February 05, 2024
An Ethiopian family in search of food from fleeing remote villages where wells have dried up due to drought arrives in Korom, northeast Ethiopia.
REUTERS/Radu Sigheti RSS/ACM
3,000,000: At least three million Ethiopians are at acute risk of hunger in the north of the country, where the federal government and ethnic Tigrayan separatists fought a grinding war from 2020 to 2022. The UK government says it is setting aside £100 million ($125.4 million) to aid people at risk of starvation in the region.
6: A drone attack early Monday killed six Kurdish fighters allied to the US on a military base housing US troops in Syria. No US deaths or injuries were reported, and the Biden administration says it will continue to target Iranian proxies in the region.
1,700,000: Did you feel that impending sense of doom over the weekend? It wasn’t (only) the Sunday Scaries. A skyscraper-sized meteorite is hurtling toward Earth and will come within just 1.7 million miles of our little blue marble on Friday. Scientists say we’ll be fine … but the asteroid is swinging back around in 2032.
18: The good people of Paris have voted to triple parking fees for SUVs, which will now run you €18 ($19.50) an hour in the city center and €12 further out. Mayor Anne Hidalgo celebrated the measure as an environmentalist victory – but at least one woman in the fashionable 8th arrondissement told Voice of America she’s sick of the mayor’s “diktats.”