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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. 

tokyo — A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom. The robot's trip into the Unit 2 reactor is a crucial initial step for what comes next — a daunting, decades-long process to decommission the plant and deal with large amounts of highly radioactive melted fuel inside three reactors that were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Specialists hope the robot will help them learn more about the status of the cores and the fuel debris. Here is an explanation of how the robot works, its mission, significance and what lies ahead as the most challenging phase of the reactor cleanup begins. What is the fuel debris? Nuclear fuel in the reactor cores melted after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's cooling systems to fail. The melted fuel dripped down from the cores and mixed with internal reactor materials such as zirconium, stainless steel, electrical cables, broken grates and concrete around the supporting structure and at the bottom of the primary containment vessels. The reactor meltdowns caused the highly radioactive, lava-like material to spatter in all directions, greatly complicating the cleanup. The condition of the debris also differs in each reactor. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, which manages the plant, says an estimated 880 tons of molten fuel debris remains in the three reactors, but some experts say the amount could be larger. What is the robot's mission? Workers will use five 1.5-meter-long pipes connected in sequence to maneuver the robot through an entry point in the Unit 2 reactor's primary containment vessel. The robot itself can extend about 6 meters inside the vessel. Once inside, it will be maneuvered remotely by operators at another building at the plant because of the fatally high radiation emitted by the melted debris. The front of the robot, equipped with tongs, a light and a camera, will be lowered by a cable to a mound of melted fuel debris. It will then snip off and collect a bit of the debris — less than 3 grams). The small amount is meant to minimize radiation dangers. The robot will then back out to the place it entered the reactor, a roundtrip journey that will take about two weeks. The mission takes that long because the robot must make extremely precise maneuvers to avoid hitting obstacles or getting stuck in passageways. That has happened to earlier robots. TEPCO is also limiting daily operations to two hours to minimize the radiation risk for workers in the reactor building. Eight six-member teams will take turns, with each group allowed to stay maximum of about 15 minutes. What do officials hope to learn? Sampling the melted fuel debris is "an important first step," said Lake Barrett, who led the cleanup after the 1979 disaster at the U.S. Three Mile Island nuclear plant for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is now a paid adviser for TEPCO's Fukushima decommissioning. While the melted fuel debris has been kept cool and has stabilized, the aging of the reactors poses potential safety risks, and the melted fuel needs to be removed and relocated to a safer place for long-term storage as soon as possible, experts say. An understanding of the melted fuel debris is essential to determine how best to remove it, store it and dispose of it, according to the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. Experts expect the sample will also provide more clues about how exactly the meltdown 13 years ago played out, some of which is still a mystery. The melted fuel sample will be kept in secure canisters and sent to multiple laboratories for more detailed analysis. If the radiation level exceeds a set limit, the robot will take the sample back into the reactor. "It's the start of a process. It's a long, long road ahead," Barrett said in an online interview. "The goal is to remove the highly radioactive material, put it into engineered canisters ... and put those in storage." For this mission, the robot's small tong can only reach the upper surface of the debris. The pace of the work is expected to pick up in the future as more experience is gained and robots with additional capabilities are developed. What's next? TEPCO will have to "probe down into the debris pile, which is over a meter thick, so you have to go down and see what's inside," Barrett said, noting that at Three Mile Island, the debris on the surface was very different from the material deeper inside. He said multiple samples from different locations must be collected and analyzed to better understand the melted debris and develop necessary equipment, such as stronger robots for future larger-scale removal. Compared to collecting a tiny sample for analysis, it will be a more difficult challenge to develop and operate robots that can cut larger chunks of melted debris into pieces and put that material into canisters for safe storage. There are also two other damaged reactors, Unit 1 and Unit 3, which are in worse condition and will take even longer to deal with. TEPCO plans to deploy a set of small drones in Unit 1 for a probe later this year and is developing even smaller "micro" drones for Unit 3, which is filled with a larger amount of water. Separately, hundreds of spent fuel rods remain in unenclosed cooling pools on the top floor of both Unit 1 and 2. This is a potential safety risk if there's another major quake. Removal of spent fuel rods has been completed at Unit 3. When will the decommissioning be finished? Removal of the melted fuel was initially planned to start in late 2021 but has been delayed by technical issues, underscoring the difficulty of the process. The government says decommissioning is expected to take 30-40 years, while some experts say it could take as long as 100 years. Others are pushing for an entombment of the plant, as at Chernobyl after its 1986 explosion, to reduce radiation levels and risks for plant workers. That won't work at the seaside Fukushima plant, Barrett says. "You're in a high seismic area, you're in a high-water area, and there are a lot of unknowns in those (reactor) buildings," he said. "I don't think you can just entomb it and wait."

