Maaret Masrin, Syria (AFP): Syrian medics have launched the first cholera vaccination campaign in the rebel-held northwest since a deadly outbreak began last year, amid increased fears of contagion after last month’s devastating earthquake. Health workers are going door to door to inoculate people in homes and displacement camps in the I...
ANKARA (AA) – Almost a quarter of all children in Europe risk poverty or social exclusion, says a recent report by an NGO. Save the Children in its latest report “Guaranteeing children’s future” said more children and families are living with poverty and social exclusion due to the high costs of living, the climate crisis, [&...
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) – Anwara Begum, an elderly Rohingya woman, has been struggling at a congested refugee camp in Bangladesh with her family since an August 2017 exodus following a brutal military crackdown in their home country of Myanmar. In the last five-and-a-half years of her existence as a forcefully displaced person in the refu...
NEW DELHI (AA) – Indian police have finally arrested three employees of a company that manufactured the cough syrup linked to the deaths of at least 19 children in Uzbekistan last year. India launched a probe in December after authorities in Uzbekistan said children there died because of side effects of the cough syrup manufactured [&hel...
MADRID (AA) – Portuguese Bishops have ‘apologized’ to victims of sexual abuse in Portugal’s Catholic Church. The bishops met in the sacred town of Fatima at a plenary meeting of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP). The CEP released a statement after the meeting, apologizing to victims across the country. The move ...
Tehran, Iran (AFP): Iranian authorities arrested four people Thursday in connection with an assault on a woman outside a girls’ school targeted in a wave of poisoning attacks, a news agency said. Hundreds of cases of respiratory distress have been reported in the past three months among schoolgirls in what one government official said co...
TEHRAN, Iran (AA) — Hundreds of schoolgirls have been hospitalized in different cities across Iran since November last year in what has been described as a wave of a mysterious illness. Though the exact number of students affected by the poisoning is yet unknown, a senior lawmaker on Wednesday put the figure tentatively at “nearly [&hell...
Jakarta, Indonesia (AFP): Dinosaur-themed birthday decorations still hang on the walls of Safitri Puspa Rani’s Indonesian home, where the family celebrated their youngest son’s birthday last year. “Knock knock! Hey everyone! It’s my eighth birthday!” said a beaming Panghegar Bhumi in a video in September, while ma...
Tehran, Iran (AFP): Iran’s president stepped in after more than 100 students were hospitalised Wednesday, the latest in a spate of poisonings at girls’ schools that has gripped the country. The president’s website said Ebrahim Raisi had assigned Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi to provide “continuous information on the re...
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) – Twelve Rohingya community organizations on Wednesday expressed concern about the World Food Program’s (WFP) decision to reduce food rations for refugees, fearing that it would force Rohingya living in Bangladesh into human trafficking, child marriage, or even prostitution. “This announcement of cutting food...
