
The proliferation of wild theories highlights how facts are increasingly under scrutiny on a misinformation-filled internet landscape, an issue exacerbated by public distrust of institutions and traditional media.
The same distrust, researchers say, has tainted online conversations about serious issues, including elections, climate and health care.
“People don’t trust what they are seeing and reading,” Karen Douglas, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent, told AFP.
“Once a seed of doubt has been sown, and people lose trust, conspiracy theories are able to gain traction.”
The rumor mill surrounding Kate spiraled since she retreated from public life after attending a Christmas Day church service and undergoing abdominal surgery in January.
Conspiracy theories exploded after the princess admitted to editing a Mother’s Day family portrait, a move that prompted news agencies including AFP to withdraw it.
Conspiracy theorists went down a new rabbit hole when a subsequent video emerged showing Kate strolling in a market with her husband, baselessly asserting that she had been replaced by a body double.
“When it comes to an institution as old and opaque as the royal family, public distrust creates an appetite for a lot of sleuthing,” Dannagal Young, from the University of Delaware, told AFP.
Social media hashtags about the princess gained such virality that many users began using them to promote unrelated posts about topics that receive far less traction, including human rights abuses in India and the Middle East.
What made the frenzy worse, researchers say, was a culture of royal secrecy and the seemingly botched PR strategy of the palace.
“To be honest, the palace could have nipped the situation in the bud much earlier,” Douglas said.
At least five people were killed and an estimated 1,000 homes destroyed when a magnitude 6.9 earthquake rocked flood-stricken northern Papua New Guinea, officials said Monday as disaster crews poured into the region.
“So far, around 1,000 homes have been lost,” said East Sepik Governor Allan Bird, adding that emergency crews were “still assessing the impact” from a tremor that “damaged most parts of the province”.
Dozens of villages nestled on the banks of the country’s Sepik River were already dealing with major flooding when the quake struck early Sunday morning.
Provincial police commander Christopher Tamari told AFP that authorities had recorded five deaths but the number of fatalities “could be more”.
Photos taken in the aftermath of the quake showed damaged wooden houses collapsing into the surrounding knee-high floodwaters.
Earthquakes are common in Papua New Guinea, which sits on top of the seismic “Ring of Fire” — an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Although they seldom cause widespread damage in the sparsely populated jungle highlands, they can trigger destructive landslides.
Many of the island nation’s nine million citizens live outside major towns and cities, where the difficult terrain and lack of sealed roads can seriously hamstring search-and-rescue efforts.
A magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit northern Papua New Guinea on Sunday morning, the United States Geological Survey said.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said there was “no tsunami threat” from the inland quake, which struck at 6:22 am local time (2022 GMT Saturday) at a depth of approximately 35 kilometres (21 miles).
The “notable quake” hit some 88 kilometres (54 miles) southwest of Wewak, the USGS said, a town of 25,000 people that serves as the capital of Papua New Guinea’s East Sepik province.
There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The tremor was downgraded from an preliminary magnitude of 7.0.
Earthquakes are common in Papua New Guinea, which sits on top of the seismic “Ring of Fire” — an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Although they seldom cause widespread damage in the sparsely populated jungle highlands, they can trigger destructive landslides.
At least seven people were killed in April last year when a 7.0-magnitude quake hit a jungle-clad area in the country’s interior.
Many of the island nation’s nine million citizens live outside major towns and cities, where the difficult terrain and lack of sealed roads can seriously hamstring search-and-rescue efforts.
UN chief Antonio Guterres, on a visit to the doorstep of Gaza, on Saturday said the world has seen enough of the war’s horrors and appealed for a ceasefire to allow in more aid.
‘Palestinians in Gaza—children, women, men—remain stuck in a non-stop nightmare,’ he said on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing where truckloads of aid trickle into Gaza but the population is stalked by ‘hunger and starvation’.
This handout pictured released by the United Nations press office shows UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres meeting with a Palestinian child evacuated from the Gaza Strip receiving treatment at the general hospital in El-Arish in Egypt’s northeastern North Sinai province on March 23, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (Photo by Mark GARTEN / UNITED NATIONS / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – MANDATORY CREDIT “AFP PHOTO / UNITED NATIONS – MARK GARTEN” – NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS – RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – MANDATORY CREDIT “AFP PHOTO / UNITED NATIONS – Mark Garten” – NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS /
‘I carry the voices of the vast majority of the world who have seen enough,’ Guterres said, deploring ‘communities obliterated, homes demolished, entire families and generations wiped out’.
