The World: Latest Stories

A celebrated ISIS executioner and an ISIS leader in Libya were both reported killed in targeted airstrikes recently. So what role can drones play in defeating ISIS?

Climate change will make natural disasters more common — and that means more deadly confrontations between humans and weather. We might all be called on to help.

After Deah Barakat was shot to death in Chapel Hill, his friends and family made his dream of a dental clinic for Syrian refugees happen.

Many people call the jihadist group claiming responsibility for the Paris and Beirut attacks, ISIS. Alternatively they've been called ISIL and even the Islamic State. But many in the Arab speaking world, and increasingly Western leader,s have taken to calling the group Daesh. So what does Daesh mean?

Generally speaking, it's hard to buy guns in Europe. But there is an exception: It's easy to buy cheap Kalashnikovs in Europe. Blame the Balkans.

Fifteen Syrian migrant families, including 50 children, are heading to Scotland. Not the mainland. Instead these asylum seekers will be taking a ferry to the Scottish island of Bute.

France native and journalist Adeline Sire walked around Paris on Monday to find bloodstained doorways and makeshift memorials and fellow French citizens in pain.

Three days after the harrowing attacks in Paris, the city is ready to get back to normal. But one Parisian says, beneath the surface, people are still anxious about what could come next.

As the opiate crisis advances, many people who thought their child-rearing years were done are finding themselves stepping in to take care of young relatives.

The saiga, antelopes that have migrated across the Central Asian steppe since the days of the woolly mammoth, are suddenly dying by the hundreds of thousands. Some researchers suspect that bacteria reacting to the effects of climate change may be to blame for this catastrophic event.

In cartoons and emblazoned on public monuments, the French Tricolour has emerged as the favored symbol to show solidarity with Paris after Friday's attacks. Arab and Muslim cartoonists are drawing something different: the personal impact of terrorism.

The terrorist attacks on Paris are resonating with people around the world. Similar deadly bomb attacks in Beirut don't seem to have prompted the same kind of reaction.

If it turns out that ISIS was behind the attacks in Paris, it marks a first for the extremist group that was born out of chaos in Iraq and Syria. Author J.M. Berger says the group is pursuing a policy of steady escalation.

Getting sent to the US as a refugee is a long process, and it's become an especially slow one for Syrian refugees.

Few were surprised that this Brussels neighborhood had a link to violence. It is portrayed as a jihadist breeding ground and a no-go area for police.

On the Greek island of Lesbos, thousands of migrants come ashore everyday. The Paris attacks won't stop them from fleeing Syria. But they might tighten immigration policies.

In the neighborhood where the attacks took place, one minute stretched into two, four, six. It was as if no one wanted this moment to end.

“France is becoming a soft target in Europe,” says Samuel Laurent, author of "Al-Qaeda in France" and "The Islamic State.”

The attack in Paris on Friday has left many people asking, could it happen here? Former Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem, answers with a qualified "yes." But she also points out that US surveillance is currently more intensive than most European nations, making such an attack more difficult to pull off.

Many Lebanese speak a full-on mix of Arabic, French and English. Calling this linguistic melange a "mother tongue" started out as a joke, but now it's become a part of Lebanon's national identity — even if it means that sometimes people don't understand what they are saying.

Our human ancestors have been laying their dead to rest for thousands of years. The departed were usually laid in the earth or on a funeral pyre. Today, earth and fire are still the most commonly used methods. But now a new paradigm is on offer.

Australian academic Susan Carland was tired of all the hate she receives online so she decided to donate $1 every time someone sends her a hate tweet. For Carland, it's about changing the toxicity to positivity.

Reporter Rhitu Chatterjee attended the University of Missouri from 2003-07. She never experience any hate. Everything was good for her. But the same couldn't be said for her peers.

The so-called Islamic State has lost control of a key town on the main road between the territory it occupies in Iraq and Syria. The town of Sinjar, in Iraq, fell Friday to a coalition of Kurdish and other militias, backed by US airpower. 'Liberated' Sinjar looks like a ghost town.

