World

  Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte listens as she attends a joint committee hearing of the House of Representatives in Quezon City, Philippines on Nov. 13, 2024. MANILA, Philippines — Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said Saturday she has contracted an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the House of Representatives speaker if she herself is killed, in a brazen public threat that she warned was not a joke. Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin referred the "active threat" against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to an elite presidential guards force "for immediate proper action." It was not immediately clear what actions would be taken against the vice president. The Presidential Security Command booste...

  Iraqi national security officials on Saturday said they arrested the top-ranking Islamic State figure in Iraqi Kurdistan. Azad Shakhi, the so-called emir of the Kurdistan faction of Islamic State, which is also known as IS, ISIS or ISIL, was detained in Kirkuk province alongside six other suspected terrorists, one of whom blew himself up amid the siege on their hideout. "The detainees were working underground and were found and arrested after a thorough investigation and gathering information," Colonel Salam Abdulkhaliq, spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Security Agency, told VOA\'s Kurdish Service. Regional security officials with knowledge of the investigation said the group had been planning to target security figures ...

  FILE - Anima Mangola eats rice and stewed cassava leaves in the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown, Sept. 25, 2024. FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Rice borders on the sacred in Sierra Leone. Unless a meal includes rice, people say, you haven\'t eaten at all. But as prices soar, consumers in the West African nation are giving up other food to buy it. That\'s a major reason why 83% of the population is food insecure, according to the U.N.\'s World Food Program. In the capital, Freetown, 28-year-old nail technician Anima Mangola dug into rice with stewed cassava leaves. "I\'d eat rice five times a day if I had me the money," she said — even as its price has more than doubled this year. Not everyone can keep up, and "people are suffer...

  Mayor of Sado City Ryugo Watanabe delivers a speech during a memorial ceremony for the Sado Island Gold Mine in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, Nov. 24, 2024. SADO, Japan — Japan held a memorial ceremony on Sunday near the Sado Island Gold Mines despite a last-minute boycott of the event by South Korea that highlighted tensions between the neighbors over the issue of Korean forced laborers at the site before and during World War II. South Korea\'s absence at Sunday\'s memorial, to which Seoul government officials and Korean victims\' families were invited, is a major setback in the rapidly improving ties between the two countries, which since last year have set aside their historical disputes to prioritize U.S.-led security cooperation...

  Chandni Raina, part of India's negotiating team, speaks to the media outside a closing plenary session at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 24, 2024. The $300 billion that will go to developing nations each year amounts to "a paltry sum," she said. BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — United Nations climate talks adopted a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually in humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping poor nations cope with the ravages of global warming in tense negotiations in the city where industry first tapped oil. The $300 billion will go to developing countries who need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat, adapt to future warming, an...

  People take pictures next an Andy Warhol painting of China's late leader Mao Zedong at "Eye to Eye," an exhibit at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran, Nov. 21, 2024. TEHRAN, Iran — As Iran faces increasing tensions with the West and turmoil at home, a new exhibition at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is displaying Western artwork including pieces not seen by the public in at least a decade. The unveiling of the exhibition Eye to Eye has drawn numerous women, their hair uncovered, to the underground galleries of the museum in Tehran\'s Laleh Park. Their presence, while unacknowledged by authorities, shows the way life has changed inside Iran just in the last few years even as the country\'s theocracy press...

  Cows are seen at the largest dump site where textile waste ends up at Old Fadama in Accra, Ghana, Oct. 19, 2024. ACCRA, Ghana — In a sprawling secondhand clothing market in Ghana\'s capital, early morning shoppers jostle as they search through piles of garments, eager to pluck a bargain or a designer find from the stalls selling used and low-quality apparel imported from the West. At the other end of the street, an upcycled fashion and thrifting festival unfolds with glamour and glitz. Models parade along a makeshift runway in outfits that designers created out of discarded materials from the Kantamanto market, ranging from floral blouses and denim jeans to leather bags, caps and socks. The festival is called Obroni Wawu October, using ...

  Nick Chow, part of the COP29 Singapore Pavilion team, poses for a photo with NEWBrew, beer made with treated wastewater, during the COP29 UN Climate Summit, Nov. 15, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — In the sprawling pavilion section of the United Nations climate talks, where countries, nonprofits and tech companies use big, flashy signs to get the attention of the thousands of people walking through, small aqua and purple beverage cans sit conspicuously on a counter at the Singapore display. Those who approach learn that the cans are beer — a brand call NEWBrew — and free for anybody who asks. But there is something not everybody who cracks one open finds out right away, if at all: the beer is made with treated wastewater. ...

  Godwin Vasanth Bosco, a naturalist and restoration practitioner, passes through native trees planted by him 10 years ago in Nilgiris district, India, Sept. 25, 2024. UDHAGAMANDALAM, India — Scattered groves of native trees, flowers and the occasional prehistoric burial ground are squeezed between hundreds of thousands of tea shrubs in southern India\'s Nilgiris region — a gateway to a time before colonization and the commercial growing of tea that reshaped the country\'s mountain landscapes. These sacred groves once blanketed the Western Ghats mountains, but nearly 200 years ago, British colonists installed rows upon rows of tea plantations. The few groves that stand today are either protected by Indigenous communities who preserve them...

  Israeli Embassy, Amman, Jordan AMMAN, JORDAN — A gunman was dead and three Jordanian policemen injured after a shooting near the heavily fortified Israeli embassy in the capital Amman in Sunday\'s early hours, a security source and state media said. Police shot a gunman who had fired at a police patrol in the affluent Rabiah neighborhood of the Jordanian capital, the state news agency Petra reported, citing public security, adding investigations were ongoing. The gunman, who was carrying an automatic weapon, was chased for at least an hour before he was cornered and killed just before dawn, according to a security source. Jordan\'s communications minister, Mohamed Momani, described the shooting as a terrorist attack that targeted public security forces in the country. ...