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London — U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of "bluster" Sunday over his warning that letting Ukraine use long-range weapons to strike inside Russia would put NATO "at war" with Moscow. Tensions between Russia and the West over the conflict reached dire levels this week as U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met at the White House to discuss whether to ease rules on Kyiv's use of western-supplied weaponry. "I think that what Putin's doing is throwing dust up into the air," Lammy told the BBC.  "There's a lot of bluster. That's his modus operandi. He threatens about tanks, he threatens about missiles, he threatens about nuclear weapons." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been asking for permission to use British Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made ATACMS missiles to hit targets deeper inside Russia for months. Biden and Starmer delayed a decision on the move during their meeting on Friday. It came after Putin warned that green-lighting use of the weapons "would mean that NATO countries, the U.S., European countries, are at war with Russia." "If that's the case, then taking into account the change of nature of the conflict, we will take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face," he added.  The Russian leader has long warned Western countries that they risk provoking a nuclear war over their support for Ukraine. "We cannot be blown off course by an imperialist fascist, effectively, that wants to move into countries willy nilly," said Lammy. "If we let him with Ukraine, believe me, he will not stop there." Lammy said that talks between Starmer, Biden and Zelensky over the use of the missiles would continue at the United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York later this month.

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LIPOVA LAZNE, Czech Republic — One person drowned in southwest Poland and thousands were evacuated across the border in the Czech Republic as heavy rains continued to batter central Europe on Sunday, causing flooding in several areas. A firefighter tackling flooding in lower Austria was also killed, Austrian Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler said on Sunday on social platform X as authorities declared the province, which surrounds Vienna, bordering the Czech Republic and Slovakia, a disaster area. Rivers overflowed from Poland to Romania, where four people were found dead on Saturday, after days of torrential rain in a low-pressure system named Boris. Some parts of the Czech Republic and Poland faced the worst flooding in almost three decades. In the Czech Republic, a quarter of a million homes were without power due to high winds and rain. Czech police said they were looking for three people who were in a car that fell into the river Staric near Lipova Lazne, 235 kilometers east of Prague on Saturday. In Poland, one person died in Klodzko county, which Prime Minister Donald Tusk said was the worst-hit area of the country and where 1,600 had been evacuated. "The situation is very dramatic," Tusk told reporters on Sunday after a meeting in Klodzko town, which was partly under water as the local river rose to 6.65 meters Sunday morning before receding slightly. That surpassed a record seen in heavy flooding in 1997, which partly damaged the town and claimed 56 lives in Poland. The nearby historic town of Glucholazy ordered evacuations Sunday morning as the local river started to break its banks, while firefighters and soldiers had been fighting since Saturday to protect a bridge in the town. Residents across the Czech border also said the situation was worse than flooding seen before. "What you see here is worse than in 1997, and I don't know what will happen because my house is under water, and I don't know if I will even return to it," said Pavel Bily, a resident of Lipova Lazne. The fire service in the region said it had evacuated 1,900 people as of Sunday morning, while many roads were impassable. In the worst-hit areas, more than 10 centimeters of rain fell overnight and around 45 centimeters since Wednesday evening, the Czech weather institute said. More rain is expected Sunday and Monday. In Budapest, officials raised forecasts for the Danube to rise in the second half of this week, to above 8.5 meters, nearing a record 8.91 meters seen in 2013, as rain continued in Hungary, Slovakia and Austria. "According to forecasts, one of the biggest floods of the past years is approaching Budapest but we are prepared to tackle it," Budapest's mayor Gergely Karacsony said. In Romania, authorities said the rain was less intense than on Saturday, when flooding killed four and damaged 5,000 homes. Towns and villages in seven counties across eastern Romania were affected, and the country's emergency response unit said it was still searching for two people missing. 

Lille, France — Eight migrants died early Sunday when their overcrowded vessel capsized while trying to cross the Channel from France to England, French authorities said, less than two weeks after the deadliest such disaster this year. The French and British governments have sought for years to stop the flow of migrants, who pay smugglers thousands of euros per head for the passage to England from France aboard small boats. A police source told AFP the accident occurred shortly after the boat embarked. Regional prefect Jacques Billant is set to hold a news conference at 10 a.m., his office said. Maritime authorities said Saturday that numerous attempts by migrants to make the perilous crossing in small boats have been attempted in recent days, with 200 people rescued in 24 hours over Friday and Saturday alone. At least 12 migrants, mostly from Eritrea, died off the northern French coast when their boat carrying dozens of people capsized this month. It was the deadliest such disaster this year and brought to 37 the number of migrant deaths in the Channel, up from 12 in 2023. More than 22,000 migrants have arrived in England by crossing the Channel since the beginning of this year, according to British officials. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and France's President Emmanuel Macron pledged this summer to strengthen "cooperation" in handling the surge in undocumented migrant numbers. The Channel crossings often prove perilous, and in November 2021, 27 migrants died when their boat capsized in the deadliest single such disaster to date. French authorities seek to stop migrants taking to the water but do not intervene once they are afloat except for rescue purposes, citing safety concerns.

