Report: 43,000 estimated dead in Somalia drought last year

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A new report says an estimated 43,000 people died amid Somalia’s longest drought on record last year and half of them likely were children under 5 years old. It is the first official death toll announced in the drought withering large parts of the Horn of Africa. At least 18,000 people, and as many as 34,000, are forecast to die in the first six months of this year. Somalia and neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya are facing a sixth consecutive failed rainy season while rising global food prices and the war in Ukraine complicate the hunger crisis.

EU targets top Iran body, 8 officials over rights abuses

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on Iran’s Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution and 8 officials, including judges, lawmakers and clerics accused of links to the security crackdown on protesters. The protests began after the Sept. 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her arrest by the Islamic Republic’s morality police, and have grown into one of the most serious challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. At least 529 people have been killed in demonstrations, according to human rights activists in Iran.

China says deadly 2022 plane crash still being investigated

BEIJING (AP) — Experts are still investigating the cause of the crash of a China Eastern Airlines jetliner that killed 132 people one year ago, China’s government said Monday. The March 21, 2022, disaster was a rare failure for a Chinese airline industry that dramatically improved safety following deadly crashes in the 1990s. The Boeing 737-800 en route from Kunming in the southwest to Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, went into a nosedive from 29,000 feet, appeared to recover and then slammed into a mountainside. Everyone aboard was killed.

Millions of rotting fish to be removed from Outback river

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Contractors are being hired to remove millions of rotting fish from a river in the Australian Outback after a unprecedented die-off following floods and hot weather, police said on Monday. The fish started dying in the Darling River near the New South Wales town of Menindee on Friday. Officials say the die-off likely occurred because fish need more oxygen in hot weather, but oxygen levels in the water dropped after recent floods receded.