Author: Reporter

Bianca Williams was tired of trying to find a store that either accepted federal food benefits for low-income mothers and their children or a store that had quality produce. So the Milwaukee resident — who has seven kids, including two currently being breastfed — decided in November that she would rather turn to frozen Thanksgiving leftovers and food from family and friends. More than 6 million people in the U.S. get benefits from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women and Children, commonly known as WIC. But it is not always easy to get the fresh produce, baby formula,...

GRAPHIC PHOTO WARNING: This gallery contains news images from war that some viewers may find disturbing. For a few hours every day or night, Dr. Suhaib Alhamss tries to sleep on a thin mattress in an operating room. He swings in and out of half-consciousness, both too tired to open his eyes and too tense to let go. Thunderous shellfire often rattles the windows of the hospital he directs in the southern Gaza Strip. But the worst sounds, Dr. Alhamss said, come from inside Kuwaiti Hospital: the cries of tiny children with no parents and enormous wounds. The panicked...

Every morning, before she is even out of her pajamas, Rachel Goldberg-Polin tears a piece of masking tape off the roll, grabs a marking pen, and in thick black strokes writes down the number of days her son, Hersh, has been held hostage by Hamas militants. Then she sticks the tape to her chest. “I find it so remarkable how nauseating it is every single time,” she said. “And it’s good. I don’t want to get used to it. I don’t want anybody to get used to the fact that these people are missing.” Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, was last...

South Korea’s top court ordered two Japanese companies to financially compensate more of their wartime Korean workers for forced labor, as it sided in December with its contentious 2018 verdicts on the firms that caused a huge setback in relations between the Asian neighbors. But observers said that the ruling would not likely hurt bilateral ties much since Seoul and Tokyo, now governed by different leaders, are pushing hard to bolster their partnerships in the face of shared challenges like North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats and China’s increasing assertiveness. The Supreme Court ruled that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries must provide...

To the steady rat-tat-tat of machine guns and exploding bursts of smoke, amphibious tanks slice across a lake not far from the big green mountains that stand along the world’s most heavily armed border. Dozens of South Korean and U.S. combat engineers build a pontoon bridge to ferry tanks and armored vehicles across the water, all within easy range of North Korean artillery. For seven decades, the allies have staged annual drills like this recent one to deter aggression from North Korea, whose 1950 surprise invasion of South Korea started a war that has technically yet to end. The...