SHANGHAI/BEIJING — Shanghai halted transportation links, recalled ships and shut tourism spots including Shanghai Disney Resort on Sunday as it braced for Typhoon Bebinca, in what could be the strongest tropical cyclone to hit the Chinese financial hub since 1949. The Category 1 typhoon, packing maximum sustained wind speeds near its center of around 144 kph, was about 500 kilometers southeast of Shanghai as of 1 p.m.  It is expected to make landfall along China's eastern coast after midnight on Monday. The strongest storm to make landfall in Shanghai in recent decades was Typhoon Gloria in 1949, which tore through the city with gusts of 144 kph. Shanghai was last threatened by a direct hit in 2022 by the powerful Typhoon Muifa, which instead landed 300 kilometers away in the city of Zhoushan, in Zhejiang province. Shanghai is typically spared the strong typhoons that hit farther south in China, including Yagi, a destructive Category 4 storm that roared past southern Hainan province last week. But Shanghai and neighboring provinces are taking no chances with Category 1 Bebinca. Resorts in Shanghai, including Shanghai Disney Resort, Jinjiang Amusement Park and Shanghai Wild Animal Park, have been temporarily closed while most ferries have been halted to and from Chongming Island - China's third-biggest island known as "the gateway to the Yangtze River." More than 600 flights to and from Shanghai were also canceled, according to local media. In Zhejiang, ships have been recalled while several parks in the provincial capital Hangzhou announced closures. Bebinca's arrival will coincide with the Mid-Autumn festival, a nationwide three-day holiday when many Chinese travel or engage in outdoor activities. China's Ministry of Water Resources on Saturday issued a Level-IV emergency response -- the lowest level in China's four-tier emergency response system -- for potential flooding in Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. 

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA's moonwalkers. SpaceX's capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida's Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot. They pulled off the first private spacewalk while orbiting nearly 740 kilometers above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 1,408 kilometers following Tuesday's liftoff. Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union scored the first in 1965, and SpaceX's Sarah Gillis the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks were done by professional astronauts. "We are mission complete," Isaacman radioed as the capsule bobbed in the water, awaiting the recovery team. Within an hour, all four were out of their spacecraft, pumping their fists with joy as they emerged onto the ship's deck. It was the first time SpaceX aimed for a splashdown near the Dry Tortugas, a cluster of islands 113 kilometers west of Key West. To celebrate the new location, SpaceX employees brought a big, green turtle balloon to Mission Control at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The company usually targets closer to the Florida coast, but two weeks of poor weather forecasts prompted SpaceX to look elsewhere. During Thursday's commercial spacewalk, the Dragon capsule's hatch was open barely a half-hour. Isaacman emerged only up to his waist to briefly test SpaceX's brand-new spacesuit followed by Gillis, who was knee-high as she flexed her arms and legs for several minutes. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, also held a performance in orbit earlier in the week. The spacewalk lasted less than two hours, considerably shorter than those at the International Space Station. Most of that time was needed to depressurize the entire capsule and then restore the cabin air. Even SpaceX's Anna Menon and Scott "Kidd" Poteet, who remained strapped in, wore spacesuits. SpaceX considers the brief exercise a starting point to test spacesuit technology for future, longer missions to Mars. This was Isaacman's second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more still ahead under his personally financed space exploration program named Polaris after the North Star. He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking along contest winners and a pediatric cancer survivor while raising more than $250 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. For the just completed so-called Polaris Dawn mission, the founder and CEO of the Shift4 credit card-processing company shared the cost with SpaceX. Isaacman won't divulge how much he spent. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

JERUSALEM — A missile fired from Yemen landed in an open area in central Israel early Sunday, the Israeli military said, in the latest reverberation from the nearly yearlong war in Gaza. The early morning attack triggered air raid sirens, including at Israel's international airport, where local media aired footage of people racing to shelters. There were no reports of casualties or damage, and the airport authority said operations resumed as normal shortly thereafter. A fire could be seen in a rural area of central Israel, and local media showed images of what appeared to be a fragment from a missile or interceptor that landed on an escalator in a train station in the central town of Modiin. The military said the sound of explosions in the area came from interceptors. Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel since the start of the war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, but nearly all of them have been intercepted over the Red Sea. The Houthis did not claim Sunday's attack directly, but rebel officials appeared to boast about it. Hashim Sharaf al-Din, a spokesperson for the Houthi-run government, said Yemenis will celebrate the birthday of Islam's Prophet Muhammad while "the Israelis will have to be in shelters." Another senior Houthi official, Hezam al-Asad, posted a taunting message in Hebrew on the social platform X. In July, an Iranian-made drone launched by the Houthis struck Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding 10 others. Israel responded with a wave of airstrikes on Houthi-held areas of Yemen. The Houthis have also repeatedly attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea, in what the rebels portray as a blockade on Israel in support of the Palestinians. Most of the targeted