'Extremely disconcerting': NIH didn't track U.S. funds going to Chinese virus research, watchdog finds

Alexander Nazaryan
·Senior White House Correspondent
Thu, January 26, 2023 

The Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, in 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

The National Institutes of Health failed to provide adequate oversight of an American organization that funded controversial research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, according to a new government report that is sure to raise new questions about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report is evidence of “major failures in past NIH oversight of high-risk research on enhanced potential pandemic pathogens,” Rutgers molecular biologist Richard Ebright told Yahoo News in an email.

Issued by the inspector general of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, the new report says nothing about the origins of the coronavirus. For the most part, it concerns research that took place well before the first cases of what came to be known as SARS-CoV-2 were discovered in China in late 2019.

But it does note that the American organization in question, the EcoHealth Alliance, should have been more rigorously scrutinized by federal officials regarding assurances that its partner lab in Wuhan was not using U.S. funds to conduct gain-of-function research, which boosts viruses to study how they might evolve in nature.

“The entire picture starts to look extremely disconcerting,” mathematical biologist Alex Washburne told Yahoo News. He said that a project on coronaviruses originating in bats, for which the EcoHealth Alliance had given a grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, “was clearly gain-of-function research.”

Sen. Rand Paul at a Senate committee hearing in June 2022.

 (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

Republicans seized on the findings, with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — a skeptic of virtually every aspect of the official coronavirus narrative — charging that the NIH “failed to conduct adequate oversight.”

China hawks will also be emboldened, accusing President Biden of not being forceful enough with the East Asian superpower.

But it is the NIH that is bound to face the most intense scrutiny. In a Twitter message, House Republicans promised that “oversight & accountability” are coming to the federal biomedical establishment, which has been celebrated by some but demonized by others.

The new report is likely to feature prominently in hearings they plan to hold.

Politics aside, Wednesday’s report raises important questions about how federal funds are monitored when they flow to foreign governments and organizations. Though the context is different, similar questions have been asked about the billions of dollars in U.S. military and civilian support to Ukraine.

“It’s a damning indictment of N.I.H.,” Georgetown University public health law expert Lawrence Gostin told the New York Times.

The main building of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. 

(J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

The new report examines a series of grants — $8 million total, awarded during both the Obama and Trump administrations — to EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that subsequently sent a total of $598,611 to the Wuhan virology lab between 2015 and 2019.

The HHS inspector general, Christi Grimm, found that the “NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address EcoHealth’s compliance with some requirements” to report research being conducted in Wuhan with U.S. funds.

“Deficiencies in complying with those procedures limited NIH and EcoHealth’s ability to effectively monitor Federal grant awards and subawards to understand the nature of the research conducted, identify potential problem areas, and take corrective action,” Grimm concluded.

The NIH “raised concerns” about some of the research EcoHealth was funding in China but ultimately did not put a halt to any of the work, Grimm wrote in her 64-page report. Crucially, EcoHealth failed to produce a progress report about its subgrants in the summer of 2019, just months before the advent of the coronavirus.

Despite these concerns, EcoHealth continues to work with the federal government; the organization was recently the recipient of $3 million from the Department of Defense to study viruses in the Philippines.

A security guard outside the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was detected in 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

In a statement, EcoHealth said it “welcomes” the inspector general’s “oversight and collaborated fully and transparently with this audit.” The organization also provided point-by-point responses to the inspector general’s findings that defended its work in China.

Since the first months of the pandemic, EcoHealth Alliance has been at the center of both legitimate and conspiratorial inquiries into how, and where, the coronavirus originated. Although it was originally thought that the virus originated at a wildlife market, no explanation has been sufficiently convincing to allow for anything approaching scientific consensus.

One attempted explanation is the so-called lab leak theory, which claims that the virus escaped from a laboratory — with the Wuhan Institute of Virology being the most likely candidate — into the general population. The hypothesis was initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory but has since been acknowledged as plausible by many experts.

Evidence, however, remains circumstantial, and most scientists subscribe to a model of pathogenesis involving an animal-to-person “spillover.” Ebola and HIV took the same route to becoming infectious diseases in the human population.

Wednesday’s report could invigorate investigators who continue to believe that China is hiding crucial evidence, including about a potential accident.

The campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in May 2020. 

(Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

When the pandemic began, EcoHealth president Peter Daszak argued that criticizing the zoonotic spillover hypothesis — that is, the notion that the coronavirus came from an animal, possibly one sold at a wildlife market — would only stoke xenophobia.

Daszak compelled members of the scientific community to sign a letter, published in February 2020 in the Lancet — one of the world’s most esteemed medical journals — criticizing the suggestion that a laboratory accident (a not-uncommon occurrence in either China or the West) could have been involved.

“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” the letter said. “Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus.”

But after the extent of EcoHealth Alliance’s work in China became known in 2021, the Lancet had to publish an addendum acknowledging Daszak’s potential conflict of interest in defending China.

The new report comes as House Republicans prepare to probe several aspects of the nation’s pandemic response, including how the virus originated. Among the lawmakers named to the committee is far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has suggested that the coronavirus was the result of a bioweapons experiment. She has accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of complicity in those experiments — of which no evidence exists — and called for his firing as the nation’s top infectious disease expert.

Fauci, who retired at the end of last year, has defended working with Chinese partners. But he has also conceded that much about how the virus came to be remains unknown.

“I have a completely open mind,” he said in November.

Climate groups decry selection of oil chief to oversee COP28


The Emirati Minister of State and the CEO of Abu Dhabi's state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber talks at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 31, 2022. Hundreds of climate and environmental groups from around the world released a letter Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023, that decried the nomination of an oil executive to oversee the United Nations climate negotiations at COP28 this year.

 (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili, File) 

BY DREW COSTLEY
Thu, January 26, 2023

Hundreds of climate and environmental groups from around the world released a letter Thursday that decried the nomination of an oil executive to oversee the United Nations climate negotiations at COP28 this year.

