KOLKATA: Indian doctors on strike in Kolkata to protest the brutal rape and murder of a colleague will resume some duties from Saturday, the group leading the protests told AFP on Friday.
The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied body at a state-run hospital in the eastern city last month rekindled nationwide anger at the chronic issue of violence against women.
While the protests and strikes have since calmed in the rest of India, regular demonstrations had continued in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state.
“We will return to work in a graded manner from Saturday,” Aniket Mahato of the West Bengal Junior Doctors Front told AFP following late-night talks with authorities.
Junior doctors would return to emergency rooms in state-run hospitals, but would not resume their duties in outpatient departments, inpatient services or on planned surgeries, he said.
He said the decision came following floods that have inundated parts of West Bengal in recent days.
“It’s time to move and help the affected people,” he said.
Doctors had given the state government a seven-day deadline to implement measures enhancing security and safety in hospitals, Mahato said, adding they would stop work again if the demands were not met.
Tens of thousands of ordinary Indians joined in the protests following the August attack, which focused anger on the lack of measures for female doctors to work without fear.
One man has been detained over the murder, but West Bengal’s state government has faced public criticism for its handling of the investigation.
Authorities eventually sacked the city’s police chief and top health ministry officials.
India’s Supreme Court last month ordered a national task force to examine how to bolster security for health care workers, saying the brutality of the killing had “shocked the conscience of the nation.”
The gruesome nature of the attack has invoked comparisons with the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus, which also sparked weeks of nationwide protests.
Striking Indian doctors to resume work after murder protest
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Striking Indian doctors to resume work after murder protest
- The discovery of a 31-year-old doctor’s body at a state-run hospital in Kolkata last month rekindled nationwide anger at the chronic issue of violence against women
- While the protests and strikes have since calmed in the rest of India, regular demonstrations continued in the eastern city, which is the capital of West Bengal state
Trump administration freezes many health agency reports and online posts
- Shutting down public health communication stops a basic function of public health
The Trump administration has put a freeze on many federal health agency communications with the public through at least the end of the month.
In a memo obtained by The Associated Press, acting Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services Dorothy Fink told agency staff leaders Tuesday that an “immediate pause” had been ordered on — among other things — regulations, guidance, announcements, press releases, social media posts and website posts until such communications had been approved by a political appointee.
The pause also applies to anything intended to be published in the Federal Register, where the executive branch communicates rules and regulations, and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientific publication.
The pause is in effect through Feb. 1, the memo said. Agencies subject to the HHS directive include the CDC, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration — entities that fight epidemics, protect the nation’s food supply and search for cures to diseases.
HHS officials did not respond to requests for comment on the pause, which was first reported by The Washington Post. Four federal health officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue confirmed the communication pause to the AP.
A former HHS official said Wednesday that it’s not unusual for incoming administrations to pause agency communications for review. But typically, officials working on the president’s transition team have the process for issuing documents running smoothly by inauguration day.
“The executive branch is a hierarchy,” said Steven Grossman, who now consults for food and drug companies, in an email. “Whether stated publicly or not, every new administration wants important commitments and positions to wait until new teams are in place and some semblance of hierarchy restored.”
A pause is reasonable as a changing executive branch takes steps to become coordinated, said Dr. Ali Khan, a former CDC outbreak investigator who is now dean of the University of Nebraska’s public health college.
“The only concern would be is if this is a prelude to going back to a prior approach of silencing the agencies around a political narrative,” he added.
During his first term, President Donald Trump’s political appointees tried to gain control over the CDC’s MMWR journal, which had published information about the COVID-19 pandemic that conflicted with messaging from the White House.
Fink wrote in her memo that some exceptions would be made for communications affecting “critical health, safety, environmental, financial or nation security functions,” but that those would be subject to review. The FDA on Tuesday and Wednesday posted notices about warning letters sent to companies and a drug safety notice.
A consumer advocacy group said the communications pause could still threaten public safety.
