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Sulaimaniyah, Iraq — Floods caused by torrential rainstorms have killed four hikers in the Sulaimaniyah region of northern Iraq, local officials told AFP. 

“Four members of a hiking team drowned because of heavy rains and flooding in Awaspi village” in the Qaradah district, local official Rouf Kamal said. 

Civil defense spokesperson Aram Ali confirmed the toll and said eight other hikers survived the incident south of Sulaimaniyah on Friday, the autonomous Kurdistan region’s second city. 

He said a weather warning was issued Thursday, with hikers particularly urged to avoid mountainous areas. 

Heavier than usual rainfall has caused flooding in several parts of Iraq, especially the north, and some roads in Kurdistan region capital Arbil were blocked. 

Iraq has suffered four consecutive years of drought, with irregular rainfall badly affecting water resources, forcing many farmers to abandon their land. 

But Ammer al-Jabiri, spokesperson for the weather service in Iraq, where the rainy season is generally from December to March, said precipitation in 2024 was “better than last year.” 
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ISLAMABAD — Pakistan has recorded its wettest April since 1961, with more than double the usual rainfall for the month, the national weather center said.

The country experienced days of extreme weather in April that killed scores of people and destroyed property and farmland. Experts said Pakistan witnessed heavier rains because of climate change.

Last month’s rainfall for Pakistan was a 164% increase from the usual level for April, according to a report published Friday by Pakistan’s national weather center.

The intense downpours affected the country’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southwestern Baluchistan provinces the most.

Devastating summer floods in 2022 killed at least 1,700 people, destroyed millions of homes, wiped out swaths of farmland and caused billions of dollars in economic losses in a matter of months.

At one point, a third of the country was underwater. Pakistani leaders and many scientists worldwide blamed climate change for the unusually early and heavy monsoon rains.
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MEXICO CITY — If a woman wins Mexico’s presidency on June 2, would she rule with gender in mind?

The question has been raised by academics, humans rights organizations and activists ahead of the voting that will likely elect Mexico’s first female president for the term 2024-30.

Out of three candidates, the frontrunner is Claudia Sheinbaum, who has promised to keep President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s legacy on track. Next comes Xóchitl Gálvez, representing several opposition parties, one of which is historically conservative.

The triumph of Sheinbaum or Gálvez, however, would not guarantee their support for certain gender-related policies.

In a country of more than 98 million Catholics, neither of the two leading candidates has shared specific proposals on abortion. Both have suggested equality and protection measures for women amid a wave of violence and femicide.

Here’s a look at some of the challenges that Mexico’s next president would face regarding abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

What’s the current abortion landscape?

Twelve of Mexico’s 32 states have decriminalized abortion, most of them in the past five years. One more will join them after its legislature complies with a recent court’s ruling, demanding a reform in its penal code.

A few more states allow abortion if the mother’s life is in danger, and it is legal nationwide if the pregnancy is the result of rape.

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that national laws prohibiting abortions are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights. The ruling, which extended Latin America’s trend of widening abortion access, happened a year after the U.S. Supreme Court went in the opposite direction, overturning the 1973 ruling that established a nationwide right to abortion.

Although the Mexican ruling orders the removal of abortion from the federal penal code and requires federal health institutions to offer the procedure to anyone who requests it, further state-by-state legal work is pending to remove all penalties.

In most of the states where it has been decriminalized, abortion-rights activists say they face persistent challenges in trying to make abortion safe, accessible and government-funded.

To address restrictions and bans, dozens of volunteers — known as “acompañantes” — have developed a nationwide network to share information on self-managed medication abortions following guidelines established by the World Health Organization.

Could a new government strike down the constitutional right to abortion in Mexico?

Whoever wins, the next president would not directly affect abortion legislation, since each state has autonomy over its penal code.

However, the president could indeed have an impact as a moral authority among the members of his or her party, said Ninde Molina, lawyer at Abortistas MX, an organization specializing in abortion litigation strategies.

“Much of the governors’ behavior emulates what the president does,” Molina said.

She’s among the activists who worry that neither Sheinbaum nor Galvez have shared specific proposals addressing abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and the protection of migrants.

“Such lukewarm proposals send the message that these are not fundamental rights,” Molina said.

And though she wouldn’t immediately worry about a setback on abortion policy, the scenario would change if López Obrador or Sheinbaum manage to get the approval of a judiciary reform aiming to replace the current judges with new ones elected by popular vote.

“The court is also in danger,” Molina said. “People may find this (electing the judges) attractive, but they don’t realize what it entails.”

