The world is facing a shortage of nurses and doctors. Shouldn’t there be more training schools specializing in medical training? Most countries have strict laws about licensing requirements for foreign doctors. This is another end-time problem that doesn’t seem to have an answer- much like the traffic and transportation issues that plague many countries.

The Philippines continues to transport truckloads of villagers as the erupting Mayon volcano has traumatized the villagers by the sight of red-hot lava flowing down its crater and they are also fearful of the sporadic blasts of ash. Nearly 15,000 people have left the mostly poor farming communities within a 3–7-mile radius of Mayon’s crater in the northeastern Albay province.

Gale force winds and heavy rains were lashing coastal parts of northwest and southern Pakistan and India’s western state of Gujarat. More than 170,000 people in the two countries were evacuated to safety before the arrival of Cyclone Biparjo which hit landfall in densely populated areas across the subcontinent Thursday, putting millions of lives at risk. Biparjoy has been churning across the northeastern Arabian Sea, heading toward southern Pakistan and western India since late last week, with winds of 160 kph (100 mph) and gusts up to 195 kph (121 mph). It has weakened slightly since Tuesday, sustaining winds of 150 kph (90 mph), equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane.

A bipartisan group of American lawmakers has asked the Biden administration to punish South Africa for what it sees as the country’s support of Russia’s war in Ukraine by moving a major trade conference scheduled to be held in South Africa this year to another country. The U.S. has suspected that South Africa is supplying Russia with materials for the war. Russia and South Africa as buddies?

Wildfires have been ravaging Nova Scotia for the last two weeks and residents are facing a harsh test as the 20,000 that were evacuated, and 60,000 acres were destroyed there was only a charred footprint in the foundation of most of the homes affected by the fire. The fires were so bad that the wind blew the bad air as far as New York and Boston and airports were closed for a couple of days because of poor visibility.

An elevated section of the major interstate Route 95 collapsed early last week in Philadelphia after a tanker truck carrying flammable cargo caught fire, closing a heavily traveled segment of the East Coast’s main north-south highway indefinitely.

Precipitation studies throughout the world show that precipitation can have wide-ranging effects on human well-being and ecosystems. Rainfall, snowfall, and the timing of snowmelt can all affect the amount of surface water and groundwater available for drinking, irrigation, and industry. They also influence river flooding and can determine what types of animals and plants (including crops) can survive in a particular place. Changes in precipitation can disrupt a wide range of natural processes, particularly if these changes occur more quickly than plant and animal species can adapt. On average, total annual precipitation has increased over land areas worldwide. Since 1901, global precipitation has increased at an average rate of 0.04 inches per decade.

Everybody in the United States and maybe throughout the world witnessed the video of the police officer in Minnesota pushing down on the neck of George Floyd, a black man, and killed him by asphyxiation in 2020 and led to protests throughout the U.S. and even in other parts of the world. But the US Justice Department’s scathing 89-page report looked well beyond that killing- describing a police force impervious to accountability whose officers beat, shot, and detained people unjustly and patrolled without the trust of residents. Floyd’s death has had an irrevocable impact on the community, the country, and the world.

In the U.S. and some other countries, there seems to be a news story every week about a mass shooting or unexplainable killing of innocent victims. Another one has arrived as at least 22 people were injured, and one person was killed by gunfire overnight in Illinois, in a peaceful Juneteenth celebration turned deadly, police say. An unknown number of suspects fired multiple rounds from multiple weapons into the large crowd of people gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, according to a statement from the DuPage County Sheriff’s Office. And in another shooting, two people were killed and three others injured after police said a shooter began firing “randomly” into a crowd at a Washington state campground that was hosting people attending a nearby music festival on Saturday night, police said. And the worst of them all was in Uganda where at least 37 people were killed- many of them students- and eight others were wounded when militants with an extremist group attacked a secondary school in western Uganda, in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the East African nation in years.