politics

Cuban children's heart hospital makes tough choices amid US blockade

BY LISANDRA COTS

  • Herminia Palenzuela, a 79-year-old doctor, said the William Soler Pediatric Hospital must now make "very difficult" decisions.
  • Doctors at Cuba's main pediatric heart hospital face wrenching decisions as a US fuel blockade further strains an already fragile health system: which children receive life-saving treatment first -- and which must wait longer.
  • Herminia Palenzuela, a 79-year-old doctor, said the William Soler Pediatric Hospital must now make "very difficult" decisions.
Doctors at Cuba's main pediatric heart hospital face wrenching decisions as a US fuel blockade further strains an already fragile health system: which children receive life-saving treatment first -- and which must wait longer.
During a visit by AFP journalists, mothers wearing medical masks were bedside next to children sitting or laying in dim rooms, with the sun providing the only light through the windows.
Universal health care is one of the proud achievements of the Cuban revolution, but the island's hospitals have struggled with shortages and aging equipment for years.
The situation has deteriorated since US President Donald Trump imposed a de facto oil blockade in January, with Cubans enduring daily blackouts that last several hours.
Herminia Palenzuela, a 79-year-old doctor, said the William Soler Pediatric Hospital must now make "very difficult" decisions.
Children with the least serious cases are "at the end of the list and simply wait," she said.

'Lucky' so far

The hospital treats newborns, children, and pregnant women whose fetuses have been diagnosed with severe congenital heart defects.
It has 100 beds, but they are not all used as doctors says they must conserve equipment and medical supplies for the sickest patients.
"Resources are always reserved for that type of patient, because they are the ones who could die at any moment," said Palenzuela, her face etched with anguish.
"We would like to operate more. We would like to do more, but the resources don't allow us to do so," said Palenzuela, who founded the hospital in 1986.
Yaima Sanchez waited in a dimly lit hallway for her nine-year-old son to be seen and given the portable device needed to monitor his heart rate.
"I come here with the faith that the doctors will see me with whatever they have available," said Sanchez, whose son has tachycardia, an abnormally fast heartbeat.
"Sometimes the device isn't there, or it's dead because there are no batteries," she told AFP. "So far, we've been lucky, but you never know."

'Dramatic levels'

With daily blackouts affecting Cubans across the island -- including two nationwide outages last week alone -- the government has prioritized hospitals, which are equipped with generators to ensure they never go dark.
Palenzuela said she can only visit the hospital three times a week. Colleagues walk several kilometers to work every day. A transport system has been set up for health workers, but not all have access to it.
In Havana, nurses and doctors in white lab coats are among people seen hitchhiking along the capital's famous Malecon seafront promenade.
According to the health ministry, more than 96,000 Cubans, including 11,000 children, are waiting for surgeries due to the energy crisis.
The director of the William Soler hospital, Eugenio Selmam, said a US trade embargo in force since 1962 has always made it difficult for Cuba to get medicine and medical equipment.
"It's something we have lived with for decades," Selmam said. "But now, with this new situation, it has reached dramatic levels."
The United Nations, which is in talks with Washington to allow imports of fuel for its aid work in Cuba, has proposed an action plan to keep critical services running in the country.
"If the current situation continues and the country's fuel reserves are exhausted, we do fear a rapid deterioration, with the potential loss of life," the UN's coordinator in Cuba, Francisco Pichon, said Wednesday.
The hospital this week received a shipment of medicine, food and hygiene products from an international humanitarian aid convoy that brought 50 tonnes of supplies to Cuba by sea and air.
"The situation is clearly complicated," said Martina Steinwurzel, a 41-year-old Italian activist and member of the Our America Convoy.
As volunteers and medical staff stacked boxes of donated supplies in a hospital room, Steinwurzel looked around and said: "These are people who have resisted for many years, and now they are living through a siege they have never experienced in their history."
lis/rd/lt/mlm

