For the Gaskins family, watching the events unfold in Afghanistan on television from the comfort of their Fort Mitchell home was not easy.

On Tuesday, Ashley Gaskins was expecting her husband to depart from Kuwait to begin a long flight home after being deployed in the Middle East for almost a year to the day.

“He sent a text message saying his flight had been delayed. He was supposed to arrive Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. and he said his flight was delayed until Thursday night because of activities in Afghanistan, that he couldn’t talk but he’d call me when he could and I was very alarmed especially not being able to talk to him,” stated Ashley.

Their agony soon turned to joy when they got word their 20 year Army veteran had boarded the plane Wednesday night and expected back on American soil soon.

“I’m excited, the girls are excited. We are just ready for him to get here,” said Ashley.

Gaskins started his duties in Kuwait following a previous assignment at the Pentagon in August, 2020. The family described the emotion they all felt when he had to go away and leave them behind.

“There was a lot of crying at first but we used facetime and that helped a lot,” added Ashley.

To give their ‘super hero’ a big hearty welcome home, the family went all out, with signs, love letters and lined their front yard with red, white and blue flags.

In the meantime, 9-year-old Joceyln told us why she couldn’t wait to see her dad, “So I can jump on him, second, so I can look at his face.”

When Gaskins reached the Baltimore ariport, he was informed about a layover and that prompted him to take a commercial flight to Atlanta and then a shuttle bus to Columbus.

He finally made it to the Fountain City around 2:30 a.m. Friday morning with his family waiting in the wee hours to greet him with open arms. It was the beginning of a reunion that, undoubtedly, brought more tears, but this time...tears of joy./agencies

Security forces released late Friday approximately 600 Muslims who were arrested at a mosque in Moscow.

"All those arrested have been released," lawyer Mariya Krasova told the Russian TASS news agency.

Earlier, another lawyer, Lidiya Anosova, told TASS that police detained the community in the Kotelniki district of Moscow.

"According to my knowledge, around 600 people were detained. These people were detained at the mosque in Kotelniki," said Anasova, who added that the detainees were taken to the Lyubertsy Police Station.

Anasova said the identities of the detainees are being checked and no charges have yet been filed.

The Press Service of the Moscow Regional Administration of the country's Interior Ministry said that information about the detention was being monitored./agencies

About 3 million children will not be able to attend school this year in Yemen, the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation to Yemen said Friday.

"With the beginning of the school year in Yemen, let’s not forget that the conflict has damaged and destroyed hundreds of schools and rendered about 3 million children unable to enroll this year," Katharina Ritz, the head of the committee, said on Twitter. "Yemeni children, like all children, need to go back to school.”

The new academic year in Yemen started about a week ago.

The UN Children's Fund announced in early August that 8.1 million children in Yemen needed urgent education assistance.

Yemen has been engulfed by violence and instability since 2014, when Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels captured much of the country, including the capital, Sanaa.

A Saudi-led coalition aimed at reinstating the government has worsened the situation, causing one of the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crises, with 233,000 people killed, nearly 80% or about 30 million needing humanitarian assistance and protection, and more than 13 million in danger of starvation, according to UN estimates./agencies

Some 10,000 civilians displaced by terror attacks in northeastern Nigeria received medical care on Friday from regional military forces.

"About 10,000 people who were displaced by Boko Haram are receiving the medical support today," Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), Brig. Gen. Godwin Mutkut told Anadolu Agency in Monguno in the northeast where civilians gathered for help.

Monguno, located around Lake Chad shores, has been overrun by Boko Haram in 2015 and 2016 before the military liberated the town.

Scores of civilians, mostly women and children, who gathered at an open field, were treated for malaria, gastrointestinal diseases, and dental challenges common in the area, said the military commander.

"The civilian population in Monguno is about 800,000 and the shelters are very concentrated in the same area. So you expect high cases of diseases and infection here," he said.

The MNJTF is a military collaboration between Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Cameroon, and Benin against terrorism in the Lake Chad area.

The MNJTF chief of civil-military activities, Col. Antoine Hounkpe, while launching the medical care in the town said the UK, US, France, and some African nations in the Lake Chad Basin supported the program with $60,000.

The 12 years of Boko Haram terror attacks have displaced more than 3 million people in the region, according to a recent report by the UN Development Program office in Nigeria./agencies

The World Health Organization (WHO) urged experts on Friday to join its new Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) after criticism from China that a new study had been "politicized."

