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Once used mainly by law enforcement, ordinary citizens now have access to smaller, cheaper versions of body cameras to help them feel safe in dangerous situations. Julie Taboh shows us how in this week’s episode of LogOn. 
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The United Nations says at least 20 children in Gaza have died of starvation and doctors say many more are increasingly suffering from grave physical and mental illnesses. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Istanbul with Nedal Hamdouna and Amjed Tantesh in Rafah, Gaza. Camera: Ihab Abu Riyash, Yan Beochat.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea will start deploying military physicians and doctors from public health centers to strike-hit hospitals on Monday to help care for patients affected by the walkout of nearly 12,000 trainee doctors from 100 hospitals over government reform plans.

Twenty military surgeons along with 138 public health doctors will be assigned to 20 hospitals for four weeks, Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said at a meeting on Sunday.

The number of military physicians called on to help so far was only a small fraction of the roughly 2,400 military doctors, according to a defense ministry briefing.

The government has denied the walkout which started on Feb. 20 has caused a full-blown health crisis, but some hospitals have had to turn away patients and delay medical procedures.

As of Friday morning, nearly 12,000 protesting doctors at 100 hospitals had left their posts in a dispute over a government plan to increase medical school admissions, health ministry data showed, defying pressure from authorities to return to work.

South Korean authorities have been trying to coax the doctors to return to work by warning them that their medical licenses could be suspended but so far appear to have had little success with the tactic.

The health ministry said notices had been sent to more than 4,900 doctors as of Friday to instruct them that authorities could start suspending licenses if they did not explain their action.

Doctors who returned to work before the administrative measure to suspend licenses was complete would be “given leniency,” Cho told KBS Radio on Monday.

The government has the power to order doctors back to work if it deems there is a serious risk to lives and public health.

The government has said the plan to increase annual medical school admissions by 2,000 starting from 2025 is vital to remedy a shortage of doctors in one of the world’s fastest-ageing societies.

The striking doctors argue that simply adding medical students will not address pay and work conditions, and could possibly exacerbate the problems.

Critics of the policy also accuse President Yoon Suk Yeol of picking a fight over medical reforms to benefit his party ahead of parliamentary elections in April.

A survey published last week by the Yonhap news agency found 84% of respondents supported adding more doctors, while 43% said striking physicians should be sternly punished.
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In Malawi, 35,000 backstreet abortions were carried out in 2022 and 2023, according to its Ministry of Health. These unsafe procedures are just one reason support for abortion rights has increased in recent years. Chimwemwe Padatha has more from Lilongwe.
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Zambia has received the first shipment of a new medicine to prevent HIV infection. The delivery makes Zambia only the second country in the world after the United States to offer the injectable preventative outside of a research setting. Kathy Short reports from Lusaka, Zambia. Camera and video editing by Richard Kille.
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Paris — French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday for the first time that he backed new end-of-life legislation that would allow what he called “help to die” and wanted his government to put forward a draft bill to parliament in May.

France’s neighbors Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands have adopted laws that allow medically assisted dying in some cases. But France has resisted that step, in part under pressure from the Catholic Church.

The Claeys-Leonetti law on the end of life, adopted in 2016, authorizes deep sedation but only for people whose prognosis is threatened in the short-term.

In an interview with Liberation newspaper, Macron said he did not want to call the new legislation euthanasia or assisted suicide, but rather “help to die.”

“It does not, strictly speaking, create a new right nor a freedom, but it traces a path which did not exist until now and which opens the possibility of requesting assistance in dying under certain strict conditions,” he said.

Macron said those conditions would need to be met and a medical team would assess and ensure the criteria for the decision was correct.

It would concern only adults capable of making the decision and whose life prognosis is threatened in the medium-term such as final-stage cancer, he said.

Family members would also be able to appeal the decision, Macron said.

The bill builds on the work of a group of 184 randomly appointed French citizens who debated the issue.

They concluded their work last year with 76% of them saying they favored allowing some form of assistance to die, for those who want it.

The decision to push ahead with the end-of-life legislation comes after the right to abortion was enshrined into the French constitution, following an overwhelming vote by lawmakers earlier this month.

