Somalia comes out on top in sea border row with Kenya

The UN's top court handed Somalia control of most of a potentially oil and gas-rich chunk of the Indian Ocean on Tuesday after a bitter legal battle with Kenya, which strongly rejected the ruling. Kenya got only a small slice of the disputed tract of sea off the East African coast in the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta responded strongly, saying his government "rejects in totality and does not recognise the findings in the decision". With Kenya refusing to recognise the "biased" court's authority, all eyes will be on what Nairobi does next in one of the world's most troubled regions.

El Nino puts millions in childhood malnutrition: study

Changing rain patterns caused by the El Nino warming phenomenon frequently drives millions of children into malnutrition and saddles them with life-long health issues, researchers said Tuesday, calling for action against the "predictable" impact. El Nino is a periodic event that affects global weather patterns, occurring every few years when eastern Pacific Ocean waters get unusually warm, leading to heavy rain in some regions but relative drought in others. US-based researchers examined 40 years worth of data for more than one million children across all developing country regions and compared their weight in El Nino with non-El Nino years.

Sri Lanka drops charges against admiral over killings

Sri Lankan authorities have dropped charges, including conspiracy to murder, against a former navy chief linked to 11 killings that drew international condemnation, the country's attorney general announced yesterday. The investigation against Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda was part of a case that cast a spotlight on extrajudicial killings during Sri Lanka's 37-year ethnic war that ended in 2009. Attorney General Sanjay Rajaratnam told the Court of Appeal that the state will not pursue charges against Karannagoda, who was first indicted in 2019. A court official told AFP that a lower court would soon discharge Karannagoda, one of 14 people accused of abducting the teenaged children of wealthy families in 2008 and 2009 and killing them after extorting money.