The World: Latest Stories

The caps at the end of our DNA, known as telomeres, shorten with each cell replication. For this reason, telomeres have been used as a marker of aging. But researchers, writing in the journal Scientific Reports, have discovered one animal whose telomere length increases with age — the edible dormouse.

Though Turkey and Russia back different sides in Syria's civil war, the recent assassination in Ankara of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov does not seem to be dividing them further.

It used to be that women who wore headscarves in Turkey faced harassment and discrimination. Lately, it's the secular women bearing the brunt of it.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, protests turned deadly against longtime President Joseph Kabila, who is refusing to leave office.

Jellyfish are blooming like crazy — clogging power plant ducts and beaches, and overwhelming some marine ecosystems. And it’s largely because of human impacts like overfishing, plastics pollution and warming oceans.

Most of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions come from destroying forests.

Last century, hundreds of thousands of garment jobs went overseas to lower-wage countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh and China where labor is far cheaper. But, thanks to technology, a new garment maker is bringing jobs back to an old textile town in Massachusetts.

They call themselves patriots. And they say they're part of a right-wing movement in Europe that's proud of their culture and traditions. However, leftists say, “They’re racists, but they say they’re not racists.”

We looked into a local service that overnights freshly baked bread from Paris, expecting to find a ritzy gourmet scene. Instead, the bread reminded us how ephemeral life can be.

A Pakistani asylum seeker was arrested a short time afterward — but on Tuesday police cast doubt on whether he was the truck's driver, and said the "dangerous criminal" behind the attack may still be at large.

The fog of war doesn’t simply happen; combatants contribute to it strategically.

Laura Passoni went to Syria to join the ISIS terror group, taking along her 4-year-old son. She soon realized: "I made a very bad mistake."

Depression is real and nothing to be ashamed of. We want to help you talk about it.

It's been 20 years since HIPAA passed, but it's still tough to get a hold of one's own medical records.

Ethane is one of the most useful gases to the petrochemicals industry. But it needs some extra processing before it can become polyethylene, the chemical used in plastics manufacturing — and that processing can cause harmful pollution.

Canada is pushing forward on its initiative to rid the country of coal-fired power plants by 2030 and put a minimum national price on carbon by 2019.

European colonists to the Americas brought with them illnesses that devastated indigenous communities. New research explores this history in the genetic record.

Winter has now hit North America and many of us are shopping for new winter boots. Researchers in Toronto came up with a rating system to test the slip resistance of 100 different types of winter boots, based on how they performed against icy conditions simulated in their state-of-the-art winter lab. You won't be happy with what they found.

Lebanese satirist Karl Sharro loves to poke fun at the state of the Arab world. But the tragedy of Aleppo has left him doubting satire's role for the first time in his life.

British musicians and politicians join together to sing a Rolling Stones classic in memory of Jo Cox.

The former head of the CIA and the NSA, Michael Hayden, says a Trump presidency could make "unwise" choices if it continues to reject intelligence assessments.

Neighbors say a backyard pond was built without permits — the unforeseen consequence being, it's now a swingers club for amphibians.

What is real and what is fake now seems the dominant theme of world politics. Here's what it means for perceptions about Syria among two very different world powers.

President Barack Obama, who has vowed to retaliate against Moscow over its election cyber-meddling, faces the media Friday as tensions soar with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

This Syrian musician has turned the struggle for Aleppo and other battles in Syria into very sad songs.

President Barack Obama signaled his concern about civilian casualties in the Yemen war on Tuesday when he halted a major resupply of smart bombs to the Saudi Arabian air force. But the same day, the US Air Force delivered the Saudis four new fighter jets.

Many undocumented immigrants in the US work in cultivation, picking fruits and vegetables. They move around or live permanently on the fields, along with their children — many of whom were born here and are US citizens. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to get tough on illegal immigration. And that has many immigrant farming communities bracing for what comes next.

The producer of "Muslims Like Us" explains why he thinks the UK needs this show.

Water-starved cities around the world are starting to turn to a once-unpalatable solution: recycling their sewage. And they have a surprising pioneer to thank for developing the technology — the southern African desert country of Namibia.

Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The entire downtown area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And before the revolution in 2011, it had a thriving arts and cultural scene. We try to get a sense of what has been lost.

ETHEL, a string quartet from New York City, released "The River" in collaboration with Native American artist Robert Mirabal. The album features a mixture of traditional Native American music, indigenous sounds from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, and classical strings.

How much can you confidently predict about what will happen next week? Next year? In a decade? After the 2016 US election and Brexit vote, maybe less than you thought before. The future has always dished up surprises, but the road ahead isn't just a blind curve. Good journalism can help people think about the lessons of the past, and the signals in the present worth noticing. The World's newsroom has been doing that for 20 years. Whose Century Is It host and former East Asia correspondent for The World Mary Kay Magistad sits down with World host Marco Werman, reporter and editor Jeb Sharp and executive editor Andrew Sussman to talk about how the world's future looked in The World's early days, how it's changed since, and how to think about what might be coming up ahead.

Lagos is a modern megacity. But it's also home to millions of slum dwellers who have been forced to govern themselves in the absence of public services.

Thanks to a sister-state program, officials from Hebei province — an agricultural heartland — are hoping to replicate an American farm in China.

However a source close to Syria's government denied the development, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said hostilities were ongoing after an earlier agreement collapsed.

For generations, British people have relied on the seas around them to supply the key ingredient for a beloved national dish. But climate change is shifting fish stocks.

In the months after 9/11, the US government set up a system to register and interview men from Muslim-majority countries in an effort to combat terrorism. It was quietly shelved after a few years mostly because it didn't work. Trump’s advisors want to bring it back.

The Syrian government and its allies, Russia and Iran, are indiscriminately bombing and shelling the last square mile of Aleppo under rebel control. The area still contains tens of thousands of unarmed civilians. Many experts say it's a war crime. But legally, it's not genocide. It's a crime of extermination.

The Bureau of Land Management has issued a new rule for the leasing of public land for solar and wind energy development — and it has bipartisan support in Congress.

So, Americans are outraged that Russia may have attempted to interfere in US elections. From Italy to Guatemala, Indonesia to Afghanistan, people ask, "so, how does it feel?"

Rex Tillerson has spent about 40 years at one of the largest oil companies in the world. He'll have to make some adjustments in order to transition into his new job as secretary of state.

President-elect Donald Trump's tweet about a US-made fighter jet, the F-35, caused its manufacturer's stock to tumble. Here's why critics of Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter program say that the plane, designed to be efficient and economical, is neither.

White Helmet volunteer Ismail Alabdullah says the city of Aleppo is like a mother to him, and until evacuation was announced on Dec. 13, he never thought he would leave it.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday ordered the border with Colombia sealed for 72 hours, calling it a "hard" but "inevitable" choice.

Israel has a policy of offering incentives to African migrants to leave the country. But when they go, they often leave their families behind.

How throw-away plastic could alter humanity as we know it.