UNITED NATIONS: The UN World Food Program (WFP) warned yesterday that humanitarian funding cuts by governments are forcing the agency to drastically cut food rations to the world’s hungriest people, with each 1 per cent cut in aid risking to push 400,000 people towards starvation.

The agency said that the 60 per cent funding shortfall this year was the highest in the WFP’s 60-year history and marks the first time the Rome-based agency has seen contributions decline while needs rise.

PAKISTAN: The Taliban yesterday rejected a Pakistani government accusation that it is to blame for the closure of a key border crossing.

Pakistan shut the vital commercial artery of Torkham in its north-west last Wednesday after guards from the two countries exchanged fire.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch on Monday accused the Taliban of building unlawful structures of and indiscriminate and unprovoked firing. 

SERBIA: Police in Serbia said that they rounded up 371 migrants and found automatic weapons during a raid yesterday at the Hungarian border towns of Subotica, Kikinda and Sombor.

Thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia travel along the land route that leads west from Turkey and through the Balkans. 

CONGO: The mining of minerals critical to electric vehicle batteries and other green technologies in Congo has led to human rights abuses, including forced evictions and physical assault, according to a new report from Amnesty International and the Initiative for Good Governance and Human Rights yesterday.

The report details how the search for the minerals has forcibly uprooted people from their homes and farmland, often without compensation or adequate resettlement.