On May 6, Kenya announced that it will close of all its refugee camps by the end of May, which will leave about half a million refugees stranded. They’re mostly people fleeing the civil war that’s ravished Somalia since 1991.
Outside America, Hillary Clinton is winning the 2016 presidential election.
Just nine years ago, the top-selling image of a woman at leading stock photography agency Getty looked like this:
On Aug. 3, 378, a battle was fought in Adrianople, in what was then Thrace and is now the province of Edirne, in Turkey. It was a battle that Saint Ambrose referred to as “the end of all humanity, the end of the world.”
Pope Francis is not impressed by Europe.
Tess Asplund, a 42-year-old Afro-Swedish woman from Stockholm, became a global hero overnight on May 1, after doing something radical: She stood up, alone, against injustice.
An estimated 462 million children of school age live in countries affected by humanitarian crises—including war, famine, and deadly epidemics—a UNICEF report published on May 4 found.
The need for family planning among migrants and refugees is well known (pdf). This population is at a higher risk of unwanted pregnancies and has less knowledge of, and access to, contraception. For women living in refugee camps, unwanted pregnancy adds hardship to an already terrible situation, and yet reproductive issues are hardly addressed as a priority in refugee camps, or conflict areas.
Palermo, Italy
Italy, home to the fourth largest Muslim population in Europe, has a mosque problem. Not because, as many a xenophobic politicians would claim, there are too many of them (link in Italian)—but for the opposite reason.
The growing Zika pandemic has quickly become a serious threat for pregnant women, who are at risk of contracting the virus and whose fetuses can develop serious conditions, such as microcephaly. The speed at which the epidemic has spread has world leaders up in arms with plans to fight the virus, which include taking away funds from research on other serious conditions (remember Ebola?).
Sant’angelo dei lombardi, Italy
In Senegal, in Dakar alone, there are 50,000 child beggers. Many of them are Talibé children, or children who are studying in daaras (Koranic schools), who often become prey of exploitation, and are forced to work and beg on the streets. Their life is terrifyingly challenging—so much so it became the subject of an action game.
With a life expectancy of 85.2 years, Italian women are expected to live, on average, five years longer than Italian men. This inevitably makes for a lot of widows: As of 2015, there were 3,782,095 widows in Italy (6.1% of the population, link in Italian), versus 741,760 widowers.
“Of all your loves mention only the marriage/of all your children only those who were born” writes Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska in one of her most famous poems, Pisanie życiorysu (“Preparing a Curriculum Vitae“).
Pizza might be the most Italian of foods—so much so that the country has nominated it for UNESCO heritage protection.
Malaria may have finally been defeated in Europe—there haven’t been any cases there in the past year—but it still remains among the 10 main causes of death worldwide according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
A boat carrying six Cuban migrants reached Miami Beach, Florida, this morning (Apr. 25), according to local news outlets.
Beyoncé’s latest album, Lemonade, was released on Apr. 23, and has already broken the Internet. Presented in a special on HBO, the 12 track album includes Formation, the single she sang at the Super Bowl, and feels deeply personal, with several songs about heartbreak, infidelity, and rage.
Saudi Arabia is one of the worst countries in the world to be a woman, coming in 134 out of 145 in a World Economic Forum ranking.
Greece has seen a big drop in the number of refugees and migrants coming to the country following an agreement between the EU and Turkey that calls for ”irregular” arrivals from Turkey to be turned back or deported.
Palermo, Italy
Italians hate to see their delicate cuisine bastardized by foreigners—especially when those foreigners are French.
It seems there is a market for single women in China—an actual “marriage market” in Shanghai where parents post profiles of their daughters (and sons), by using cards that list their physical attributes and other skills and credentials.