Microscopic air pollution caused mostly by burning fossil fuels shortens lives worldwide by more than two years, researchers reported Tuesday.
Across South Asia, the average person would live five years longer if levels of fine particulate matter met World Health Organization standards, according to a report from the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute.
Five Iranian crew of a cargo plane grounded in Argentina since last week have had their passports temporarily seized pending a probe into possible links to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, officials said Monday.
A judge on Monday ordered their travel documents held for an additional 72 hours after Security Minister Anibal Fernandez said information had been received from "foreign organizations" that some among the crew may be linked to companies with ties to the Guards.
The Revolutionary Guards, Iran's ideological army, is on a US blacklist of foreign "terrorist organizations."
The United Nations is launching a crowd-funding campaign for an operation intended to prevent an ageing Yemeni oil tanker from unleashing a potentially catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, a senior official said Monday.
"We hope to raise $5 million by the end of June," David Gressly, the UN's humanitarian coordinator for the war-hit country, told an online press briefing, adding it was an "ambitious" target.
Iraq, an oil-rich but poverty-stricken country battered by decades of war and insurgency, has been mired in a long political crisis that just took a turn for the worse.
Shiite Muslim firebrand cleric and former anti-US militia leader Moqtada Sadr on Sunday sparked fresh turmoil when his followers, the biggest bloc in parliament, resigned en masse.
The move deepened uncertainty in a country where democratic institutions built since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein remain fragile and Iran wields major influence.
Saudi Arabia has required would-be hajj pilgrims from many Western countries to apply for visas via a government portal online, a move intended to crack down on "fake" travel agencies, officials told AFP on Monday.
The new system was put in place as the kingdom prepares to welcome 850,000 Muslims from abroad for the annual hajj after two years during which pilgrims not already in Saudi Arabia were barred because of Covid pandemic restrictions.
Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Monday urged citizens in Turkey to leave "as soon as possible" over threats that Iranian operatives are actively planning attacks on Israelis in Istanbul.
The stark warning comes amid the latest surge in tensions between bitter rivals Iran and Israel, with Tehran blaming the Jewish state for a series of attacks on its nuclear and military infrastructure, inside Iran but also inside Syria.
Lapid made no mention of any alleged Israeli operations against Iranian targets.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi landed in Israel on Monday as the EU seeks to wean itself off Russian fossil fuel imports.
Both leaders were due to hold energy talks in Israel, which has turned from a natural gas importer into an exporter in recent years because of major offshore finds.
Von der Leyen was to meet Foreign Minister Yair Lapid later Monday and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday, with talks expected to focus "in particular on energy cooperation", a commission statement said.
Iraq temporarily closed Baghdad airport Monday as choking clouds of dust blanketed the capital, the latest crippling sandstorm in a country that has warned climate change poses an "existential threat".
It was the tenth such storm since mid-April to hit Iraq, which has been battered by intense droughts, soil degradation, high temperatures and low rainfall linked to climate change.
Iraqi lawmakers from firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's bloc resigned Sunday, the parliamentary speaker said, in a move ostensibly designed to up pressure to end an eight-month political paralysis.
Sadr on Thursday had urged the MPs from his bloc -- the biggest in parliament -- to ready resignation papers, in a bid, he said, to break the parliamentary logjam and create space for the establishment of a new government.
The International Atomic Energy Agency on Sunday urged Iran to resume talks "now" to avoid a crisis that could make it "extremely more difficult" to salvage the 2015 nuclear accord.
Iran this week disconnected some cameras allowing international inspectors to monitor its nuclear activities in response to a Western resolution passed June 8 in which the UN agency denounced Tehran's lack of cooperation.
Twenty-seven surveillance cameras "have been removed," IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in an interview broadcast Sunday by CNN, calling it a "very serious move."
