Emergency crews in Papua New Guinea move survivors of massive landslide to safer ground

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Emergency responders in Papua New Guinea were moving survivors of a massive https://apnews.com/article/papua-new-guinea-landslide-86fcf41e600122fd54ddcfb56bcab403
 — feared to have buried scores of people — to safer ground on Sunday as tons of unstable earth and tribal warfare, which is rife in the country’s Highlands, threatened the rescue effort.The South Pacific island’s government meanwhile is considering whether it needs to officially request more international support.Crews have given up hope of finding survivors under earth and rubble 6 to 8 meters (20 to 26 feet) deep after a landslide wiped out part of Yambali village in Enga province a few hours before dawn on Friday, said Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the International Organization for Migration’s mission in Papua New Guinea.Local authorities initially estimated the death toll could be around 100, but others fear many more have died.
    

“Hopes to take the people out alive from the rubble have diminished now,” Aktoprak told The Associated Press.“People are coming to terms with this so there is a serious level of grieving and mourning,” he added.Only fives bodies had been dug out of the debris by hand by late Saturday, with heavy earth-moving equipment yet to arrive at the mountainous location 600 kilometers (370 miles) northwest of the capital, Port Moresby.



Government authorities were establishing evacuation centers on safer ground on either side of the massive swathe of debris that covers an area the size of three to four football fields and has cut the main highway through the province.
    
        
            
                
    
    


    
    
        
    

            
        
    
“Working across the debris is very dangerous and the land is still sliding,” Aktoprak said.Besides the blocked highway, https://apnews.com/article/papua-new-guinea-landslide-6908ec1ed79d30c6a02dfa3bdac25f79
 that have transported food, water and other essential supplies since Saturday to the devastated village 60 kilometers (35 miles) from the provincial capital Wabag have faced risks related to tribal fighting in Tambitanis village about halfway along the route. Papua New Guinea soldiers were providing security for the convoys.
    

Eight locals were killed in a clash between two rival clans on Saturday in a longstanding dispute unrelated to the landslide. Around 30 homes and five retail businesses were burned down in the fighting, local officials said.Aktoprak said he did not expect tribal combatants would target the convoys but noted that opportunistic criminals might take advantage of the mayhem to do so.“This could basically end up in carjacking or robbery,” Aktoprak said. “There is not only concern for the safety and security of the personnel, but also the goods because they may use this chaos as a means to steal.”Longtime tribal warfare has cast doubt on the official estimate that almost 4,000 people were living in the village when a side of Mount Mungalo fell away.Justine McMahon, country director of the humanitarian agency CARE International, said that figure was based on an out-of-date census and didn’t take into account the recent movements of refugees fleeing tribal violence in the region.“The authorities do anticipate that the number of casualties will rise,” McMahon told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
    

“Because of tribal fights, other displaced people had moved into the area, so they do expect that the population is much bigger than the official figures indicate,” McMahon added.McMahon said moving survivors to “more stable ground” was an immediate priority along with providing them with food, water and shelter. The military was leading those efforts.While Papua New Guinea is in the tropics, the village is 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) above sea level where temperatures are substantially cooler.Papua New Guinea Defense Minister Billy Jospeh and the government’s National Disaster Center director Laso Mana were flying from Port Moresby by helicopter to Wabag on Sunday to gain a firsthand perspective of what is needed.Aktoprak expected the government would decide by Tuesday whether it would officially request more international help.The United States and Australia, a near neighbor and Papua New Guinea’s most generous provider of foreign aid, are among governments that have publicly stated their readiness to do more to help responders.Papua New Guinea is a diverse, developing nation with 800 languages and 10 million people who are mostly subsistence farmers.

https://apnews.com/article/papua-new-guinea-landslide-yambali-enga-642d9e8e0c913efa25ed2d67df318393 

 UK police catch terrorism suspect who escaped from a London prison

LONDON (AP) — A former soldier who escaped from a London prison while awaiting trial on terrorism charges was captured Saturday, police said.Daniel Abed Khalife was on the run four days before a massive search managed to nab him in Chiswick in west London.Khalife escaped on the bottom of a food delivery truck from Wandsworth Prison on Wednesday. The breakout ignited a storm of criticism as political opponents blamed the ruling Conservative party for incompetence.Khalife, 21, is accused of planting fake bombs at a military base and of violating Britain’s Official Secrets Act by gathering information “that could be useful to an enemy.” He was discharged from the British army after his arrest earlier this year and had denied the allegations. His trial is set for November.London counter-terror police had offered a 20,000 pound ($25,000) reward for information leading to his arrest.
                                    

https://apnews.com/article/london-prison-escape-khalife-76a5d61b07a1cf3cb0df23b8422af828 

 UN atomic watchdog warns of threat to nuclear safety as fighting spikes near plant in Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The United Nations atomic watchdog warned of a potential threat to nuclear safety due to a spike in fighting near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine as the forces of the war-torn country continued pressing their counteroffensive on Saturday.The International Atomic Energy Agency said its experts deployed at the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant reported hearing numerous explosions over the past week, in a possible indication of increased military activity in the region. There was no damage to the plant.“I remain deeply concerned about the possible dangers facing the plant at this time of heightened military tension in the region,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi warned in a statement issued late Friday. 
    

