Feed aggregator

Geneva — The World Health Organization chief on Monday urged countries to nail down a landmark global agreement on handling of future pandemics after they missed a hard deadline. Scarred by COVID-19 — which killed millions, shredded economies and crippled health systems — nations have spent two years trying to forge binding commitments on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Negotiators failed to clinch a deal ahead of this week's World Health Assembly — the annual gathering of WHO's 194 member states — the deadline for concluding the talks. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus opened the assembly Monday, saying he was confident that an agreement would be secured. "Of course, we all wish that we had been able to reach a consensus on the agreement in time for this health assembly and crossed the finish line,” he said. "But I remain confident that you still will, because where there is a will, there is a way." Tedros said the task before negotiators had been "immense, technically, legally, and politically", and that they had been "operating on a very ambitious timeline." "You have demonstrated a clear commitment to reaching an agreement," he said, adding that negotiators had "worked long days and nights," closing meetings as late as 4:00 a.m. He hailed their dedication to push forward despite "a torrent of misinformation that was undermining your negotiations." While missing Friday's deadline, countries have voiced a commitment to keep pushing for an accord. Negotiators are due on Tuesday to present the outcome of the talks to the assembly, which runs until June 1, and the assembly will take stock and decide what to do next. "I know that there remains among you a common will to get this done, so, there must always be a way," Tedros said. "Meaning the solution is in your hands," he stressed. Parallel talks have also taken place on revising the International Health Regulations, which were first adopted in 1969 and constitute the existing international legally binding framework for responding to public health emergencies around the world. The proposed amendments to the IHR, including adding more nuance to a system meant to alert countries to potential health emergencies of global concern, might have a better chance of being adopted during this week's assembly, observers said.

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.

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. — Generations of American families have grown up not knowing exactly what happened to their loved ones who died while serving their country in World War II and other conflicts. But a federal lab tucked away above the bowling alley at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha and a sister lab in Hawaii are steadily answering those lingering questions, aiming to offer 200 families per year the chance to honor their relatives with a proper burial. “They may not even have been alive when that service member was alive, but that story gets carried down through the generations," said Carrie Brown, a Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency lab manager at Offutt. "They may have seen on the mantle a picture of that person when they were little and not really understood or known who they were.” Memorial Day and the upcoming 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6 are reminders of the urgency of Brown's work. The forensic anthropologists, medical examiners and historians who work together to identify lost soldiers are in a race against time as remains buried on battlefields around the globe deteriorate. But advances in DNA technology, combined with innovative techniques including comparing bones to chest X-rays taken by the military, mean the labs can identify more of the missing soldiers every year. Some 72,000 World War II soldiers remain unaccounted for, along with roughly 10,000 more from all the conflicts since. The experts believe about half of those are recoverable. The agency identified 59 servicemembers in 2013, when the Offutt lab first opened. That number has steadily risen — 159 service members last year, up from 134 in 2022 — and the labs have a goal of 200 identifications annually. The labs' work allowed Donna Kennedy to bury her cousin, Cpl. Charles Ray Patten, with full military honors this month in the same Lawson, Missouri, cemetery where his father and grandfather are buried. Patten died 74 years ago during the Korean War, but spent decades buried as an unknown in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. “I just I ached. I mean, it hurt. You know, I just felt so bad. Even though I didn’t know him, I loved him,” Kennedy said. Patten's funeral was a simple affair with just a few family members. But often when veterans who fought decades earlier are identified, people waving flags and holding signs line the streets of their hometowns to herald the return of their remains. “This work is important first and foremost because these are individuals that gave their lives to protect our freedom, and they paid the ultimate sacrifice. So we’re here holding that promise that we’ll return them home to their families,” Brown said. "It’s important for their families to show them that we’ll never stop, no matter what,” she said. Often there are compelling details, Brown said. One of her first cases involved the intact remains of a World War I Marine found in a forest in France with his wallet still in his pocket. The wallet, initialed G.H., contained a New York Times article describing plans for the offensive in which he ultimately died. He also had an infantryman badge with his name and the year he received it on the back. Before leaving France with the remains, the team visited a local cemetery where other soldiers were buried and learned there were only two missing soldiers with the initials G.H. Brown had a fair idea who that soldier was before his remains even arrived in the lab. That veteran was buried in Arlington National Cemetery and Brown often visits his grave when she is in Washington D.C. Most cases aren’t that easy. The experts who work at the lab must piece together identities by looking at historical records about where the remains were found and which soldiers were in the area. They then consult the list of possible names and use the bones, objects found with them, military medical records and DNA to confirm their identities. They focus on battles and plane crashes where they have the greatest chance of success because of available information. But their work can be complicated if soldiers were buried in a temporary cemetery and moved when a unit was forced to retreat. And unidentified soldiers were often buried together. When remains are brought to the lab, they sometimes include an extra bone. Experts then spend months or even years matching the bones and waiting for DNA and other test results to confirm their identities. One test even can identify if the soldier grew up primarily eating rice or a corn-based diet. The lab also compares specific traits of collar bones to the chest X-rays the military routinely took of soldiers before they were deployed. It helps that the military keeps extensive records of all soldiers. Those clues help the experts put together the puzzle of someone's identity. “It’s not always easy. It’s certainly not instantaneous,” Brown said. “Some of the cases, we really have to fight to get to that spot, because some of them have been gone for 80 years.”

