LONDON: Prince Harry is challenging on Tuesday the British government’s decision to strip him of his security detail after he gave up his status as a working member of the royal family and moved to the United States.
The Duke of Sussex said he wants protection when he visits home and claimed it’s partly because an aggressive press jeopardizes his safety and that of his family.
The three-day hearing scheduled to begin in London’s High Court is the latest in a string of Harry’s legal cases that have kept London judges busy as he takes on the UK government and the British tabloid media. It was not clear if he would attend Tuesday’s hearing.
Harry failed to persuade a different judge earlier this year that he should be able to privately pay for London’s police force to guard him when he comes to town. A judge denied that offer after a government lawyer argued that officers shouldn’t be used as “private bodyguards for the wealthy.”
Harry, the youngest son of King Charles III, said he did not feel safe bringing his wife, former actor Meghan Markle, and their two young children back to Britain and was concerned about his own safety after being chased by paparazzi following a London charity event.
Harry’s animosity toward the press dates back to the death of his mother Princess Diana, who died in a car wreck as her driver tried to outrun aggressive photographers in Paris. Harry, whose wife is mixed-raced, cited what he said were racist attitudes and unbearable intrusions of the British media in his decision to leave the United Kingdom.
The 39-year-old prince is challenging the decision by the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures to provide his security on a “case by case” basis after moving in 2020 to Canada and then California, where he and his family now reside.
He said the committee unfairly nixed his security request without hearing from him personally and did not disclose the makeup of the panel, which he later learned included royal family staff. He said Edward Young, the assistant private secretary to the late Queen Elizabeth II, should not have been on the committee because of “significant tensions” between the two men.
The Home Office has argued that any tensions between Harry and the royal household staff was irrelevant and that the committee was entitled to its decision because he had relinquished his role as a working member of the family.
The case is one of five that Harry has pending in the High Court.
The four other lawsuits involve Britain’s best-known tabloids, including a case that alleges the publisher of the Daily Mail libeled him when it ran a story suggesting he had tried to hide his efforts to continue receiving government-funded security. A ruling is expected in that case Friday.
Three other lawsuits allege that journalists at the Mail, the Daily Mirror, and The Sun used unlawful means, such as deception, phone hacking or hiring private investigators to dig up dirt about him.
Prince Harry challenges UK government’s decision to strip him of security detail when he moved to US
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Prince Harry challenges UK government’s decision to strip him of security detail when he moved to US
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- Duke of Sussex wants protection when he visits home, claims it is partly because an aggressive press jeopardizes his safety and that of his family
Pope embarks on challenging trip to Asia, with China in the background
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- Pope Francis arrives on Tuesday in Indonesia on the first leg of his trip that will also take him to Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Singapore
- Indonesia has been visited by two popes before — Pope Paul VI in a 1970 trip to Jakarta and Pope John Paul II in 1989
VATICAN CITY: If any evidence were needed to underscore that Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest, farthest and most challenging of his pontificate, it’s that he’s bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country program while keeping up with work back home.
Francis will clock 32,814 kilometers (20,390 miles) by air during his Sept. 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, both in terms of days on the road and distances traveled.
That’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, uses a wheelchair, lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip at the last minute (to Dubai in November to participate in the UN climate conference) on doctors’ orders.
But Francis is pushing ahead with this trip, originally planned for 2020 but postponed because of COVID-19. He’s bringing along his medical team of a doctor and two nurses and taking the usual health precautions on the ground. But in a novelty, he’s adding his personal secretaries into the traditional Vatican delegation of cardinals, bishops and security.
The long trip recalls the globetrotting travels of St. John Paul II, who visited all four destinations during his quarter-century pontificate, though East Timor was an occupied part of Indonesia at the time of his landmark 1989 trip.
By retracing John Paul’s steps, Francis is reinforcing the importance that Asia has for the Catholic Church, since it’s one of the few places where the church is growing in terms of baptized faithful and religious vocations. And he is highlighting that the complex region also embodies some of his core priorities as pope – an emphasis on interreligious and intercultural dialogue, care for the environment and insistence on the spiritual component of economic development.
