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Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner arrives at 10 Downing Street for a weekly Cabinet meeting in London, United Kingdom, on Sept. 2, 2025.
Hard Numbers: UK’s deputy PM resigns, US jobs market stagnates, Another earthquake hits Afghanistan, & More
£40,000: Deputy UK Prime Minister Angela Rayner has resigned from her role after it emerged that she legally avoided £40,000 ($54,000) in stamp duty – the tax incurred on buying a house – when she purchased a second home. Rayner also quit her roles as housing secretary and deputy Labour Party leader, which has prompted a major reshuffle: Foreign Secretary David Lammy replaces Rayner as deputy PM, and also becomes justice secretary. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper replaces Lammy at the helm of the Foreign Office.
22,000: The US economy added just 22,000 jobs in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Further, the rise in nonfarm payroll employment for June and July combined was revised down 21,000. The stagnant labor market will put extra pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at a faster pace.
3: A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck southeastern Afghanistan Thursday, the third quake to hit the country this week. At least 2,205 people have now died as a result. Rescue efforts remain hampered by landslides and rough terrain, with helicopters delivering aid. The Taliban has appealed for international aid as aftershocks continue to rattle the quake-prone region.
102: At 102, Kokichi Akuzawa became the oldest person to summit Mount Fuji, climbing with family and friends. Akuzawa broke his own record, having set the last one when he scaled Fuji at 96.
370: Rescue workers have now recovered 370 bodies from a remote mountain village in Darfur, per a local leader, after landslides battered this area of western Sudan on Sunday. Meanwhile, aid workers are using donkeys to deliver aid to those who are still living. Heavy rains and floods continue to batter the area.Displaced people ride an animal-drawn cart after Rapid Support Forces attacks on Zamzam displacement camp, in the town of Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan, on April 15, 2025.
UN’s highest court dismisses Sudan’s claims of Emirati role in Darfur genocide
The International Court of Justice on Monday rejected Sudan’s claims that the United Arab Emirates had violated the Genocide Conventions by allegedly supplying arms to the Rapid Support Forces, a rebel paramilitary group involved in ethnic violence in Darfur.
What’s happening in Darfur? A vicious civil war, one that reached the two-year mark last month, has ripped Sudan to shreds. Darfur has seen the worst of the war, with the RSF allegedly committing genocide there. This latest ethnic-cleansing effort is separate from the one that took place in the region between 2003 and 2005, but RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, nicknamed “Hemeti,” has been involved in both.
As for the legal case. The Sudanese government claimed that the UAE helped supply weapons to the RSF in Darfur, but the court rejected this. Some UN experts and US lawmakers believe there is evidence, though, that the Emirati nation has played a role.
Nowhere is safe. Sudan’s civil war keeps chugging along. The RSF launched strikes on a military airport near Port Sudan on Sunday, according to the Sudanese army. The rebel group didn’t confirm the attack. Prior to the strikes, Port Sudan had been considered one of the safest places in the country.
What’s next? A slew of world leaders gathered in London three weeks ago to discuss the war and renew calls for peace, yet there continues to be a stalemate as each side trades blows. The government army seized control of the capital Khartoum in late March, but the RSF snatched Al Nahud, a strategic town in west Sudan, last week. In retrospect, the calls for peace in the UK capital were in hope rather than expectation. The question now is whether either side can gain enough ground to force negotiations — or whether the international community will apply pressure to bring them to the table.A displaced Sudanese woman looks on as she sits next children at “Abdallah Nagi” shelter camp, which houses people mostly displaced from the capital Khartoum, in Port Sudan, Sudan, on April 15, 2025.
Sudan’s forgotten Civil War reaches grim milestone
While the world is flooded with bad news, nowhere is it worse than Sudan, where the civil war hit the two-year mark on Tuesday.
Due to the fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, 13 million people have been displaced, over 150,000 are dead, a genocide is reportedly unfolding in Darfur, and reports of famine and rape being used as a weapon are widespread throughout the country.
While SAF regained control of the capital Khartoum last month, the RSF is brutally consolidating the Darfur region in the West. In recent days, they launched a fierce offensive in el-Fasher, aiming to capture the last remaining state capital in Darfur still under SAF’s control by setting ablaze refugee camps that are home to half a million people.
Desperation times. The war pits two leaders of the 2021 Sudanese coup — SAF Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — against each other. Each has foreign backers keeping them stocked with weapons, but neither appears ready to lay down arms. Nevertheless, the UK hosted ministers from 20 countries in London on Tuesday in an attempt to restart peace talks.
