Growing at unprecedented rates, and shaped by forces both familiar and new, dozens of African cities will join the ranks of humanity’s biggest megalopolises between now and 2100. wapo.st/3qMEwKV
Several recent studies project that by the end of this century, Africa will be the only continent experiencing population growth.
Thirteen of the world’s 20 biggest urban areas will be in Africa, as will more than a third of the world’s population. wapo.st/3qMEwKV
In each of the following African cities, we examine common themes — migration, inequality, foreign investment, conflict and planning — that underlie this transformation across the continent. wapo.st/3qMEwKV
Set to become the world’s most populous city, Lagos faces all the challenges rapid growth poses, which can be boiled down to one: planning. wapo.st/3qMEwKV
For half a century now, displacement by catastrophe has been the main driver of growth in Khartoum, Sudan.
Greater Khartoum’s population has octupled while a succession of wars, famines, droughts and floods have ravaged Sudan’s countryside. wapo.st/3qMEwKV
Like many port cities, Kenya's Mombasa is infused with distant cultures.
Port cities like this one are layered with evidence of how budding empires, in the Arab world, Europe and now China, sought to remake them. wapo.st/3qMEwKV
Poverty is a symptom of systems that entrench inequality.
In Kinshasa, Congo’s capital city and home to at least 15 million people, those systems — erected by departing colonizers — are still firmly in place. wapo.st/3qMEwKV
Ivory Coast’s biggest city, Abidjan, is a cosmopolitan patchwork of neighborhoods where flavors, languages and histories overlap.
As Africa’s population grows, Abidjan and other cities across the continent will reap the dividends of that growth. wapo.st/3qMEwKV
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Emily Franciose’s love of the backcountry drew her to boarding school in the Swiss Alps.
Then a mountain fell apart beneath her skis — and left her parents seeking answers. wapo.st/3UqR3SH
Emily had been on skis since she was 2, had attended avalanche safety courses and traveled with a first-aid kit.
She arrived at Ecole d’Humanité — which had a backcountry program with ski tours at least once a week in the Swiss Alps — in August 2022, one day after turning 18. wapo.st/3UqR3SH
The school’s last backcountry outing of the season took place on March 21, 2023.
Spring break was a few days away. Emily and her roommate had tickets to Paris.
But first, a trek to the top of the Wellhorn: wapo.st/3UqR3SH
As Donald Trump faces dwindling options to pay off a massive fine imposed as a result of losing a fraud case in New York, financial experts say filing for bankruptcy would provide one clear way out of his financial jam.
But Trump is not considering that approach, partially out of concern that it could damage his campaign to recapture the White House, according to four people close to the former president. wapo.st/3TLvfAX
Even though bankruptcy could alleviate Trump’s immediate cash crunch, it also carries risks for a candidate who has marketed himself as a winning businessman — and whose greatest appeal to voters, some advisers say, is his financial success. wapo.st/3TLvfAX
A bankruptcy filing by Trump personally or by one of his companies could delay for months or years the requirement that he pay the judgment of nearly half a billion dollars, which with interest is growing by more than $100,000 a day. wapo.st/3TLvfAX
Four major nonprofits that rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic by capitalizing on the spread of medical misinformation collectively gained more than $118 million between 2020 and 2022, a Post analysis shows. wapo.st/49CX18x
The money enabled the organizations to deepen their influence in statehouses, courtrooms and communities across the country.
Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., received $23.5 million in contributions, grants and other revenue in 2022 alone, allowing it to expand its state-based lobbying operations to cover half the country. wapo.st/49CX18x
Another influential anti-vaccine group, Informed Consent Action Network, nearly quadrupled its revenue during that time to about $13.4 million in 2022, giving it the resources to finance lawsuits seeking to roll back vaccine requirements. wapo.st/49CX18x
Frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) are people, Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled last week, opening up a new front in the national debate over reproductive rights.
IVF, a treatment for many types of infertility, is an assisted reproductive technology that involves multiple steps. Patients self-administer hormone injections to stimulate egg production, and medical staff retrieve mature eggs from ovaries, place them in petri dishes and fertilize them with sperm.
The multiple fertilized eggs, or embryos, can be transferred to the uterus for an immediate attempt at pregnancy, or frozen for the future. wapo.st/3uQrJLX
The state’s top court ruled that someone can be held liable in a wrongful-death lawsuit over the destruction of a frozen embryo, affording the fertilized egg the same rights as a person.
The justices said that the state had long recognized that “unborn children are ‘children.’” On Friday, they said that framing extended to frozen embryos. wapo.st/3uQrJLX
Exclusive: Over the last five years, more than 2,000 people have wandered away from assisted-living and dementia-care units or been left unattended outside, according to an exhaustive search by The Washington Post.
Nearly 100 people died — though the exact number is unknowable because no one is counting. wapo.st/47iqF0R
Patients with memory problems walk away from assisted-living facilities just about every day in America, a pattern of neglect by an industry that charges families an average of $6,000 a month for the explicit promise of safeguarding their loved ones. wapo.st/47iqF0R
The federal government does not regulate the nation’s roughly 30,000 assisted-care facilities, as it does nursing homes.
Instead, regulation falls to individual states, few of which have adopted strong staffing and training requirements. wapo.st/47iqF0R
On the stage of the Theatre Lab in downtown D.C., five women shared their stories of motherhood. But the monologues would go beyond labor pains, late-night feedings and raising boys.
Just as the mothers remembered how they brought each of their children into the world, they would tell an audience how their sons left.
One was 13, shot by a 12-year-old after a night of playing games at a Dave & Busters. The oldest was 29, shot 22 times. The youngest was 8, killed by a stray bullet while eating dinner and playing video games on one of his favorite nights, Taco Tuesday. wapo.st/3Gi4nRE
The women connected with each other through the pain of having a child killed by gunfire. The group became the “Strong Azz Mothers.” wapo.st/3Gi4nRE