Here is a look at the trip and some of the issues that are likely to come up, with the Vatican’s relations with China ever-present in the background in a region where Beijing wields enormous influence.
Indonesia
Francis loves gestures of interfaith fraternity and harmony, and there could be no better symbol of religious tolerance at the start of his trip than the underground “Tunnel of Friendship” linking Indonesia’s main Istiqlal mosque to the country’s Catholic cathedral.
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Francis will visit the underpass in central Jakarta with the grand imam, Nasaruddin Umar, before both partake in an interfaith gathering and sign a joint declaration.
Francis has made improving Christian-Muslim relations a priority, and has often used his foreign travels to promote his agenda of committing religious leaders to work for peace and tolerance, and renounce violence in God’s name.
Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population and has enshrined religious freedom in its constitution, officially recognizing six religions — Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Protestantism and Catholicism. Francis is likely to highlight this tradition of religious tolerance and celebrate it as a message for the broader world.
“If we are able to create a kind of collaboration between each other, that could be a great strength of the Indonesian nation,” the imam said in an interview.
Papua New Guinea
Francis was elected pope in 2013 largely on the strength of an extemporaneous speech he delivered to his fellow cardinals in which he said the Catholic Church needed to go to the “peripheries” to reach those who need God’s comfort the most. When Francis travels deep into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, he will be fulfilling one of the marching orders he set out for the future pope on the eve of his own election.
Few places are as remote, peripheral and poverty-wracked as Vanimo, a northern coastal town on the main island of New Guinea. There Francis will meet with missionaries from his native Argentina who are working to bring Christianity to a largely tribal people who still practice pagan traditions alongside the Catholic faith.
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“If we suspend our preconceptions, even in tribal cultures we can find human values close to Christian ideals,” Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who heads the Vatican’s missionary evangelization office and is part of the Vatican delegation, told the Fides missionary news agency.
Francis will likely reflect on the environmental threats to vulnerable and poor places like Papua New Guinea, such as deep sea mining and climate change, while also pointing to the diversity of its estimated 10 million people who speak some 800 languages but are prone to tribal conflicts.
East Timor
When John Paul visited East Timor in 1989, he sought to console its overwhelmingly Catholic population who had suffered under Indonesia’s brutal and bloody occupation for 15 years already.
“For many years now, you have experienced destruction and death as a result of conflict; You have known what it means to be the victims of hatred and struggle,” John Paul told the faithful during a seaside Mass in Tasi-Toli, near Dili.
“I pray that those who have responsibility for life in East Timor will act with wisdom and good will toward all, as they search for a just and peaceful resolution of present difficulties,” he said then in a direct challenge to Indonesia.
It would take another decade for the United Nations to organize a referendum on Timor’s independence, after which Indonesia responded with a scorched-earth campaign that left the former Portuguese colony devastated. East Timor emerged as an independent country in 2002, but still bears the trauma and scars of an occupation that left as many as 200,000 people dead — nearly a quarter of the population.
Francis will literally walk in John Paul’s footsteps when he celebrates Mass on the same seaside esplanade as that 1989 liturgy, which some see as a key date in the Timorese independence movement.
“That Mass with the pope was a very strong, very important moment for Timor’s identity,” said Giorgio Bernardelli, editor of AsiaNews, the missionary news agency. “It also in many ways put the spotlight on the drama that Timor was living for the international community.”
Another legacy that will confront Francis is that of the clergy sexual abuse scandal: Revered independence hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo was secretly sanctioned by the Vatican in 2020 for sexually abusing young boys.
There is no word on whether Francis will refer to Belo, who is still revered in East Timor but has been barred by the Vatican from ever returning.
Singapore
Francis has used several of his foreign trips to send messages to China, be they direct telegrams of greetings when he flies through Chinese airspace or more indirect gestures of esteem, friendship and fraternity to the Chinese people when nearby.