Macron has sought to bolster his image as a social reformer just three months before June’s European parliamentary elections. His party is more than 10 points behind the far-right Rassemblement National party in polls.
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washington — A Pentagon study released Friday that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence, a conclusion consistent with past U.S. government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades. 

The study from the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed U.S. government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more popularly known as UFOs. It found no evidence that any of them were signs of alien life, or that the U.S. government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and were hiding it. 

“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” said the report, which was mandated by Congress. Another volume of the report focused on more recent research will be out later. 

U.S. officials have endeavored to find answers to legions of reported UFO sightings over the years, but so far have not identified any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life. 

A 2021 government report that reviewed 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories found no extraterrestrial links, but it drew few other conclusions and called for better data collection. 

The issue received fresh attention last summer when a retired Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress that the U.S. was concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon has denied his claims and said in late 2022 that a new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects — the same one that released Friday’s report — had received “several hundreds” of new reports but had found no evidence so far of alien life. 

The authors of Friday’s report said the purpose was to apply a rigorous scientific analysis to a subject that has long captured the American public’s imagination. 

“AARO recognizes that many people sincerely hold versions of these beliefs which are based on their perception of past experiences, the experiences of others whom they trust, or media and online outlets they believe to be sources of credible and verifiable information,” the report said. 

“The proliferation of television programs, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centered on UAP-related topics most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population,” it added. 
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Washington — A U.N. report released Friday about the prevalence of female genital mutilation around the globe is drawing attention to the practice among the Dawoodi Bohra community, a Muslim minority sect based in India.

India is not on the UNICEF list of 31 countries released Friday. But the extent of FGM in India, although small relative to its population and long shrouded in secrecy, is coming into the open.

The ritual is mostly practiced by the Dawoodi Bohras, a subsect of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam with an estimated 1 to 2 million followers around the globe. Recent surveys show that as many as 80% of Bohra girls undergo genital mutilation as a religious right of passage.

“We are still significant, even if our numbers are few,” said Aarefa Johari, a Dawoodi Bohra activist and co-founder of Sahiyo, an anti-FGM advocacy group. “Injustices and harmful practices must be opposed because they are wrong, not because of the number of people they affect.”

Affluent and politically influential, most Dawoodi Bohras live in India’s Gujarat province, with smaller communities thriving in Pakistan, Yemen, East Africa, the Middle East, Australia and North America.

The World Health Organization defines FGM, also known as female genital cutting, as “procedures involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for nonmedical reasons.” The organization says the practice has no health benefits and classifies it as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

The UNICEF report, released on International Women’s Day, shows that more than 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, an increase of 30 million compared with data released eight years ago. Africa accounts for over 144 million of the total, followed by Asia with over 80 million, and the Middle East with 6 million.

Shelby Quast, an international human rights lawyer, said India should have been “absolutely” included in the UNICEF report.

Noting that FGM is practiced in at least 92 countries, she said the report captures “just the tip of the iceberg.”

“We can’t eliminate FGM by 2030 if we’re not looking at it in all the countries where it exists,” Quast said in an interview.

The method practiced in the Dawoodi Bohra community involves the cutting of a part of the clitoral hood. The Bohras deny it’s a form of genital mutilation. They prefer the term khatna, or female circumcision, and say it is safe. Although not endorsed by most Muslim scholars, the Dawoodi Bohras see it as a religious duty.

Until recent years, the practice was little-known outside the close-knit community. The issue came to light after a 2011 online campaign launched by survivors. Others came forward with harrowing stories of trauma.

Court cases in Australia and the United States exposed its prevalence among diaspora communities.

In 2016, three Dawoodi Bohras in Australia were sentenced to 15 months in prison for violating the country’s FGM ban.

In 2017, four members of the community in the U.S., including two doctors, were charged with performing FGM on at least six minor girls. A federal judge later dismissed the charges as unconstitutional, but the case put the spotlight on the Dawoodi Bohra community’s practice of FGM.

Spurred by the publicity, community activists and human rights advocates sprang into action to shed light on the problem.

Research by Johari’s group revealed that FGM was also practiced by small communities in India’s Kerala state.