ships have no connection to Israel. The war in Gaza, which began with Hamas' October 7 attack into southern Israel, has rippled across the region, with Iran and allied militant groups attacking Israeli and U.S. targets and drawing retaliatory strikes from Israel and its Western allies. On several occasions, the strikes and counterstrikes have threatened to trigger a wider conflict. International carriers have canceled flights into and out of Israel on a number of occasions since the start of the war, adding to the war's economic toll on the country. Iran supports militant groups across the region, including Hamas, the Houthis and Lebanon's Hezbollah, its most powerful ally, which has traded fired with Israel on a near-daily basis since the war in Gaza began. Iran and its allies say they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians. The military said around 40 projectiles were fired from Lebanon early Sunday, with most intercepted or falling in open areas. The strikes along the Israel-Lebanon border have displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides. Israel has repeatedly threatened to launch a wider military operation against Hezbollah to ensure its citizens can return to their homes. Hezbollah has said it would halt its attacks if there is a cease-fire in Gaza. The United States and Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar have spent much of this year trying to broker a truce and the release of scores of hostages held by Hamas, but the talks have repeatedly bogged down. In recent weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted on lasting Israeli control over the Gaza side of the border with Egypt, which Israeli forces captured in May. He has said Hamas used a network of tunnels beneath the border to import arms, allegations denied by Egypt, which along with Hamas is opposed to any lasting Israeli presence there. An Israeli military official said late Saturday that of the dozens of tunnels discovered along the border, only nine entered Egypt, and all were found to have been sealed off. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence, said it was not clear when the tunnels were sealed. The discovery appeared to weaken Netanyahu's argument that Israel needs to keep open-ended control of the corridor to prevent cross-border smuggling. Egypt has said it sealed off the tunnels on its side of the border years ago, in part by creating its own military buffer zone along the frontier.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

ACCRA, Ghana — Texas Kadiri Moro stood in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Accra on Thursday, dressed in short pink Speedos and a pink polo shirt. Accompanied by trumpet players, carrying a banner with slogans including "Why should a society of evildoers judge others?" and "Justice begins where inequality ends!" he marched across the Ghanaian capital in a one-man protest against a highly controversial bill that targets members of the LGBTQ+ community and their supporters.  Moro is an unusual figure amid the LGBTQ+ rights activists in the coastal West African nation.  He is heterosexual, married to a woman, and a father of six. He is a teacher. And he is a practicing Muslim. Yet for months he has been conducting solo demonstrations against the bill, which criminalizes members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as its supporters, including promotion and funding of related activities and public displays of affection. It could send some people to prison for more than a decade.  The bill was passed by Ghana's parliament earlier this year but has been challenged in the Supreme Court.  It has not yet been signed into law by President Nana Akufo-Addo, who cited ongoing proceedings. But he refused to reject it either.  "There are so many issues about rights" when it comes to the bill, Moro told The Associated Press.  "Homosexuality does not affect anyone," Moro said. "We have activities that people are doing in the country that are worse than homosexual activities," he said, citing adultery as an example. Parliament, he said, should be more concerned with "other crimes and pollution."  The bill has sparked condemnation from rights groups and some in the international community who have been concerned about similar efforts by other African governments.  Sponsors of the bill have said it seeks to protect children and people who are victims of abuse.  Man becomes target Gay sex is already illegal in Ghana, carrying a three-year prison sentence, but the new bill could imprison people for more than a decade for activities including public displays of affection and promotion and funding of LGBTQ+ activities.  Since he began his protests, Moro has lost his job, not received any assistance from the LGBTQ+ community, and become a target of "very hostile attacks from the Muslim community," he said.  But he is determined to continue. For him, it is about battling injustice.  "I know I'm doing something that God is asking me to do," he said.  To point out the hypocrisy of the bill, Moro carried a petition to the Parliament asking the government to withdraw foreign missions from countries where homosexuality is legal, if they find it "filthy," he said.  Bill 'is a wrongdoing' At the entrance to Parliament House, Kate Addo, Parliament's director of communications, received Moro's petition on behalf of the speaker. She said she was pleased with his initiative.  "We live in a democratic country where what people do in their bedrooms is not to be anyone's concern," Addo said. "However, we are also regulated by law."  Even though Ghana's president delayed signing the bill into law, activists said that the debate by itself triggered an increase in physical and psychological violence against LGBTQ+ people.  Joseph Kobla Wemakor, the executive director of Human Rights Reporters Ghana, said that "abuse, both psychologically and physically against members of the community has skyrocketed" since the bill was introduced.  "The moment people hear that you are part of this, the LGBTQ+, you are an enemy," Wekamor said. "They are looking forward to hurting you, even lynching you, killing you."  They are "forgetting that we are all humans," he said. "It takes one man to change the world," he said. "And if he has started something like that, other people will follow, because it (the bill) is a wrongdoing." 