He reiterated that ‘nothing justifies the horrific attacks by Hamas’ against Israel, triggering the war on October 7.
‘And nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,’ the United Nations secretary-general said.
Guterres, speaking at a lectern in front of the imposing gates to the Gaza side of Rafah, through which aid trucks pass, said the ‘heartbreak and heartlessness of it all’ were clear.
‘A long line of blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates. The long shadow of starvation on the other,’ which he called ‘a moral outrage.’
Guterres emphasised ‘it is more than time for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire’ and appealed to Israel for ‘total, unfettered access for humanitarian goods throughout Gaza.’
The UN chief, who makes an annual ‘solidarity mission’ to distressed Muslim communities during their holy fasting month, said that ‘in the Ramadan spirit of compassion, it is also time for the immediate release of all hostages’ captured in the October attacks and still held by militants in Gaza.
Response from Israel
Israel’s foreign minister said Saturday the United Nations had become an ‘anti-Israeli body’ under Antonio Guterres, after the UN chief called for a ceasefire on a visit to Gaza’s border.
International outrage over the heavy civilian toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza has further worsened the long strained ties between Israel and the world body.
‘Under his (Guterres’s) leadership, the UN has become an anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli body that shelters and emboldens terror,’ Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on social media platform X.
The top Israeli diplomat criticised Guterres, who Katz said ‘stood today on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing and blamed Israel for the humanitarian situation in Gaza’, claiming instead that Hamas militants ‘plunder’ aid.
Katz, whose government has accused staff at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees of involvement in Hamas’s October 7 attack that triggered the war, also said Guterres spoke ‘without calling for the immediate, unconditional release of all Israeli hostages’.
Vote at Security Council
Meanwhile, a vote at the UN Security Council on a new text calling for an ‘immediate’ ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war was postponed to Monday, diplomatic sources told AFP, after a separate, US-lead draft resolution was vetoed.
The United States, Israel’s main ally and military backer, had put forward a resolution mentioning ‘the imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire’ and condemning the October 7 attack by Hamas.
Russia and China on Friday vetoed that resolution, which was also opposed by Arab states for stopping short of explicitly demanding Israel immediately end its campaign in Gaza.
The new ceasefire text was meant to go to a vote on Saturday, but was pushed back to allow further discussions, the diplomatic sources said.
The new, tougher draft resolution, seen by AFP, ‘demands an immediate ceasefire’ for the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan that leads ‘to a permanent sustainable ceasefire’ respected by all sides.
Eight of the council’s 10 non-permanent members have been working on the draft, which also calls for the ‘immediate and unconditional’ release of hostages seized by Hamas and the lifting of ‘all barriers’ to humanitarian aid flowing into the besieged Gaza Strip.
‘We as (the) Arab Group unanimously endorse and support the draft resolution,’ said Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour, who had denounced the US-led text as biased.
But US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield indicated opposition, saying the resolution would jeopardize ongoing diplomatic efforts to secure the release of hostages—the same reason the United States gave before vetoing previous ceasefire resolutions.
‘In its current form, that text fails to support sensitive diplomacy in the region. Worse, it could actually give Hamas an excuse to walk away from the deal on the table,’ she said.
Friday’s text did not explicitly use the word ‘call,’ but simply stated that a ceasefire was imperative, and linked to ongoing talks, led by Qatar with support from the United States and Egypt, to halt fighting in return for Hamas releasing hostages.
‘If the US is serious about a ceasefire, then please vote in favor of the other draft resolution, clearly calling for a ceasefire,’ China’s representative, Zhang Jun, said.
Whether dogs truly understand the words we say – as opposed to things like tone and context clues – is a question that has long perplexed owners, and so far science hasn’t been able to deliver clear answers.
But a new brain wave study published Friday in Current Biology suggests that hearing the names of their favorite toys actually activates dogs’ memories of those objects.
“It definitely shows us that it’s not human-unique to have this type of referential understanding,” first author Lilla Magyari of the Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary, told AFP, explaining that researchers have been skeptical up to this point.