research

Lost in space: Sperm struggles to navigate during weightless sex

BY DANIEL LAWLER

  • "Sperm need to actively find their way to an egg, and this study is the first to put that ability to the test under space-like conditions," Nicole McPherson, a researcher at Adelaide University in Australia, told AFP. The scientists used a plastic chamber that resembles the female reproductive tract to act as a "miniature obstacle course", the senior author of the new study said.
  • Scientists have used a tiny plastic "obstacle course" to test how much sperm would struggle to navigate during sex in the weightlessness of space.
  • "Sperm need to actively find their way to an egg, and this study is the first to put that ability to the test under space-like conditions," Nicole McPherson, a researcher at Adelaide University in Australia, told AFP. The scientists used a plastic chamber that resembles the female reproductive tract to act as a "miniature obstacle course", the senior author of the new study said.
Scientists have used a tiny plastic "obstacle course" to test how much sperm would struggle to navigate during sex in the weightlessness of space.
Some particularly resilient sperm still made it through the course, suggesting that conceiving children in space will still be possible, according to research published on Thursday.
However a bigger problem could be that the development of embryos after fertilisation was harmed by a lack of gravity, the Australian team of researchers found.
With humanity setting its eyes on colonising space -- next week NASA hopes to launch its first crewed mission around the Moon in half a century -- scientists have been studying how difficult it will be to procreate on spaceships or other worlds.
One of the biggest challenges is that sperm will no longer be pulled downwards by Earth's gravity.
"Sperm need to actively find their way to an egg, and this study is the first to put that ability to the test under space-like conditions," Nicole McPherson, a researcher at Adelaide University in Australia, told AFP.
The scientists used a plastic chamber that resembles the female reproductive tract to act as a "miniature obstacle course", the senior author of the new study said.
"Think of it as a tiny race track... sperm are introduced at one end and have to swim their way through to the other."
- Filtering out weak runners - 
Both human and mice sperm were sent down the course, which was inside a device that uses constant rotation to simulate the microgravity of space.
The sperm was about 50 percent worse at navigating through the course compared to how they perform under Earth's gravity.
This worked out to be roughly a 30-percent drop in successful fertilisation, according to the study in the journal Communications Biology. 
However the sperm that did make it through seemed to produce better-quality embryos, which could turn out to be "beneficial", McPherson said. 
It appeared that the stress of microgravity acted as a "filter" that effectively cleared the field, "leaving only the most capable sperm in the running," she explained.
A bigger problem came in the first 24 hours after sperm had fertilised the eggs.
"The results reversed sharply, with fewer embryos formed, and those that did were of poorer quality," McPherson said. 
This suggests that microgravity "may not be the deal-breaker we feared, but protecting the embryo from weightlessness in those critical first hours will likely be essential for reproduction in space," she added.
Some including billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk have ambitious plans to make humans an interplanetary species by establishing settlements on the Moon then Mars.
There has also been speculation that the first baby conceived outside the bounds of Earth could be the result of a couple having sex on a flight launched by the booming space tourism industry.
McPherson emphasised that much more research is needed to understand how reproduction works in space, adding that fertilisation is "only one small piece of a very long and complex puzzle".
"We are still a long way from seeing the first space baby."
dl/ach 

trial

US jury finds Meta, YouTube liable in social media addiction trial

BY ROMAIN FONSEGRIVES WITH ALEX PIGMAN IN WASHINGTON

  • Two further bellwether trials are expected to follow in the same Los Angeles courthouse, with their outcomes likely to determine whether social media companies fight on or move toward a broader settlement, potentially including redesigning how their platforms work.
  • A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday found Meta and YouTube liable for harming a young woman because of an addictive design of their social media platforms, ordering the companies to pay $6 million in damages, including $3 million in punitive damages.
  • Two further bellwether trials are expected to follow in the same Los Angeles courthouse, with their outcomes likely to determine whether social media companies fight on or move toward a broader settlement, potentially including redesigning how their platforms work.
A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday found Meta and YouTube liable for harming a young woman because of an addictive design of their social media platforms, ordering the companies to pay $6 million in damages, including $3 million in punitive damages.
The verdict hands plaintiffs in more than a thousand similar pending cases significant leverage -- and signals to the broader tech industry that juries are prepared to hold social media companies accountable for the mental health toll of their design choices.
The jury answered yes to all seven questions on verdict forms for both companies, finding that Meta and YouTube were negligent in the design and operation of their platforms and that their negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to the plaintiff.
Jurors also found that both companies knew or should have known their services posed a danger to minors, that they failed to adequately warn users of that danger, and that a reasonable platform operator would have done so.
The panel awarded $3 million in compensatory damages, assigning Meta 70 percent of the responsibility for the plaintiff's harm -- a $2.1 million share -- and YouTube the remaining 30 percent, or $900,000. 
In a second phase, jurors added a further $3 million in total punitive damages after finding both companies had acted with malice, oppression or fraud.
Both companies said they would appeal the verdict.
"This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site," Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said.
A spokesperson for Meta said they "respectfully disagree with the verdict," adding that "teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app."
Nine of the 12 jurors further found that both companies had acted with malice, oppression or fraud, a finding that set the stage for the separate punitive damages.
The plaintiff, known in court documents by her initials K.G.M. and called Kaley at trial, began using YouTube when she was six, downloading the app on her iPod Touch to watch videos about lip gloss and an online kids game. 
She joined Instagram at nine, getting around a block her mother had put in place to keep her off the platform.
She told jurors that her near-constant social media use "really affected my self-worth," saying the apps led her to abandon hobbies, struggle to make friends and constantly measure herself against others.
In closing arguments, plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier cast the case as a story of corporate greed, saying that features like infinite scrolling, autoplay videos, notifications and like counts were engineered to drive compulsive use among young people.