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — A bag of Cheetos gets dropped and left on the floor. Seems inconsequential, right? Hardly. Rangers at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southern New Mexico describe it as a "world-changing" event for the tiny microbes and insects that call this specialized subterranean environment home. The bag could have been there a day or two or maybe just hours, but those salty morsels of processed corn made soft by thick humidity triggered the growth of mold on the cavern floor and on nearby cave formations. "To the ecosystem of the cave it had a huge impact," the park noted in a social media post, explaining that cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organized to eat and disperse the foreign mess, essentially spreading the contamination. The bright orange bag was spotted off trail by a ranger during one of the regular sweeps that park staff make through the Big Room, the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America, at the end of each day. They are looking for straggling visitors and any litter or other waste that might have been left behind on the paved trail. The Big Room is a popular spot at Carlsbad Caverns. It is a magical expanse filled with towering stalagmites, dainty stalactites and clusters of cave popcorn. Tons of trash From this underground wonderland in New Mexico to lake shores in Nevada, tributaries along the Grand Canyon and lagoons in Florida, park rangers and volunteers collect tons of trash left behind by visitors each year as part of an ongoing battle to keep unique ecosystems from being compromised while still allowing visitors access. According to the National Park Service, more than 300 million people visit the national parks each year, bringing in and generating nearly 70 million tons of trash, most of which ends up where it belongs - in garbage bins and recycling containers. But for the rest of the discarded snack bags and other debris, it often takes work to round up the waste, and organizations like Leave No Trace have been pushing their message at trailheads and online. At Carlsbad Caverns, volunteers comb the caverns collecting lint. One five-day effort netted as much as 50 pounds (22.68 kilograms). Rangers also have sweep packs and spill kits for the more delicate and sometimes nasty work that can include cleaning up human waste along the trail. "It's such a dark area, sometimes people don't notice that it's there. So they walk through it and it tracks it throughout the entire cave," said Joseph Ward, a park guide who is working specifically on getting the "leave no trace" message out to park visitors and classrooms. The rangers' kits can include gloves, trash bags, water, bleach mixtures for decontamination, vacuums and even bamboo toothbrushes and tweezers for those hard-to-reach spots. As for the spilled Cheetos, Ward told The Associated Press that could have been avoided because the park doesn't allow food beyond the confines of the historic underground lunchroom. Cheetos response After the bag was discovered in July, cave specialists at the park settled on the best way to clean it up. Most of the mess was scooped up, and a toothbrush was used to remove rings of mold and fungi that had spread to nearby cave formations. It was a 20-minute job. Some jobs can take hours and involve several park employees, Ward said. Robert Melnick, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon, has been studying the cultural landscape of Carlsbad Caverns, including features like a historic wooden staircase that has become another breeding ground for exotic mold and fungi. He and his team submitted a report to the park in recent days that details those resources and makes recommendations for how the park can manage them in the future. The balancing act for park managers at Carlsbad and elsewhere, Melnick said, is meeting the dual mandate of preserving and protecting landscapes while also making them accessible. "I don't quite know how you would monitor it except to constantly remind people that the underground, the caves, are a very, very sensitive natural environment," he said. Pleas to treat the caverns with respect are plastered on signs throughout the park, rangers give orientations to visitors before they go underground, and reminders of the dos and don'ts are printed on the back of each ticket stub. But sometimes there is a disconnect between awareness and personal responsibility, said JD Tanner, director of education and training at Leave No Trace. Personal stake is vital Many people may be aware of the need to "keep it pristine," but Tanner said the message doesn't always translate into action or there is a lack of understanding that small actions — even leaving a piece of trash — can have irreversible damage in a fragile ecosystem. "If someone doesn't feel a personal stake in the preservation of these environments, they may not take the rules seriously," Tanner said. Diana Northup, a microbiologist who has spent years studying cave environments around the world, once crawled up the main corridor at Carlsbad Caverns to log everything that humans left behind. "So this is just one thing of very many," she said of the Cheetos. As many as 2,000 people go through the caverns on any given day during the busy season. With them come hair and skin fragments, and those fragments can have their own microbes on board. "So it can be really, really bad or it can just be us and all the stuff we're shedding," Northup said of human contamination within cave environments. "But here's the other side of the coin: The only way you can protect caves is for people to be able to see them and experience them." "The biggest thing," she said, "is you have to get people to value and want to preserve the caves and let them know what they can do to have that happen."