Earlier this month, the United Arab Emirates, host of the U.N. climate talks this year, named Sultan al-Jaber to the presidency of the conference Nov. 30 to Dec. 12. The company he runs as chief executive, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., produces 4 million barrels of crude oil per day and hopes to expand to 5 million daily by the end of the decade.

Revenues generated from the sale of that oil are critical to economic health of the UAE, which is among the world's top 10 oil producers. And the burning of that oil creates carbon dioxide emissions while the climate crisis is worsening.

Activists said the selection of al-Jaber “threatens the legitimacy and efficacy” of the conference. “There is no honor in appointing a fossil fuel executive who profits immensely off of fueling the climate crisis to oversee the global response to climate change,” read the letter to U.N. officials.

The letter goes on to say the nomination of an oil executive to oversee the climate talks exemplifies the influence that fossil fuel companies have over international climate policy.

Some of the world's largest environmental and climate action groups, such as 350.org, Friends of the Earth International and Greenpeace, signed the letter, along with five of the nine coalitions of non-governmental organizations that represent different sectors of the global population at the climate talks.

The groups said leadership of the climate talks must be free of fossil fuel influence. In addition, they demanded that fossil fuel companies be excluded from sponsorships, partnerships and rulemaking processes at the conference and that it needs to focus on those most affected by climate change in the negotiations and solutions.

Before the letter, several others had weighed in on the nomination of al-Jaber. John Kerry, the United States' climate envoy, backed the nomination in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. Former U.S. vice president and climate leader Al Gore criticized the selection of al-Jaber during the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this month.

Activists with the youth climate action group Fridays for Future also voiced their unhappiness with the move while in Davos.

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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Crashes on Mexico City's neglected subway kill dozens. The mayor's answer? Send in troops

Kate Linthicum
Thu, January 26, 2023 

Luis Rodríguez spends three hours on the subway most days traveling between his home on the northern edge of Mexico City and his university 25 miles south.

It’s a long commute for the 21-year-old student. His mother hates every minute of it.

Like the rest of the country, she’s watched as the aging subway system here has been crippled by deadly accidents, including a collapse in 2021 that killed 26 people and a collision this month that left an 18-year-old student dead.

“She tells me to be very safe, but the truth is, it’s out of our hands,” Rodríguez said as he steadied himself on a shuttering subway car on a recent morning. “It’s not up to me whether this line collapses. We’re all vulnerable here.”

The inauguration of the Mexico City Metro shortly after the 1968 Olympics was supposed to modernize this bustling mountain capital, bringing it on par with great world cities such as Paris and New York.

It promised too to be a great equalizer, giving the millions of workers living in informal settlements on the city’s periphery access to the thriving culture and economy at its center.

But after years of neglect, the Metro has instead become a stand-in for Mexico’s broader problems: entrenched inequality, unreliable public services and corruption so flagrant and pervasive that at times it actually kills.

These days, the Metro is also a political battlefield.

In addition to the deadly crashes, other alarming incidents in recent months include electrical failures, train cars spontaneously separating and a series of underground fires that have sickened dozens of riders. On Monday, 18 people were hospitalized after high-voltage cables overheated and choked a station with black smoke.

Opponents of Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum — a favorite to become the country’s next president — blame her for the breakdowns, saying her government has not properly maintained the system.

Sheinbaum, in turn, has blamed unnamed saboteurs for what she describes as an “atypical” uptick in system failures.

She is backed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a longtime political ally who granted her request to deploy more than 6,000 national guard troops to the Metro to ward against what he termed — without offering evidence — possible “premeditated” attacks.

Critics say the government should be sending engineers, not soldiers, to address the Metro’s problems. During a series of protests in recent days, activists scrawled graffiti linking the troop deployment to López Obrador’s broader militarization of the country and calling Sheinbaum an “assassin.”

As prosecutors investigate the recent incidents, one thing is clear: The crashes, political discord and now troops in fatigues at every train station have unnerved many of the 5 million mostly working-class people who rely on the Metro daily.

“None of us are comfortable,” said Armando, a 72-year-old textile vendor who declined to give his last name precisely because the Metro has become so politicized. “But we suffer it anyway because there is no other option.”

People walk down the stairs in the Pantitlán Metro station in Mexico City on Jan. 19.

 (Toya Sarno Jordan / For The Times)

For the 22 million people who live in and around Mexico City, an unruly metropolitan area that spans 3,000 square miles, transportation has always been a thorny issue.

Many can’t afford cars, and anyway, roads and highways are notoriously snarled with traffic. Privately run buses are ubiquitous but frequently targeted by armed robbers.

The Metro, with its 140 miles of underground and elevated tracks, has long been the most efficient and inexpensive way to get around. It is a city in itself: a labyrinth of echoing corridors and 195 stations boasting internet cafes, dress shops, pizza places, libraries and even yoga classes.

A ride costs just 5 pesos — around 25 cents — and is heavily subsidized by the government. That cheap fare is part of the problem: The system has never come close to paying its own costs, so maintenance depends on how much money political leaders allot it. Until 2021, funding for the Metro had steadily fallen, part of a broader austerity plan pushed by López Obrador.

The disrepair is obvious. On some lines, train cars that debuted when the Metro opened 54 years ago are still in use. Stations are poorly lighted, and many escalators are perpetually broken, so old that replacement parts are no longer manufactured.

“A lot of equipment and systems have already exceeded their useful lifespan and should have been replaced 20 years or 15 years ago,” said Jorge Jiménez Alcaraz, who heads Mexico’s trade group for engineers and architects and who served as the director of the Metro system in 2018. He said that he and other Metro officials frequently asked for more resources, but that politicians were loath to raise train fares because of the protest it would provoke.

Although the Metro has long been beset by pickpocketing and sexual harassment — so much so that a few years ago the city began segregating train cars by gender and handing out rape whistles — its safety problems have come into focus more recently, spurred in part by a string of dramatic wrecks.

In 2020, two trains collided, killing one person and injuring 41 others.

The following year, a fire in a Metro control center killed one and injured 31.

Later in 2021, an elevated train line buckled in half, dragging two subway cars onto the highway below. The crash on Line 12 killed 26 people, injured 100 and made the Metro’s failings global news.