'Existential' threat?

Meta and YouTube had maintained throughout the trial that Kaley's mental health struggles had nothing to do with their platforms.
Meta's lawyer pointed to her life at home and a turbulent relationship with her parents, while YouTube disputed how much time Kaley actually spent on its platform.
The jury rejected both defenses across all seven questions on each verdict form.
TikTok and Snap were originally named as defendants but settled on undisclosed terms before the trial got underway. 
Two further bellwether trials are expected to follow in the same Los Angeles courthouse, with their outcomes likely to determine whether social media companies fight on or move toward a broader settlement, potentially including redesigning how their platforms work.
The penalty amounts are "a slap on the wrist for companies like Meta and YouTube, which are two of the biggest ad sellers in the world," said Jasmine Enberg of Scalable, who tracks the social media industry.
"But if these companies are forced to redesign their products, that poses an existential threat to their business models." 
A separate New Mexico jury on Tuesday found Meta liable for endangering children by making them vulnerable to predators on its platforms and other dangers.
The state had sought the maximum $2.2 billion in damages, but the jury awarded a lesser amount of $375 million.
arp/js/cms

trial

Day of reckoning arrives for social media after US court loss

BY THOMAS URBAIN

  • - Legislative pressure builds - The Los Angeles and Santa Fe cases are part of a broader wave of legal and regulatory action that gathered pace after Australia moved last year to ban social media for people under 16. 
  • A Los Angeles jury's ruling that Meta and YouTube contributed to a teenage girl's depression marks a potential turning point in the years-long legal battle against social media giants -- one that could carry an enormous price tag.
  • - Legislative pressure builds - The Los Angeles and Santa Fe cases are part of a broader wave of legal and regulatory action that gathered pace after Australia moved last year to ban social media for people under 16. 
A Los Angeles jury's ruling that Meta and YouTube contributed to a teenage girl's depression marks a potential turning point in the years-long legal battle against social media giants -- one that could carry an enormous price tag.
The civil court on Tuesday found Meta and YouTube's parent Google liable for failing to adequately warn young people about the risks of excessive use of their Instagram and YouTube apps, respectively, even though they were aware of the dangers. 
Both Meta and YouTube said Wednesday that they planned to appeal the California verdict. 
A separate jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico, earlier this week found Meta liable for endangering minor users of Facebook and Instagram.

Billions on the line

Meta was quick to note that compensatory damages in the Los Angeles case totalled just $3 million, with a further $3 million in punitive damages awarded by the jury Wednesday.
In New Mexico, the company was ordered to pay $375 million in penalties, a verdict it said it would appeal.
The rulings could ripple across hundreds of pending lawsuits against social media companies facing similar allegations, with the total liability potentially running into the billions of dollars.
"Bellwether trials like this one serve as signals about how juries respond to specific theories of harm," said Daryl Lim, a law professor at Pennsylvania State University.
He added that the verdict "should increase the pressure" on platforms to settle outstanding cases.
Snap and TikTok settled with the plaintiff in the Los Angeles case before the trial began, sidestepping a jury entirely.

Self-regulation

The cases center on users like Kaley G.M., the plaintiff in the Los Angeles case, who said she developed depression, chronic anxiety and body image issues from early and intense exposure to social media. 
Researchers have increasingly linked such sufferings to heavy social media use among adolescents.
"For years, social media companies have claimed they're hard at work making their platforms safer for kids and teenagers," said Minda Smiley, an analyst at eMarketer. "Critics have long been skeptical."
"This verdict could mark the start of a difficult new chapter for social platforms -- one where the rules they write for themselves no longer cut it," she added.
Vanitha Swaminathan, a marketing professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said the ruling exposed "an important tension between the goals of the platform companies and the issues it poses for some of its most vulnerable consumers."