The critical question: With global attention on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, diplomatic engagement with Sudan has fallen by the wayside. What would it take for the world to respond to the Sahel state with the urgency it demands?Sphen, one half of the world’s most famous gay gentoo penguin couple, has died at the age of 11.
Hard Numbers: Bye-bye birdie, High Court sides with Maduro, Feds intervene in Canadian rail strike, El Salvador ain’t so safe, Aid trickles into Darfur, World’s oldest woman
11: Sphen, one-half of Sydney Sea Life Aquarium’s beloved same-sex gentoo penguin couple, passed away of natural causes this week, his caretakers announced on Thursday. Sphen and his partner, Magic, spent six years together and successfully adopted and raised two chicks. When keepers showed Magic Sphen’s body to help him understand his partner had died, the entire colony reportedly broke into birdsong.
0: Venezuela's Supreme Court has confirmed President Nicolas Maduro’s victory in last month’s presidential elections, even though the opposition says they are the rightful winner. But the court's impartiality – which is closely aligned with his regime and has ruled against the government exactly zero times – is highly questionable. The court’s certification contradicts experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center who were invited to observe the election and sided with the opposition.
9,000: After Canada’s top two railroads, Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City, locked out more than 9,000 unionized workers on Thursday, the government moved to issue a back-to-work order. Canadian National Railway will begin returning to work, while the stoppage at Canadian Pacific Kansas City will continue. But the union and company officials are scheduled to meet the board Friday morning.
1: Data from the attorney general’s office of El Salvador shows that one person in the tiny Central American country goes missing each day despite frequent claims from strongman President Nayib Bukele that his mass arrests of suspected gang members have made El Salvador the “safest country in the Western Hemisphere.” The Working Group for Missing Persons in El Salvador, an association of nine NGOs, says this represents a 10% annual increase, and it has set up a website where Salvadorans can register missing loved ones.
15: A tiny trickle of humanitarian aid managed to enter Sudan’s Darfur province on Wednesday, but just 15 of 131 trucks were allowed to cross the border from Chad before Sudan’s army shut the route. The trucks are carrying enough food for 13,000 people in a region on the brink of famine, but there are more than 6 million people in Darfur who don’t know where their next meal will come from.
116: The Guinness Book of World Records confirmed that 116-year-old Tomiko Itooka of Japan is the world’s oldest living person after she proved she was born on May 23, 1908, in Osaka. She played volleyball in high school, managed her husband’s textile factory, and was an active hiker, summiting the 10,000-foot Mount Ontake twice. When informed of her new global status, she replied simply, “Thank you.”
A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. Hundreds of Masalit families from Sudan's West Darfur state were relocated here months after fleeing to the Chadian border town of Adre, following an ethnically targeted massacre in the city of El Geneina.
Sudan’s Masalit people are being butchered. Is the world watching?
On Saturday, the Sudanese Army fended off an attack by the Rapid Support Forces on the city of el-Fasher in the western region of Darfur. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are sheltering in the city, the final stronghold of government forces in the region, having escaped unspeakable horrors perpetrated by the RSF and allied Arab militias.
The clashes around el-Fasher lasted several hours and included strikes on heavily populated areas. The Army may have won this weekend, but the RSF maintains control of the hinterlands and will likely attempt to take the city again. The more remarkable part, however, is that the Army acted to protect civilians.
Last week, Human Rights Watch published a landmark report on earlier violence in Darfur, based on over 220 interviews with civilians. It showed that as RSF and allied fighters systematically raped, tortured, and murdered Masalit people, the Army forces simply stood by.
The Masalit and other Black ethnic groups in southern and western Sudan were the traditional targets of Arab slavers from the north. That ethno-religious conflict has formed part of the basis of multiple civil wars since Sudan’s independence, and the Masalit, in particular, were already viciously persecuted by Janjaweed militias starting in 2003.
The violence resurged after a Masalit governor, Mohamed Abdalla al-Doma, took power in West Darfur in 2020. Local Arabs in the capital el-Geneina demanded protection from the RSF – which evolved directly from the Janjaweed militias – and the fighting has been worse there than anywhere in Sudan apart from Khartoum.
The HRW report estimates up to 15,000 people died in the province between April and November 2023, with survivors recounting staggering sexual and physical violence. One woman, Karima, age 26, says men went door to door in her neighborhood, executing male civilians. When they reached her house, they beat her and raped her three times at gunpoint.
She and over half a million survivors have now fled to eastern Chad, where they live in desperate conditions in refugee camps. It’s a perverse homecoming for some who grew up in similar camps two decades ago.