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.

London — Life expectancy in Europe has returned to the level it reached before the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, while the U.S. is still trying to regain lost ground. Overall, new numbers show life expectancy has increased in most parts of the world, with eastern sub-Saharan Africa showing the biggest gains over the past three decades. Latest European Union figures released this month show the average life expectancy across the bloc in 2023 was 81.5 years — almost a year's gain over 2022, as the coronavirus pandemic was coming to an end. Jennifer Beam Dowd is a professor of demography and population health at the University of Oxford. “Within Europe, we're seeing really high life expectancy in countries like Spain and Italy, Sweden, Norway, but some countries are falling behind their peers and that includes the UK. And then Eastern Europe has made a lot of progress since the post-Soviet mortality crisis of the 1990s, but they're still lagging behind a bit,” she said. A recent study in the Lancet journal showed that globally, life expectancy increased by 6.2 years between 1990 and 2021 — with eastern sub-Saharan Africa experiencing the largest increase of some 10.7 years. “I think that's really good news and reflects a lot of continued progress all over the world in falls and infectious disease and infant and child mortality, which makes a big difference to life expectancy because you're saving a lot of years of life if you save lives at young ages,” said Jennifer Beam Dowd. Figures released in March showed average life expectancy in the United States in 2022, the most recent data available, was 77.5 years — still more than a year lower than the life expectancy before the pandemic. Figures for 2023 have not yet been released. “A lot of countries have bounced back close to pre-pandemic life expectancy, but some countries such as the U.S. have not returned yet to the levels they were at in 2019," said Jennifer Beam Dowd. "Another thing that's having a big impact, we think right now, is the obesity epidemic, which started taking off, especially in the U.S., in the early 1980s. And in fact, we are seeing major slowdowns in improvements from cardiovascular disease that are driving a lot of the stalling life expectancy in high-income countries.” The European principality of Monaco — a favorite home for the super-rich — had the world’s highest life expectancy in 2023, at almost 90 years, according to U.S. figures.

Life expectancy in Europe has returned to the level it reached before the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, while the U.S. is still trying to regain lost ground. Overall, new numbers show life expectancy has increased in most parts of the world, with eastern sub-Saharan Africa showing the biggest gains over the past three decades. Henry Ridgwell reports.