rio de janeiro — Rio de Janeiro's main beaches bustle with commotion on sunny weekends. But activity ground to a near standstill on one stretch of sand. People held up their phones to record athletic feats they'd never before witnessed, or even imagined. The game? Footvolley, a combination of soccer and beach volleyball. The athlete? A 3-year-old border collie named Floki. Floki sparks wonder among bystanders because he hangs tough in a game that even humans struggle to get a handle on. Footvolley rules are essentially the same as beach volleyball, but with a slightly lower net and, like soccer, players are forbidden from using hands and arms. Floki springs up from the sand to drive the ball with his snout. He has become something of an internet sensation in Brazil, with hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok. Floki's owner, Gustavo Rodrigues, is a footvolley coach, but swears he didn't plan this. He had wanted an American Bully, a decidedly less sprightly breed. Floki came into Rodrigues' life instead and quickly revealed his potential when, at just 2 months old, he started jumping after birthday balloons. Rodrigues started Floki out on what's called "altinha," where a group standing in a circle juggles a soccer ball for as long as possible. In 2023, Floki made his debut in the much more complex, competitive game of footvolley — a hobby enjoyed by some Brazilian soccer stars after they retire, including World Cup winners Ronaldinho and Romario. Footvolley players need poise, agility, coordination, timing, finesse. Covering one side of the court between just two people means quick sprints back and forth on soft sand under the baking sun. It's no mean feat, but Floki was a natural. A star was born. "He does things that even some professionals don't — like positioning on the court," said Rodrigues, 26. "Sometimes the ball goes from one side (of the court) to the other, and he doesn't keep his back turned to it. He turns toward the ball to always hit it straight on." It's clear this high-energy pup lives for this game. Even resting under the shade of the beach's caipirinha bar, he was laser-focused on the action of the adjacent court's match. When playing, he barks at Rodrigues to pass him the ball and seems to at least understand the basic rules. At times, rather than passing back to Rodrigues for the third and final touch their opponents expect, he sneaks the ball over the net himself to score a point. Then he jumps into Rodrigues' arms to celebrate. One of the awestruck onlookers Sunday was Luiza Chioli, who had traveled to Rio from Sao Paulo. She already knew the famous Floki from TikTok, but hadn't expected front-row seats to watch him while sipping her gin and tonic. "Seeing social media, we had thought it was just cuts, that they used the best takes," said Chioli, 21. "But we saw he played, performed the whole time, did really well. It's really cool." As Floki's follower count has grown, partnerships and endorsement deals have come rolling in. Rodrigues and Floki live in the inland capital Brasilia, but often travel to Rio — footvolley's mecca — and other Brazilian states to show off his skills, do marketing appearances and create monetized social media content. Floki's Sunday began with almost an hour playing beside former footvolley champion Natalia Guitler, who's been called Queen of the Beach. Between attempts to film her doing a trick pass to him, he scampered for drinks of water or to dip in the ocean. By the end, both she and Floki were scrambling for shade. "We're dead," she said as she collapsed onto the sand next to a panting Floki. Someone passed her a phone to check out the best clips for her Instagram, where she has almost 3 million followers. "Me and my bestie @dog_altinha playing footvolley," she wrote in a later post showing their long rally, and which included her bicycle kicking the ball over the net. After a rest and another footvolley session, Floki headed to a more remote beach to do a marketing shoot for Farm, a fashion designer that's become the paragon of Rio's breezy tropical style, both in Brazil and abroad. Then Floki was on Instagram hyping a brand of dog popsicles, gnawing a banana-flavored one himself, and giving an altinha demonstration to mall shoppers. His evening stroll along Copacabana's beachside promenade showed him straining against his leash, still evidently bursting with his boundless energy. With their weekend marketing blitz in Rio over, Rodrigues and Floki would head back to Brasilia, where their influencer hustle takes a back seat to the hustle of playing competitive matches. They win about one in every three, Rodrigues said, and their opponents are always desperate to avoid being beaten by a dog. "It generates talk, and people make fun," said Rodrigues. "No one likes to lose a point to him, so people play their hearts out against us."