New crack in Section 230

For year, US platforms have sheltered behind Section 230, a legal provision shielding them from liability for content posted by their users. 
But lawyers for Kaley G.M. chose a different battlefield: the design of the platforms themselves, which they argued were engineered to trap and addict young users.
The strategy amounts to a "narrowing" of Section 230 that offers "alternative pathways to liability," said Lim at Pennsylvania State University.

Legislative pressure builds

The Los Angeles and Santa Fe cases are part of a broader wave of legal and regulatory action that gathered pace after Australia moved last year to ban social media for people under 16. 
Several US states have since passed or are weighing their own legislation to protect minors online, though none has set a hard minimum age.
Congress has so far stayed on the sidelines. "It usually steps in only after courts and state governments have begun to reshape the policy landscape," Lim said.
Should the courts ultimately compel platforms to overhaul their products, the consequences could be severe. 
"Their ad businesses thrive off attention," said Jasmine Enberg of Scalable. "If product changes make their apps less engaging, that makes them less valuable to advertisers."
"If these companies are forced to redesign their products," she warned, "that poses an existential threat to their business models."
tu/arp/js/dw 

internet

Grieving families hail court victory against Instagram, YouTube

BY ROMAIN FONSEGRIVES

  • - 'Predator' defense - The platforms "had no defense" in this case, said Schott, outraged by the way Meta's lawyers attributed Kaley G.M.'s depression to her chaotic childhood -- surrounded by a neglectful father, a hot-tempered mother, and a sister who attempted suicide.
  • Hearing the news that Instagram and YouTube had been found liable Wednesday for contributing to a young American woman's depression, Lori Schott jumped for joy and wept, as if it were her own daughter who had just won her case.
  • - 'Predator' defense - The platforms "had no defense" in this case, said Schott, outraged by the way Meta's lawyers attributed Kaley G.M.'s depression to her chaotic childhood -- surrounded by a neglectful father, a hot-tempered mother, and a sister who attempted suicide.
Hearing the news that Instagram and YouTube had been found liable Wednesday for contributing to a young American woman's depression, Lori Schott jumped for joy and wept, as if it were her own daughter who had just won her case.
"We have ripped the door of this courthouse open in memory of our kids, and we're shining a light," the Colorado farmer told AFP, having traveled more than 1,800 kilometers (1,112 miles) to attend the verdict in Los Angeles.
It is "validation that what we saw, our children being harmed, was true. It's going to make the world safer."
This landmark trial involved Kaley G.M., a 20-year-old Californian who had been a compulsive user of various social media platforms since childhood and accused them of exacerbating her mental health issues and suicidal thoughts.
TikTok and Snapchat had reached a financial settlement to avoid going to court, but Google, the owner of YouTube, and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, had opted for a legal battle.
The ruling on Monday ordering them to pay $3 million in damages is not just a victory for the young woman.
It also sets a precedent for thousands of American families who accuse the social media industry of knowingly designing its platforms to make children addicted, through features such as "likes," notifications, infinite scrolling, and autoplay videos.

'Predator' defense

The platforms "had no defense" in this case, said Schott, outraged by the way Meta's lawyers attributed Kaley G.M.'s depression to her chaotic childhood -- surrounded by a neglectful father, a hot-tempered mother, and a sister who attempted suicide.
"Their defense is to attack Kaley and her family. And what does a predator do? A predator attacks the victim," she said.
Angry, the 60-year-old cannot come to terms with the loss of her daughter Annalee, a little blonde girl in a cowboy hat whose smile lights up the pin attached to the lapel of her jacket.
After her suicide at age 18, her mother discovered a note explaining that she thought she was ugly and realized that she constantly compared herself to other women on social media who regularly used filters to alter their appearance.
"It was all built into the design of these platforms to keep little girls engaged," she said, still shocked by the internal documents revealed during the trial.
These confidential records notably showed how their architecture reduced users to a series of statistics, such as "customer lifetime value," representing the total expected profit for a person over their entire time on the platform.
"Their internal operation said kids are worth $270 lifetime value," she whispered, her throat tightening. "My daughter is worth a hell of a lot more than $270."