Francis’ visit to Singapore, where three-quarters of the population is ethnically Chinese and Mandarin is an official language, will give him yet another opportunity to reach out to Beijing as the Vatican seeks improved ties for the sake of China’s estimated 12 million Catholics.
“It’s a faithful people, who lived through a lot and remained faithful,” Francis told the Chinese province of his Jesuit order in a recent interview.
The trip comes a month before the Vatican is set to renew a landmark 2018 agreement governing bishop nominations.
Just last week, the Vatican reported its “satisfaction” that China had officially recognized Tianjin Bishop Melchior Shi Hongzhen, who as far as the Vatican is concerned had actually taken over as bishop in 2019. The Holy See said China’s official recognition of him under civil law now was “a positive fruit of the dialogue established over the years between the Holy See and the Chinese government.”
But by arriving in Singapore, a regional economic powerhouse which maintains good relations with both China and the United States, Francis is also stepping into a protracted maritime dispute as China has grown increasingly assertive with its presence in the South China Sea.
China pushes rivals’ limits in regional disputes
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- China has in recent months deployed military and coast guard vessels in a bid to eject the Philippines from a trio of strategically important reefs and islands in the South China Sea
- China has for years sought to expand its power in the South China Sea, brushing aside an international ruling that its claim to most of the waterway has no legal basis
BEIJING: China’s campaign of confrontation, from remote reefs in Southeast Asia to Taiwan and far-flung Japanese islands, is designed to wear down regional rivals competing with it for contested territories, analysts say.
Beijing in recent years has asserted its claims in the long-running disputes far more boldly as its military strength has grown.
The escalating actions — over islands in the East China Sea claimed by Japan, the self-ruled territory of Taiwan and the South China Sea — have also come as Beijing’s rivals have drawn closer to the United States.
“(China) believes its strong-arm tactics are paying dividends,” Duan Dang, a Vietnam-based maritime security analyst, told AFP.
China has in recent months deployed military and coast guard vessels in a bid to eject the Philippines from a trio of strategically important reefs and islands in the South China Sea.
“The number of fronts where an accident could spiral suddenly is very real,” Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told AFP.
The latest flashpoint is Sabina Shoal, just 140 kilometers (86 miles) west of the Philippine island of Palawan and roughly 1,200 kilometers from China’s nearest major landmass, the island of Hainan.
On Monday, Beijing said it took “control measures” against two Philippine Coast Guard ships that “illegally” entered the waters near Sabina Shoal.
Manila countered that Chinese vessels had stopped Philippine ships from resupplying their own coast guard vessels in the area — slamming Beijing as the “biggest disruptor” to regional peace.
China has for years sought to expand its power in the South China Sea, brushing aside an international ruling that its claim to most of the waterway has no legal basis.
It has built artificial islands armed with missile systems and runways for fighter jets, and deployed vessels that the Philippines says harass its ships and block its fishers.
In 2012, Beijing seized control of Scarborough Shoal, another contested area close to the Philippines.
And in June, Chinese coast guard personnel brandishing weapons boarded Philippine vessels near the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, a confrontation in which Manila said one of its sailors lost a thumb.
The recent incidents have come as the Philippines has strengthened ties with traditional ally the United States, with which it has a mutual defense treaty.
Duan said the pact might “deter outright war,” but Beijing still saw a chance to tighten the screws on Manila while Washington was distracted by the ongoing Middle East conflict and the uncertainties around its own presidential election in November.
However the Philippines on Thursday flagged the possibility of US escorts for its resupply missions.
Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore (NUS), told AFP China was trying to “wear down” Filipino resolve.
Beijing is posing a “direct challenge to the Philippines’ ability to administer and make use of its exclusive economic zone,” he said.
They are “trying to push the envelope (but stay) below the threshold of aggression,” he explained.
“They don’t want to lose control of the escalation.”
China’s recent assertiveness has extended far beyond the South China Sea.
Around Taiwan, it has sent increasing numbers of fighter jets, drones and naval vessels as part of a strategy that analysts say is designed to keep the democratic island exhaustingly vigilant against a possible invasion.
