author - oman observer

On a recent weekday morning, during the rush to get out the door, my husband, Ben, started telling me about a podcast he’d just heard on the health impacts of air pollution — seemingly oblivious...

In China’s far west region of Xinjiang, officials imposed a near-total lockdown and made a rare admission of failure in their handling of a COVID-19 outbreak. In Inner Mongolia in the north, the...

It was supposed to be a joyous occasion for fans of Arema FC, the most beloved soccer team in Malang. Tens of thousands of young people — who call themselves “Aremania” — had packed the...

SHENZHEN, China — The signs of a looming lockdown in Shenzhen, China, had been building for a while. The city had been logging a few coronavirus infections for days. Daily COVID tests were required...

RIO DE JANEIRO — For the past decade, Brazil has lurched from one crisis to the next: environmental destruction, an economic recession, one president impeached, two presidents imprisoned, and a...

SOWETO, South Africa — For seven years, a daily pill has been available in South Africa to protect people from getting HIV. But when Victoria Makhandule, a community health worker, counsels the...

Canada announced Monday that it would remove all remaining coronavirus entry restrictions, including testing and quarantine requirements, effective Oct. 1, ending some of the world’s longest and...

After the success of a limited pilot program for online passport renewal this summer, the US State Department says it plans to fully launch an online passport-renewal option for the general public...

Although Devangi Patel, 33, has been working as a cardiothoracic anesthesiologist at a large medical center outside Atlanta for only two years, her goal is to afford to walk away from her job at 50. ...

MELBOURNE, Australia — As the sad scene now playing out on an Australian beach attests, rescuing an animal larger than a car is no easy matter. On Wednesday, about 230 pilot whales were stranded...

When the state-owned factory where Hesham el-Atar worked for 15 years was liquidated this month, he had a feeling it was linked to international pressure on the Egyptian government to reduce its role...

LONDON — The flowers have been cleared. Union Jacks no longer fly at half-staff. Ads have replaced Queen Elizabeth II’s image on bus shelters. A day after burying their revered monarch, Britons...

LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II will be laid to rest Monday, after a majestic state funeral at Westminster Abbey and a grand procession to Windsor Castle that is expected to draw a vast crowd,...

— One by one, they stood before the coffin, straightening their backs, squaring their shoulders, pulling in their shirttails. Most bowed their heads, some curtsied, and others blew kisses. Many...

LONDON — He’s been famous since day one, a tabloid staple as the firstborn child of Prince Charles and the glamorous young Princess Diana.Since then, Prince William has lived his life in public....

UNO NATIONAL PARK, India — Eight Namibian cheetahs arrived in India Saturday, decades after their local extinction, in an ambitious project to reintroduce the big cats that have divided experts on...

Roger Federer is the most famous living citizen of Switzerland. “It’s not even close,” Nicolas Bideau, a Swiss official in charge of promoting the country’s image abroad, once told me. ...

A New York woman was sentenced to four months in federal prison after spitting on a passenger, then shoving a flight attendant on an American Airlines flight in February 2021, a year that saw a record...

KYIV, Ukraine — A day after routing Russian forces in a lightning advance that seized hundreds of square miles and a strategic town in the northeast, Ukraine claimed additional territory Sunday in...

ISLAMABAD — Violent swells have swept away roads, homes, schools, and hospitals across much of Pakistan. Millions of people have been driven from their homes, struggling through waist-deep, fetid...