'Shaping public opinion'

During the trial, lawyers for YouTube and Instagram sought to convince the court that these platforms no longer aim to maximize the amount of time their users spend online, unlike in their early days.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, also expressed regret on the stand that Instagram waited until 2022 to verify the ages of its users.
Outside the courtroom, his company is ramping up advertising to promote new Instagram accounts for teens, which are private by default and block messages from people not followed by users under 16.
The Silicon Valley giant is also promoting new features to alert parents if their teen repeatedly searches for content related to suicide or self-harm on Instagram.
But for Julianna Arnold, whose daughter Coco died at age 17 after receiving fentanyl from a stranger she met on Instagram, these efforts ring hollow.
"People need to wake up and start seeing through their PR. They're not doing nearly enough for kids' safety," said the Californian, co-founder of the victims' advocacy group Parents Rise.
For her, the increase in lawsuits against these platforms is essential, as the US Congress is currently considering a bill that would, for the first time, impose a "duty of care" on social media companies.
"This decision is not going to change everything, but it helps us to sway public opinion," she insisted. "That's the only way to get the ear of legislators in Washington."
rfo/arp/sms

mice

Mammals cannot be cloned infinitely, mice study discovers

BY DANIEL LAWLER

  • The 58th generation of mice did not survive, establishing for the first time that mammals cannot be cloned an infinite number of times, the scientists said in a study published on Tuesday.
  • There is a limit on how many times a mammal can be cloned before suffering "mutational meltdown", Japanese scientists have discovered, after making 1,200 clones over two decades that started off with a single mouse.
  • The 58th generation of mice did not survive, establishing for the first time that mammals cannot be cloned an infinite number of times, the scientists said in a study published on Tuesday.
There is a limit on how many times a mammal can be cloned before suffering "mutational meltdown", Japanese scientists have discovered, after making 1,200 clones over two decades that started off with a single mouse.
The 58th generation of mice did not survive, establishing for the first time that mammals cannot be cloned an infinite number of times, the scientists said in a study published on Tuesday.
It had been hoped that this method, which involves making clones of other clones, could have a range of uses in the future, including saving endangered species or mass-producing animals for their meat.
"We had believed that we could create an infinite number of clones. That is why these results are so disappointing," the study's senior author Teruhiko Wakayama of the University of Yamanashi told AFP.
It was Wakayama's team that cloned the first mouse in 1997, a year after the famous Dolly the Sheep became the first-ever mammal clone.
For the new research, the scientists first cloned the original female mouse in 2005.
Once a mouse reached three months old, they were cloned again, resulting in three or four new generations every year.
Over the next 20 years, they carried out more than 30,000 cloning attempts that created over 1,200 mice.
The process involves removing the DNA-containing nucleus of a cell from a donor animal and implanting it into an unfertilised egg from which the nucleus has been removed.

'Critical turning point'

In the first few years, the method's success rate steadily rose -- reaching over 15 percent at one point -- and the mice appeared to all be identical. 
This gave the scientists hope that they could make clones indefinitely.
However there was a "critical turning point" around the 25th generation, according to the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
After that point, harmful genetic mutations built up over the generations, and each new set of mice was less likely to survive.
By the 57th generation, only 0.6 percent survived. Despite their accumulating mutations, these mice were still healthy.
However all the mice in the 58th generation died shortly after birth.
"There were no visible abnormalities in the pups, and the cause of death is unknown," Wakayama said.
The scientists sequenced the genomes of some of the clones, finding that they had three times more mutations than mice born via sexual reproduction. 
They also had larger placentas -- and some were missing a copy of their X chromosome.
"It was once believed that clones were identical to the original," Wakayama said, but this was clearly not the case.
Wakayama admitted his team has "no idea" how to overcome this problem, suggesting that  perhaps the answer was to develop a better cloning method.

The importance of sex

Importantly, when the later clones -- even in the 57th generation -- mated with male mice, they had healthy offspring with fewer mutations.
This discovery demonstrates "that sexual reproduction is indispensable for the long-term survival of mammalian species," the study said.
It also supports a theory called Muller's ratchet, which "predicts that in asexual lineages, deleterious mutations inevitably accumulate, ultimately producing mutational meltdown and extinction," the study said.
The research "provides the first empirical demonstration" that this meltdown occurs in mammals, it added.
The finding could also rule out all sorts of scenarios involving clones that have been dreamt up in science fiction.
For example, Wakayama joked that this finding meant it would have been impossible to create so many clone troopers in the Star Wars prequel "Attack of the Clones".
It could also affect any plans to preserve Earth's genetic resources in a vault in the hope of re-cloning a new population following some catastrophe in the future, the study pointed out.
Wakayama is also working on new ways to collect cells from animals without harming them, as part of efforts to bring endangered species back from the brink.
His team has already successfully made clones from cells found in urine -- and are currently working to do the same with faeces.
dl/yad