He noted that the IAEA team was informed that staff at the nuclear power plant had been reduced temporarily to minimum levels due to concerns of more military activity in the area.



“Whatever happens in a conflict zone, wherever it may be, everybody would stand to lose from a nuclear accident, and I urge that all necessary precautions must be taken to avoid it happening,” Grossi said.
    
    


    


The IAEA has repeatedly expressed concern that the fighting could cause a potential radiation leak from the facility, which is one of the world’s 10 biggest nuclear power stations. The plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.As Ukrainian forces pressed to expand their gains after recently capturing the village of Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region, the U.K. Defense Ministry noted in its latest report that Russia has brought in reinforcements to stymie the Ukrainian advances.“It is highly likely that Russia has redeployed forces from other areas of the frontline to replace degraded units around Robotyne,” it said. “These redeployments are likely limiting Russia’s ability to carry out offensive operations of its own along other areas of the front line.”The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted that the Russian military has made notable changes to its command and control structure to “protect command infrastructure and improve information sharing.”Russian forces have continued their barrage across Ukraine. The regional authorities in the northeastern region of Sumy that borders Russia said that the latest Russian shelling of the region has left four people wounded, one of whom later died in a hospital.
                                    

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-counteroffensive-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-d35112510e7db3e5e92602f5e93e91c5 

 Republicans’ opposition to abortion threatens a global HIV program that has saved 25 million lives

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The graves at the edge of the orphanage tell a story of despair. The rough planks in the cracked earth are painted with the names of children, most of them dead in the 1990s. That was before the HIV drugs arrived.Today, the orphanage in Kenya’s capital is a happier, more hopeful place for children with HIV. But a political fight taking place in the United States is threatening the program that helps to keep them and millions of others around the world alive.The reason for the threat? Abortion.
    

The AIDS epidemic has killed more than 40 million people since the first recorded cases in 1981, tripling child mortality and carving decades off life expectancy in the hardest-hit areas of Africa, where the cost of treatment put it out of reach. Horrified, Republican U.S. President George W. Bush and Congress two decades ago created what is described as the largest commitment by any nation in history to combat a single disease.



The program known as the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, partners with nonprofit groups to provide HIV/AIDS medication to millions around the world. It strengthens local and national health care systems, cares for children orphaned by AIDS, and provides job training for people at-risk.
    
    


    


Now a small number of Republican lawmakers are endangering the stability of the program, which officials say has saved 25 million lives in 55 countries from Ukraine to Brazil to Indonesia. That includes the lives of 5.5 million infants born HIV-free.At the Nairobi orphanage, program manager Paul Mulongo has a message for Washington. “Let them know that the lives of these children we are taking care of are purely in their hands,” Mulongo says.
    

The issue of abortion has been a sensitive one since PEPFAR’s inception in 2003. But each time the program came up for renewal in Congress, Republicans and Democrats were able to put aside partisan politics to support a program that’s long been seen as the vanguard of global aid.“Most eras in countries are measured by loss of life in war and famine and pandemic,” said Tom Hart, president of the ONE Campaign, a nonpartisan organization that worked with Bush to create the program. “This era has been measured in lives saved.” The campaign has published a letter from dozens of faith leaders to Congress calling PEPFAR “a story of medical miracles and mercy.”But lawmakers’ bipartisan support is cracking as the program is set to expire at the end of September. The trouble began in the spring, when the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative Washington think tank, accused the Biden administration of using PEPFAR “to promote its domestic radical social agenda overseas.”The group pointed to new State Department language that called for PEPFAR to partner with organizations that advocate for “institutional reforms in law and policy regarding sexual, reproductive and economic rights of women.” Conservatives argued that’s code for trying to integrate abortion with HIV/AIDS prevention, a claim the administration has denied.In language echoing the early, harsh years of the epidemic, Heritage called HIV/AIDS a “lifestyle disease” that should be suppressed by “education, moral suasion and legal sanctions.” It recommended halving U.S. funding for PEPFAR, saying poor countries should bear more of the costs.
    