If, for example, an abortion case reaches the Supreme Court and its current composition has changed, then a setback could indeed happen, Molina said.

What do the conservatives think?

Isaac Alonso, from Viva México Movement, which supported right-wing activist Eduardo Verástegui’ s presidential aspirations, thinks that neither Sheinbaum nor Gálvez represent Mexico’s conservative interests.

In his ranks, he said, no one is in favor of criminalizing women who have abortions. But since they firmly believe that abortion is unjustifiable, they would hope for government policies that encourage births through improvements in the adoption system.

Rodrigo Iván Cortés, director of the National Family Front, an anti-abortion group, said the current administration could not be considered an ally. “Before 2018, abortion had only been approved in Mexico City,” he said.

“It is very relevant to say how the Supreme Court, under the leadership of Arturo Saldívar, had an ideological bias,” said Cortés about a judge who currently advises Sheinbaum.

Still, he said, despite who wins the elections, his organization will continue “to take care of the first and fundamental of rights: life.”

What’s needed to rule with a feminist perspective?

“Just because a woman wins does not guarantee a gender perspective at all,” said Pauline Capdevielle, an academic from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

“In fact, what we are seeing are strategies by conservative sectors to create a façade of feminism that opposes the feminist tradition.”

A true change, Capdevielle said, would start by integrating feminists into the government.

“It is not about putting women where there were none, but about politicizing these issues and really promoting a transformation.”

Some feminists have shown support for Sheinbaum, but both she and López Obrador have also received criticism for their lack of empathy towards women who protest against gender violence.

Amnesty International and other organizations have denounced excessive use of force against women during International Women’s Day protests and say that Mexican women’s right to protest has been stigmatized.

According to Capdevielle, some of the issues that need to be addressed in Mexico’s gender agenda are reproductive justice and women’s participation in political processes.

“The right to get an abortion must be consolidated,” she said. “It is far from being a reality for all women.”

Comprehensive sexual education, access to contraceptives and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community should be prioritized as well, Capdevielle said.

What about LGBTQ+ rights?

“The needs of this community are not likely to figure prominently in Mexico’s presidential elections,” said Cristian González Cabrera, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Gay and transgender populations are regularly attacked and killed in Mexico, a nation marked by its “macho” culture and highly religious population. Human rights organization Letra S documented more than 500 homicides of LGBTQ+ people in the last six years, 58 of them in 2023.

The latest deaths came in 2024, with the murder of three members of the transgender community. This group, along with migrants, are particularly vulnerable to attacks, Gonzalez Cabrera said.

“LGBT migrants continue to suffer abuse from criminal groups and Mexican officials,” he said. “Too often, these human rights violations are not effectively investigated or punished.”

Sheinbaum said in 2023 that, as Mexico City’s mayor, she created a special unit for trans people and said that her dream would be to continue fighting on behalf of sexual diversity, but did not go into specifics.

As for Gálvez, she showed support for women “from the sexual diversity,” but also did not delve into specifics.

González Cabrera highlights that since 2022 all Mexican states recognize same-sex marriage, but some LGBTQ+ rights are not yet guaranteed nationwide.

“There are 11 states where the legal recognition of gender identity for trans people is not possible through administrative means, despite a Supreme Court’s ruling recognizing this right,” he said.

For there to be an agenda in favor of the LGBTQ+ population, González Cabrera said, a government should approach the communities’ organizations to learn about their needs, allocate resources to address violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity, support LGBTQ+ migrants and encourage local governments to align their legislation with the court’s rulings on their rights.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan — China on Friday launched a lunar probe to land on the far side of the moon and return with samples that could provide insights into differences between the less-explored region and the better-known near side.

It is the latest advance in China’s increasingly sophisticated space exploration program, which is now competing with the U.S., still the leader in space.

China also has a three-member crew on its own orbiting space station and aims to put astronauts on the moon by 2030. Three Chinese lunar probe missions are planned over the next four years.

Free from exposure to Earth and other interference, the moon’s somewhat mysterious far side is ideal for radio astronomy and other scientific work. Because the far side never faces Earth, a relay satellite is needed to maintain communications.

The rocket carrying the Chang’e-6 lunar probe — named after the Chinese mythical moon goddess — lifted off Friday at 5:27 p.m. as planned from the Wenchang launch center on the island province of Hainan. About 35 minutes later it separated entirely from the massive Long March-5 rocket — China’s largest — that had slung it into space, as technicians monitoring the launch from ground control smiled and applauded.

Shortly afterward, launch mission commander Zhang Zuosheng took to a podium at the front of the room and said the launch had gone off exactly as planned and the spacecraft was on its set trajectory. “I declare this launch mission a complete success,” Zhang said to further applause.