pandemic

WHO chief urges countries to complete pandemic agreement

  • In May 2025, WHO member states adopted a landmark pandemic agreement on tackling future health crises, after more than three years of negotiations sparked by the shock of Covid-19.
  • The World Health Organization chief on Monday urged countries to complete the missing piece of a pandemic agreement designed to avoid the panic and chaos of Covid-19 this week.
  • In May 2025, WHO member states adopted a landmark pandemic agreement on tackling future health crises, after more than three years of negotiations sparked by the shock of Covid-19.
The World Health Organization chief on Monday urged countries to complete the missing piece of a pandemic agreement designed to avoid the panic and chaos of Covid-19 this week.
WHO member states meeting at the UN health agency's Geneva headquarters have until Saturday to thrash out the trickiest bit of the entire treaty -- the nuts and bolts of how a vital portion of the text will work in practice.
"We must get this done. The next pandemic will not wait," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted.
He urged nations not to fall for the "dangerous temptation" to opt for yet more negotiating time, as the "increasingly unfavourable climate" would only mean "this will get harder, not easier".
In May 2025, WHO member states adopted a landmark pandemic agreement on tackling future health crises, after more than three years of negotiations sparked by the shock of Covid-19.
The accord aims to prevent future pandemics from leading to the disjointed responses and international disarray that surrounded the coronavirus crisis by improving global coordination, surveillance and access to vaccines.
But the heartbeat of the treaty, the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system, was left aside in order to get the deal over the line.
Countries were given another year to sort out the details of how it will operate.
The PABS mechanism deals with sharing access to pathogens with pandemic potential, then sharing the benefits derived from them: vaccines, tests and treatments.
Countries are tasked with getting PABS finalised by the next World Health Assembly, the WHO's decision-making body, in mid-May. 

'Not there yet'

Tedros welcomed negotiators back on Monday for the sixth and "for what we all hope will be the final meeting" on finalising PABS.
"We're so close -- but of course, we're not there yet," he said, warning that it was "probably the only chance" to secure an outcome.
"The conflict in the Middle East and crises elsewhere in our world are reminders that health emergencies can erupt suddenly and affect multiple countries, increasing the risk of disease outbreaks."
Tedros, who led the WHO during Covid-19, said countries must ask themselves whether the text would solve the problems faced during the pandemic.
"We need to do everything in our collective power to finalise the (deal) so we do not waste the last four-and-a-half years," he said.
"If we don't, we are left with the status quo: no PABS system, and a Pandemic Agreement that exists only on paper."
rjm/nl/sbk

vaccines

Mixed results for Lyme disease vaccine hit Valneva shares

  • The new vaccine candidate "demonstrated more than 70 percent efficacy in preventing Lyme disease in individuals aged five years and above" during a phase 3 clinical trial, the US and French-Austrian companies said in a joint statement. 
  • An experimental vaccine for Lyme disease is broadly effective, pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Valneva announced Monday, however the latter firm's shares fell because the clinical trial did not reach its main goal.
  • The new vaccine candidate "demonstrated more than 70 percent efficacy in preventing Lyme disease in individuals aged five years and above" during a phase 3 clinical trial, the US and French-Austrian companies said in a joint statement. 
An experimental vaccine for Lyme disease is broadly effective, pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Valneva announced Monday, however the latter firm's shares fell because the clinical trial did not reach its main goal.
There are currently no approved vaccines to treat Lyme disease -- the world's most common tick-borne illness. 
The new vaccine candidate "demonstrated more than 70 percent efficacy in preventing Lyme disease in individuals aged five years and above" during a phase 3 clinical trial, the US and French-Austrian companies said in a joint statement. 
However, because there were fewer cases of Lyme disease than expected during the study period, the trial did not meet its primary endpoint, they added.
Following the announcement, Valneva's share price plunged more than 38 percent at around noon GMT on the Paris stock exchange, which was otherwise up 0.7 percent.
Prizer said in the statement it remains "confident in the vaccine's potential and is planning submissions to regulatory authorities" in the United States and European Union.
"These results bring us a step closer to our goal of delivering a much-needed vaccine to help protect against Lyme disease," Valneva CEO Thomas Lingelbach added.
The vaccine LB6V, formerly called VLA15, creates antibodies in humans that fight off the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, which causes Lyme disease.
The condition is rarely fatal, but people bitten by an infected tick often get a rash and suffer flu-like symptoms including muscle and joint ache, headache, nausea and vomiting. 
In some cases, it can also cause neurological problems.
Research in 2022 estimated that more than 14 percent of the global population has had the disease, warning that transmission rates could increase as climate change brings longer, drier summers. 
pan/dl/gv