As soon as that line had been inaugurated in 2012, passengers had begun complaining about cracks in the structure of the concrete viaduct over which the trains passed. A congressional investigation in 2014 found major structural flaws, low-quality construction materials and a “deficient, hasty and incomplete certification of the functionality and safety of the line.”

A Norwegian firm hired to investigate the accident blamed faulty construction and a lack of maintenance under Sheinbaum, who took office in late 2018, and the previous mayoral administration. Sheinbaum rejected the findings and threatened to sue the firm.

The political ramifications were immediate. The section of train line that collapsed had been built by a company owned by Mexico’s wealthiest man, telecom and construction magnate Carlos Slim, during the mayoral term of Marcelo Ebrard, now foreign secretary and Sheinbaum’s top rival for the presidential nomination of their political party, Morena.

After the crash, protesters demanded more investment in the Metro: “It wasn’t an accident, it was negligence,” read messages written around the city.

People gather to protest at the site of the deadly Line 12 accident in May 2021.

 (Claudio Cruz / AFP/Getty Images)

Sheinbaum promised to rebuild Line 12 and make other improvements.

But the problems have continued. This month, two trains collided, killing one person and injuring 57.

There are signs the incidents are damaging the mayor’s political standing.

A January poll by El Financiero newspaper showed support for Sheinbaum had dipped in one month by 5 percentage points to 41%.

Her opponents say the sabotage allegations are attempts to shift blame.

“She is incapable of understanding the criminal responsibility that she bears for the unfortunate death of people on the Metro during her government,” said Luisa Gutiérrez, a local deputy for the right-of-center National Action Party.

Riders themselves are worried but resigned. Chilangos, as Mexico City residents call themselves, are used to living with the unknown: major earthquakes, unexpected water shortages, electrical blackouts.

“We’re resilient people,” said Miguel Ángel Sanchez, 69, who was waiting in a crush of morning rush-hour commuters, hoping to board a train. As usual, there were long delays. Earlier, another train he had been riding on had stopped on the tracks for several minutes, not moving, as the smell of smoke filled the tunnel.

He said he wished the politicians deciding the fate of the Metro actually rode it.

“Which among them would get on the Metro?” he asked. “No, they all have high-end cars: Mercedes, BMWs, Audis.”

In front of him, people pushed onto an already crowded waiting train. One man’s backpack got caught between the doors and other passengers scrambled to free it. Sanchez looked on in disgust. “Look at this,” he said. “It makes me want to move to the country.”

Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

In Brazil's Amazon, malnourished Yanomami children get needed care

Alan Chaves with Ramon Sahmkow in Brasilia
Fri, 27 January 2023 


In a hospital in Brazil's Amazon, half a dozen Yanomami children are dozing in blue hammocks. Some are suffering from pneumonia, others from malaria. Some even have snake bites. All of them are underfed.

Cases of malnutrition and malaria in the region have skyrocketed in recent weeks, prompting the new leftist government of President Lula Inacio Lula da Silva to declare a health emergency.

Of the nearly 60 Indigenous children being treated at the San Antonio children's hospital in Boa Vista, in the northern state of Roraima, three-quarters of them are Yanomami, and eight of those are in intensive care, according to official data.


The vast majority of children are suffering from "moderate to severe malnutrition," complicated by other ailments including pneumonia, malaria and the stomach flu, pediatrician Eugenio Patricio tells AFP.

"These patients, due to malnutrition, don't have enough in the tank to fight infections. So the consequences are far more serious, and some end up in intensive care," he adds.

The San Antonio hospital is the only one in the state -- located on the country's northern border with Venezuela and Guyana -- that can treat children under the age of 12.

To get there, many of the Indigenous patients must be flown in from their remote jungle villages.

Most of the Yanomami children, who are generally eight years old or younger, are about half the normal weight for their age -- and sometimes even less, Patricio explains.

"They are extremely weak when they arrive here," he says.

While the San Antonio hospital handles the most serious cases, other Indigenous youth and adults are treated at another facility in Boa Vista.

And a field hospital built by the Brazilian air force opened its doors Friday in the courtyard of the Indigenous health center to help handle the crisis.

- Illegal mining -

Last week, Lula's government said that 99 Yanomami children under the age of five had died in 2022 on Brazil's largest Indigenous reservation, mainly due to malnutrition, pneumonia and malaria.

Federal police are investigating possible acts of "genocide" against the Yanomami people, to determine whether the neglect and lack of health access was intentional on the part of public officials in the administration of far-right ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro.

Conditions on the Yanomami reservation have become increasingly violent, with illegal miners regularly killing Indigenous residents, sexually abusing women and children and contaminating the area's rivers with the mercury used to separate gold from sediment, according to complaints from Indigenous organizations.

And the increase of illegal mining in the Amazon has driven the spread of diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and Covid-19, according to experts.

The country's Supreme Court had ordered the removal of gold miners in the area, but the Bolsonaro government, which encouraged mining and agribusiness activities on Indigenous lands, never complied.

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Why Brazil's Yanomami are being decimated by disease, mining

A Yanomami woman carrying a baby, walks next to an Army field hospital, on the grounds of the Saude Indigenous House, a center responsible for supporting and assisting Indigenous people in Boa Vista, Roraima state, Brazil, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023. The government declared a public health emergency for the Yanomami people in the Amazon, who are suffering from malnutrition and diseases such as malaria.

 (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)


ELÉONORE HUGHES and EDMAR BARROS
Thu, January 26, 2023 

BOA VISTA, Brazil (AP) — Severe malnutrition and disease, particularly malaria, are decimating the Yanomami population in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, and on Jan. 20 the federal government declared a public health emergency. While many in Brazil were left wondering how the calamity could materialize seemingly overnight, it didn't come as a surprise to those familiar with the Yanomami’s circumstances, who have issued warnings for several years.

The AP explains how the Yanomami reached this tragic point.

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WHO ARE THE YANOMAMI?