Once again, the international community is struggling to find time for Sudan. The Biden administration marked the one year anniversary of the present war last month by issuing an executive order authorizing sanctions on Sudanese leaders — pretty weak tea. The UN authorized a factfinding mission in October 2023 that has been unable to carry out its mandate, while the World Food Programme’s appeal for aid for Sudan was only 5% fulfilled in February.
Failing to protect civilians like Karima isn’t only a tragedy; it undermines confidence in the international order, particularly in Africa, the continent that will drive the world’s population and economic growth in the coming century. It’s also a damning reflection of the international community’s commitment to human rights and justice.
FILE PHOTO: Sudanese refugees who fled the violence in Sudan's Darfur region and newly arrived ride their donkeys looking for space to temporarily settle, near the border between Sudan and Chad in Goungour, Chad May 8, 2023.
Fears of mass killings rise in Darfur
Genocide once again threatens to devastate Darfur as the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces encircle El Fasher, the last city in North Darfur not under the paramilitary group’s control.
The United Nations warned this weekend of imminent attacks on El Fasher’s 800,000 residents and hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by Sudan's year-long civil war, a situation that human rights investigators describe as having the potential for “Hiroshima- and Nagasaki-level casualties.”
A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “The world must act swiftly to prevent a potential genocide in the region.”
Eight and a half million Sudanese have been displaced since conflict broke out in April 2023, with 25 million at risk of famine nationwide. The RSF has been accused of massacres and mass rapes, most notably in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina, where 10,000-14,000 people were killed in ethnically targeted attacks last year against Black African Masalit and other non-Arab civilians.
Now, echoes of Darfur’s 2003 famine, which stemmed from the same ethnic conflicts, have resurfaced – but with competing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, aid workers fear the world once again will not pay attention until it is too late.Women from the city of Al-Junina (West Darfur) cry after receiving the news about the death of their relatives as they waited for them in Chad, Nov. 7, 2023.
Sudan genocide feared after massacre at refugee camp
Sudan’s ongoing civil war may once again be spiraling into genocide. Late last week, the UN Refugee Agency condemned the mass killing of at least 800 people within 72 hours by the Arab paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and its allies in the Ardamata refugee camp in West Darfur. This weekend, the EU's chief diplomat Josep Borrell cited witness reports that over 1,000 members of the Black African Masalit population had been killed, noting that the international community “cannot turn a blind eye on what is happening in Darfur and allow another genocide to happen in this region."
Borrell was referencing the mass killing in Darfur that saw 300,000 Masalit murdered between 2003 and 2005 by an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed. Former President Omar al-Bashir used the militia to crush Darfuri rebel groups who were revolting against the neglect of the region's Black African population. Today’s RSF, including its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemedti, are reportedly drawn from this group of Janjaweed fighters.
The UN Refugee Agency also reported “shocking accounts of widespread rape and sexual violence” committed by the RSF, following a report in August 2023 by the UN Human Rights Commission that the RSF was deploying rape and sexual violence “as tools to punish and terrorize communities.”
So far, however, no major world leaders have condemned the violence, called for a ceasefire, or demanded meetings to end the conflict.
Women from the city of Al-Junina (West Darfur) cry after receiving the news about the death of their relatives as they waited for them in Chad, November 7, 2023.
Sudan’s civil war rages through Darfur
Sudan’s civil war reached a grim turning point this week as Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries solidified their control over the Darfur region in Western Sudan. The RSF has been accused of war crimes there as part of its conflict with the Sudanese government.
The background: Back in 2019, the Sudanese military and the RSF cooperated to topple long-serving dictator Omar Bashir, but they fell out over how to work together thereafter. In April of this year, clashes between them erupted into a full-blown war that has left thousands dead and driven more than 5.7 million people from their homes. More than a million have fled to neighboring Chad, one of Africa’s poorest countries.
In Darfur specifically, the RSF and allied Arab militias have been accused in recent months of targeted massacres of the Masalit, a local Black African ethnic group that is a minority within the wider Arab-dominated Sudanese state. RSF fighters have also been accused of systematically abducting and raping women and girls in Darfur.
Flashback: Twenty years ago, Darfur was the scene of gruesome atrocities in which the Sudanese government and local Arab militias (including the fearsome janjaweed horsemen) slaughtered more than 170,000 Masalit in response to a rebellion against the central government. The US government labeled that campaign a “genocide” in 2004.
Peace talks have failed. There are various cross-cutting initiatives led by the African Union, Egypt, the US and Saudi Arabia, and South Sudan. Several ceasefires have fallen apart already. Meanwhile, Sudan’s civilians continue to pay the price.
The UN warned on Tuesday that the deepening war had “turned homes into cemeteries.”