The Philippine Space Agency issued a statement saying expected debris from the rocket launch was “projected to have fallen within the identified drop zones.”

China in 2021 was forced to defend its handling of a rocket booster that burned up over the Indian Ocean after the administrator of the American space agency and others accused Beijing of acting recklessly by allowing its rocket to fall to Earth seemingly uncontrolled after the mission.

Huge numbers of people crowded Hainan’s beaches to view the launch, which comes in the middle of China’s five-day May Day holiday. As with previous recent launches, the event was televised live by state broadcaster CCTV.

After orbiting the moon to reduce speed, the lander will separate from the spacecraft and within 48 hours of setting down it will begin drilling into the lunar surface and scooping up samples with its robotic arm. With the samples sealed in a container, it will then reconnect with the returner for the trip back to Earth. The entire mission is set to last 53 days.

China in 2020 returned samples from the moon’s near side, the first time anyone has done so since the U.S. Apollo program that ended in the 1970s. Analysis of the samples found they contained water in tiny beads embedded in lunar dirt.

Also in the past week, three Chinese astronauts returned home from a six-month mission on the country’s orbiting space station after the arrival of its replacement crew.

China built its own space station after being excluded from the International Space Station, largely because of U.S. concerns over the Chinese military’s total control of the space program amid a sharpening competition in technology between the two geopolitical rivals. U.S. law bars almost all cooperation between the U.S. and Chinese space programs without explicit congressional approval.

Faced with such limitations, China has expanded cooperation with other countries and agencies. The latest mission carries scientific instruments from France, Italy and the European Space Agency in cooperation with Sweden. A small Pakistani satellite is also on board.

China’s ambitious space program aims to put astronauts on the moon by 2030, as well as bring back samples from Mars around the same year and launch three lunar probe missions over the next four years. The next is schedule for 2027.

Longer-term plans call for a permanent crewed base on the lunar surface, although those appear to remain in the conceptual phase.

China conducted its first crewed space mission in 2003, becoming the third country after the former Soviet Union and the U.S. to put a person into space using its own resources.

The three-module Tiangong, much smaller than the ISS, was launched in 2021 and completed 18 months later. It can accommodate up to six astronauts at a time and is mainly dedicated to scientific research. The crew will also install space debris protection equipment, carry out payload experiments, and beam science classes to students on Earth.

China has also said that it eventually plans to offer access to its space station to foreign astronauts and space tourists. With the ISS nearing the end of its useful life, China could eventually be the only country or corporation to maintain a crewed station in orbit.

The U.S. space program is believed to still hold a significant edge over China’s due to its spending, supply chains and capabilities.

The U.S. aims to put a crew back on the lunar surface by the end of 2025 as part of a renewed commitment to crewed missions, aided by private sector players such as SpaceX and Blue Origin. They plan to land on the moon’s south pole where permanently shadowed craters are believed to be packed with frozen water.
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phoenix — Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has relegated a Civil War-era ban on most abortions to the past by signing a bill Thursday to repeal it. 

Hobbs said the move was just the beginning of a fight to protect reproductive health care in Arizona. The repeal of the 1864 law that the state Supreme Court recently reinstated won’t take effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends, which typically happens in June or July. 

Abortion rights advocates say they’re hopeful a court will step in to prevent what could be a confusing landscape of access for girls and women across Arizona as laws are introduced and then reversed. 

The effort to repeal the long-dormant law, which bans all abortions except those done to save a patient’s life, won final legislative approval Wednesday in a 16-14 vote of the Senate, as two GOP lawmakers joined with Democrats. 

Hobbs denounced “a ban that was passed by 27 men before Arizona was even a state, at a time when America was at war over the right to own slaves, a time before women could even vote.” 

“This ban needs to be repealed, I said it in 2022 when Roe was overturned, and I said it again and again as governor,” Hobbs said during the bill signing. 

In early April, Arizona’s Supreme Court voted to restore the 1864 law that provides no exceptions for rape or incest and allows abortions only if the mother’s life is in jeopardy. The majority opinion suggested doctors could be prosecuted and sentenced to up to five years in prison if convicted. 

Democrats, who are the minority in the Legislature, struck back with the help of a handful of Republicans in the House and Senate to advance a repeal in a matter of weeks to Hobbs’ desk. 

A crowd of lawmakers — mostly women — joined in the signing ceremony with celebratory airs, including taking selfies and exchanging congratulations among Democrats. 