An estimated 30,000 Yanomami people live in Brazil’s largest indigenous territory, which covers an area roughly the size of Portugal and stretches across Roraima and Amazonas states in the northwest corner of Brazil's Amazon. Some also live in southern Venezuela. They provide food for themselves by hunting, gathering, fishing, and growing crops in large gardens cleared from the forest. Every few years, the Yanomami move from one area to another, allowing the soil to regenerate.


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WHAT IS CAUSING THE CRISIS?

Illegal gold miners were first present in Yanomami territory during the 1980s, but then were largely expelled. They have flooded back in recent years, attracted by high gold prices and urged on by former President Jair Bolsonaro. Their numbers surged to 20,000 during Bolsonaro’s administration, according to estimates from environmental and Indigenous rights groups.

Miners destroy the habitat of animals that the Yanomami hunt, and occupy fertile land that the Yanomami use to farm. The miners also process ore with mercury that poisons the rivers that the Yanomami depend upon for fish. Mining creates pools of stagnant water where mosquitoes that transmit illness breed. And miners relocating to exploit new areas spread sickness to native people who possess low immunity due to limited contact with outsiders.

“The impacts accumulate,” said Estêvão Senra, a geographer and researcher at Instituto Socioambiental, an environmental and Indigenous rights non-profit. “If (the Yanomami) are sick, they miss the right moment to open a new area for farming, compromising their future.”

An AP investigative series last year detailed how the scale of prospecting on Indigenous lands exploded in recent years, illegally mined gold seeps into global supply chains, and mining stokes divisions within Indigenous territories.

____

WAS THIS A SUDDEN DISASTER?

No. It has spiraled over the course of several years. Eight of 10 children aged 5 or under had chronic malnutrition in 2020, according to a study in two Yanomami regions by UNICEF and Brazilian state health research institute Fiocruz. There were 44,069 cases of malaria in two years, meaning the entire population was contaminated, some people more than once, Roraima state’s public prosecutor’s office said in 2021, citing data from Brazil’s country-wide disease notification system.

Curable conditions like flu, pneumonia, anemia and diarrhea become life-threatening. At least 570 Yanomami children died from untreated diseases during Bolsonaro’s term, from 2019 to 2022, according to Health Ministry data obtained by independent local news website Sumauma. That marked a 29% increase from the prior four years.

There was a greater need for medical care, but services for Indigenous peoples deteriorated under Bolsonaro, according to Adriana Athila, an anthropologist who has studied public healthcare for the Yanomami, which is provided by one of the special districts designed for the needs of Indigenous communities. There have also been reports of miners taking control of health facilities and airstrips in Yanomami territory for their own use. Local leaders themselves have been sounding the alarm for years.

“The miners are destroying our rivers, our forest and our children. Our air is no longer pure, our game is disappearing and our people are crying out for clean water,” Júnior Hekurari Yanomami, president of the Yanomami local health council, wrote on Twitter last March. “We want to live, we want our peace back and our territory.”

The recent influx of miners severely exacerbated the disruption of traditional Yanomami life that took place over the prior two decades. That was caused by the introduction of social welfare programs that forced people to make weeks-long trips to collect their benefits in cities, where they often remain for extended periods in squalid conditions, as well as the establishment of non-Indigenous institutions, such as military bases, medical posts, and religious missions, which transformed some temporary villages into permanent settlements, depleting hunting and soil resources.

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WHAT WAS BOLSONARO’S ROLE?

As a young lawmaker in the 1990s, Bolsonaro fiercely opposed the creation of the Yanomami territory. More recently, he openly championed mining in Indigenous lands and the integration of native peoples into modern society. Environmentalists, activists and the vast majority of Indigenous groups slammed his efforts and warned of devastating impacts. He pressured Congress for an emergency vote on the bill his mining and justice ministries drafted and presented in 2020 to regulate the mining of Indigenous lands, but lawmakers demurred. Even large mining companies repudiated the proposal.

Wildcat gold miners, for their part, were undeterred, “because they knew the government would turn a blind eye,” Senra said.

Hekurari on Saturday also accused Bolsonaro’s administration of ignoring some 50 letters pleading for help. That is in part why some, including President Lula, have accused Bolsonaro of genocide.

Bolsonaro called such claims “another left-wing farce” on his Telegram channel Sunday, and said Indigenous healthcare was one of the government’s priorities, citing implementation of a sanitary protocol for entry into their territories during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that during his administration the health ministry provided more than 53 million basic-care services to Indigenous peoples.

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HOW HAS LULA RESPONDED?

After defeating Bolsonaro in the October election, Lula took power Jan. 1. The change created an expectation that the burgeoning crisis would finally receive attention, said Senra, given the sharp reversal for Amazon policy Lula had outlined on the campaign trail. Indeed, Lula dispatched a team to Yanomami territory last week and on Saturday traveled to Boa Vista, the nearby capital of Roraima, where many Yanomami people have been medevaced for treatment.

Following Lula’s declaration of a medical emergency, the army began flying food kits into Yanomami territory and set up a field hospital in Boa Vista, while the health ministry put out a nationwide call for medical professionals to volunteer.

Marcos Pelligrini, a former doctor within Yanomami territory and professor of collective health at the Federal University of Roraima in Boa Vista, said that he felt relief upon seeing army helicopters transporting food kits.

“It’s a moment of hope,” he said.

But going forward, the miners still must be removed from the region by the Federal Police and environment regulator Ibama, with help from the defense ministry, Minister for Indigenous Peoples Sonia Guajajara told newspaper Estado de S. Paulo.

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Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro. AP writer Fabiano Maisonnave contributed.

 

Israel's high-tech economic engine balks at govt policies








Israel Jittery TechOmri Kohl, founder and CEO of Pyramid Analytics Israeli hi-tech company, work in his office in Ramat Gan, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. As Israel's new government pushes ahead with its far-right agenda, the tech industry is speaking out in unprecedented criticism against policies it fears will drive away investors and decimate the booming sector, Israel.

 (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)


TIA GOLDENBERG
Wed, January 25, 2023 

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s tech industry has long been the driving force behind the country’s economy. Now, as Israel’s new government pushes ahead with its far-right agenda, the industry is flexing its muscle and speaking out in unprecedented criticism against policies it fears will drive away investors and decimate the booming sector.