With a couple of famous exceptions, dogs have fared poorly on lab tests requiring them to fetch objects after hearing their names, and many experts have argued it isn’t so much what we say but rather how and when we say things that pique our pooches’ interest.
Yelling “Go get the stick!” and having a dog successfully bring the object back doesn’t conclusively prove they know what the word “stick” means, for example.
Even scientists who concede that dogs do pay attention to our speech have said that, rather than really understanding what words stand for, they are reacting to particular sounds with a learned behavior.
In the new paper, Magyari and colleagues applied a non-invasive brain imaging technique to 18 dogs brought to their lab in Budapest.
The test involved taping electrodes to the dogs’ heads to monitor their brain activity. Their owners said words for toys they were most familiar with — for example “Kun-kun, look, the ball!” — and then showed them either the matching object or a mismatched object.
After analyzing the EEG recordings, the team found different brain patterns when dogs were shown matching versus mismatched objects.
This experimental setup has been used for decades in humans, including babies, and is accepted as evidence of “semantic processing,” or understanding of meaning.
The test also had the benefit of not requiring the dogs to fetch something in order to prove their knowledge.
“We found the effect in 14 dogs,” co-first author Marianna Boros told AFP, proving the ability is not confined to “a few exceptional dogs.” Even the four that “failed” may have simply been tested on the wrong words, she added.
Holly Root-Gutteridge, a dog behavior scientist at the University of Lincoln in England, told AFP that the ability to fetch specific toys by name had previously been deemed a “genius” quality.
Famous border collies Chaser and Rico could find and retrieve specific toys from large piles but were deemed outliers, she said.
But the new study “shows that a whole range of dogs are learning the names of the objects in terms of brain response even if they don’t demonstrate it behaviorally,” said Root-Gutteridge, adding it was “another knock for humanity’s special and distinct qualities.”
The paper “provides further evidence that dogs might understand human vocalizations much better than we usually give them credit for,” added Federico Rossano, a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego.
But not all experts were equally enthusiastic. Clive Wynne, a canine behaviorist at Arizona State University, told AFP he was “split” on the findings.
“I think the paper falls down when it wants to make the big picture claim that they have demonstrated what they call ‘semantic understanding,’” he said, though he praised the “ingenious” experimental setup as a new way to test the full extent of dogs’ “functional vocabulary.”
For example, Wynne said, he needs to spell out the word “w-a-l-k” when he’s in front of his dog — lest his pet get excited for an outing there and then — but he doesn’t need to take the same precautions in front of his wife, whose understanding of the word goes beyond simple association.
“Would Pavlov be surprised by these results?” asked Wynne, referencing the famous Russian scientist who showed dogs could be conditioned to salivate when they heard a bell signaling meal time. “I do not think he would be.”
The Islamic State group (IS) has claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 100 people – terrorism experts say its Afghan branch is likely responsible.
Since the fundamentalist Taliban took over Kabul, the ISKP – the Afghan branch of IS – has managed to poach members from its rival movement and has repeatedly shown off its will and capability to strike outside Afghanistan’s borders.
An August 2021 blast claimed by the group killed 100 civilians and 13 American soldiers at Kabul airport – just as the United States was withdrawing from the Afghan capital and the Taliban laid their hands on power.
It was the deadliest-ever attack by IS against the US.
Washington offered a $10 million reward for information on ISKP’s leader Sanaullah Ghafari, also known as Shahab al-Muhajir.
Born in 1994, he is “responsible for approving all ISIS-K operations throughout Afghanistan and arranging funding to conduct operations,” according to the US State Department, which uses an alternative acronym for the ISKP.
The US foreign ministry placed Ghafari on its foreign terrorist blacklist in November 2021.
Afghanistan’s IS branch was built by the group’s envoys arriving from Iraq and Syria – unlike almost everywhere else in the world, where pre-existing outfits pledged to its cause, said Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) research outfit and a former UN terrorism expert.
“They have very close connections to the centre, much more than the other affiliates,” Schindler told AFP, adding that this gives them access to ample funding.
Lucas Webber, co-founder of specialist website Militant Wire, highlighted that the “ISKP has emerged as the most internationally minded IS branch… producing propaganda in more languages than any other branch since the height of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria.”
