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The Ethiopian government accuses Tigray forces of expanding the conflict into the neighboring Afar region, the third regional state to be drawn into the conflict. Authorities say this has imperiled food aid to some of the 54,000 people who have fled their homes due to the fighting.

The World Food Program is renewing its appeal for unimpeded access to Ethiopia's northern province of Tigray, where an estimated four million people are suffering from acute hunger.

The U.N. refugee agency on Friday called for concerted action to help record-breaking numbers of people forced to flee increasingly violent armed attacks in Burkina Faso.

Rising violent attacks by jihadist groups in Burkina Faso are forcing record-breaking numbers of people to flee both inside the country and across international borders, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, reported on Friday.

The public water system in Lebanon is "on life support" and could collapse at any moment, putting 71 per cent of the population, or more than four million people, at immediate risk of losing access to safe supply, the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, warned on Friday.

The Department of the Air Force announced today it is pausing plans related to aircraft basing decisions at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona and Nellis AFB, Nevada that are dependent upon the requirement to retire 42 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs.

Members of a top Iraqi delegation expect to reach an agreement Friday with the Biden administration to end the U.S. combat mission in Iraq, the country's foreign minister told VOA on Thursday.

The United States is pleased to announce nearly $155 million in additional humanitarian assistance for the people of Iraq as well as Iraqi refugees in the region and generous communities hosting them.

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One person was shot dead in Iran during the eighth consecutive night of protests over severe water shortages, bringing the death toll in the unrest to at least five.

French President Emmanuel Macron has changed his phone and phone number in light of allegations that Israel's Pegasus spyware might have targeted him, a presidency official has said.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Friday that Washington is waiting for North Korea's response to a proposal for resuming dialogue and looks forward to a "reliable, predictable and constructive way forward" with Pyongyang.

A bipartisan Congressional committee on China has asked the president of the International Olympic Committee to postpone and relocate the 2022 Beijing Winter Games if China does not end its severe human rights abuses against Muslim Uyghurs in its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

As flood-stricken residents of the central Chinese province of Henan scrambled to clean up following disastrous flooding in and around the provincial capital Zhengzhou, the meteorology bureau warned of more heavy rains brought in by Typhoon In-Fa, which is predicted to make landfall at the weekend.

The White House said Friday that it is "undeterred" by the latest sanctions announced by China targeting several U.S. citizens, which came days after Washington sanctioned seven Chinese officials over Beijing's crackdown in Hong Kong.

The US is not qualified to lecture China or interfere in Chinese affairs, nor is it qualified to say it deals with China from "a position of strength," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a press conference on Friday, referring to US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman's upcoming visit to China, as analysts noted that the results of her visit depend

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Ten democratic politicians and activists have said they will plead guilty to 'illegal assembly' charges for attending a gathering marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre in Hong Kong.

Belarus has forced the closure of 15 more nongovernmental organizations as strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka's crackdown against pro-democracy activists, the independent media, and civil rights groups continues to intensify.

The crackdown that intensified upon opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's return to Russia six months ago appears to be expanding ahead of parliamentary elections at summer's end, with increasingly broad swaths of society in the crosshairs. The latest victims include a legal-aid organization and an independent media outlet whose investigations have irked the Kremlin.