The public outcry presents a pointed challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who champions Israeli technology on the international stage and has long boasted of his own economic prowess. It also highlights how deep and broad opposition to the government’s policies runs, from political rivals, to top members of the justice system and military.

Tech leaders say that since the government took power last month, a cloud has emerged over their industry, with foreign investors spooked at what some say is a country regressing rather than striving for innovation. They fear the government's plans to overhaul the judiciary and pledges by some top officials to advance discriminatory laws will imperil the industry that has earned the country the nickname Start-Up Nation and in turn, send Israel's economy into a tailspin.

“Investors are asking ‘where is Israel headed? Will it continue to be a country that leads technologically or is it moving two generations backwards? Are political agendas more important than the ability to be global tech leaders?’" said Omri Kohl, CEO of Pyramid Analytics, a company that makes business intelligence software. If the tech industry suffers, he said, “everyone will lose.”

Over the last three decades, Israel’s tech industry has become the beating heart of its economy. The sector employs more than 10% of the country’s salaried workforce, according to official figures. And while the industry has struggled this past year like its counterparts abroad, it still accounts for about a quarter of the country's income taxes, thanks to its high salaries, and produces more than half of the country’s exports.

During his time as prime minister for most of the past decade and a half, plus another stint in the 1990s, Netanyahu's political fortunes have been linked to the rise of the tech industry. For many in the tech sector, that makes his government’s agenda and the speed with which it is advancing all the more confounding.

“Bibi is determined but he also understands that we are a small country that is very dependent on the outside world,” said Eynat Guez, the CEO of human resources software firm Papaya Global, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. “With all due respect to Bibi, that determination will hit a wall very quickly” when investors start to pull out, she said.

On Thursday, Guez tweeted that the company, which has raised nearly half a billion dollars from investors, would be “removing all of the company's money from the country” because of the proposed changes. Israeli media reported two venture capital firms were doing the same.

The tech industry sees the government’s policies as a warning light for critical foreign investors, who they say are already holding off on investments as they wait for the political developments to unfold.

The current government’s plans to accelerate settlement expansion on occupied lands sought by the Palestinians for a state could also impact foreign investment. Norway’s $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund several years ago ruled out doing business with certain Israeli companies because of their involvement in the settlement enterprise, considered illegal by most of the international community. Last month, Israeli media reports said that the Norwegian fund was again rethinking its investment, in part because of the new government.

Maxim Rybnikov, an analyst with the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's, told The Associated Press in an email that judicial changes could present “downside risks in the future" that could affect Israel's debt rating. That sentiment was reportedly echoed by Israel's central bank chief in a meeting this week with Netanyahu and voiced publicly by numerous other leading economists and business figures.

Many in Israel's tech sector say the circumstances could prompt young Israeli talent as well as global tech giants who have offices in the country to leave. That would be catastrophic for the homegrown industry, they say.

Typically silent on politics, hundreds of tech workers walked out of their offices on Tuesday near tech hubs around the country to protest the planned changes. Waving signs reading “there's no high-tech without democracy,” and “democracy is not a bug that needs to be fixed,” they blocked a central Tel Aviv throughway for about an hour.

Last month, hundreds of executives, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists signed a letter calling on Netanyahu to rethink his policies for the sake of the economy, calling them “a real existential threat to the illustrious tech industry.”

“We call on you to stop the growing snowball, steady the ship and preserve the status quo,” the letter said.

Jerusalem Venture Partners, one of the country’s leading venture capital firms, issued a statement against a proposed law allowing discrimination against LGBTQ people, signed by the companies it backs.

And leaders of top firms are speaking out on social media, including Barak Eilam, chief executive of the Nasdaq-traded NICE Ltd., one of Israel’s oldest and largest tech companies and Nir Zohar, president and chief operating officer of the website builder Wix, who have both slammed the proposed changes.

Netanyahu has pledged to charge ahead with his policies.

At a news conference on Wednesday, he lashed out at his critics, accusing his political opponents and the media of using scare tactics to promote their own agendas.

“In recent days, I have heard concerns about the effect of the legal reforms on our economic resilience," he said. “The truth is the opposite. Our steps to strengthen democracy will not harm the economy. They will strengthen it.”

Most worrisome to the tech sector is the planned overhaul of Israel’s justice system, which would give parliament power to overturn certain Supreme Court decisions. Critics say the changes would grant the government overwhelming power and upend Israel’s democratic system of checks and balances. Last weekend, an estimated 100,000 Israelis took to the streets against the planned changes.

Tech leaders also have spoken out against pledges by Netanyahu’s ultranationalist partners to craft legislation that would allow discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community, seeing it as contradictory to the pluralistic values of the tech sector.

Netanyahu has given authority over certain educational programs to Avi Maoz, the head of a radical, religious ultranationalist party who is anti-LGBTQ. Netanyahu has also made promises to his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners to strengthen their insular school system that emphasizes religious studies over subjects like math and English. Economists say this will prevent their integration into the modern world, a step seen as necessary to keep the economy afloat.

Moshe Zviran, the chief entrepreneurship and innovation officer at Tel Aviv University, a position that encourages youth to navigate the tech world, said the next generation might not have the same opportunities as their predecessors because of the government's policies.

“If there won’t be exits and sales and Israeli high-tech it’ll be a real problem. It’s a fatal blow to the Israeli economy," said Zviran, the former dean of the university's business school.

“The minute that innovation departs, what are we left with here?”

Ukraine has a mixed record of treating its citizens fairly – that could make it harder for it to maintain peace, once the war ends

David Cingranelli, Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Human Rights Institute, Binghamton University, State University of New York  

Brendan Skip Mark, Professor of political science, University of Rhode Island

THE CONVERSATION
Thu, January 26, 2023 

Ukraine has a mixed human rights record over the past several decades, new data shows. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the dominant Western media narrative has been clear – Russia is the “global villain,” and Ukraine a model country victimized by an unjust war. But while the war may be unjust, Ukraine had its share of problems before the conflict with Russia intensified in 2022.