Beijing says Taiwan is part of its territory and has refused to rule out using force to unify with it.
China has also in recent years ratcheted up pressure over a disputed island group controlled by Japan in the East China Sea.
Tokyo in June protested after four Chinese vessels that were believed to be armed approached the islands, known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan.
And this week Japan said a Chinese military plane flew into its airspace for the first time, a “serious violation” of its sovereignty.
Beijing has not admitted the incursion near the uninhabited Danjo Islands — uncontestedly Japanese territory — but has said it would have been unintentional.
However, analysts said it may have deliberately aimed to probe Japan’s air defense network and collect electronic intelligence.
“People sometimes look at the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea... as isolated,” said Chong, of NUS.
“They are not. These are all areas where (China) hopes to be able to establish more control,” he said.
“They’re trying to see how far they can push.”
With men at the front lines, women watch over Ukraine’s night sky for Russian drones
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- The women come from all walks of life — stay-at-home moms to doctors like Angelina — and call themselves the “Witches of Bucha,” a nod to their role of keeping watch over the night skies for Russian drones
KYIV, Ukraine: When the air raid siren bellows in the dead of night, the women in arms rush to duty.
Barely two months since joining the mobile air-defense unit, 27-year-old Angelina has perfected the drill to a tee: Combat gear fitted, anti-aircraft machine gun in place, she cruised behind the wheel of a pickup, singing along to a Ukrainian song about rebellion.
The rest unfolded in seconds: Under a tree-lined position near Kyiv’s Bucha suburb, she and her five-woman unit mounted the gun, checked the salvo and waited. The chirp of crickets filled the silence until the Russian-launched Shahed drone was shot down — on this August night, by a nearby unit — another menace to near daily life in Ukraine eliminated.
To shoot down a drone brings her joy. “It’s just a rush of adrenaline,” said Angelina, who like other women in the unit spoke to The Associated Press on condition only their first names or call signs be used, in keeping with military policy.
Women are increasingly joining volunteer mobile units responsible for shooting down Russian drones that terrorize Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure as more men are sent east to the front line.
While women make up only a tiny fraction of the country’s armed forces, their service is vital. With tens of thousands of men reportedly recruited every month, women have stepped up as crucial operations from coal mines to territorial defense forces accept them to fulfill traditionally male roles.
At least 70 women have been recruited into the Bucha defense forces in recent months for anti-drone operations, said the area’s territorial defense commander, Col. Andrii Velarty. It’s part of a nationwide drive to attract part-time female volunteers to fill the ranks of local defense units.
The women come from all walks of life — stay-at-home moms to doctors like Angelina — and call themselves the “Witches of Bucha,” a nod to their role of keeping watch over the night skies for Russian drones.
Some were motivated to volunteer by the Russian massacre of hundreds of Bucha residents during the monthlong occupation of the Kyiv suburb by Russian troops soon after the February 2022 invasion. Bodies of men, women and children were left on the streets, in homes and in mass graves.
“We were here, saw these horrors,” said Angelina, who treated wounded residents, including children, during the Russian occupation.
So when she spotted a sign calling for female recruits on a highway while driving in June with her friend, Olena, also a doctor, “we didn’t hesitate,” she said.
“We called and were immediately told ‘Yes, come tomorrow,’” she said. “There is work that we can do here.”
A grueling training
At a training session deep inside Bucha’s forest this month, female recruits ranging in age from 27 to 51 were being tested on how quickly they could assemble and disassemble rifles. “I have eighth graders who can do this better,” their instructor shouted.
The recruits were taught about a variety of weapons and mines, tactics and how to detect Russian infiltrators — their skills adapted to a war in which their enemy’s methods are always changing.
“We train no less than men,” said Lidiia, who joined a month ago.
A 34-year-old sales clerk with four children, Lidiia said her main motivation was to do her part to protect her family. Her children have looked at her differently since she began wearing army fatigues, she said.
“My younger son always asks, ‘Mom, do you carry a gun?’ I say, ‘Yes.’ He asks, ‘Do you shoot?’ I say, ‘Of course I do.’”