climate

German court rejects landmark climate case against BMW, Mercedes

BY SARAH MARIA BRECH WITH SAM REEVES IN FRANKFURT

  • DUH executive director Barbara Metz said the decision did not "absolve Mercedes-Benz and BMW of their responsibility for the climate crisis, which stems from their sale of millions of internal combustion engine vehicles in order to maximise profits".
  • A German top court on Monday rejected a landmark climate case brought by environmentalists that had aimed to force auto giants BMW and Mercedes-Benz to stop selling combustion-engine cars from 2030.
  • DUH executive director Barbara Metz said the decision did not "absolve Mercedes-Benz and BMW of their responsibility for the climate crisis, which stems from their sale of millions of internal combustion engine vehicles in order to maximise profits".
A German top court on Monday rejected a landmark climate case brought by environmentalists that had aimed to force auto giants BMW and Mercedes-Benz to stop selling combustion-engine cars from 2030.
The case at the Federal Court of Justice was brought by campaigners of the group Environmental Action Germany (DUH), and marked the latest example of activists turning to the judiciary to enforce climate action.
The plaintiffs built their case on a landmark 2021 ruling by Germany's Constitutional Court that the state has a duty to protect future generations from the effects of climate change and sought to apply the principle to companies.
But handing down its ruling, Germany's highest court for civil and criminal matters rejected DUH's arguments. It found that citizens' personal rights were "not affected... by the business activities of the defendant," in a decision that upheld rulings by lower courts.
"Private individuals cannot demand that automobile manufacturers refrain from placing passenger cars with internal combustion engines on the market" ahead of European Union deadlines, it said.
The DUH case demanded a 2030 phase-out of fossil fuel-powered cars -- five years earlier than the target year in a European Union plan that was last year watered down after intense lobbying by automakers.
DUH executive director Barbara Metz said the decision did not "absolve Mercedes-Benz and BMW of their responsibility for the climate crisis, which stems from their sale of millions of internal combustion engine vehicles in order to maximise profits".
But she said the court had made it clear that responsibility for action lies with the federal government, and called on Chancellor Friedrich Merz to step up action to protect the climate.
The DUH said it was also considering whether to file an appeal to the Constitutional Court.

Activists turning to courts

Mercedes welcomed the ruling for providing "a clarification of our democratic system".
"Setting legal requirements for climate targets is the responsibility of the legislature, not the judiciary," said the group in a statement, adding that climate protection remained a key consideration.
BMW added that the decision contributed to "legal certainty for companies operating in Germany". 
"Throughout the proceedings, we have consistently maintained the position that the debate over how to achieve climate targets must take place within the political process through democratically elected parliaments," the group added in a statement. 
The legal action is part of a wider trend of climate activists turning to courts.
Campaigners celebrated last May after a regional court in northern Germany ruled that companies could in principle be sued over the consequences of their emissions.
However, the court did not award damages to a Peruvian farmer, Saul Luciano Lliuya, who had brought the case against utility firm RWE.
The case against the carmakers was passed up to the Federal Court of Justice on appeal after lower courts in Stuttgart and Munich ruled in favour of the firms, finding they had complied with relevant regulations.
German carmakers have invested billions in the transition to electric and hybrid vehicles in a bid to meet EU climate targets.
But progress has been slowed by lower than anticipated demand, with many consumers put off by higher upfront costs and still patchy charging infrastructure.
burs-sr/fz/gv