Expert analysis shows that Russia launched an illegal war and has committed the vast majority of the human rights violations in the conflict – such as targeting Ukraine’s civilians.

Ukraine has also allegedly committed war crimes against Russian soldiers during the conflict. Much like Russia, the country has had a mixed record over the past two decades regarding treatment of its citizens.

We are human rights scholars who helped launch the world’s largest quantitative data set – known as CIRIGHTS – to track global human rights in December 2022.

Our analysis shows that while Ukraine’s prewar human rights record is better than Russia’s, it is far below the global average. Along with an ongoing problem of government corruption, Ukraine has been cited by Western human rights groups for not prosecuting hate crimes and failing to properly address and respond to gender-based violence.

Ukrainian women and children pass through the Przemysl train station in Poland after fleeing the war in April 2022. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Ukraine’s human rights record

Ukraine scores in the bottom third of all countries in terms of its human rights record, according to our data. Its score of 42 out of 100 is the same as that of the Central African Republic – a country rife with violence against civilians and political instability.

Several factors contributed to this ranking. Ukraine’s military, for example, is known to have indiscriminately used cluster munitions in highly populated areas of Donetsk – in the eastern part of Ukraine that is occupied by a rebel government – in 2014, killing civilians. Ukraine’s police also killed numerous protesters in Kyiv during the 2014 protests, which led to EU sanctions.

Other human rights and freedom monitors like the U.S. nonprofit Freedom House have reported more recently that Ukraine was “partly free” when it came to issues like expression, access to information and the press. The country ranked just below the global average, with a score of 59 out of 100.

Other human rights analyses show that the extent to which people in Ukraine are free from government torture and forced labor and enjoy such privileges as freedom of religion and expression has improved since 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up – and Ukraine gained its independence – the country’s ranking still stands below that of Ukraine’s Western European neighbors, like Poland and Hungary.

Unless Ukraine addresses its human rights shortfalls, it could risk not achieving or maintaining lasting peace, no matter when or how the war eventually ends. Research shows that human rights violations create social and political problems that can lead to conflict both within a country and internationally.

How it works

While many human rights measurement projects tend to focus on if and how a government uses physical violence against its people, our project aims to measure all 30 internationally recognized human rights, including women’s rights and workers’ rights.

We believe that this kind of comprehensive data helps all people have an easy, transparent and reliable way to understand a country’s human rights record.

Hundreds of undergraduate and graduate research assistants, as well as 10 faculty members across different schools, scored each human right for all countries of the world for each year since 1981, based on publicly available research and human rights reports. Each country’s scores in the 2022 report card are based on the most recent year for which scores were available for all human rights scored by the CIRIGHTS data project.

The scorers work independently with a rigorous set of scoring guidelines to consider 25 human rights measures and then work together to resolve differences to agree upon a numerical score.

The December 2022 annual report placed Canada and Sweden at the head of the class, with a 96 each, followed by New Zealand, Norway and Portugal at 94. At the bottom were Iraq, with a score of 12, China at 10, and North Korea and Syria with 6, and Iran at 2. The U.S. was not measured in this report card, since the U.S. government does not report on its own human rights. Subsequent reports will include analysis of the U.S. drawn from other sources.

Ukraine’s recent history of protests

Research has shown that violations of human rights increase the likelihood of violent protests, terrorism and rebellion.

Ukraine, like Russia, has a history of citizens’ fighting corruption through public grievances, which turn into mass protests. Its Orange Revolution in 2004 and 2005, for example, resulted in widespread marches in protest of the alleged fraudulent election of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, a candidate backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Following a run-off election, Yanukovych’s anti-corruption opponent Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko was elected in January 2005.

But five years later, Ukranians voted Yanukovych right back into office.

In 2014, mass protests once again emerged in Ukraine after the government abruptly canceled an economic trade and political agreement with the European Union, following Russian pressure. People protested the decision, and Yanukovych’s government passed new laws to limit protests. Emboldened, police violently repressed the demonstrators – leading to more violent and deadly riots.

The 2014 and 2015 clashes culminated in the ouster of Yanukovych and the overthrow of the pro-Russian Ukrainian government. The protests also coincided with Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula.

Conflict between Russia and Ukraine has since dramatically intensified, spreading across much of Ukraine in 2022. This conflict has only made domestic human rights conditions more important.

Ukrainians take to the streets during the 2004 Orange Revolution to protest an alleged fraudulent election.Sergey Supinski/AFP via Getty ImagesWhy it matters

Our data shows that Russia ranked as the 12th-worst human rights violator in the world over the past two decades, placing it far below Ukraine. Russia is known to be responsible for thousands of civilian deaths in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, as well as the torture and imprisonment of Ukrainian citizens living in Russia.

And our analysis showed that Ukraine’s record for protecting civil and political rights, as well as other kinds of rights, were substantially better than Russia’s in recent years. Our scores are consistent with scores provided by other groups that track human rights.

The statistical evidence from all sources shows that both Russia and Ukraine have poor human rights records and are a long way from achieving a passing grade. This means for both countries it will be hard to achieve internal peace after the war ends.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: David Cingranelli, Binghamton University, State University of New York and Brendan Skip Mark, University of Rhode Island.

Read more:

US military spending in Ukraine reached nearly $50 billion in 2022 – but no amount of money alone is enough to end the war


US aid to Ukraine: $13.6 billion approved following Russian bombardment marks sharp increase

Driving 100 Miles in an EV Is Now More Expensive Than in an ICE

Ryan Erik King
Wed, January 25, 2023 

Photo: Anna Moneymaker (Getty Images)

No longer needing to buy gasoline is one of the most convincing selling points for potential electric vehicle customers. It’s easy to conclude that owning an EV and recharging at home is cheaper than using a car powered by an internal combustion engine. The conclusion is correct if a driver switches powertrains between luxury vehicles, like going from a Porsche Macan to an electric Porsche Taycan.