“I’ve always been the best for them, but now I’m the best in a slightly different way,” she said.
On July 31, she was on duty when Russia launched 89 Shahed drones, all of which were destroyed. Lidiia was an assistant machine-gunner that night.
“We got ready, we went to the call, we found that there were a lot of targets all over Ukraine,” she said. “We had night-vision devices so it was easy to spot the target.”
What did she feel as her unit shot down three of the drones? “Joy and some foul language,” Olena said.
After shooting down drones, the day job begins
When the sun rose, Angelina and Olena removed their heavy combat gear and went home to slip on surgical scrubs. Another shift, this time at the intensive care unit at the hospital where they work, was about to start.
By midnight, they would be back near the tree line, waiting for incoming Russian drones. “Today I slept for two hours and forty minutes,” Olena said.
There is no escape from the war for both women.
Their boyfriends are soldiers, and Angelina, an anesthesiologist, met hers at the hospital where he was recovering from a combat wound to his foot.
Seeing the numbers of wounded Ukrainian soldiers was one reason she decided to volunteer.
“To bring our victory closer. If we can do something to help, why not?” she said.
Angelina’s boyfriend worries every time she is on duty and the air raid alarm sounds. He texts her, “be careful” and when it ends, “write to me” — despite it being much scarier on the front lines, she said.
‘We are no longer women, we are soldiers’
The Russian drone attacks are typically more intense at night, but daytime attacks are just as deadly. The drone unit spends entire nights driving back and forth from their base in the forest to the position. Sometimes they stand there for hours waiting to shoot.
“There is nothing easy about it. In order to shoot it down, you have to train constantly,” Angelina said. “I have to train all the time, including on simulators.”
Their platoon commander, a confident woman with long braided hair who goes by the call sign Calypso, leads training in shooting, assault skills and combat medicine every Sunday.
There’s no difference between the male and female volunteers, she said.
“From the moment we come to serve, sign a contract, we are no longer women, we are soldiers,” she said. “We have to do our job, and men also understand this. We don’t come here to sit around and cook borscht or anything.”
“I have a feeling the girls and I would shoot down these Shaheds with our bare hands, with a stick, if we had to — anything to stop them from landing on our children, friends and family.”
The women in the mobile-fire units are on duty every two or three days. They work in groups of five, with a machine gunner, assistant, fire support, a driver and commander.
“Of course, war is war, but no one has canceled femininity,” Calypso said. “It doesn’t matter whether you hit a Shahed with painted eyes or not, the work is still going on. And not everyone has a manicure.”
As more women are trained to join the ranks of the territorial defense forces, the safer Ukraine’s skies will be, Angelina said.
“This means that I can make at least some small contribution to the fact that my mother sleeps peacefully, that my brothers and sisters go to school peacefully and they can meet their friends peacefully,” she said.
“So that my godsons can also grow under a relatively peaceful sky.”
Trump ‘disrespected sacred ground’ at US military cemetery, VP Harris says
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- “Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” Harris said.
- In one image, Trump is standing with family members of a fallen Marine, posing among headstones while grinning broadly and giving a thumbs-up
WASHINGTON: Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said Saturday that her Republican rival Donald Trump “disrespected sacred ground” at a US military cemetery during a contentious pre-election visit.
Trump’s presence at the hallowed Arlington National Cemetery — intended to provide a campaign boost ahead of the November 5 vote — has instead mushroomed into a public dispute consuming the candidates and the military.
In Monday’s incident at the cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington, Trump broke rules barring photography for political purposes, posing with relatives of US service members killed in Afghanistan in content that was later shared by his campaign on social media.
“Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” Harris said.
In one image, he is standing with family members of a fallen Marine, posing among headstones while grinning broadly and giving a thumbs-up.
“If there is one thing on which we as Americans can all agree, it is that our veterans, military families, and service members should be honored, never disparaged, and treated with nothing less than our highest respect and gratitude,” Harris wrote on X.