Shortly after that, Republican Rep. Chris Smith, a longtime supporter of PEPFAR who wrote the bill reauthorizing it in 2018, said he would not move forward with reauthorization this time unless it bars NGOs who use any funding to provide or promote abortion services. His threat comes with weight as he chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee with jurisdiction over the program’s funding.But since that proposal faces stiff opposition from Democrats in Congress, Smith, with support from prominent anti-abortion groups, wants to cut PEPFAR’s usual five-year funding to one year if that ban is not included. He said that would allow lawmakers annually to revisit contracts with partners they believe may support or provide abortion services.“It’s a false narrative that says that you can’t do (the program) year by year as we try to protect the unborn child,” Smith told The Associated Press.Supporters of the program say that under existing U.S. law, partners are already prohibited from using its funding for abortion services. The head of PEPFAR, John Nkengasong, told the AP he knew of no instance of the program’s money going directly or indirectly to fund abortion services.He warned that any instability in the flow of U.S. funding for PEPFAR could have dangerous implications for health globally, including in the United States. The key to controlling AIDS, he said, is the assurance that infected people have a pill to take each day.
    

Without that, the virus could come back, ”and about 20 million lives might be lost in the coming years,” he said. “The fragile gains that we’ve achieved will be lost.”In Africa, many PEPFAR partners and recipients in largely conservative countries don’t support abortion either because of religious beliefs. But the idea that the program reliant on the steady supply of HIV drugs could be subject to political winds is a cause for alarm.“If PEPFAR goes, who is going to meet that cost?” asked Josephine Kaleebi, who leads an organization in Uganda that helped the program’s first-ever recipient of HIV treatment medication.“We are proud to say that the first recipient is alive,” Kaleebi said.The group, Reach Out Mbuya Community Health Initiative, was founded by members of Uganda’s Catholic Church, which is against abortion. In the reception area, portraits of priests line the walls.
    

But Reach Out helps anyone who walks in needing HIV drugs, Kaleebi said. About 6,000 people are served, many of them “the extremely most vulnerable” from one of the poorest areas of the capital, Kampala.Mark Dybul, who helped create and lead PEPFAR under Bush, warned that weakening PEPFAR would also hurt the diplomatic goodwill the U.S. has created in developing regions.“It’s no secret that we are in a geopolitical struggle for influence in Africa with Russia and China,” he said. “And our biggest influence in many ways, visible and most impactful, is PEPFAR.” A spokesperson for former president Bush declined comment.In neighboring Kenya, Bernard Mwololo believes he is alive because of the drugs that PEPFAR provides. “Sometimes it’s so crazy when you hear people saying that these HIV drugs should be bought by the local government,” he said. “I am telling you, they can’t manage it.”The 36-year-old, now an HIV activist, has lived most of his life at the Nairobi orphanage after his parents died of AIDS. He recalled arriving and learning that he could have hope. He was enrolled in a better school, was given a bicycle and ate balanced meals.The number of children in sub-Saharan Africa newly orphaned by AIDS reached a peak of 1.6 million in 2004, the year that PEPFAR began its rollout of HIV drugs, researchers wrote in a defense of the program published by The Lancet medical journal last month. In 2021, the number of new orphans had dropped to 382,000.And deaths of infants and young children from AIDS in the region have dropped by 80%.Now the orphanage is transformed. Children dart around playing soccer or swing in the colorful play area. Some are among the 1.4 million children and adults living with HIV in Kenya, according to UNAIDS. More than 1 million have received free HIV drugs because of PEPFAR.Stopping PEPFAR would be like committing “global genocide,” said Mulongo, the orphanage program manager.He recalled how helpless he felt watching children die before HIV drugs were readily available. Almost two decades ago, they would lose at least 30 children a month to AIDS.Elsewhere in Nairobi, 16-year-old Idah Musimbi is part of a generation that has grown up without the fear that an HIV diagnosis was a likely death sentence.She displayed the pills that have given her a sense of normalcy. She contracted HIV at birth.“I don’t think I would live for long if these drugs stopped coming. My grandparents cannot afford to buy food every day, let alone these ARVs,” she said.Her grandfather David Shitika, a pastor, said he owes the lives of his granddaughter and her mother to PEPFAR. His daughter was diagnosed with HIV in 1995, when many people were dying.“It was called the slimming killer disease,” he said. “Nobody wanted to live with an infected person, and those who died were wrapped in nylon bags before burial” for fear of infection.Now he hopes that the Republicans’ threat to PEPFAR will fade, and that his granddaughter will go on to study law and achieve her dream of becoming a judge.“I want to tell the American people, God bless you,” Shitika said. “I do not know why you decided to help us.”___Amiri and Knickmeyer reported from Washington. AP writers Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda, contributed.
                                    

https://apnews.com/article/africa-hiv-aids-united-states-d9ef380acba1a0e96409197b39dea7fa