MEJICANOS, El Salvador — From the window of her tin-sided shop outside El Salvador's capital, San Salvador, Esmeralda Quintanilla watches artists get to work in her neighborhood on walls still pockmarked by bullet holes from the country's civil war and gang conflict. Armed with brushes, paint and spray cans, muralists and graffiti artists have already covered the walls of several of the 40 five-story units in a housing complex in the Zacamil neighborhood of the Mejicanos district. "With the murals, everything looks really nice," said Quintanilla, a 55-year-old seamstress who has lived in the neighborhood nearly half her life. "You start to see all this, and it gives the place a different image. I feel really happy, proud." The dozen murals already completed include a Mesoamerican pyramid, pixelated depictions of the Virgin Mary and works straight out of the artists' imaginations. The initiative in the once-violent neighborhood is led by a Salvadoran foundation that seeks to fill communities with art. Its aim in Zacamil is to create stories-high murals over the next two years on nearly every wall of the complex, which houses around 4,000 residents. Zacamil got a break from decades of violence two years ago when President Nayib Bukele launched a nationwide crackdown on gangs. The state of emergency — which human rights groups have said Bukele must end amid reports of abuses — has put almost 82,000 alleged gang members in prison. Even with the murals improving the neighborhood's appearance, chronic infrastructure issues remain, with garbage piled up in the streets and storm drains clogged. TV antennas, power cables and clothes strewn out windows across clotheslines also dot the neighborhood. Many Zacamil residents fled in 1989 when fighting between the Salvadoran army and the former leftist guerrilla group, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, nearly destroyed the Mejicanos district. When they returned, many found homes damaged by two earthquakes in 2001 or invaded by gang members. "There are always problems, but this is a facelift," said a 70-year-old resident who declined to give his name. El Salvador's 12-year civil war from late 1979 to January 1992 killed more than 75,000 people.

JOHANNESBURG — Thethiwe Mahlangu woke early on a chilly morning and walked through her busy South African township, where minibuses hooted to pick up commuters and smoke from sidewalk breakfast stalls hung in the air. Her eyes had been troubling her. But instead of going to her nearby health clinic, Mahlangu was headed to the train station for an unusual form of care. A passenger train known as Phelophepa — or "good, clean, health" in the Sesotho language — had been transformed into a mobile health facility. It circulates throughout South Africa for much of the year, providing medical attention to the sick, young and old who often struggle to receive the care they need at crowded local clinics. For the past 30 years — ever since South Africa's break with the former racist system of apartheid — the train has carried doctors, nurses and optometrists on an annual journey that touches even the most rural villages, delivering primary health care to about 375,000 people a year. The free care it delivers is in contrast to South Africa's overstretched public health care system on which about 84% of people rely. Health care reflects the deep inequality of the country at large. Just 16% of South Africans are covered by health insurance plans that are beyond the financial reach of many in a nation with unemployment of over 32%. Earlier this year, the government began to address that gap. President Cyril Ramaphosa in May signed into law the National Health Insurance Act, which aims to provide funding so that millions of South Africans without health insurance can receive care from the better-provisioned private sector. But the law has been divisive. The government has not said how much it will cost and where the money will come from. Economists say the government will have to raise taxes. Critics say the country can't afford it and warn that the system — yet to be implemented — will be open to abuse by corrupt officials and businessmen. They say the government should fix the public health care system instead. For Mahlangu and others who look to the train for a rare source of free treatment, the situation at local health clinics is one of despair. Long lines, shortages of medicines and rude nurses are some of the challenges at the clinics that cater for thousands of patients a day in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg. "There we are not treated well," Mahlangu said. "We are made to sit in the sun for long periods. You can sit there from 7 a.m. until around 4 p.m. when the clinic closes. When you ask, they say we must go ask the president to build us a bigger hospital." The health train has grown from a single three-carriage operation over the years to two 16-carriage trains. They are run by the Transnet Foundation, a social responsibility arm of Transnet, the state-owned railway company. When the train began in 1994, many Black people in South Africa still lived in rural villages with little access to health facilities. It was a period of change in the country. The train began as an eye clinic, but it soon became clear that needs were greater than that. Now both trains address the booming population of South Africa's capital of Pretoria and nearby Johannesburg, the country's economic hub. One would spend two weeks in Tembisa alone. "The major metros are really struggling," said Shemona Kendiah, the train's manager. But the traveling clinic is far from the solution to South Africa's health care problems. Public health expert Alex van den Heever said there have been substantial increases in the health care budget and the public sector employment of nurses and doctors since the country's first democratic government in 1994. The health department's budget in Gauteng province, which includes Pretoria and Johannesburg, has grown from 6 billion rand ($336 million) in 2000 to 65 billion ($3.6 billion) rand now. But van den Heever accused the African National Congress, the ruling party since the end of apartheid, of allowing widespread corruption to undermine the public sector, including the health care system. "This has led to a rapid deterioration of performance," he said. For South Africans who have witnessed the decline firsthand, it can be a relief when the health train pulls into town. Mahlangu — with her new pair of glasses — was among hundreds who walked away satisfied with its services and already longing for the train's return next year. Another patient, Jane Mabuza, got a full health checkup along with dental services. She said she hoped the train would reach many other people. "Here on the train, you never hear that anything has been finished," she said.