The SAGO will advise the WHO on technical and scientific concerns on the origins of emerging and re-emerging pathogens of epidemic and pandemic potential, and will be composed of a “wide range of experts acting in their personal capacity.”

SAGO will guide the WHO on the next steps for understanding the SARS-CoV-2 origins but China has not stated clearly that it will accept the group.

"Following the publication of the WHO-China joint report of the phase one studies on the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in March 2021, WHO has outlined the next series of studies ... and continues to be in discussions with member states and experts on next steps," the WHO said Aug. 12 in announcing the group.

But the WHO noted that China and other states suggested that the March study had been “politicized” or that the WHO acted because of “political pressure.”

On Aug. 16, China’s Foreign Ministry website quoted spokeswoman Hua Chunying who said: “The WHO-China joint study report (in March) on the origins of COVID-19 was produced in full compliance with WHO procedures and with scientific methods. It has proven to be a valuable and authoritative report that can stand the scrutiny of science and history.

“The report should be the foundation and guidance for global origins tracing. Any attempt to overturn or distort the conclusions of the report is political manipulation and disrespect to science and scientists around the world,” Hua added

The US, which has fully engaged with the WHO after former President Donald Trump said it would leave the UN health agency, criticized the first report along with other nations, urging further investigations, which drew criticism from China.

High threat pathogens

“There have been an increasing number of high threat pathogens emerging and re-emerging in recent years with, for example, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, Lassa, Marburg, Ebola, Nipah, avian influenza, the latest being SARS-CoV-2,” the WHO said in the statement on Friday.

“There is a clear need for robust surveillance and early actions for rapid detection and mitigation efforts, as well as systematic processes to study the emergence of these pathogens and routes of transmission from their natural reservoirs to humans,” it added.

The examination is critical to helping WHO, member states, and partner institutions prepare for future spillover threats and to minimize the risk of a disease outbreak growing into a pandemic, it said.

“From SARS-CoV-2, which continues to wreak havoc around the world, to the next ‘Disease X,’ this global framework to study the emergence of new and known high threat pathogens needs to be comprehensive and coordinated based on a One Health approach,” said the WHO.

Such a study should encompass biosafety and biosecurity, “and it needs to be scientific, transparent, comprehensive, rapid and inclusive,” it added./agencies

The US Treasury Department on Friday sanctioned Russian operatives and entities linked to the poisoning of opposition figure Aleksey Navalny.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated nine Russian individuals and two Russian entities involved in the "state-sponsored poisoning" of Navalny or "Russia's chemical weapons program," it said in a statement.

Also, the US Department of State has designated two scientific laboratories under the Russian Ministry of Defense that have engaged in activities to develop Russia's chemical arsenal, it added.

"Today, on the one year anniversary of Aleksey Navalny's poisoning by Russian government agents, we stand with our ally, the United Kingdom, to again condemn the Kremlin's use of a chemical weapon to target one of Russia's most prominent opposition leaders," OFAC Director Andrea Gacki said in the statement.

"Navalny's poisoning was a shocking violation of international norms against the use of chemical weapons and was part of an ongoing campaign to silence voices of dissent in Russia," she added.

Navalny had been poisoned in a nerve agent attack, and was sent to Germany for medical treatment. He was detained by Russian authorities upon his return to the country.​​​​​​​/agencies

Greek and Polish firefighters continued efforts on Friday to contain somewhat abated forest fires that broke out five days ago northwest of Greece's capital Athens.

The wildfires that had already devoured pine forests in the area have burned over Mt. Pateras overnight moving towards the town of Megara.

The country's fire department said that 461 firefighters, including 143 from Poland, are deployed against the blaze, along with 166 vehicles, four firefighting planes, and four helicopters.

Breaking out on Monday, the fire has burned down numerous houses and forced the evacuation of several settlements with an estimated 100,000 acres reduced to ash.

Meanwhile, another fire that broke out earlier on Friday near the town of Keratea southeast of the capital is currently under control, according to local media.

Since Aug. 3 Greece's firefighting capabilities have been stretched to their limits as the country battles for three consecutive weeks against large wildfires all over the country, leading the government to seek international help.

Around 24 European nations, as well as others from the Middle East, responded to the appeal.

According to Greek media, authorities are looking into the possibility of arson after witnesses saw flares into the forest./agencies