Americans depend on timely information from the CDC, the FDA and other agencies to avoid foodborne illnesses and stay aware of other health issues, said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“When it comes to stopping outbreaks, every second counts,” Lurie said in a statement. “Confusion around the vaguely worded gag order is likely to lead to unnecessary delay in publishing urgent public alerts during active outbreaks.”
He was echoed by Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a University of Southern California public health expert.
“Local health officials and doctors depend on the CDC to get disease updates, timely prevention, testing and treatment guidelines and information about outbreaks,” Klausner wrote in an email. “Shutting down public health communication stops a basic function of public health. Imagine if the government turned off fire sirens or other warning systems.”
Swiss prosecutors examine complaints against Israel president
- The Swiss Keystone-ATS news agency reported that one of the complaints came from an NGO called Legal Action Against Genocide
GENEVA: Swiss prosecutors said Wednesday they were examining several complaints against visiting Israeli President Isaac Herzog, as reports suggested NGOs were accusing him of “incitement to genocide” in Gaza.
The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) confirmed it had received “several criminal complaints” against Herzog, who was at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos this week.
“The criminal complaints are now being examined in accordance with the usual procedure,” the OAG said in an email sent to AFP, adding that the office was in contact with Switzerland’s foreign ministry “to examine the question of the immunity of the person concerned.”
It provided no details on the specific complaints filed.
The Swiss Keystone-ATS news agency reported that one of the complaints came from an NGO called Legal Action Against Genocide.
The NGO was calling for Herzog to be prosecuted “for incitement to genocide and crimes against humanity,” the news agency said.
The complaint, it said, deemed he had played “an active role in the ideological justification of genocide and war crimes in Gaza, by erasing all distinction between the civilian population and combatants.”
Israeli officials have repeatedly denied allegations of war crimes and genocide, accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Herzog spoke at Davos on Tuesday and held meetings on Wednesday morning but it was unclear if he was still in Switzerland.
Complaints were also filed against him when he attended the Davos meeting a year ago but the OAG refrained from opening an investigation that time, Keystone-ATS reported.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
It sparked a war that has levelled much of Gaza and, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, killed more than 47,100, a majority of them civilians, figures the United Nations has said are reliable.
Trump halts refugee arrivals in crackdown
- The memo asked the UN International Organization for Migration not to move refugees to transit centers
- Refugees already resettled in the United States will continue to receive services as planned, it said
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has halted arrivals of refugees already cleared to enter the United States, according to a memo seen Wednesday, as he quickly pursues a sweeping crackdown on migration.
Following an executive order signed Monday hours after Trump took office, “all previously scheduled travel of refugees to the United States is being canceled,” said a State Department email to groups working with new arrivals.
The memo asked the UN International Organization for Migration not to move refugees to transit centers and said that all processing on cases has also been suspended.
Refugees already resettled in the United States will continue to receive services as planned, it said.
Trump in each of his presidential campaigns has run on promises to crack down on undocumented immigration.
But the refugee move also targets a legal pathway for people fleeing wars, persecution or disasters.
In his executive order, he said he was suspending refugee admissions as of January 27 and ordered a report on how to change the program, in part by giving “greater involvement” to states and local jurisdictions.
It also revoked his predecessor Joe Biden’s decision to consider the impact of climate change in refugee admissions.
New Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said Wednesday that the State Department will “no longer undertake any activities that facilitate or encourage mass migration. “
“Our diplomatic relations with other countries, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, will prioritize securing America’s borders, stopping illegal and destabilizing migration and negotiating the repatriation of illegal immigrants,” Rubio said in a statement.
Biden had embraced the refugee program as a way to support people in need through legal means.
In the 2024 fiscal year, more than 100,000 refugees resettled in the United States, the most in three decades.
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar have been among the top sources of refugees in recent years.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voiced alarm at Trump’s moves and said that acceptance of refugees was “a core American value.”
