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Items by Thomson Reuters Foundation
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Education is at risk in the West Bank from Israel’s military operation and funding cuts
Every day, Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank run the gauntlet of Israeli roadblocks, checkpoints and settler attacks on their way to school. Since the launch of Israel’s major military operation in the West Bank in January, though, the trip has become even more perilous. Thousands of troops...
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The death of the American dream after Trump axes refugee funds
Ali landed in the United States as a relieved refugee from Iraq just as Donald Trump moved back into the White House. His timing wasn’t good. “When I came to America, they assured me… they’ll help me financially, provide a place and food,” said Ali by telephone. “But when I...
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Children in Gaza defy trauma to return to school
Children have returned to school in Gaza, taking classes in tents or in the rubble of schools where families sheltered during the war, but trauma, aid blockades and the threat of more fighting could derail their drive to learn. At least 14,500 children have been killed in the war to...
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Sudan's refugees face deadly game of 'snakes and ladders' in Libya
The mayday relay came in from Eagle 3, a surveillance aircraft for the EU’s Frontex border agency – a rubber boat crammed with 70 people was taking on water off the coast of Libya. Humanity 1, a rescue ship operated by the German NGO SOS Humanity, rushed to the scene...
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Vanishing mountains: winter air pollution smothers Iran
Toxic air that cloaked Iran this winter sent thousands to hospital, shuttered schools and forced Tehran to admit it must do more to tackle its top pollutants: old cars and filthy fuel. In the capital, a sprawling mountain-ringed metropolis that is home to more than 18 million people, residents experienced...
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'We need everything': Gazans ponder mammoth task of rebuilding
As bombs rained down and entire neighbourhoods around her were pulverised, Shayma Abualatta found the only way to cope with the trauma of Gaza’s 15-month-long war was to make sure she did all she could to get an education. Now the 21-year-old, who is studying computer science and computer engineering,...
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Syrian exodus reveals fears of some behind the joy of many
The exhausted-looking man stood on the Lebanese side of the Masnaa border crossing and turned his back on Syria as he scanned cars parked along the hilly road that marks the most direct route from Beirut to the Syrian capital, Damascus. He had left his home in Damascus with his...
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Cradle of freedom? Saudis lambasted for hosting UN internet forum
Saudi Arabia plays host this month to a major United Nations effort to discuss internet policy, drawing accusations of rank hypocrisy from rights activists who say the kingdom represses free speech and jails online critics. Just this January, activists say Riyadh sentenced a Saudi woman to 11 years in prison...
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FACTBOX - Syria: the war in numbers
On 15 March, 2011, a 40-strong crowd gathered in Old Damascus chanting political slogans. The brief protest in Syria’s capital marked the start of nearly 14 years of war and brutality that ended with the fall of President Bashar Al-Assad. On 8 December, 2024, Syrian rebels seized Damascus after a...
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‘Invisible' refugee children caught in Europe's migration red tape
As silently as they had arrived, three teenagers slipped away following a member of a smuggling gang, hardly older than themselves, through the shadowed-filled station in the north-eastern Italian city of Trieste one cold winter evening. Less than 100 km (62 miles) from the Italian border with Slovenia, Trieste’s central...
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In Lebanon, people with disabilities isolated, abandoned by war
As bombs rained down on Beirut’s southern suburbs, Ali Hussaini faced a heart-wrenching challenge: how to explain what was happening to his two partially deaf daughters. “They would ask me what is going on. Why are we running away?” Hussaini said. “When the bombs hit, I would try to move them...
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'We will die from hunger': Gazans decry Israel's UNRWA ban
After surviving more than a year of war in Gaza, Aisha Khaled is now afraid of dying of hunger if vital aid is cut off next year by a new Israeli law banning the UN Palestinian relief agency from operating in its territory. The law, which has been widely criticised...
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In Egypt, prospect of Trump win raises fears over school funding
In Egypt, education officials are watching the US election with concern, worried that if Republican Donald Trump wins, he could reduce US financial support for schools catering to students who hope to help lead the energy transition. The former president has pledged to roll back key climate policies implemented by...
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Sudan war risks 'lost generation' of children
Amina’s eyes were red-rimmed and vacant, her voice a whisper of grief as she recounted the day her 17-year-old son was killed in Sudan’s south-eastern town of Sinja. As gunfire erupted near their home in April, she tried to escape with her five children, but Ahmed was caught in the...
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One year of war in Gaza: Deadliest conflict for reporters
Palestinian journalist, Islam Al-Zaanoun, was so determined to cover the war in Gaza that she went back to work two months after giving birth. But, like all journalists in Gaza, she was not just covering the story – she was living it. The 34-year-old, who works for Palestine TV, gave...
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Sudan refugees in Egypt caught between conflict and crackdown
Abdallah Bahr waited with his family for hours in the scorching sun outside the UN Refugee Agency’s Cairo office, hoping to receive the asylum identification cards that would allow them to stay in Egypt after fleeing Sudan’s war. They had arrived at 2 a.m. in the morning, and finally got...
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Sickness can be 'death sentence' in Gaza as war fuels disease
In Gaza, falling ill can be a death sentence. Cancer patients are waiting to die, polio has returned and many of the doctors and nurses who might have offered help are dead, while the hospitals they worked at have been reduced to rubble. Doctors and health professionals say that even...
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In Gaza, keeping the internet on can cost lives but also save them
Forced to flee his home yet again as war raged across the Gaza Strip, Khalil Salim was desperate to get his family to safety but how could he be sure he wasn’t leading them deeper into danger? He needed up-to-date information and so he went online and checked out the...
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Gaza's pregnant women defy odds to give birth, protect babies
In a flimsy tent crouched low among the smashed buildings of Rafah, Palestine Bahr felt her contractions begin early one day in May. Her baby was coming but how would she make her way through the rubble-strewn streets to hospital without a car? She managed to find a donkey cart...
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Palestinian tech firms adapt to survive as war hits business
Before the Israel-Palestinian war, the women of the occupied West Bank-based tech non-profit Female Innovators and Investors of MENA (FINOMENA) had grand plans. Some were honing their coding skills ahead of a hackathon in partnership with Microsoft. Others were planning excitedly to travel to a networking event in Dubai...
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Palestinians lose jobs as Israeli firms seek foreign replacements
When Taha Amin-Ismail Khalifeh dialled into a conference call with his Israeli employer last month, the Palestinian hotel worker expected a briefing on how the Israel-Palestine war was affecting business. Instead, he and 40 others were laid off. Khalifeh, who lives in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, had worked as...
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Gaza's tech 'window to the world' shattered by Israel-Palestine war
If the internet was once Gaza’s window to the world, that window has now slammed shut and the Strip’s nascent tech industry has gone from incubator to grave in six weeks of all-out war. Some of Gaza’s brightest brains have died in the punishing Israeli bombardment, much of the Strip’s...
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In the Middle East, poor miss out as 'faulty' algorithms target aid
Asma Ibrahim, an unemployed woman who lives in a cramped shack in northern Lebanon, has no idea why she was refused a welfare benefit for the country’s poorest people – money that would prevent her five children from going to bed hungry. “People in need are not receiving anything,” she...
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Turkiye fishermen fight to save wetlands as water scarcity bites
They won a pioneering climate change lawsuit earlier this year – but few fishermen in the Turkish village of Tekelioglu feel hopeful that an ongoing battle in the courts can revive the dried-out lake where they have worked for generations. “I don’t feel anything anymore,” retired fisherman, Suleyman Pekkara, who...
