The World: Latest Stories

Many new initiatives were unveiled at Climate Week NYC this year, including pledges from businesses and countries to speed up the transition to electric cars and renewable energy. But, in the face of multiple disastrous global weather events and the unwillingness of the Trump administration to even admit climate problems exist, the sense of urgency is rising.

Caribbean islands have been battered by the record-breaking hurricanes Irma and Maria. They now face the monumental task of rebuilding thousands of homes and much of their infrastructure.

Over the course of her career, she’s rescued 12 people after earthquakes and other disasters in Mexico, Haiti and Ecuador.

The federal relief effort for hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico has been criticized as slow and insufficient. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal personnel are on the ground, trying to help.

Rainbow flags at a Mashrou' Leila concert in Cairo sparked Egypt's widest anti-gay crackdown.

Failure to certify the deal does not mean that the US is withdrawing.

Ari Beser's grandfather helped bomb Hiroshima. Now he's part of the movement to abolish nuclear weapons.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson worked together to achieve major civil rights victories in 1964 and 1965. But then the Vietnam War got in the way. King's public denunciation of the war was widely condemned, even by many in his own movement, and ruined his relationship with Johnson.

Leilah Day and Hana Baba are journalists at KALW based in San Francisco. They say they wanted to "start conversations and provide sound-rich stories about what it means to be black, and how we talk about blackness" — and so, The Stoop was born.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or a related extremist group is thought to have targeted the US troops, in an attack that highlights an incoherent US policy in West Africa.

Some of the fish you buy from your local grocery store may have come from factories in China where North Koreans are working. An investigative team from The Associated Press tracked the products from China to US freezer cases.

A campaign that Western military are linking to Russian hackers has targeted the contingent of 4,000 NATO troops deployed to Poland and the Baltic states this year, to protect the alliance’s European border with Russia.

Writer Bruce Handy reminds us why we still love the books we read as kids.

How and why Danny Strong made a movie about how and why J.D. Salinger made “The Catcher in the Rye.”

The life and death of Vincent van Gogh, as told through his paintings.

The Pulitzer Prize winning author remembers a formative experience with a punk band that didn’t look — or sound — very punk-y.

About 154,000 people are eligible to renew. As of Thursday morning, many still had not applied — cost, the difficulty in getting legal help and fear of how the government will treat them are likely reasons.

Amir Darabi was a child prodigy. He started playing the piano when he was 3 years old. Later, he felt there wasn't enough competition in Iran. But for an Iranian, getting to the US is a Herculean task.

A federally funded medical training program offers new doctors perks to practice in poor and rural areas. But Congress may pull the plug on the funding.

Two women accused of poisoning the half-brother of North Korea's leader plead not guilty as their trial began this week. The women say they thought they were participating in a prank for a TV show.

After a natural disaster, people scramble to rebuild their houses, get food and water. But for sex traffickers, it can also be a scramble to cash in.

The French magazine Charlie Hebdo describes itself as a punch in the face. So get ready America, because Charlie Hebdo is coming to town, online and in English.

Commentary: Author Malka Older lays out her case for allowing for secession.

It's a question that's puzzled historians and investigators for nearly 75 years and we may have an answer soon.

Author and activist Masha Gessen follows the experiences of half-dozen Russians whose lives have been changed by Putin's retro-totalitarian state.

The US says Cuba failed to protect Americans on Cuban soil, while Cuba says Americans are just looking for an excuse to punish the country.

The Trump administration has cut the US diplomatic presence in Havana in half and warned Americans not to visit Cuba, on the suspicion that a secret sonic weapon is making people sick. But scientists say that’s not possible.

Alaska is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the country. And Anchorage is feeling the impacts of climate change.

Experts say if no evidence emerges, ISIS will have “blown a mile-wide hole in their credibility.”

The US tops the list of importers and exporters of weapons designed for individual use, according to research by the Small Arms Survey.

Weiss and colleagues dreamed up the idea behind a massive antenna so sensitive it detects faint, invisible ripples in space from 1.3 billion years ago - offering evidence of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

President Donald Trump shook hands with storm survivors on Puerto Rico Tuesday, during a trip designed to quiet critics who branded his initial response slow and ham-fisted.

After a scaled-down annual summit, tensions between the Trump administration and leaders of historically black colleges and universities continue to mount. And some worry it’s their ethnic diversity that could take the biggest hit, a diversity some don’t even know exists.

“I think people like myself in local office,” says Massachusetts state Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, “they’re hearing pressure from the local constituencies to ... organize the community.”

The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world and high rates of gun violence — far outstripping other developed countries with high gun ownership rates, like Switzerland.

When you're in high school and you're undocumented, it adds a whole new level to the typical teenage stress.

Journalist Gerry Hadden offers a firsthand look, from a Barcelona polling center, at Spanish police's violent operations to disrupt the outlawed referendum on Catalan independence.

In the 1920s, the US demanded that Italy help them vet immigrants. They created barriers for immigrants considered to be a threat — physically, culturally or politically.

Rapid response networks, being replicated in cities across the US, are one neighborhood reaction to President Donald Trump's push to step up deportations.

You may not envy what dung beetles and carrion beetles dine on, but you live in a world that they help keep clean.

We know that one of the first migrant groups, known as the Clovis people, lived here around 13,000 years ago. Beyond that, however, many details about these early Americans are still hazy.

Northern right whales were hunted to near extinction, but they seem to be hanging on after being protected by the Endangered Species Act. After 13 sudden deaths, scientists wonder whether they face a new man-made threat: climate disruption.

At the Aging Aircraft Lab, planes are taken apart piece by piece to learn more about the ravages of time on various aircraft designs — from cracking, to corrosion, to metal fatigue.

"Maybe a little bit less of tweeting about the NFL and more of a humane attitude towards what is being lived here on the island right now."

The Spanish government is taking extreme measures to make sure the vote doesn't happen — but Catalans are pushing back with some tactics of their own.

There have been questions about the speed with which the Trump administration has moved to deploy the US military after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. "It feels a little bit slow," says one former US Navy admiral.

Ukraine-born Eugene Hutz is the lead singer of the band Gogol Bordello. Although the band is based in New York and Hutz himself has lived there for years, identity and Ukraine help define the band.

Farmers reckon with the environmental costs of an annual Thanksgiving tradition.

On Sept. 7, a massive earthquake off of Mexico's southern coast damaged buildings. And then a powerful aftershock a few weeks later finished some of them off. People in the region just want the earth to stop shaking.

Communal detention in Sittwe, Myanmar, might not fit the classic model of detention camps, but author Andrea Pitzer says the Rohingya-only enclaves are just as inhumane.