However, a recent report from the Anderson Economic Group (AEG) found that fueling costs from mid-priced ICE-powered vehicles are lower than similarly priced electric vehicles. Combustion drivers pay about $11.29 per 100 miles on the road. EV drivers who charge up at home spend about $11.60 per 100 miles. The price difference is more dramatic for those who mainly recharge at stations. Frequent charging station users pay $14.40 per 100 miles.

AEG founder Patrick Anderson stated, “The run-up in gas prices made EVs look like a bargain during much of 2021 and 2022. With electric prices going up and gas prices declining, drivers of traditional ICE vehicles saved a little bit of money in the last quarter of 2022.”

There were several factors AEG used in determining that owning an electric vehicle was more expensive, like home charging equipment costs, road taxes and deadhead miles. ICE-powered car owners have gas purchases taxed to fund road construction and maintenance. While EV owners don’t pay a gas tax, some states have introduced an additional EV registration fee to compensate.

The massive increase in the report for charging station users versus home chargers is accounted for by the deadhead miles to reach stations and the opportunity cost of waiting for vehicles to charge at stations. The difference highlights the lackluster coverage for electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the United States.

 Jalopnik

Brazil's Lula proposes Mercosur trade deal with China after EU accord

Brazil's President Lula da Silva visits Uruguay


Wed, January 25, 2023

(Reuters) -Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday that he favored an agreement between Mercosur and China in a plan to modernize and open the South American trade bloc to other regions.

On a visit to Uruguay to dissuade its government from reaching a deal on its own with China, which would undermine the Mercosur customs union, Lula said the long-awaited Mercosur accord with the European Union must be completed urgently.

"Let's intensify the talks and firm up this agreement (with the EU) so that we can then discuss a possible agreement between China and Mercosur and I think it is possible," said the leftist president who took office again on Jan. 1.

"We want to sit down as Mercosur and discuss with our Chinese friends the Mercosur-China agreement," Lula said, adding that China is Brazil's biggest trading partner.

Talks for the EU-Mercosur trade agreement were completed in 2019, but environmental concerns stalled the deal before it was approved by the legislatures of the EU member states.

Uruguay's President Lacalle Pou said that his country needed to open up its economy to the world and it could discuss parallel trade arrangements outside of Mercosur.

Last year, Uruguay entered into formal negotiations for a free-trade agreement with China, a decision criticized by the other Mercosur members, and Uruguay recently advanced in talks to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"At the same time we are going to create a technical team with Uruguay, Brazil and no doubt the other countries to see what we really want and need from our relationship with China," Pou said.

(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Haitian police rebels protest is paralyzing Port-au-Prince






PIERRE RICHARD LUXAMA and MEGAN JANETSKY
Thu, January 26, 2023 at 11:05 AM MST·3 min read

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Outraged rebel police officers paralyzed Port-au-Prince on Thursday, roaring through the streets on motorcycles in protest of a slew of killings of police officers by Haitian gangs.

More than a hundred protesters blocked roads, shot guns into the air, and broke through gates in the capital's airport and the Prime Minister's house, with tensions escalating throughout the day.

Gangs have killed at least 10 officers in the past week; another is missing and one more has severe bullet wounds, according to the Haitian National Police.

Video circulating social media — likely recorded by gangs — shows the naked and bloodied bodies of six men stretched out on the dirt, their guns laying on their chests. Another video shows two masked men who are smoking cigarettes from the dismembered hands and feet of the dead men.

The gang who killed them, known as Gan Grif, still has the bodies, police said.

The wave of grisly killings of police is only the latest example of escalating violence in the Caribbean nation, which has been gripped by gang wars and political chaos following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.

His unelected successor as head of the government, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, has asked the United Nations to lead a military intervention, but no country has been willing to put boots on the ground.

The deaths enraged members of Fantom 509, an armed group of current and former police officers that has violently demanded better conditions for officers.

Dozens of these men wove through city on Thursday, many wearing hoods along with police uniforms, flak jackets and rifles and automatic weapons. They seized buses to blockade roads and torched tires across the city, leaving smoke plummeting through the streets.

Many demanded tougher crackdowns on the gangs, and called for the end to Henry's administration, which many Haitians view as illegitimate. Demonstrators broke down one of the gates outside Henry’s home and a barrier at the Port-au-Prince airport, where he planned to make an appearance later in the day.

“We need a revolution,” screamed one protester dressed in a bullet proof vest, helmet and gas mask. “We are in the streets to fight, for our brothers and sisters who are victims of the bandits. We have to take to the streets every day to get what we want.”

A video recorded by local Haitian media shows empty streets and closed businesses on a key road of Port-au-Prince where the rebel group passed through.

In addition to the bodies displayed by the gang, a number of officers were killed last week in a firefight with gangs in a neighborhood that was once considered relatively safe.

Since Henry took the reins of the country, 78 police officers have been killed, according to a Thursday report by Haitian human rights group, National Network of the Defense of Human Rights.

The Haitian National Police expressed condolences to the slain officers' families and colleagues, and said it's "calling for peace and invites police officers to come together to bring forward an institutional response to the different criminal organizations that terrorize the Haitian people.”

The U.S. Embassy in Haiti also tweeted Thursday afternoon asking for calm.

The United Nations estimates that 60% of Port-au-Prince is controlled by the gangs. On the streets of the capital, Haitians say it's more like 100%.

This week, the U.N. special envoy for Haiti urged the American and Canadian governments to lead an international armed force to help Haiti combat the gangs. Haitian police, meanwhile, are pleading for more resources.

“The movement will continue, we can’t let police get killed like this,” said one masked man in a police uniform carrying a pistol who did not want to be identified. “We can do the job if they give us ammunition."

___

Associated Press journalist Evens Sanon contributed to this report.

Haiti police block streets, break into airport to protest officer killings

Thu, January 26, 2023 
By Steven Aristil and Harold Isaac

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) -Haitian police officers on Thursday blocked streets and forced their way into the country's main airport to protest the recent killing of officers by armed gangs expanding their grip on the Caribbean nation.

Protesters in civilian clothes who identified themselves as police first attacked Prime Minister Ariel Henry's official residence, according to a Reuters witness, and then flooded the airport as Henry was arriving from a trip to Argentina.

