内容摘要：This photo provided by researchers shows Kalambo Falls in Zambia in 2019. A pair of crossed logs found on a riverbed nearby may be the oldest evidence of early humans building with wood, nearly half a million years old, according to a study published Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2023 in the journal Nature. (Geoff Duller/Aberystwyth University via AP)

This photo provided by researchers shows Kalambo Falls in Zambia in 2019. A pair of crossed logs found on a riverbed nearby may be the oldest evidence of early humans building with wood, nearly half a million years old, according to a study published Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2023 in the journal Nature. (Geoff Duller/Aberystwyth University via AP)

On the edge of the rapidly growing camp for displaced people, an official was drawing lines in the dust. He was marking squares, a hopscotch of future homes for the waiting families. What they would build on the spaces little bigger than a king-sized bed, and where they would find the materials, would be their problem.For Issack, Hassan and the rest, the huts would be better than sleeping under the stars, with thorn bushes giving no protection from the mosquitoes and grit flung by the wind. Families hurried in the last hour before sunset to occupy their squares, digging with twigs to make holes for poles of stripped branches.

Twenty-four hours later, their section of the camp looked like any other, with plastic sheeting and fabric, even strips of mosquito nets and clothing, stretched around the branches.Issack lived in one hut built by his wife, Hassan in another built by his sister.Mohamed Kheir Issack, 80, right, and Issack Farow Hassan, 75, sit in Issack’s shelter at a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Mohamed Kheir Issack, 80, right, and Issack Farow Hassan, 75, sit in Issack’s shelter at a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)As fragile as their new existence was, Hassan pounded the dust with his metal cane when asked if they could ever go home again. Absolutely not.

That’s in part because their area of Somalia is controlled by an extremist group, al-Shabab, which other people who fled described as having little pity as crops withered and livestock died by the millions. The extremists, affiliated with al-Qaida, continued to heavily tax residents by asking up to half of their harvest, even as people began to starve.

Because al-Shabab makes it almost impossible to reach areas under their control with humanitarian assistance, their presence has played an especially deadly role in droughts. An estimated quarter-million people died in the famine declared in Somalia in 2011, many because al-Shabab wouldn’t allow most aid in or, often, suffering people out.But the future of Yemen itself remains in question. The Houthis broadly maintain control over the capital of Sanaa and the country’s northwest. Yemen’s exiled government is part of a fractious coalition that for now appears unable to wrest any control back from the rebels. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which launched a war 10 years ago against the Houthis,

as fighting appears broadly frozen on the ground.“The United States can hurt the Houthis, it can weaken them,” wrote Gregory D. Johnsen, a Yemen expert at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, “but without effective ground troops — either its own or someone else’s — it will not be able to eliminate their capabilities.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump directed his attorney general last month to investigate online fundraising, he cited concerns that foreigners and fraudsters were using elaborate “schemes” and “dummy accounts” to funnel illegal contributions to politicians and causes.Instead of calling for an expansive probe, however, the president identified just one potential target: ActBlue,