new york — It's a practice that's about as American as apple pie — accusing immigrant and minority communities of engaging in bizarre or disgusting behaviors when it comes to what and how they eat and drink, a kind of shorthand for saying they don't belong.  The latest iteration came at Tuesday's presidential debate, when former President Donald Trump spotlighted a false online tempest around the Haitian immigrant community of Springfield, Ohio. He repeated the groundless claim previously spread by his running mate, JD Vance, that the immigrants were stealing dogs and cats, the precious pets belonging to their American neighbors, and eating them. The furor got enough attention that officials had to step in to refute it, saying there was no credible evidence of any such thing.  But while it might be enough to turn your stomach, such food-based accusations are not new. Far from it.  Food-related scorn and insults were hurled at immigrant Chinese communities on the West Coast in the late 1800s as they started coming to the United States in larger numbers, and in later decades spread to other Asian and Pacific Islander communities like Thai or Vietnamese. As recently as last year, a Thai restaurant in California was hit with the stereotype, which caused such an outpouring of undeserved vitriol that the owner had to close and move to another location.  Behind it is the idea that "you're engaging in something that is not just a matter of taste, but a violation of what it is to be human," said Paul Freedman, a professor of history at Yale University. By tarring Chinese immigrants as those who would eat things Americans would refuse to, it made them the "other."  Food as flashpoint  Other communities, while not being accused of eating pets, have been criticized for the perceived strangeness of what they were cooking when they were new arrivals, such as Italians using too much garlic or Indians too much curry powder. Minority groups with a longer presence in the country were and are still not exempt from racist stereotypes — think derogatory references to Mexicans and beans or insulting African Americans with remarks about fried chicken and watermelon.  "There's a slur for almost every ethnicity based on some kind of food that they eat," said Amy Bentley, professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University. "And so that's a very good way of disparaging people."  That's because food isn't just sustenance. Embedded in human eating habits are some of the very building blocks of culture — things that make different peoples distinct and can be commandeered as fodder for ethnic hatred or political polemics.  "We need it to survive, but it's also highly ritualized and highly symbolic. So the birthday cake, the anniversary, the things are commemorated and celebrated with food and drink," Bentley said. "It's just so highly integrated in all parts of our lives."  And because "there's specific variations of how humans do those rituals, how they eat, how they have shaped their cuisines, how they eat their food," she added, "It can be as a theme of commonality ... or it can be a form of distinct division."  It's not just the what. Insults can come from the how as well — eating with hands or chopsticks instead of forks and knives, for example. It can be seen in class-based bias against poorer people who didn't have the same access to elaborate table settings or couldn't afford to eat the same way the rich did — and used different, perhaps unfamiliar ingredients out of necessity.  Such disparagement can extend directly into current events. During the Second Gulf War, for example, Americans angry at France's opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq started calling french fries "freedom fries." And a much-used insulting term in the United States for Germans during the first two world wars was "krauts" — a slam on a culture where sauerkraut was a traditional food.  "Just what was wrong with the way urban immigrants ate?" Donna R. Gabaccia wrote in her 1998 book, "We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans." In reviewing attitudes of the early 20th century and its demands for "100% Americanism," she noted that "sauerkraut became 'victory cabbage'" and one account complained of an Italian family "still eating spaghetti, not yet assimilated."  More food culture, more fodder  Such stereotypes have persisted despite the fact that the American palate has significantly expanded in recent decades, thanks in part to the influx of those immigrant communities, with grocery stores carrying a wealth of ingredients that would baffle previous generations. The rise of restaurant culture has introduced many diners to authentic examples of cuisines they might have needed a passport to access in other eras.  After all, Bentley said, "when immigrants migrate to a different country, they bring their foodways with them and maintain them as they can. ... It's so reminiscent of family, community, home. They're just really material, multisensory manifestations of who we are."  Haitian food is just one example of that. Communities like those found in New York City and south Florida have added to the culinary landscape, using ingredients like goat, plantains and cassava.  So when Trump said that immigrants in Springfield — whom he called "the people that came in" — were eating dogs and cats and "the pets of the people that live there," the echoes of his remarks played into not just food but culture itself.  And even though the American palate has broadened in recent decades, the persistence of food stereotypes — and outright insults, whether based in fact or completely made up — shows that just because Americans eat more broadly, it doesn't mean that carries over into tolerance or nuance about other groups.  "It's a fallacy to think that," said Freedman. "It's like the tourism fallacy that travel makes us more understanding of diversity. The best example right now is Mexican food. Lots and lots of people like Mexican food AND think that immigration needs to be stopped. There's no link between enjoyment of a foreigner's cuisine and that openness." 