Adel Termos acted decisively during a Beirut bombing on Thursday, with little regard for his own safety.

Student protesters in South Africa are chalking up another victory in their "decolonization" campaign. Stellenbosch University, once a bastion of apartheid ideology, has agreed to stop teaching in Afrikaans and switch to English as the main language of instruction.

We bring you rare funk and soul music from Brazilian music, courtesy of a Boston-based record collector who dug through a lot of crates of records to find just the right tracks.

FIFA has cleared five men as candidates to lead the organization. The world soccer body says all five passed a thorough 'integrity check.' But all of them are also tainted by their past associations with an organization saddled by years of corruption allegations.

Over the years, Jose Garcia's life has collided with some of Chicago's biggest school reform efforts, including a recent teacher training effort that has him teaching at his old high school. Will he make it?

He’s a plainspoken outsider and a former neurosurgeon. Ben Carson has lurched to the front of the pack in the race to be the GOP’s presidential nominee. But his foreign policy ideas are raising questions.

The activist group Syria is Being Silently Slaughtered thought they were safe in Turkey. Then one of their members was beheaded.

Kurdish and other militias have launched an offensive, backed by US air power, against ISIS in northern Iraq. The goal is the strategic town of Sinjar.

The US and the rest of the world failed to forge an ambitious plan to tackle the climate crisis six years ago in Copenhagen. Since then the crisis has only gotten worse, but going into the next global climate summit in Paris, President Obama's top science adviser John Holdren is hopeful that world leaders are finally ready to step up to the challenge of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

The Kremlin says that Russian television accidentally showed secret plans for a devastating nuclear torpedo system. Others aren't so sure.

Kenyans are overwhelmingly against gay rights. Patrick Gathara thinks his cartoons could help change that attitude. So he draws cartoons and writes about gay rights, even those it makes his readers really angry.

WBEZ’s Becky Vevea spent the last year following Jose Garcia, a young Chicagoan who went off to college and was recruited back to teach at his high school.

The pro-separatist parties that control the government of Catalonia are pushing decisively for a split from Spain. But opinion polls show the Catalan public split pretty much down the middle on the issue. And Spain's prime minister says he simply won't allow the country's break up.

Geographical maps are pretty sweet. Nautical maps are rad. But transit maps? Well transit maps are the coolest maps because they help fight climate change.

The Veterans Administration was all over the news last year, with a scandal over wait times and a subsequent cover-up. Reforms were promised. And so when we asked our online community of veterans what we should focus on this Veterans Day, many asked for an update on the VA.

The picturesque town of Crickhowell in Wales does not have a reputation for global finance and accounting. But recently a group of independent shopkeepers decided to take an unusual step: create the town's own "offshore" tax haven as a political protest.

It's been 70 years since the end of World War II. Author and historian James Holland says we've got the story of what happened all wrong.

What happens for the families in China who secretly had second children before the policy change?

A Chinese billionaire who got his start as a taxi cab driver stunned the art world again this week. With a swipe of his credit card, Liu Yiqian purchased a famed painting of a "reclining nude" by the Italian master Modigliani.

Isaura Ramirez came home from serving in Iraq only to battle depression. She turned a corner when her husband enrolled her in a comedy class.

Some charter schools in Chicago are trying to lure the best and brightest students back into teaching in their old schools. But what does it take to build a teacher?

Architects and utility companies have long focused on ways to seal buildings up and homes to make them more energy efficient. But new research demonstrates that good ventilation is crucial for our cognitive abilities and is easily achievable.

Thieves in eastern France used the cover of night to break in to a Napiot dairy farm. No one was harmed, but the thieves made off with 100 wheels of valuable Comté cheese.

So Vladimir Putin's pumped-up, drugged-out Olympians may get stripped of their 2012 medals. That won't undo the damage, says high jumper Erik Kynard, Jr. He may get a gold medal, years later, but says: "I won’t be able to go back to the podium and do a victory lap.”