“The US Refugee Admissions Program has a long history of bipartisan support and is a life-saving tool for the most vulnerable refugees, all while making Americans safer by promoting stability around the world,” she said.
The State Department memo said that Afghans who worked with the United States until the collapse of the Western-backed government in 2021 could still arrive through their separate resettlement program.
But Shaheen voiced concern that Afghans were also being left in limbo with flights canceled.
China families appeal to free relatives held by scam gangs in Myanmar
BEIJING/BANGKOK: The abduction and cross-border rescue had all the makings of the kind of action script struggling Chinese actor Wang Xing had hoped to land — only not as a reality star.
Wang, 22, flew to Bangkok earlier this month after getting an unsolicited offer to join a film that was shooting in Thailand.
There was no movie. Instead, like hundreds of other Chinese men, Wang had been duped by a job offer that he later acknowledged appeared too good to be true, as part of a trap set by a criminal syndicate.
Like others desperate for work, he was kidnapped and put to work in one of the online scam centers that operate just across the Thai border in Myanmar, according to his account and statements by police in China and Thailand.
But unlike most trafficked Chinese whose families wait in quiet anguish, Wang had a powerful advocate back home. His girlfriend, who goes by the nickname Jiajia, broadcast details of Wang’s abduction and started a social media campaign documenting her battle to get him back to China, picking up millions of followers and the support of Chinese celebrities.
When Wang was freed on Jan.7 by Thai police, who said he had been found in Myanmar but gave few details about his release, frustrated families of other Chinese people still detained in the Myanmar scam centers began to post details of their own cases in an attempt to capitalize on the attention.
Within days, the rare grassroots effort had collected the names of nearly 1,800 Chinese nationals that family members said had been trafficked into Myanmar from border areas of China and Thailand.
Social media disinformation fueling poor governance, Nigerian foreign minister tells WEF
- Yusuf Tuggar says Sahel countries suffer from foreign state-backed social media campaigns
- Comments come in WEF panel on what can be done to tackle poor governance
LONDON: Disinformation campaigns on social media, sometimes instigated by external countries, have fueled poor governance in parts of Africa, Nigeria’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Speaking during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Yusuf Tuggar said that while social media could have a positive effect on governance and improving transparency, disinformation spread on its platforms was something Nigeria was having to deal with.
He pointed to countries neighboring or near to Nigeria where foreign powers had been blamed for sophisticated social media campaigns that helped to swell support for military regimes.
Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso underwent military coups in recent years and broke away from the Economic Community of West African States — ECOWAS — last year to form their own alliance.
Disinformation or misinformation had a “deleterious effect on governments and governance, and sometimes it’s even destructive,” Tuggar said during a panel on the threat of poor governance.
“It’s so sophisticated, and then sometimes you also have external interference where you have other states sponsoring such attacks, if you will, on others.”
While he did not name any countries in particular, Tuggar said that this was something Nigeria was contending with in discussions about the three countries leaving ECOWAS. Nigeria is the most powerful member of the economic bloc, which is regarded as having helped to improve financial and political stability in the region.
“That sort of negative campaign sways public opinion one way or the other, and if you’re relying on votes on openness and transparency, then, you know, it’s not a fair game,” Tuggar said.
A study released last year by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, which is based at the US Department of Defense, found Russia to be the leading source of disinformation in Africa, with West Africa and the Sahel the most targeted.
Tuggar’s comments came as the panel discussed how leaders could tackle the poor level of governance globally that is blamed for eroding global cooperation and stalling progress on critical social, economic and environmental issues.
Ngaire Woods, dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, said that good governance was about whether people could continue to trust you when you got things wrong.
“Resilience in leadership takes legitimacy as well as effectiveness,” she said. “Legitimacy is about the trust you engender among those you govern or those that you lead in your company.”
Johan Andresen, chairman of the Norwegian private investment company Ferd, said that good governance needed to be handled in two ways — risk and responsibility.
“You have to have management of the risks in the organizations, but you should also try to experiment with how much responsibility can you actually take,” he said.