It has been mounting an “ambitious and aggressive campaign to bolster its external operations capabilities and strike its various enemies abroad,” he added.
Both Western and Russian security services have long been monitoring ISKP.
On Tuesday, German authorities arrested two Afghan suspected jihadists, believed to have been planning an attack on the Swedish parliament.
Public burnings of the Koran have increased the terrorist threat against Stockholm.
One of the two men is alleged to have travelled from Germany to join ISKP.
Germany had previously dismantled a Russian-Tajik network in 2020, with more groups targeted in 2022 and 2023.
Russian authorities said on March 7 they had killed suspected ISKP members in an operation in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow.
Officials said the people had been planning an attack on a synagogue in the capital.
Kazakhstan said two of its citizens were killed in the operation.
Russia has become a priority target for ISKP, which condemns its invasion of Ukraine and its military interventions across Africa and in Syria, Webber said.
A 2022 suicide bombing targeted Russia’s embassy in Afghanistan.
ISKP “is working to extend its reach throughout Central Asia and Russia,” Webber added, putting together “a Russian language media wing to build support and incite violence inside the country”.
Schindler said that with Moscow’s attention on the invasion of Ukraine, Russia is a more tempting target.
Friday’s attack – relatively cheap and straightforward to put together – was “a big symbol”, he added.
“Its hard to overestimate how important today’s attack in Moscow is for the Islamic State and what it tells about its evolution,” Tore Hamming of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday.
“IS had worked since 2019 to reestablish an institutional unit in charge of external operations,” Hamming added, “first in Turkey and later in Afghanistan with Central Asians as key actors.”
“Based on a recent high number of foiled plots and today’s attack, it appears they are succeeding,” Hamming said.
ISKP now has “Afghanistan and Central Asia as a hub to target Russia/Asia and Turkey as a gateway to Europe,” he added.
JERUSALEM: In a small hotel near the Augusta Victoria Hospital in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, where she received radiation therapy for breast cancer, Palestinian Rim Abu Obeida waits anxiously.
She is among a group of Palestinian patients living in limbo while a top Israeli court weighs whether they can be sent back to war-torn Gaza now that their treatment is completed.
Like dozens of Gazans before Israel began its intensive military operations after October 7, she was granted permission to leave the territory for care because hospitals in the Gaza Strip did not have the necessary equipment.
“This week, we were suddenly told we had to return to Gaza. This is sending us to hell, to death!” Abu Obeida said.
If she is forced to leave, she will not have much to return to — her house in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis has been destroyed in Israeli’s offensive.
The roughly 20 patients from Gaza, most of them battling cancer, have been receiving treatment in Tel Aviv and East Jerusalem for the past six months.
COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body that governs civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, said this week that because the patients “don’t need any continued medical treatment, they are being returned to the Gaza Strip.”
But at the last minute, the Israeli Supreme Court, responding to a petition by the NGO Physicians for Human Rights, suspended COGAT’s order.
The court is expected to rule on the case, though the timeline is unclear. The government has until April 21 to file its arguments.
In the next room, along with Abu Obeida, Manal Abu Shaaban was busy stashing food into her bags.
“I have rice, sugar, everything they are deprived of there. I hope they won’t stop me from bringing them in,” she said. Abu Shaaban, a breast cancer patient like Abu Obeida, said she was not opposed to returning.
Still, she knew the security situation meant she would be unable to reach her home in Gaza City, in the besieged territory’s north.
“I want to go back. But to my home, in my house! Not in Rafah, in the south, where they want us to go, I don’t know anyone there,” she said.
Large swaths of the north have been flattened by Israeli bombardment, and a UN-backed assessment said the area faces famine by May unless substantially more aid reaches it.
Meanwhile, in Gaza’s south, up to 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are crammed into Rafah and live under the threat of a full-scale Israeli ground offensive.
Asked about the fate of the patients who face being returned to Gaza, Augusta Victoria Hospital director Fadi Mizyed paused for a few seconds.
“I don’t know. They will go back in a war zone, they will be at risk, they will be living in catastrophic conditions,” he said.
“The situation in Gaza is beyond description, with no guaranteed healthcare services that can do what is needed for any cancer patients.”
“We said we don’t think it’s the right thing to do but at the end of the day it’s not our call,” he added.
