Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

The World Food Program will end its main assistance program in Syria in January, affecting millions

Summary: The United Nations’ World Food Program has announced that it will halt its main efforts in Syria beginning in January, due to financial constraints.

Context: The agency previously cut food assistance to the approximately 5.5 million Syrian civilians it was supporting back in July, and then in August it cut the financial aid it was providing to Syrian refugees in Jordon, both cuts the result of insufficient funding; in a recent statement, the World Food Program said that these cuts are arriving at a moment in which food security in the region is “worse than ever before”—about 90% of Syrians live in poverty—and that it will continue to maintain its smaller, less expensive programs, like providing school meals and rehabbing irrigation systems in Syria, but that ever-shrinking agency budgets and donor fatigue have made those efforts precarious, as well.

—The Associated Press

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Nigerian military drone attack kills 85 civilians in error

Summary: The President of Nigeria has ordered an investigation into an apparently accidental drone strike that killed a reported 85 people who were celebrating a religious holiday in a village the northern part of the country.

Context: Drones are commonly used in this part of Nigeria to attack what the government calls bandits, and this is not the first time military aircraft and drones have errantly bombed Nigerian civilians, instead—in September of 2022, alone, there were at least 14 recorded instances of purportedly accidental bombings of residential areas; raids by these bandit groups have plagued locals in the afflicted regions for years, and the government has been regularly criticized for not doing more to address the issue, but this recent bombing—which Amnesty International says may have actually killed closer to 120 people, as the gathered group was bombed, then bombed again when people rushed in to help the first group that was hit—seems to have struck a nerve, in part because of the number of people killed, and in part because they were attacked while celebrating the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

—Al Jazeera

Venezuela's Maduro pledges to permit oil and mining development in disputed territory

Summary: Following a seemingly positive, if controversial referendum on the matter, Venezuelan President Maduro has said that he intends to start building-out oil and mining infrastructure in a sizable chunk of neighboring Guyana as soon as possible.

Context: Maduro has been eyeing this region—which is about the size of Greece, and makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s internationally recognized territory—since 2015 when oil and gas were discovered offshore in large volumes and in exploitable areas; it’s unclear whether this pledge will be actionable, though, as the International Court of Justice has said no and proceeding with the annexation of this area, which was apparently supported by that aforementioned referendum, would likely involve military action, which though not impossible would probably result in a land-war in the Americas, which many nations in North, South, and Central America would be keen to avoid at all costs, likely making Venezuela even more of a pariah than it already is (though there’s some concern that Maduro might move forward with such an effort, either way, as he’s immensely unpopular and might see this as a means of holding onto power, despite that unpopularity).

—Reuters

The Office for National Statistics has increased its previous estimate of net migration to the UK from 606,000 to 745,000, citing “unexpected patterns” of migrant behavior for the significant miscalibration; this has led to angry mutterings from (generally anti-immigration) conservative politicians, while those on the left have accused the (conservative) government of failing to manage immigration and the economy, more broadly.

—The Guardian

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Temperature, in Celsius (that’s about -72 degrees Fahrenheit) recorded in Yakutsk, Russia (in Siberia) on Tuesday.

And that’s without taking into account the impact of the accompanying humidity and wind, which forecasters have said made the area feel like something closer to -63 C.

This is a huge swing, as parts of Siberia have also been experiencing record-high temperatures the past few years, causing permafrost to melt and infrastructure to collapse into mud and sinkholes, among other impacts.

—Reuters

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