LILANDA, Zambia — Extreme weather events have hit parts of Africa relentlessly in the last three years, with tropical storms, floods and drought causing crises of hunger and displacement. They leave another deadly threat behind them: some of the continent's worst outbreaks of cholera. In southern and East Africa, more than 6,000 people have died and nearly 350,000 cases have been reported since a series of cholera outbreaks began in late 2021.  Malawi and Zambia have had their worst outbreaks on record. Zimbabwe has had multiple waves. Mozambique, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia also have been badly affected.  All have experienced floods or drought — in some cases, both — and health authorities, scientists and aid agencies say the unprecedented surge of the water-borne bacterial infection in Africa is the newest example of how extreme weather is playing a role in driving disease outbreaks.  "The outbreaks are getting much larger because the extreme climate events are getting much more common," said Tulio de Oliveira, a South Africa-based scientist who studies diseases in the developing world.  De Oliveira, who led a team that identified new coronavirus variants during the COVID-19 pandemic, said southern Africa's latest outbreaks can be traced to the cyclones and floods that hit Malawi in late 2021 and early 2022, carrying the cholera bacteria to areas it doesn't normally reach.  Zimbabwe and Zambia have seen cases rise as they wrestle with severe droughts and people rely on less safe sources of water in their desperation like boreholes, shallow wells and rivers, which can all be contaminated. Days after the deadly flooding in Kenya and other parts of East Africa this month, cholera cases appeared.  The World Health Organization calls cholera a disease of poverty, as it thrives where there is poor sanitation and a lack of clean water. Africa has had eight times as many deaths this year as the Middle East, the second-most affected region.  Historically vulnerable, Africa is even more at risk as it faces the worst impacts of climate change as well as the effect of the El Niño weather phenomenon, health experts say.  In what's become a perfect storm, there's also a global shortage of cholera vaccines, which are needed only in poorer countries.  "It doesn't affect countries with resources," said Dr. Daniela Garone, the international medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF. "So, it doesn't bring the resources."  Billions of dollars have been invested into other diseases that predominantly affect the world's most vulnerable, like polio and tuberculosis, largely because those diseases are highly contagious and could cause outbreaks even in rich countries. But that's not the case with cholera, where epidemics remain contained.  WHO said this month there is a "critical shortage" of oral cholera vaccines in the global stockpile. Since the start of 2023, 15 countries — the desperate few — have requested a total of 82 million doses to deal with deadly outbreaks while only 46 million doses were available.  There are just 3.2 million doses left, below the target of having at least 5 million in reserve. While there are currently cholera epidemics in the Middle East, the Americas and Southeast Asia, Africa is by far the worst-affected region.  Vaccines alliance GAVI and UNICEF said last month that the approval of a new cholera vaccine would boost stocks. But the result of the shortage has already been measured in deaths.  Lilanda, a township on the edge of the Zambian capital of Lusaka, is a typical cholera hot spot. Stagnant pools of water dot the dirt roads. Clean water is like gold dust. Here, over two awful days in January, Mildred Banda saw her 1-year-old son die from cholera and rushed to save the life of her teenage daughter.  Cholera shouldn't be killing anyone. The disease is easily treated and easily prevented — and the vaccines are relatively simple to produce.  That didn't help Banda's son, Ndanji.  When he fell sick with diarrhea, he was treated with an oral rehydration solution at a clinic and released. He slipped back into dehydration that night at home. Banda feels terrible guilt.  "I should have noticed earlier that my son was not feeling well," she said, sitting in her tiny concrete house. "I should have acted faster and taken him back to the clinic. I should have taken him back to save his life."  Because of the vaccine shortage, Zambia couldn't undertake a preventative vaccination campaign after neighboring Malawi's outbreak. That should have been a warning call, said de Oliveira. Zambia only made an emergency request when its cases started mounting.  The doses that might have saved Ndanji started arriving in mid-January. He died on Jan. 6.  In Zimbabwe, a drought worsened by El Niño has seen cholera take hold in distant rural areas as well as its traditional hot spots of crowded urban neighborhoods.  Abi Kebra Belaye, MSF representative for Zimbabwe, said the southern African nation normally has around 17 hard-hit areas, mostly urban. This year, cholera spread to 62 districts as the struggle to find water heightened the risk.  "This part of Africa is paying the highest price of climate change," Kebra Belaye said.  Augustine Chonyera, who hails from a cholera-prone part of the capital, Harare, was shocked when he recently visited the sparsely populated rural district of Buhera.  He said he heard grim tales of the impact of the disease: a family losing five members, a husband and wife dying within hours of each other and local businesses using delivery trucks to take the sick to a clinic several kilometers (miles) away.  "It seems now the people in rural areas are in more danger than us. I still wonder how it happened," Chonyera said.  He said he returned home as soon as he could — after giving a large bottle of treated water he had brought with him to an elderly woman. 