BEIJING — At Beijing's largest antiques market, Panjiayuan, among the Mao statues, posters and second-hand books are prominent signs warning against the sale of publications that might have state secrets or "reactionary propaganda." Some of the signs display a hotline number so that citizens can tip off authorities if they witness an illegal sale. China's antique and flea markets were once a gold mine of documents for historians, but now the signs are emblematic of the chill that has descended on their ability to do research in the country. On one hand, Beijing wants to increase academic exchange and President Xi Jinping last November invited 50,000 American students to China over the next five years -- a massive jump from about 800 currently. How much steam that will gather is very much an open question. But scholars of modern Chinese history in particular -- arguably among the people most interested in China - fear that tightened censorship is extinguishing avenues for independent research into the country's past. This is especially so for documents relating to the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution -- the most historically sensitive period for the Chinese Communist Party -- when Mao Zedong declared class war and plunged China into chaos and violence. "I would say the period of going to flea markets and simply finding treasure troves is pretty much over," said Daniel Leese, a modern China historian at the University of Freiburg. Trawling for documents "has basically gone out of favor because it has simply become too complex, difficult and dangerous," he said, adding that younger foreign scholars are increasingly relying on overseas collections. The Chinese Communist Party has exerted control over all publications including books, the media and the internet since establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, with the degree of censorship fluctuating over time. But censorship has only intensified under President Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012 and has blamed "historic nihilism" or versions of history that differ from the official accounts for causing the collapse of the Soviet Union. In recent years, a raft of new national security and anti-espionage legislation has made scholars even more wary of citing unofficial Chinese materials. Some scholars of modern Chinese history who have published studies that either challenged Chinese state narratives or are on sensitive topics say they have been denied visas to China. James Millward, a historian at Georgetown University, said he had been visa-blocked on several occasions after contributing to the 2004 book Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland but has since received short-term visas a few times albeit after a lengthy process. The political climate is also shaping how historians choose their research subjects. One historian based in the U.S. said he has chosen to work on non-controversial topics to maintain travel access to China. He declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue. China's education ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. The foreign ministry said it was unaware of relevant circumstances. Documentary discoveries Leese and other foreign historians say they previously found case files of persecuted intellectuals as well as secret Communist Party documents at Chinese flea and antique markets. These were often donated by relatives of deceased officials or painstakingly rescued by booksellers from recycling centers near government offices disbanded during the mass state sector layoffs of the 1990s. But the government has, since 2008, cracked down on flea markets and other sources of used books and documents. Buyers have been arrested, sellers have been fined and used book websites have been cleared of politically sensitive items, according to domestic media reports, collectors and four overseas researchers who spoke with Reuters. In 2019, for example, a Japanese historian was detained for two months on spying charges after buying 1930s books on the Sino-Japanese War from a second-hand bookshop. Two years later, a hobbyist accused of selling illegal publications from Hong Kong and Taiwan publishers on Kongfuzi, China's biggest website for used books, was fined 280,000 yuan ($39,000) for not having a business license, Chinese media reported. And this year, two workers at a recycling center were punished for selling confidential military documents, state media said. Buyers now cultivate personal relationships with merchants who sell through WeChat, said a Beijing-based collector interested in documents from the Cultural Revolution, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Historians also note that access to the vast majority of local government archives has been restricted since 2010 and their digitization has enabled censors to heavily redact them. Foreign-based historians add that their counterparts in mainland China can only preserve materials for posterity in the current political climate. But not all are downbeat. "Even under Xi, Chinese scholars continue to seek openings and enlarge the understanding and interpretation of PRC history," said Yi Lu, assistant history professor at Dartmouth College, who has worked extensively with Chinese university collections of 20th-century materials. "All is not lost."