Henry was temporarily stuck in the airport, but returned to his residence in Port-au-Prince later on Thursday, followed by police protesters. A Reuters witness heard heavy gunfire near his home.

Haiti's National Police and the Prime Minister's Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Roads around Port-au-Prince and in several cities to the north were blocked by protesters.

A group of U.S. government officials were visiting Haiti at the time, and a U.S. State Department spokesperson said all Washington's personnel were accounted for and they had moved some meetings as a precaution.

Haitian human rights group RNDDH said in a statement that 78 police officers had been killed since Henry came to power in July 2021, averaging five each month, saying the prime minister and the head of the national police Frantz Elbe were "responsible for each of the 78 lives lost during their reign."

"History will remember they did nothing to protect and preserve the lives of these agents who chose to serve their country," it added.

Late on Thursday, The Bahamas' foreign ministry said the country's prime minister had ordered all Bahamians, including its diplomatic personnel, to leave Haiti as soon as security conditions permit.

Haitian police had earlier in the day stopped the neighboring country's local charge d'affaires and taken their vehicle and weapons, it added, saying all its diplomats were safe, as well as five citizens who had been trapped around the airport.

Last week, four police officers near the capital were killed by the Vitelhomme gang, while shootouts on Wednesday with the Savien gang in the town of Liancourt left another seven officers dead, according to Haiti's National Police and local media reports.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols expressed condolences to the families of police officers killed in the latest violence, and said the United States would continue to "impose costs on those responsible for this heinous violence."

Asked how the developments could affect efforts to craft an international armed intervention, the U.S. State Department spokesperson told Reuters the United States was still working with international partners to develop "a framework" for a security mission to "provide security and stability."

The United Nations is discussing sending a foreign strike force to confront the criminal groups. The proposal was originally made three months ago but no country has offered to lead such a force.

(Reporting by Steven Aristil, Harold Isaac and Ralph Tedy Erol in Port-au-Prince, Brian Ellsworth in Caracas, Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Additional reporting by Sarah Morland; Editing by Sandra Maler and Christopher Cushing)

TALIBAN FEMICIDE

UN food agency: Afghan malnutrition rates at record high

A mother with her malnourished child waits to receive help and check-up at a clinic that run by the WFP, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023. A spokesman for the U.N. food agency says malnutrition rates in Afghanistan are at record highs. Aid agencies have been providing food, education, healthcare and other critical support to people, but distribution has been severely impacted by a Taliban edict banning women from working at national and international nongovernmental groups.

 (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

EBRAHIM NOROOZI
Thu, January 26, 2023

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Malnutrition rates in Afghanistan are at record highs with half the country enduring severe hunger throughout the year, a spokesman for the World Food Program said Thursday.

The Taliban takeover in August 2021 drove millions into poverty and hunger after foreign aid stopped almost overnight. Sanctions on Taliban rulers, a halt on bank transfers and frozen billions in Afghanistan’s currency reserves restricted access to global institutions and the outside money that supported the country’s aid-dependent economy before the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.

“Half of Afghanistan endures severe hunger throughout the year, regardless of the season, and malnutrition rates are at a record high for Afghanistan," said Phillipe Kropf, a spokesman for the U.N. food agency in Kabul.

"There are seven million children (under the age of 5) and mothers who are malnourished, in a country with a population of 40 million.”

Afghans are not starving to death, he said, but they have no resources left to stave off the humanitarian crisis.

Aid agencies have been providing food, education and healthcare support to Afghans, including heating, cash for fuel and warm clothes. But distribution has been severely impacted by a Taliban edict banning women from working at national and international nongovernmental groups.

“The ban has come at the worst possible moment," said Kropf. “Families and communities don’t know where their next meal is coming from.”

The WFP scaled up its delivery and distribution of aid in anticipation of a tough winter before the ban came in, planning to reach 15 million this month with emergency food assistance and nutrition support. While it is not directly affected by the ban, 19 of its NGO partners suspended operations in Afghanistan following the Dec. 24 edict.

The NGO ban on women workers has seen the suspension of 115 of 437 mobile health clinics, affecting 82,000 children, and pregnant and lactating women. The suspension of a training project is hurting 39,300 people, mostly women, while the pause of a school snack program has hit 616,000 students.

At a nutrition clinic in Kabul, 32-year-old nurse Anisa Samadi said most children and mothers will die without support from agencies like the WFP and World Health Organization. Their help is needed now more than ever, she told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“In the last five months I have seen the number of patients increasing. Three months ago we had 48 patients. Last month, we had 76 and this month so far we have 69 or 70, mostly we have twins who are so weak, while their mothers are also weak.”

Shortages of medicine alongside poverty and a lack of food means even a small illness can turn into a huge problem for many Afghans, she said.

Her colleague, 30-year-old nutrition adviser Sheba Hussanzada, said children at the clinic receive therapeutic food. But the children return with pneumonia, causing unhealthy weight loss. “Mothers are saying that they don’t have wood or any other way to keep their children warm at home. They don’t have enough food to feed them," she said.

First-time mother Fereshta, 24, visited the clinic because she doesn't have enough milk to feed her child. Her husband used to have a job, but now there is no work for him.

“Since the Taliban have come, the economic condition is so bad and people don’t have food to eat. People don't have three meals. If there weren't such a center to support us, I might lose my child," the young mother said.

The NGO ban has followed in a slew of measures restricting the rights and freedoms of women and girls in Afghanistan, and has drawn international condemnation and weeks of campaigning to get it lifted.

The highest-ranking woman at the U.N. Amina Mohammed said Wednesday she used everything in her “toolbox” during meetings with Taliban ministers in Afghanistan to try to reverse their crackdown on women and girls, urging Muslim countries to help the Taliban move from the “13th century to the 21st” century.

On Thursday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, asked for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ reaction to rising malnutrition rates in Afghanistan said: “It’s yet another sign of the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Afghanistan we’re seeing in the midst of particularly harsh winter conditions."

___

Associated Press writer Riazat Butt contributed to this report from Islamabad.