TASHIROJIMA — On a small island off Japan's northeastern coast, visitors make offerings at a shrine for unlikely local guardians: cats. The "Neko Jinja," or Cat Shrine, mythologizes cats as guardian angels of Tashirojima, where cats outnumber humans. Legend says the island used to be famous for sericulture and farmers would keep cats because they would chase away rats, protecting the silkworm cocoons from the rodents. Fishermen on the island have also traditionally believed that cats bring good luck, including large hauls of fish. Another legend says fishermen used to watch the cats' behavior for tips on the coming weather before heading to sea. The islanders have long coexisted with the cats. One day, however, a fisherman accidentally injured a cat while working. Feeling sorry for the injury, the islanders built the shrine for cats. Tashirojima is part of the city of Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture in the Tohoku region, which became well known after a tsunami devastated the area following a massive magnitude 9 earthquake on March 11, 2011. Over 100 cats inhabit Tashirojima, along with about 50 humans, according to the city's website. Along a paved road running about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) between the island's two ports, cats groom themselves and mingle with other cats. There are a few cafes and inns, but no car rental shops, gas stations or public transportation. Tourists are expected to walk up and down the island's hills while visiting. Most of the cats are used to tourists, who can be seen petting the friendly animals throughout the island.

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.

The African National Congress has been governing South Africa since 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected president following the end of apartheid. But as voters get ready to go to the polls on May 29, the party known for its opposition to apartheid faces dissatisfaction from some citizens who feel the party has not delivered on its promises. VOA Nairobi Bureau Chief Mariama Diallo has this story.

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.

BANGKOK — A Thai court on Monday sentenced a lawmaker from a progressive opposition party to two years in prison after finding her guilty of defaming the monarchy in a speech she made during a protest rally three years ago. Chonthicha Jangrew of the Move Forward Party was greeted by several supporters when she arrived at the Thanyaburi Provincial Court in Pathum Thani province, north of Bangkok, with some party colleagues. Chonthicha, popularly known by her nickname “Lookkate,” represents a constituency in Pathum Thani. Her charges stemmed from her speech in 2021 that demanded the release of all political prisoners during a rally in front of the same court that delivered Monday’s sentence.  She was found guilty for parts of the speech concerning how the government then led by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha had amended laws to give King Vajiralongkorn more power to control the palace wealth, which is managed by the Crown Property Bureau. The judge said her speech could misinform the public by suggesting that King Vajiralongkorn can spend taxpayers’ money for his personal use and use his influence to interfere with politics, which could tarnish his reputation. The judge originally sentenced her to three years in prison but reduced it to two years because of her cooperation in the trial. The law for defaming the monarchy, an offense known as lese majeste, carries a penalty of three to 15 years imprisonment. It is widely referred to as Article 112 from its place in the Criminal Code. Chonthicha was afterwards released on bail of 150,000 baht ($4,100). Had bail not been granted and she been sent directly to prison, she would have immediately been removed from her seat in Parliament. She told reporters she wasn’t surprised about the verdict as most of 112 charges led to convictions. She said she will appeal, adding that she was glad to have been granted release on bail but wished that other political prisoners were given the same right. A young activist charged with lese majeste died in detention earlier this month after carrying out a monthslong hunger strike to protest the revocation of her bail in January. Chonthicha and nine other defendants in the case were charged with other offenses including illegal assembly and violating an emergency decree enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. All 10 were acquitted of those charges. Chonthicha was the only one who had been charged with violating the lese majeste law. Before becoming a politician, Chonthicha had been an activist since she was a college student. She became a high-profile figure in the youth-dominated movement by confronting the police during the mass street protests that demanded democratic reform of several powerful institutions including the monarchy. Chonthicha, 31, won a seat in last year’s general election, part of a surprise victory for the progressive Move Forward Party that shook Thai politics.  However, it failed to take power after the party was outmaneuvered by influential conservative forces, as members of the Senate refused to approve the party's leader as prime minister. Criticism of Thailand’s monarchy is considered taboo, and insulting or defaming key royal family members is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. But student-led pro-democracy protests began to challenge that taboo in 2020, openly criticizing the monarchy. That led to vigorous prosecutions under what was previously a little-used law. Critics say the law is often wielded as a tool to quash political dissent. The advocacy group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights says that since early 2020, more than 270 people — many of them student activists — have been charged with violating Article 112. In December, another lawmaker from the Move Forward Party was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison over two posts she allegedly shared two years ago on the social media platform X, then known as Twitter. She appealed and was granted release on bail.