new york — Single mother Rebecca Wood, 45, was already dealing with high medical bills in 2020 when she noticed she was being charged a $2.49 "program fee" each time she loaded money onto her daughter's school lunch account.  As more schools turn to cashless payment systems, more districts have contracted with processing companies that charge as much as $3.25 or 4% to 5% per transaction, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The report found that though legally schools must offer a fee-free option to pay by cash or check, there's rarely transparency around it.  "It wouldn't have been a big deal if I had hundreds of dollars to dump into her account at the beginning of the year," Wood said. "I didn't. I was paying as I went, which meant I was paying a fee every time. The $2.50 transaction fee was the price of a lunch. So I'd pay for six lunches, but only get five."  The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the federal policy on fee-free school lunch, has mandated that districts inform families of their options since 2017, but even when parents are aware, having to pay by cash or check to avoid fees can be burdensome.  "It's just massively inconvenient," said Joanna Roa, 43, who works at Clemson University in South Carolina as a library specialist and has two school-aged children.  Roa said that when her son was in first grade and she saw the $3.25-per-transaction fee for lunch account transactions, she and her husband decided to send him to school with packed lunches instead.  "A dollar here and there, I expected," she said. "But $3.25 per transaction, especially here in rural South Carolina where the cost of living is a lot lower — as are the salaries — is a lot."  Roa said packing lunch for two kids every day, for two working parents, was an increased burden of time and effort. For the past two years, thanks to surplus funds, her school district has been providing free lunches in school, which has changed the equation, but Roa said that could end at any point.  In its review of the 300 largest public school districts in the U.S., the CFPB found that 87% of sampled districts contract with payment processors.  Within those districts, the companies charge an average of $2.37 or 4.4% of the total transaction, each time money is added to a child's account. For families with lower incomes who can't afford to load large sums in one go, those fees can hit weekly or even more frequently, increasing costs disproportionately. Families that qualify for free or reduced lunch pay as much as 60 cents per dollar in fees when paying for school lunches electronically, according to the report.  In Wood's case, she researched the fees and learned about the USDA requirement to offer fee-free payment by cash or by check. When she pointed this out to the superintendent of her daughter's Massachusetts school district, the administrator said the lack of transparency was an oversight. To protest, Wood had planned to pay for her daughter's lunches in coins at the school office, together with other parents. But then the pandemic hit, changing, among other things, school lunch policy.  In subsequent years, Wood became part of a campaign that successfully pushed for universal free school lunches in the state, but she continues to protest school processing fees for families.  "Even if lunch itself is free, if you want to buy something a la carte, or an extra lunch, or some other transaction, you still have to pay that fee," Wood said. "They take money from people who need it the most."  While payment companies maintain that school districts have the chance to negotiate fees and rates when they form their contracts, the CFPB found that complex company structures "may insulate companies from competition and make school districts less likely to negotiate." Just three companies — MySchoolBucks, SchoolCafe, and LINQ Connect — dominate the market, according to the report.  Without the ability to choose which company to work with, "families have fewer ways to avoid harmful practices," the agency said, "including those that may violate federal consumer protection law."  The companies named in the report did not respond to requests for comment.  I'm a parent facing these fees. What can I do?  Know that you always have a right to pay by cash or check, under federal policy. You can also request that your school district negotiate down the fees with their payment processing company, or request that the district cover the fees directly, which can give them leverage in negotiating a contract.  If your school is located in a low-income area, you may also check whether your district qualifies for the Community Eligibility Provision, which would allow the school to provide free breakfast and lunch to all enrolled students. More information on the CEP is available at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's website.