Female genital mutilation was long associated with Africa. But the recent “discovery” of FGM in India and other Asian communities has shown that it’s a global problem, Johari said.

“I believe it has important implications for the global movement to end it,” said Johari, herself a survivor.

Like many Dawoodi Bohra girls, Johari was “cut” at the age of 7. The physical effects of the ritual sometimes extend into adulthood. But Johari considers herself among the fortunate; she was spared the complications.

“What impacted me at a later age, however, was the realization and the understanding of what had been done to me,” Johari said via email from Mumbai. “When you are cut as a young child, you have no way of knowing what your original anatomy was like, how much was cut, and how it will affect your sexual experiences later.

“[FGM] supporters in the community like to claim that our type of ‘mild’ cut makes no difference to sexual life; some even claim it enhances sexual pleasure,” Johari said. “But none of them have a frame of reference, and the uncertainty, the not knowing, leaves me feeling frustrated, helpless and angry.”

The discord has divided the community. Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the group’s spiritual leader, has defied calls for a ban.

“Whatever the world says, we should be strong and firm. … It must be done,” he said during a religious sermon in Mumbai in 2016.

Meanwhile, Indian government officials have wavered on the issue, and a push to criminalize FGM has stalled in India’s Supreme Court, according to Lakshmi Anantnarayan, a human rights activist and researcher.

Some officials initially backed a prohibition only to change their position and deny FGM’s existence, Anantnarayan said.

A petition filed in 2017 with India’s Supreme Court demanding an FGM ban has triggered strong pushback from the powerful Bohra community.

The petition calls FGM a discriminatory practice and a gross violation of the rights of women and girls. But Bohra leaders, joined by a group of Bohra women, have defended it as an “essential” religious ritual protected under India’s Constitution.

The Supreme Court has tasked two panels with examining the constitutionality of female genital cutting. A decision in the case is still pending.

The delay “clearly demonstrates the lack of political will amongst legal authorities, policymakers and law enforcement to prioritize protecting girls from FGM in India,” Anantnarayan said in an email. “Like so many other issues of violence against women in India, FGM/C too continues to be practiced with impunity as the country just turns a blind eye to the plight of women and girls.”

The Indian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

India is not the only Asian country without an FGM ban. The ritual persists in at least 10 countries on the continent, all without legal prohibition.

In the face of opposition from the powerful Bohra community, many activists view a ban as unlikely. But they don’t see changing laws as a panacea. Instead, they find hope in shifting mindsets.

Mariya Taher, another co-founder of Sahiyo and herself a survivor, noted that the same survey that revealed an 80% prevalence rate of FGM among the Bohras also found that 81% opposed continuing the tradition.

“The assumption was that everyone thought it was important to continue,” she said in an interview.

She said she learned from talking to fellow Dawoodi Bohras in the U.S. that some mosque leaders have been quietly urging mothers to spare their daughters, despite the group’s official stance.

“I think social change takes a long time, but it’s heartening to see that as this issue gets more attention, we are seeing that attitudes towards it are shifting,” she said.
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State Department — The United States and China have agreed to extend a science and technology agreement for another six months, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.

“The Department of State on behalf of the U.S. government is negotiating to amend, extend and strengthen protections within the U.S.-PRC Science and Technology Agreement (STA). In February 2024, the United States and PRC agreed to an additional short-term six-month extension of the U.S.-PRC STA,” a spokesperson told VOA.

“The short-term six-month extension keeps the agreement in force while we continue negotiations,” the spokesperson added.

U.S. officials have said the STA provides consistent standards for government-to-government scientific cooperation between the U.S. and China.

While the agreement supports scientific collaboration in areas that benefit the United States, U.S. officials acknowledge the challenges posed by China’s national science and technology strategies and its domestic legal framework.

Critics, including U.S. lawmakers, point out China’s restrictions on data and a lack of transparency in sharing scientific findings. Washington is also concerned about Beijing’s potential military application of shared research.

The STA was originally signed in 1979 by then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and then-PRC leader Deng Xiaoping.

The agreement has been renewed about every five years since its inception, with the most recent 5-year extension occurring in 2018. Last August, it received a 6-month extension as officials from the two countries undertook negotiations to amend and strengthen the terms.
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