Israel

WHO sends first overland convoy from emergencies hub to Beirut

  • Last year, the Dubai logistics hub processed more than 500 emergency orders for 75 countries around the world.
  • The World Health Organization has sent a first overland convoy of medical equipment bound for Beirut from its global emergency logistics hub in Dubai, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Saturday.
  • Last year, the Dubai logistics hub processed more than 500 emergency orders for 75 countries around the world.
The World Health Organization has sent a first overland convoy of medical equipment bound for Beirut from its global emergency logistics hub in Dubai, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Saturday.
The UN health agency has dispatched 22 metric tonnes of "life-saving medicines and trauma and emergency supplies", Tedros said on X.
The supplies are enough to support treatment for 50,000 patients, including 40,000 surgical interventions, he said.
"This is the first land convoy dispatched through a multi-country land bridge from WHO's Global Logistics Hub in Dubai, which has established a new route to keep supplies moving amid growing logistics disruptions across the Middle East region," said Tedros.
The convoy is expected to reach Beirut within a week. 
Lebanon was pulled into the broader Middle East war when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on March 2 to avenge the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Israeli-US attacks.
Israel has responded with heavy strikes across Lebanon and ground incursions in the border area, killing more than 1,000 people according to Lebanese authorities.
Lebanon's health system is facing mounting pressure from rising needs, mass displacement, and critical shortages of medicines, supplies and fuel, said Tedros.
The WHO chief said more medical shipments were ready and would be sent soon to support the response in Lebanon.
Last year, the Dubai logistics hub processed more than 500 emergency orders for 75 countries around the world.
Operations were briefly suspended early in the Middle East war due to insecurity, airspace closures and restrictions affecting access to the Strait of Hormuz. The WHO then began looking at potential overland routes.
Tedros raised the plight of health workers in Lebanon, who "continue to operate under difficult conditions".
The WHO has recorded 63 attacks on health care targets in Lebanon since March 2, resulting in 51 deaths and 91 injuries.
Of those attacks, 28 impacted facilities, 23 impacted transport, 32 impacted supplies and 10 impacted warehouses.
Almost all involved the use of heavy weapons.
Though the WHO counts and verifies attacks on health care, it does not attribute blame as it is not an investigation agency.
"WHO calls for the protection of healthcare and urges all parties to choose the life-saving path to peace," said Tedros.
rjm/gv

Women

From bats to bonds: Uganda's 'cricket grannies'

BY MARY KULUNDU

  • The so-called "cricket grannies" are bound together by a growing love of a game they initially knew nothing about but is now helping them manage age-related health conditions, stress and loneliness.
  • Giggles and songs ripple across a field in rural eastern Uganda where elderly women swing cricket bats as a way to reshape what ageing, health and sports can look like in later life.
  • The so-called "cricket grannies" are bound together by a growing love of a game they initially knew nothing about but is now helping them manage age-related health conditions, stress and loneliness.
Giggles and songs ripple across a field in rural eastern Uganda where elderly women swing cricket bats as a way to reshape what ageing, health and sports can look like in later life.
The so-called "cricket grannies" are bound together by a growing love of a game they initially knew nothing about but is now helping them manage age-related health conditions, stress and loneliness.
Clad in floor-length dresses and mostly barefoot, the women, aged 50 to 90, gather weekly at a playground in Jinja district, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the capital, Kampala.
Each swing draws cheers from teammates as the women turn Saturday morning practice into a lively spectacle.
"With the exercises I've been doing, my legs used to hurt, but they no longer do," Jennifer Waibi Nanyonga, 72, told AFP.
"I spent the whole of last year without seeing a doctor for my back, yet it had previously been paining me," added the grandmother of 29.
The initiative began in 2025 with just 10 grandmothers in the remote village of Kivubuka and has since grown more than tenfold.
The programme was initially aimed at children, but when cricket coach Aaron Kusasira realised their caregivers had little knowledge of the game and often kept them from joining, he decided to involve the elderly women, too.
"We come here, we jog, we move around, we do some stretches," Kusasira, 26, said.
They "unknowingly have to run because they have to compete," he added. 
Physical inactivity is a leading risk factor for deaths from noncommunicable diseases and, according the World Health Organization, it is more common among women globally.
International health data estimates that sedentary lifestyles are costing public health systems roughly US$27 billion per year, and will continue to rise if activity levels are not improved.

Fresh start

Beyond physical activity, cricket has also fostered a sense of community among the Ugandan grannies.
"When at home, you have no company and spend your time buried in your thoughts," said an elderly woman who only gave her first name, Patriciah.
For others, the weekly meetings have proved cathartic.
"When I arrive here and see my friends, we get together and talk about our problems, we counsel each other," said Jennifer Waibi Nanyonga.
"By the time we return home, everyone is lighter and with a fresh start," she added.
For coach Kusasira, training the women has been a win-win, giving him the opportunity to coach children in the area without opposition.
"From the kids to the elders, provided I see the smiles... it's enough. I know that is a day well spent," he said.
vid-mnk/er/giv/ceg/lga/sbk