The scene stood in sharp contrast to Wednesday’s vote in the Senate that extended for hours as Republicans described their motivations in personal, emotional and even biblical terms — including graphic descriptions of abortion procedures and amplified audio recordings of a fetal heartbeat. 

Meanwhile, across the country, an abortion rights initiative in South Dakota submitted far more signatures than required to make the ballot this fall. In Florida, a ban took effect against most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people even know they are pregnant. 

In Arizona, once the repeal takes effect in the fall, a 2002 statute banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy will become the state’s prevailing abortion law. 

Whether the 1864 law will be enforced in the coming months depends on who is asked. The anti-abortion-rights group defending the ban, Alliance Defending Freedom, maintains county prosecutors can begin enforcing it once the Supreme Court’s decision becomes final, which hasn’t yet occurred. 

Planned Parenthood Arizona filed a motion Wednesday asking the court to prevent a pause in abortion services until the repeal takes effect. Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes has joined in that action. 

The Supreme Court set deadlines next week for briefings on the motion.
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NASA may soon have another way to get astronauts into space. Plus, the agency reconnects with an old friend and how to train a dog for a walk … on the moon. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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WASHINGTON — Hackers who breached UnitedHealth’s tech unit in February potentially stole data from a third of Americans, the largest U.S. health insurer’s CEO told a congressional committee on Wednesday.

Two congressional panels grilled CEO Andrew Witty about the cyberattack on the company’s Change Healthcare unit, which processes around 50% of all medical claims in the U.S.

The breach has caused widespread disruptions in claims processing, impacting patients and providers across the country.

Witty fielded heated questions from House Energy and Commerce Committee members about the company’s failure to prevent the breach and contain its fallout.

Pressed for details on the data compromised, Witty said protected health information and personally identifiable information pertaining to “maybe a third” of Americans was stolen.

“We continue to investigate the amount of data involved here,” he added. “We do think it’s going to be substantial.”

The cybercriminal gang AlphV hacked into Change on Feb. 12 using stolen login credentials on an older server that did not have multifactor authentication, Witty said.

“It was … a platform which had only recently become part of the company was in the process of being upgraded,” Witty said, referring to UnitedHealth’s $13 billion acquisition of Change in 2022.

The platform also did not have the security measures prescribed in a joint alert issued by the FBI and U.S. cyber and health officials in December 2023 to specifically warn about AlphV, or BlackCat, targeting healthcare organizations.

UnitedHealth paid the gang around $22 million in bitcoin as ransom, Witty said, adding that however there was no guarantee that the breached data was secure and could not still be leaked. Another hacking group claiming to be an offshoot of AlphV said last month it had a copy of the data, though the company has not verified that claim.

The Senate Finance Committee probed the outsized influence of UnitedHealth – which has a market capitalization of $445 billion and annual revenue of $372 billion – on American health care. But Witty said the company’s problems were not a threat to the broader economy.

Senator Bill Cassidy said senators on the panel “would have to ask, is the dominant role of United too dominant because it is into everything and messing up United messes up everybody?”

“My point is, the size of United becomes a it’s almost a too big to fail and sure, because if it fails, it’s going to bring down far more than it ordinarily would,” Cassidy said.

Witty said in response, “I don’t believe it is because actually despite our size, for example, we have no hospitals in America, we do not own any drug manufacturers.”

Yet, Change processes medical claims for around 900,000 physicians, 33,000 pharmacies, 5,500 hospitals and 600 laboratories in the U.S.

U.S. military members’ data was also stolen in the hack, Witty revealed, without saying how many of them were impacted.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden called the hack a national security threat.

“I believe the bigger the company, the bigger the responsibility to protect its systems from hackers. UHG was a big target long before it was hacked,” he added.

“UnitedHealth Group has not revealed how many patients’ private medical records were stolen, how many providers went without reimbursement, and how many seniors are unable to pick up their prescriptions as a result of the hack,” said Wyden.

In letters to both congressional committees, the American Hospital Association said an internal survey of its members found that 94% of hospitals reported damage to cash flow, and more than half reported “significant or serious” financial damage due to Change’s inability to process claims.

Similarly, 90% of respondents to an American Medical Association survey of doctors said they continue to lose revenue because of the hack, according to the group’s written testimony to the Senate Finance Committee.
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The U.S. state of Florida has a new law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. In this presidential campaign, Donald Trump is defending the right of states to regulate reproductive rights. Joe Biden says that decentralized authority threatens women’s lives. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns has the story
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London — Climate change will cut the average income of people around the world by one-fifth by 2050, according to a new report published in the journal Nature by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

As many parts of the world experience extreme weather, the global impacts of a changing climate are set to cost $38 trillion a year by the middle of the century, the report warns — a reduction in the world’s average income of some 19%.