On Thursday, the US Army issued a rare statement confirming that a cemetery staff member had been “abruptly pushed aside” after asking Trump’s team to stop filming in a burial section for those killed in recent wars, where photography for political purposes is banned.
Trump’s campaign team has gone on the offensive by describing the employee as a “despicable individual” and claiming she was suffering a mental health episode.
But the military said the staff member had “acted with professionalism” and it condemned the incident as “unfortunate.”
Trump spoke at length at a rally Friday night about the cemetery incident and Afghanistan and said it was families of fallen troops who asked to have their picture taken with him.
“I said ‘Absolutely.’ I wasn’t doing it for — I don’t need publicity, I get a lot of publicity. I would like to get a lot less publicity,” Trump said in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Trump blamed the White House for the criticism he is drawing.
“Joe Biden killed those young people because he was incompetent. And then they tell me that I used their graves for public relations purposes. And I didn’t. And I’ll tell you what, it was a disgrace,” Trump said.
Trump has made criticism of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the US retreat from Afghanistan a keynote of his campaign, arguing that he would have managed it better.
He visited the cemetery with families of some of the 13 service members killed in a 2021 bombing in Kabul during the last, chaotic hours of the US withdrawal.
Trump’s relationship with the military has long spawned controversy.
While often touting his support for the armed forces, he privately mocked the war dead while he was president and did not want to be seen near military amputees, according to his former chief of staff.
Harris’s blunt response Saturday appeared to underline her determination to take the fight directly to Trump in what is shaping up to be a bruising presidential election.
Trump has repeatedly mocked Harris’s name, intelligence, appearance and racial identity, while the Harris campaign has replied that the former president is “weird,” an aspiring dictator, and “out of his mind.”
Harris earlier faced withering criticism over the cemetery incident from Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance.
Apparently responding to a mistaken report that Harris had already reacted to the visit, Vance accused her of feigning outrage and said, “She can go to hell.”
“Don’t focus on Donald Trump showing up to grieve with some people who lost their children. Focus on your own job. Don’t do this fake outrage thing,” he later told the Washington Post.
At that point Harris had not publicly mentioned the cemetery visit.
Kevin Carroll, who served as a senior aide to Trump’s homeland security chief John Kelly, voiced scathing criticism of Trump’s behavior in an opinion piece published Friday in The Guardian newspaper.
“The photo of a grinning Trump giving a jaunty thumbs-up over these patriots’ graves is an indelible image of narcissism risen to the point of sociopathy,” Carroll wrote.
UNICEF issues emergency tender to secure mpox vaccines
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- Depending on the production capacity of manufacturers, agreements for up to 12 million doses through 2025 can be made, according to the statement
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has issued an emergency tender to secure mpox vaccines for crisis-hit countries in collaboration with the Gavi vaccine alliance, Africa CDC and the World Health Organization, the organizations said in a joint statement on Saturday.
Depending on the production capacity of manufacturers, agreements for up to 12 million doses through 2025 can be made, according to the statement.
Under the tender, UNICEF will set up conditional supply agreements with vaccine manufacturers, the statement said.
This will enable UNICEF to purchase and ship vaccines without delay, once financing, demand, readiness and regulatory requirements are confirmed.
The collaboration — which would also include working with the Vaccine Alliance and the Pan American Health Organization as well as with Gavi, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and WHO — would facilitate donations of vaccines from existing stockpiles in high-income countries.
The statement added that WHO is reviewing information submitted by manufacturers on Aug. 23, and expects to complete a review for an emergency use listing by mid-September.
The agency is reviewing applications for emergency licenses for two vaccines made by Bavarian Nordic and Japan’s KM Biologics.
Earlier in August, the WHO declared mpox a global public health emergency following an outbreak of the viral infection in the Democratic Republic of Congo that spread to neighboring countries.
More than 18,000 suspected cases of mpox have been reported in Congo so far this year with 629 deaths, while over 150 cases have been confirmed in Burundi, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Sweden and Thailand have confirmed cases of the clade Ib type of the virus, outside of the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries.