UMZIMKHULU: At a rural village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, unemployed 19-year-old Nozuko Majola is trying to figure out if she has enough money for the one-hour ride to collect her much-needed HIV medication, usually delivered to her home that can’t be easily reached due to rough, untarred roads.
Majola is one of millions of patients in South Africa affected by US President Donald Trump’s global foreign aid freeze, raising worries about HIV patients defaulting on treatment, infection rates going up and eventually a rise in deaths.
In 2024, think tank Human Sciences Research Council released figures showing that Majola’s province recorded the second-highest HIV prevalence in the country, at 16 percent, with at least 1,300 young people estimated to contract the disease every week.
KwaZulu-Natal also had the highest number of people living with HIV in South Africa in 2022, about 1.9 million. The country counts more than 7.5 million people infected with the virus that causes AIDS — more than any other nation.
There are 5.5 million South Africans receiving antiretroviral treatment, whose funding is now in question after Trump suspended the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. It contributes more than $400 million a year to South Africa’s HIV programs and nongovernmental organizations, about 17 percent of the total funding, according to the Health Ministry.
Globally, PEPFAR is credited with saving at least 26 million lives since its inception in 2003, according to the UN AIDS agency.
Last week, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to temporarily lift the funding freeze, while the US Embassy in South Africa said PEPFAR projects would resume under a limited waiver. However, aid groups dealing with HIV have already shuttered with closure notices hanging at the entrances and PEPFAR-branded vehicles standing idle, with patients diverted to struggling health facilities.
Most of the PEPFAR funding is channeled through non-governmental organizations, which run programs that compliment health care services provided by the government.
For Majola and other HIV patients in the Umzimkhulu region, where unemployment is rife and most people rely on subsistence farming and government welfare grants, the aid freeze has disrupted their lives.
“Things will be tough around here, and a lot of people will default on their treatment because we really struggle with transport,” she said. “The mobile clinics hardly come here.”
The freeze has hurt various groups that can no longer provide treatment, causing an influx of patients to already overstretched public facilities. Along with the medication, these programs also allowed health personnel to test HIV patients in far-flung villages, which has been a lifeline for many, especially those afraid to visit public facilities due to the social stigma attached to HIV.
In addition, nearly 15,000 health workers whose salaries are funded through PEPFAR are left wondering if they have lost their livelihoods.
About an hour away in the district of Umgungundlovu, which the think tank says has the highest number of HIV cases in South Africa, HIV counselors gathered in a small office discussing how best to assist patients like Majola. A manager at a nearby health clinic wondered how to handle the administrative work that is piling up after PEPFAR-funded workers withdrew.
“People who were doing administration and data capturing, whose salaries were funded by PEPFAR, have left. We are a small facility and we cannot handle such a workload,” said the manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Nozuko Ngcaweni has been on HIV treatment for about 30 years. One of her children was also infected and died at age 17. She said the aid suspension already impacted her community and many missed their treatment.
“Not long ago, we said by 2030, we want to see an HIV-free generation. But if things remain as is, we will not achieve that. We will have to deal with deaths,” she said.
Mzamo Zondi, a provincial manager of the Treatment Action Campaign, which advocates for access to HIV treatment for the poor, has been monitoring the impact of the aid freeze in Umgungudlovu.
“Our response (to HIV) is likely to falter as we struggle to stop newly infected cases,” he said. “This is a matter of life and death.”
South African NGOs worry Trump’s aid freeze will cause HIV patients to default on treatment
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South African NGOs worry Trump’s aid freeze will cause HIV patients to default on treatment
- There are 5.5 million South Africans receiving antiretroviral treatment
One person dies as migrants aim to cross English Channel
- Both the British and French governments have made tackling migrants crossing the English Channel illegally a high priority
PARIS: One person has died after a boat carrying migrants trying to cross the English Channel from France got into difficulties overnight, said a local French authority on Thursday.
The French local authority responsible for the North Sea and English Channel regions said 15 people had been rescued and brought back to shore at the port of Gravelines, near Dunkirk.
Both the British and French governments have made tackling migrants crossing the English Channel illegally – often in perilous conditions as they travel in dinghies or small boats – a high priority.
Data in January showed Britain’s Labour government had removed 16,400 illegal migrants since coming to power last July, marking the highest rate of such removals since 2018, although Labour’s political opponents say the government needs to do more.
Sudan TV says army close to taking control of Presidential Palace from paramilitary RSF group
- Marks a significant shift in the two-year-old conflict that threatens to fracture the country
- The war has led to what the UN calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis
DUBAI: Sudan’s state TV said on Thursday that the army is close to taking control of the Presidential Palace in Khartoum from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, marking a significant shift in the two-year-old conflict that threatens to fracture the country.
Late on Wednesday, heavy clashes erupted near the palace, with explosions heard and airstrikes by the army targeting central Khartoum, witnesses and military sources said.
After nearly two years of war, the RSF controls most of the west of Sudan and parts of the capital Khartoum, but has been losing ground in central Sudan to the army.
The two military factions staged a coup in 2021, derailing a transition to civilian rule, and warfare broke out in April 2023 after plans for a new transition triggered violent conflict.
The war has led to what the UN calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with both the RSF and the army accused of widespread human rights abuses.
India detains hundreds of farmers as police bulldoze protest sites
- The farmers had camped on the border with adjoining Haryana since last February
- Security forces have earlier halted their march toward the capital, New Delhi
NEW DELHI: Police in India’s northern state of Punjab detained hundreds of farmers and used bulldozers to tear down their temporary camps in a border area where they had protested for more than a year to demand better crop prices.
The farmers had camped on the border with adjoining Haryana since last February, when security forces halted their march toward the capital, New Delhi, to press for legally-backed guarantees of more state support for crops.
“We did not need to use any force because there was no resistance,” Nanak Singh, a senior police officer, told the ANI news agency about Wednesday night’s clearance action. “The farmers cooperated well and they sat in buses themselves.”
The farmers had been given prior notice, he added.
Television images showed police using bulldozers to demolish tents and stages, while escorting farmers carrying personal items to vehicles.
Media said among the hundreds detained were farmers’ leaders Sarwan Singh Pandher and Jagjit Singh Dallewal, the latter carried away in an ambulance as he had been on an indefinite protest fast for months.
“On one hand the government is negotiating with the farmer organizations and on the other hand it is arresting them,” Rakesh Tikait, a spokesperson for farmer group Bhartiya Kisan Union said on X.
Punjab’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which authorized the eviction, said it stood by the farmers in their demands, but asked them to take up their grievances with the federal government.
“Let’s work together to safeguard Punjab’s interests,” said the party’s vice president in the state, Tarunpreet Singh Sond, adding that the blockage of key roads had hurt the state’s economy. “Closing highways is not the solution.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government was forced to repeal some farm laws in 2021 after a year-long protest by farmers when they camped outside Delhi for months.
Federal government officials met the farmers’ leaders on Wednesday, said Fatehjung Singh Bajwa, the vice president of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Punjab.
“It is clear that this arrest is a deliberate attempt to disrupt the ongoing dialogue between farmers and BJP leadership,” he added in a post on X.
Muslims with tattoo regrets flock to free removal service during Ramadan
- A growing number of people in Indonesia’s capital have signed up for free tattoo removal services offered by Amil Zakat National Agency
- Launched in 2019, the tattoo removal program is now held every Ramadan, a month of fasting, increased worship, religious reflection and good deeds
JAKARTA, Indonesia: Teguh Islean Septura groans in pain as each staccato rat-a-tat-tat of the laser fires an intense beam at the elaborate tattoos on his arm. But the former musician’s determination to “repent” in the holy month of Ramadan is enough to keep him going.
The 30-year-old guitarist got his back, arms and legs tattooed to “look cool” when he was performing in a band. But these days Septura has a newfound zeal for Islam, including the conviction that Muslims should not alter the body that God gave them.
“As humans, sometimes we make mistakes. Now I want to improve myself by moving closer to God,” Seputra said, as a health worker aimed the white laser wand at Septura’s skin, blasting the red, green and black pigments with its penetrating light. “God gave me clean skin and I ruined it, that’s what I regret now.”
Septura is among a growing number of people in Indonesia’s capital who have signed up for free tattoo removal services offered by Amil Zakat National Agency, an Islamic charity organization, during Ramadan to give practicing Muslims an opportunity to “repent.”
Launched in 2019, the tattoo removal program is now held every Ramadan, a month of fasting, increased worship, religious reflection and good deeds. Some 700 people have signed up for the services this year, and in total nearly 3,000 people have taken part.
“We want to pave the way for people who want to hijrah (to move closer to God), including those who want to remove their tattoos” said Mohammad Asep Wahyudi, a coordinator of the event. He added that many people cannot afford to remove their tattoos or know where and how they can do so safely.
Laser removal, which takes repeated treatment and may not be completely successful, could cost thousands of dollars for tattoos as extensive as Septura’s.
Tattooing remains strongly associated with gangs and criminality in some Asian cultures. In addition to the religious prohibitions in Muslim-majority Indonesia, ideas about tattoos also reveal oppressive attitudes toward women, who if tattooed can be labeled as promiscuous or disreputable and not worth marrying.
Sri Indrayati, 52, said she tattooed the name of her first daughter on her hand shortly after she gave birth to her at the age of 22. She said she regretted it when her two grandchildren kept asking her to erase it because it looked like dirty, thick marker writing.
“When I take my grandson to school, (the children) whisper to each other: ‘look at that grandma, she has a tattoo!” she said.
Another woman, Evalia Zadora, got a tattoo of a large star on her back and the words “Hope, Love and Rock & Roll” on her upper chest as a teen to gain acceptance into a gang. She wants to remove them now to move closer to God and out of consideration for her family.
“Bad image (against people with tattoos) is not a big deal for me, but it affected my husband and son,” said Zadora, 36. “They are not comfortable with my tattoos and I respect their feelings, so I want to remove it.
On Trump’s orders, thousands of JFK assassination documents newly public
- The archives’ Kennedy assassination collection has more than six million pages of records, the vast majority of which had been declassified and made public before Trump’s order
WASHINGTON: Thousands of pages of digital documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy are now available for historians, conspiracy theorists and the merely curious, following orders from US President Donald Trump.
The president, shortly after taking office for his second term in January, signed an executive order directing national intelligence and other officials to quickly come up with a plan “for the full and complete release of all John F. Kennedy assassination records.”
The archives’ Kennedy assassination collection has more than six million pages of records, the vast majority of which had been declassified and made public before Trump’s order. Trump told reporters on Monday that 80,000 pages would be released on Tuesday. Justice Department lawyers got orders Monday evening to review the records for release. The digital documents did not start appearing until 7 p.m. (2300 GMT) Tuesday on a National Archives web page. As of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday (0230 GMT Wednesday), the National Archives had published 2,182 PDFs totaling 63,400 pages.
The archives did not immediately respond on Wednesday to a request for comment on whether more documents would soon be released in response to a January order from Trump.
Kennedy’s murder has been attributed to a sole gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. The Justice Department and other federal government bodies have reaffirmed that conclusion in the intervening decades. But polls show many Americans still believe his death was a result of a conspiracy.
“There will be people who will be looking at the records and seeing if there is any hint of any confirmation about their theory,” Larry Schnapf, an environmental lawyer who has researched the assassination and pushed the government to make public what it knows about what led up to the shooting in Dallas on a November afternoon six decades ago, said on Wednesday.
Schnapf, who stayed up until 4 a.m. poring over the documents, said that what he found as he went through them was less illuminating about Kennedy’s assassination than about US spy operations.
“It’s all about our government’s covert activities leading up to the assassination,” he said.
Department of Defense documents from 1963 that were among those released Tuesday covered the Cold War of the early 1960s and the US involvement in Latin America, trying to thwart Castro’s support of communists in other countries. One document released from January 1962 reveals details of a top-secret project called “Operation Mongoose,” or simply “the Cuban Project,” which was a CIA-led campaign of covert operations and sabotage against Cuba, authorized by Kennedy in 1961, aimed at removing the Castro regime.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to provide more transparency about Kennedy’s death. Upon taking office, he also ordered aides to present a plan for the release of records relating to the assassinations in 1968 of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said he advocates for transparency in Washington and noted previous administrations, including the Biden administration, have also released Kennedy assassination documents. But he added that even with the thousands of new documents, the public will still not know everything, as much evidence may have been destroyed throughout the decades.
The National Archives did not immediately respond to queries on Wednesday about whether plans for releasing documents on Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr had been developed or when such documents would be released.