The losses are already locked in, independent of future emission choices, the report says.

Maximilian Kotz, co-author of the report, told VOA there is little the world can do to mitigate the impact.

“What we find is that over the next 25 to 30 years, impacts on the economy are consistent across different emissions scenarios, regardless of whether we enter a high-emission or low-emission world,” he said.

Climate change, and especially higher temperatures, have been shown to impact worker productivity, said Kotz.

“That’s then going to be manifest across numerous different industries — although it’s particularly strong, those impacts, when workers are outdoors, so in contexts like manufacturing sectors,” he said. “And then, we also know that impacts on agricultural productivity are very strong from again, particularly high temperatures.”

The research looked at climate and economic data from the past 40 years from more than 1,600 regions across the world and used it to assess future impacts. Those least responsible for global emissions are likely to be worst hit.

“Committed losses are projected for all regions except those at very high latitudes, at which reductions in temperature variability bring benefits. The largest losses are committed at lower latitudes in regions with lower cumulative historical emissions and lower present-day income,” the report said.

The authors conclude that tackling climate change would be far cheaper than putting up with the economic damage and estimate the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be just one-sixth of the $38 trillion impact of climate change by 2050.

The research is likely to underestimate the total economic impact of climate change.

“Important channels such as impacts from heatwaves, sea-level rise, tropical cyclones and tipping points, as well as non-market damages such as those to ecosystems and human health, are not considered in these estimates,” the report said.
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The average income of people around the world will be cut by one-fifth because of climate change by the middle of the century, according to a new report by Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published in the journal Nature. Henry Ridgwell has more.
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BEIJING — The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China said he was allowed back into his lab after he spent days locked outside, sitting in protest.

Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post on Wednesday, just past midnight, that the medical center that hosts his lab had “tentatively agreed” to allow him and his team to return and continue their research for the time being.

“Now, team members can enter and leave the laboratory freely,” Zhang wrote in a post on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. He added that he is negotiating a plan to relocate the lab in a way that doesn’t disrupt his team’s work with the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, which hosts Zhang’s lab.

Zhang and his team were suddenly told they had to leave their lab for renovations on Thursday, setting off the dispute, he said in an earlier post that was later deleted. On Sunday, Zhang began a sit-in protest outside his lab after he found he was locked out, a sign of continuing pressure on Chinese scientists conducting research on the coronavirus.

Zhang sat outside on flattened cardboard in drizzling rain, and members of his team unfurled a banner that read “Resume normal scientific research work,” pictures posted online show. News of the protest spread widely on Chinese social media, putting pressure on local authorities.

In an online statement Monday, the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center said that Zhang’s lab was closed for “safety reasons” while being renovated. It added that it had provided Zhang’s team an alternative laboratory space.

But Zhang responded the same day his team wasn’t offered an alternative until after they were notified of their eviction, and the lab offered didn’t meet safety standards for conducting their research, leaving his team in limbo.

Zhang’s dispute with his host institution was the latest in a series of setbacks, demotions and ousters since the virologist published the sequence in January 2020 without state approval.

Beijing has sought to control information related to the virus since it first emerged. An Associated Press investigation found that the government froze domestic and international efforts to trace it from the first weeks of the outbreak. These days, labs are closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out and some Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country.

Zhang’s ordeal started when he and his team decoded the virus on Jan. 5, 2020, and wrote an internal notice warning Chinese authorities of its potential to spread — but did not make the sequence public. The next day, Zhang’s lab was ordered to close temporarily by China’s top health official, and Zhang came under pressure from authorities.

Foreign scientists soon learned that Zhang and other Chinese scientists had deciphered the virus and called on China to release the sequence. Zhang published it on Jan. 11, 2020, despite a lack of permission from Chinese health officials.

Sequencing a virus is key to the development of test kits, disease control measures and vaccinations. The virus eventually spread to every corner of the world, triggering a pandemic that disrupted lives and commerce, prompted widespread lockdowns and killed millions of people.

Zhang was awarded prizes overseas in recognition for his work. But health officials removed him from a post at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and barred him from collaborating with some of his former partners, hindering his research.

Still, Zhang retains support from some in the government. Though some of Zhang’s online posts were deleted, his sit-in protest was reported widely in China’s state-controlled media, indicating divisions within the Chinese government on how to deal with Zhang and his team.

“Thank you to my online followers and people from all walks of life for your concern and strong support over the past few days!” Zhang wrote in his post Wednesday.
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