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Mosul, Iraq — If they had tried to do this a few years ago, the group of Iraqi women enjoying a night out in Mosul would probably have risked severe punishment. The northern city was under the harsh rule of the Islamic State group until the jihadists were ousted from their last major Iraqi bastion in 2017. Seven years later, Mosul's streets truly come alive at nightfall, and residents are rediscovering the art of having a good time. Amira Taha and her friends have come to a restaurant with their children, to enjoy food and live music -- complete with crooners -- on a night out that would have been unthinkable under IS rule. "There has been enormous change in Mosul," Taha tells AFP. "We now have freedom and nights out like this have become common" because of "the very stable security situation." The city has new restaurants to go to, pleasure cruises on the river Tigris, and amusement parks that draw families keen to take advantage of the newfound stability. Dressed in an electric blue suit, the 35-year-old mother says "people wanted to open up [to the world] and enjoy themselves." Reign of terror On the stage, three Iraqi singers in suits and slicked-back hair take it in turns to entertain the diners with Iraqi and Arab pop songs. The orchestra includes an electric organist, a violinist, and a musician playing the darbouka, a goblet-shaped drum. When the jihadists took Mosul in 2014 they imposed a reign of sheer terror. Music was banned, as were cigarettes. Churches and museums were ransacked and IS staged public stonings and beheaded perceived wrongdoers. Even after Mosul was retaken in 2017 in a destructive and lengthy fight by Iraqi and international coalition forces, it took several years for its citizens to emerge from years of trauma. Entire neighborhoods were devastated, and reconstruction became a lengthy process. Mines had to be cleared before homes, infrastructure and roads could be rebuilt to allow hundreds of thousands of people to return to what is now a metropolis of 1.5 million people. In the past, Taha says, "people would go home, shut their doors and then go to bed" because of fears over security. But now, all around her on the restaurant's lawns, families are seated at most of the tables. Sometimes the men and women puff on water pipes as their children clap and dance. Overlooking the restaurant is a brand-new bridge spanning the Tigris, a proud symbol of a Mosul being reborn. Taking a gamble Other cities in Iraq are in a similar situation, enjoying a return to normality after decades marked by war, sectarian violence, kidnappings, political conflict and jihadist extremism. Ahmed -- who goes by only his first name -- opened a restaurant called "Chef Ahmed the Swede" in June, after spending "half of my life" in Sweden and taking a gamble. Now he serves between 300 and 400 diners every day, Ahmed tells AFP. "I'd always dreamt of coming back and starting my own business," says the proprietor, who is in his 40s. "People want to go out, they want to see something different," he says. At Ahmed's, diners can choose from dishes inspired by Scandinavian and European cuisines, alongside old favorites such as pastas, pizzas and grilled meats. Khalil Ibrahim runs an amusement park on the banks of the river. "The city has seen radical changes over the past few years," he says. "We've gone from destruction to reconstruction." Friday is the first day of the weekend, and the evening is pierced by the happy shrieks and laughter of children in dodgem cars, the Ferris wheel and other attractions. "People used to go home early," Ibrahim tells AFP. "But now they're still arriving even at midnight." 'We can breathe' His park opened in 2011, but it was "completely destroyed" in the war. "We started again from scratch" with the help of private funding, he says. As Mosul was still emerging from its jihadist nightmare, another tragedy befell the city. In 2019 around 100 people, mostly women and children, died when a ferry taking families across the river to a leisure park capsized. But today, pleasure boats ply the Tigris by night, their passengers admiring the riverbank lights of the restaurants and their reflection in the dark waters. In small cafes, clients play dominoes or cards as they have a smoke. "We're comfortable here. We can breathe. We have the river, and that's enough for us," says day laborer Jamal Abdel Sattar. "Some shops stay open until 3 in the morning, and some never close," he adds. "When people got their first taste of security, they began to go out again." 

Yangon, Myanmar — The death toll in Myanmar in the wake of Typhoon Yagi has jumped to 74, state media reported on Sunday, a day after its junta made a rare request for foreign aid. Floods and landslides have killed almost 350 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which hit the region last weekend, according to official figures. In Myanmar, the floods "resulted in 74 deaths and 89 people missing" as of Friday evening, the Global New Light of Myanmar said. Search and rescue operations were ongoing, it said, adding that the floods had destroyed more than 65,000 houses and five dams, heaping further misery on the country where war has raged since the military's 2021 coup. The junta's previous death toll was 33, with more than 235,000 people displaced, according to figures released Friday. Swathes of farmland have been inundated in central regions, including around the sprawling, low-lying capital Naypyidaw. There have been reports of landslides in hilly areas but with roads and bridges damaged and phone and internet lines down, compiling information has been difficult. The Sittaung and Bago rivers, which flow through central and southern Myanmar, were both still above dangerous levels Sunday, state media said, although water levels were expected to fall in the coming days. Authorities in Myanmar had opened 82 "relief camps" to house displaced people, according to state media. Thailand's weather office warned Sunday of further heavy rain in provinces along the Mekong river. Request for aid The floods have heaped more misery on Myanmar, where more than 2.7 million people have already displaced by conflict. Myanmar's junta chief made a rare request for foreign aid to deal with the floods, state media reported Saturday. The military has previously blocked or frustrated humanitarian assistance from abroad. Last year it suspended travel authorizations for aid groups trying to reach around a million victims of powerful Cyclone Mocha that hit the west of the country. On Saturday the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Myanmar and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told AFP they could not currently comment on the junta's request. Heavy monsoon rains lash Southeast Asia every year, but human-made climate change is causing more intense weather patterns that can make destructive floods more likely. Climate change is causing typhoons to form closer to the coast, intensify faster and stay longer over land, according to a study published in July. 

