Born out of World War II’s devastation to prevent the scourge of conflict, the United Nations marked its 75th anniversary Monday with an appeal from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to preserve the longest period in modern history without a military confrontation between the world’s most powerful nations.

The UN chief told the mainly virtual official commemoration that “it took two world wars, millions of deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust for world leaders to commit to international cooperation and the rule of law,” and that commitment produced results.

Flooding has affected well over a million people across East Africa, another calamity threatening food security on top of a historic locust outbreak and the coronavirus pandemic.

The Nile River has hit its highest levels in a half-century under heavy seasonal rainfall, and large parts of Sudan, Ethiopia and South Sudan have been swamped amid worries about climate change.

The Trump administration is hoping to capitalize on agreements to be signed this week between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain by pressing for an end to a dispute that has roiled relations between the Gulf Arab countries.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that the U.S. is hopeful that Saudi Arabia and its regional allies will end a more than three-year blockade on neighboring Qatar that has persisted despite repeated U.S. calls for a resolution. Mr. Pompeo said it was particularly important to build on Arab-Israeli rapprochement to better confront increasing malign behavior from Iran.

A UN investigator warned of the possibility of “another Iron curtain” descending in Europe during an urgent debate on the human rights situation in Belarus in Geneva on Friday.

The all-day talks, called by Germany on behalf of the European Union, was interrupted repeatedly by the delegations of Belarus, Russia, China and Venezuela raising procedural objections.

Taiwan scrambled fighter jets on Friday as 18 Chinese aircraft buzzed the island, crossing the sensitive midline of the Taiwan Strait, in response to a senior U.S. official holding talks in Taipei.

China had earlier announced combat drills and denounced what it called collusion between the island, which it claims as part of its territory, and the United States.

Whether students have to wear masks, and the trouble they could face if they do not, depends on where they go to school.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages masks for most students, especially when they are less than 6 feet apart. The exceptions are children younger than 2 and those with breathing problems or who cannot remove the mask without help.

Yoshihide Suga became Japan’s first new prime minister in nearly eight years on Wednesday, pledging to contain COVID-19 and push reforms after retaining about half of predecessor Shinzo Abe’s lineup in his cabinet.

Mr. Suga, 71, said he would stick with his former boss’ “Abenomics” growth policies while pushing reforms including deregulation, digitalization and smashing of bureaucratic barriers.

One in seven cases of COVID-19 reported to the World Health Organization is a health worker and in some countries that figure rises to one in three, the agency said on Thursday.

The WHO called for frontline medical workers to be provided with protective equipment to prevent them from being infected with the novel coronavirus, and potentially spreading it to their patients and families.

Reuters – The coronavirus pandemic threw millions of Americans out of work, ended the longest U.S. economic expansion on record and undermined a key argument for President Donald Trump’s re-election.

Now, the Republican president and his Democratic opponent in the November 3 election, Joe Biden, want to convince Americans they can get the economy back on track. Here is how they want to revive it:

Reuters – More than 100 wildfires have ripped through parts of the U.S. West in recent weeks, consuming areas nearly the size of New Jersey, killing at least 35 people and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

While wildfires typically erupt in states west of the Rocky Mountains in late summer, a number of factors have made fires in recent years more damaging.

A panel of government health advisers said Friday there is no clear evidence that a harder-to-crush version of the painkiller OxyContin designed to discourage abuse actually resulted in fewer overdoses or deaths.

The conclusion from the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel comes more than a decade after Purdue Pharma revamped its blockbuster opioid, which has long been blamed for sparking a surge in painkiller abuse beginning in the 1990s.

We counted 21 meteors in an hour. The streaks of light were part of the annual Perseid meteor shower that my wife and I recently observed.

Sitting under the glorious night sky, I realized it had been too long since I had stared at the stars. I felt as though I was forgetting the vastness of Creation, with its innumerable orbs of light, planets and galaxies.

Israel will enter a three-week nationwide lockdown starting on Friday to contain the spread of the coronavirus after a second-wave surge of new cases, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

During the lockdown, which comes during the Jewish high-holiday season, Israelis will have to stay within 500 meters of their houses, but can travel to workplaces that will be allowed to operate on a limited basis.

Search-and-rescue teams, with dogs in tow, were deployed across the blackened ruins of southern Oregon towns on Sunday as smoldering wildfires still ravaged U.S. Pacific Coast states after causing widespread destruction.

A blitz of wildfires across Oregon, California and Washington has destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns this summer, scorching more than 4 million acres and killing more than two dozen people since early August.

The United States military on Wednesday announced that it would reduce its presence in Iraq from 5,200 to 3,000 troops this month, formalizing a long-expected move.

Last month, Reuters reported that the United States was expected to reduce its troops presence in Iraq by about a third.

Rapid population growth, lack of access to food and water and increased exposure to natural disasters mean more than 1 billion people face being displaced by 2050, according to a new analysis of global ecological threats.

Compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), a think-tank that produces annual terrorism and peace indexes, the Ecological Threat Register uses data from the United Nations and other sources to assess eight ecological threats and predict which countries and regions are most at risk.