ISLAMABAD — Heavily armed militants attacked a Pakistan security outpost near the border with Afghanistan early Monday, resulting in the deaths of five soldiers and five assailants in the ensuing firefight. Security officials confirmed the deaths to VOA, saying the attack occurred in the remote Tirah valley in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and also resulted in injuries to six soldiers. The Pakistani military’s media wing did not immediately respond to a request from VOA for comment on the attack in the former militant stronghold on the Afghan border. Militants allied with the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), released a statement claiming responsibility for staging the raid in Tirah. The deadly attack came a day after the Pakistani military reported that a counterterrorism raid near the provincial capital of Peshawar killed two Pakistani soldiers and five alleged “terrorists” believed to be linked to TTP.  Sunday Pakistan Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi also renewed Islamabad’s demand for the Taliban government in Afghanistan to immediately stop TTP leaders and fighters from orchestrating cross-border terrorism from their alleged safe havens in the neighboring country. Naqvi stated at a news conference that "if the TTP headquarters remain in Afghanistan" and no action is taken to dismantle them, it would become "very challenging" for Islamabad to improve relations with the de facto Kabul rulers. “We want good relations with Afghanistan, but this is possible only if they do not allow their land to be used for terrorism against Pakistan,” Naqvi said. “But it is imperative (for the Taliban) that the individuals engaged in terrorism within their borders are apprehended, prosecuted, or surrendered to us.” The minister also stated that TTP had planned and directed from Afghan sanctuaries a suicide car bombing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this past March that killed five Chinese engineers along with their Pakistani driver. The Chinese nationals were working on a major hydropower project in the province known as the Dasu Dam. Naqvi said that the suicide bomber was an Afghan national, noting that Pakistani authorities have arrested 11 people in connection with the attack and plan to prosecute them soon. The Taliban government rejects allegations TTP is operating out of their territory, saying they are not allowing anyone to use Afghan soil to threaten neighboring countries or beyond. But skeptics question those assertions. A recent United Nations report on the security situation in Afghanistan highlighted the Taliban’s continued close ties to al-Qaida operatives, saying the terrorist network has established new training camps in the country and is facilitating TTP to conduct cross-border attacks against Pakistan.   

DHAKA, Bangladesh — A cyclone flooded coastal villages, blew away thatched roofs and left hundreds of thousands of people without power Monday in southern Bangladesh and eastern India. At least seven deaths were reported. Dozens of Bangladeshi villages were flooded after flood protection embankments either washed away or were damaged by the storm surge, TV stations reported. Nearly 800,000 people had been evacuated from vulnerable areas in Bangladesh on Sunday.  Authorities have given no casualty figures yet, but Dhaka-based Somoy TV reported that at least seven people died. Two others were missing in a boat capsizing, the station said.  In India's West Bengal state, roofs on thatched houses were blown away while electric poles and trees were uprooted in some coastal districts. There were no immediate reports of deaths. Heavy downpours also inundated streets and homes in low-lying areas of Kolkata city. Cyclone Remal weakened considerably after making landfall in Bangladesh’s Patuakhali district early in the morning with sustained 111 kph winds. The Meteorological Department in Dhaka said the winds were now 90 kph with gusts to 120 kph. The India Meteorological Department said Remal was likely to weaken further throughout the day. It warned of heavy showers over Assam and other northeastern states for the next two days.  The Kolkata airport reopened after being shut Sunday, and Bangladesh shut down the airport in the southeastern city of Chattogram and canceled all domestic flights to and from Cox’s Bazar. Loading and unloading in the Chittagong seaport was halted and more than a dozen ships moved from jetties to the deep sea as a precaution. Volunteers helped Bangladesh's hundreds of thousands of evacuees move to up to 9,000 cyclone shelters. All schools in the region were closed until further notice.  Remal was the first cyclone in the Bay of Bengal ahead of this year's monsoon season, which runs from June to September. India’s coasts are often hit by cyclones, but changing climate patterns have increased the storms' intensity, making preparations for natural disasters more urgent.

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.