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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.

rome — Italian prosecutors requested on Saturday a six-year prison sentence for Matteo Salvini, Italy's far-right deputy prime minister, for allegedly blocking migrants from disembarking at one of the country's ports in 2019. Salvini, a partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's coalition, is on trial for alleged deprivation of liberty and abuse of office for keeping 147 migrants at sea for weeks on a ship run by the Open Arms charity. "The prosecution has asked for former interior minister Salvini to be sentenced to six years," Open Arms' lawyer Arturo Salerni told AFP, as the "long and difficult trial" nears an end. A verdict in the trial, which began in October 2021, could come next month, he said. Salvini would be free to appeal any decision. Salvini was not present, but wrote on Facebook: "Six years in prison for having blocked arrivals and defended Italy and Italians? Madness. Defending Italy is not a crime." Meloni also criticized the prosecutors. "It is incredible that a minister of the Italian Republic risks 6 years in prison for doing his job defending the nation's borders, as required by the mandate received from its citizens," the prime minister wrote on X. In summing up, prosecutor Geri Ferrara told the Palermo court in Sicily that there was "one key principle that is not debatable." "Between human rights and the protection of state sovereignty, it is human rights that must prevail in our fortunately democratic system," he said. The ship was stuck at sea for nearly three weeks before the migrants were allowed to disembark on the island of Lampedusa following a court order. Members of Open Arms have testified that the migrants' physical and mental well-being reached a crisis point as sanitary conditions onboard became dire, including a scabies outbreak. Salvini, head of the anti-immigration League party and interior minister at the time, testified in January that he had understood that "the situation was not at risk" onboard the ship. "The POS (safe port) should have been provided immediately and without delay," prosecutor Marzia Sabella said Saturday, according to Italian media reports. "Refusing to do so was breaking the rules, not being in line with a government plan," and Salvini's "choices" had given rise to "chaos," she said. A populist known for an "Italians first" policy, Salvini has repeatedly used attacks against illegal immigration to boost his political capital. In 2019, serving under prime minister Giuseppe Conte, he implemented a "closed ports" policy under which Italy refused entry to charity ships that rescue migrants stranded while crossing the Mediterranean. He cast it as a tough measure against traffickers who operate boats between North Africa and Italy and Malta, the deadliest migrant crossing in the world. French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, also known for her anti-immigrant politics, offered Salvini a message of support on Saturday night, alleging he was the target of "judicial harassment aimed at silencing him." Salvini thanked her and promised not to "give in." Much of the trial has been focused on determining whether the decision-making and responsibility in the case lay with the Conte government or Salvini alone. Salvini has previously faced a similar trial, accused of refusing to allow 116 migrants to disembark from an Italian coast guard boat in July 2019. But it was thrown out by a court in Catania in 2021. 

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Geneva, Switzerland — Limited capacity is keeping mpox testing coverage low in the DR Congo — the epicenter of the international emergency — the World Health Organization said Saturday in its latest situation report.  "Testing coverage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo remains low, due to limited testing capacity," the United Nations health agency said in its update.  It said the mpox case fatality ratio in the DRC in 2024 was 0.5% among confirmed cases — or 25 deaths from 5,160 cases — and 3.3% among suspected cases, both tested and untested — or 717 deaths among 21,835 cases.  "Due to limited access to laboratory testing in remote areas, only about 40% of all suspected cases have been tested in 2024 (up from 9% in 2023), and among these, around 55% tested positive," the WHO said.  It said the three countries reporting the most suspected cases in the year up to September 8 were the DRC, followed by Burundi (1,489 suspected cases, no deaths), and Nigeria (935 suspected cases, no deaths).  There are two clades of mpox, each with a and b subclades.  The WHO said the clades and their subclades were circulating in different geographic areas and were affecting different populations — and therefore needed "tailored and locally adapted outbreak responses."  The WHO declared an international emergency over mpox on August 14, concerned by the surge in cases of the new Clade 1b strain in the DRC that spread to nearby countries.  In the DRC, Clade 1b has been detected chiefly in the eastern South Kivu and North Kivu provinces, with additional cases in the Kinshasa capital province.  Current sequencing capacity in the DRC "is limited, and clade distribution might be broader than what is currently known" the WHO said.  Clade 1b has also been detected in the DRC's eastern neighbors Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, plus Kenya. Additionally, a single case has been detected in Sweden and another in Thailand.  Looking at global vaccine availability, the WHO said more than 3.6 million doses had been pledged for the global response, including more than 620,000 doses of the MVA-BN vaccine by European countries, the United States and manufacturer Bavarian Nordic.  Meanwhile Japan has pledged 3 million doses of the LC16 vaccine.  To date, 265,000 MVA-BN doses have been delivered to Kinshasa, while 10,000 have gone to Nigeria. 

TUNIS, Tunisia — The official start of the presidential campaign season in Tunisia began on Saturday, a day after Tunisians took their anger to the streets of the capital to decry what protesters say is the deteriorating state of the country. In what appeared to be the largest protest since authorities began a monthslong wave of arrests earlier this year, hundreds of Tunisians marched peacefully on Friday and called for an end to what they called a police state. "We're here to say no and show that we don't all agree with what's really happening in the country," Khaled Ben Abdeslam, a father and urban development consultant, told The Associated Press. In 2011, longtime Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled by nationwide protests that unleashed revolt across the Arab world. More than a decade later, Ben Abdelslam said he was worried about the growing number of political figures who've been thrown in jail under President Kais Saied and said he wants to ensure Tunisia "turns the page" for the good of his kids. "Nobody dares to say or do anything anymore today," he said as protesters neared Tunisia's powerful Interior Ministry. He and other demonstrators slammed both Tunisia's economic and political woes, carrying signs that grouped together the growing costs of staple items and growing concerns about civil liberties. "Where is sugar? Where is oil? Where is freedom? Where is democracy?" signs read. Some carried posters telling the government that "human rights are not optional" while others revived the popular slogans that mobilized Tunisia's masses against Ben Ali. This time though, they directed scorn toward Saied. The protests capped off a week in which the North African country's largest opposition party, Ennahda, said its senior members had been arrested en masse, at a scale not previously seen. The arrests come as Saied prepares to campaign for reelection on October 6, when he will ask voters to grant him a second term. When first elected in 2019, Saied used anti-corruption promises to win over people disillusioned with the political controversies that plagued Tunisia's young democracy in the years that followed the Arab Spring. Since taking office, the 66-year-old former law professor has gone to lengths to consolidate his own power, freezing the country's parliament and rewriting the constitution. Throughout his tenure, authorities have arrested journalists, activists, civil society figures and political opponents across the ideological spectrum. And though he promised to chart a new course for the country, its unemployment rate has steadily increased to one of the region's highest at 16%, with young Tunisians hit particularly hard. The economy continues to face significant challenges, yet Saied has managed to energize supporters with populist rhetoric, often accusing migrants from sub-Saharan Africa of violence and crime and aiming at changing the country's demography. In the months leading up to his reelection bid, the political crackdown has expanded. His opponents have been arrested, placed under gag order or faced criminal investigations that observers have called politically motivated. Figures who said they planned to challenge him have been sentenced for breaking campaign finance laws. Others have been ruled ineligible to challenge him by Tunisia's election authority. Even those whom the authority approved have later faced arrest. Ayachi Zammel, a businessman planning to challenge Saied, was promptly arrested after being announced as one of the two candidates approved to appear on the ballot alongside Saied. His attorney, Abdessattar Messaoudi, told The Associated Press that she feared a court may bar him from politics for life as it had done to other Saied challengers. The Tunisian Network for the Defense of Rights and Freedoms — a newly formed coalition of civil society groups and political parties — organized Friday's protest to draw attention to what it called a surge of authoritarianism. Outrage swelled among many members of the network after the country's election authority — made up of Saied appointees — dismissed a court ruling ordering it to reinstate three challengers to Saied. The authority has defied judges who have ruled in favor of candidates who have appealed its decisions and pledged not to allow Mondher Zenaidi, Abdellatif El Mekki and Imed Daimi to appear on the ballot alongside Saied next month. Hajer Mohamed, a 33-year-old law firm assistant said that she and her friends are terrified about the direction Tunisia is heading in ways they couldn't have imagined when people rejoiced the freedoms won 13 years ago. "We never thought that after the 2011 revolution we'd live to see the country's suffocating situation," she said. "Even under former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the situation wasn't as scandalous as it is today."