The International Monetary Fund, Argentina’s biggest creditor, agreed Monday to release the next tranche of loans due under a bailout program, endorsing government austerity measures so severe they even surpass the terms of its $43 billion loan.

The IMF deal follows the completion of its review of Argentina’s compliance record and confirms the next $792 million payment will become available to the government in June, reassuring markets and boosting confidence among bankers about Argentina’s prospects as it goes through its worst economic crisis in two decades.

IMF DEPLOYS REMAINING $1.1B IN PAKISTAN BAILOUT FUNDS

The decision by the fund’s technical staff still requires final approval from the IMF’s executive board, which could take weeks.

Argentina’s annual inflation rate reached 287% in March, among the highest in the world, deepening poverty and spurring strikes and protests. But the IMF praised President Javier Milei’s libertarian government for a number of economic successes — Argentina’s first quarterly fiscal surplus in 16 years, falling monthly inflation and surging sovereign bond prices.

To overhaul the beleaguered economy, Milei has slashed public sector wages, eliminated thousands of state jobs, frozen public works projects and and cut subsidies. He has also devalued the nosediving peso currency by over 50%, helping it stabilize but causing the prices of basic goods to skyrocket.

Argentina President Javier Milei speaks during a ceremony to commemorate Holocaust and Heroism Day, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, May 8, 2024.  (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Although brutal for Argentina’s poor and middle classes, the market-friendly overhaul has “resulted in faster-than-anticipated progress in restoring macroeconomic stability and bringing the program firmly back on track,” the IMF said, thanking Argentine authorities for “the decisive implementation of their stabilization plan.”

The praise marks a dramatic turn-around from the past six decades during which Argentine politicians showed little interest in enacting reforms stipulated as part of borrowing agreements.

Previous left-leaning governments fell far short of IMF targets and relied on central bank money printing to finance treasury spending, pushing the country’s IMF program — launched in 2018 and refinanced in 2022 — to a breaking point.

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The international lender remains deeply unpopular in Argentina, where the public blames it for an economic implosion and debt default in late 2001. The IMF later acknowledged it made mistakes contributing to the collapse.

It’s rare for a country to have the IMF as its biggest creditor. Argentina is in the strange position of relying on money lent by the fund to repay the fund itself.

The Eurovision Song Contest continued to spawn unprecedented controversy, days after the winner was crowned, with the 27-nation European Union lambasting organizers on Monday for their “incoherence” in banning its flag from the concert hall during the final.

In an unusually sharp letter, EU Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas wrote to the Swiss-based European Broadcast Union, which organizes the contest, that its ban contributes to “discrediting a symbol that brings together all Europeans.”

EDEN GOLAN, ISRAELI EUROVISION CONTESTANT, SURROUNDED BY BOOS, APPLAUSE AND TIGHT SECURITY AHEAD OF FINALS

In a contest already full of controversy, the European Commission said it plans “a very lively discussion” with the organizers over the ban. Even though the 27-nation EU did not compete as such, many of its member states did, and the star-spangled blue flag is often seen as a unifier for all involved.

Nemo, representing Switzerland, with the song “The Code,” wins the final of the 68th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest at the Malmö Arena, in Malmö, Sweden, Saturday, May 11, 2024.  (Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via AP)

Schinas wrote that “such actions have cast a shadow over what is meant to be a joyous occasion for peoples across Europe and the world to come together in celebration.”

The flag is on show at countless events and across the EU nations and often flies alongside the national colors from tiny city halls to massive governmental buildings.

Schinas was especially bitter since the ban came only a month ahead of EU-wide parliamentary elections where the EU as an institution is an object of fierce debate and often attacked by extremist parties.

“The incoherence in the EBU’s stance has left myself and many millions of your viewers wondering for what and for whom the Eurovision Song Contest stands,” the letter said.

During the weeklong contest, organizers were already roiled by the protests linked to the war in Gaza and Israel’s participation in the event on top of the controversial disqualification of the Dutch participant over an incident which was never fully explained.

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Ahead of the final, a spokesperson for the European Broadcasting Union said ticket holders are only allowed to bring and display flags representing participating countries, as well as the rainbow-colored flag which is a symbol for LGBTQ+ communities.

Swiss singer Nemo won the 68th Eurovision Song Contest Saturday night with “The Code,” an operatic pop-rap ode to the singer’s journey toward embracing a nongender identity.

The United Kingdom’s law to deport asylum-seekers shouldn’t apply in Northern Ireland, because parts of it violate human rights protections, a Belfast judge ruled Monday.

The Illegal Migration Act was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights and undermines rights provided in the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998, High Court Justice Michael Humphreys said.

US CAN LEARN FROM CONTROVERSIAL UK POLICY AS FIRST MIGRANTS ROUNDED UP FOR DEPORTATION, EXPERT SAYS

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the government would appeal the judgment.

The law is central to Sunak’s contentious plan to deport some migrants to Rwanda, but it wasn’t immediately clear what impact the ruling would have on that initiative.

While the prime minister’s office said the ruling wouldn’t derail or delay Rwanda deportations that the U.K. government says will begin in July, a lawyer whose client prevailed in bringing the case said the law wouldn’t apply in Northern Ireland.

Sinead Marmion, asylum and immigration solicitor at Phoenix Law, poses outside Belfast High Court in Belfast, Monday May 13, 2024. The United Kingdom’s law to deport asylum-seekers shouldn’t apply in Northern Ireland because parts of it violate human rights protections, a Belfast judge ruled Monday. While the prime minister’s office said the ruling wouldn’t derail or delay Rwanda deportations it expects to begin in July, Sinead Marmion, a lawyer whose client prevailed in bringing the case said the law wouldn’t apply in Northern Ireland.  (Liam McBurney/PA via AP)

“This is a huge thorn in the government’s side,” attorney Sinéad Marmion said. “There’s a huge obstacle in the way of them being able to actually implement that in Northern Ireland now.”

The law was created to deter thousands of migrants who risk their lives crossing the English Channel to claim asylum in the U.K. by creating the prospect that they would be sent to the east African country. It allows those who have arrived illegally to be deported to a “safe” third country where their claims can be processed.

While the U.K. Supreme Court struck down flights to Rwanda, because it said that the nation was unsafe, a subsequent bill pronounced the country safe, and that makes it harder for migrants to challenge deportation. It also allows the U.K. government to ignore injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights that seek to block removals.

Humphreys found that parts of the law violated human rights protections of a post-Brexit deal signed between the U.K. and European Union last year. That agreement, known as the Windsor Framework, said that it must honor the peace accord that largely brought an end to the Troubles — 30 years of violence between British unionists and Irish nationalists.

The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party said that the U.K. government had been repeatedly warned that its immigration policy wouldn’t apply in Northern Ireland, because it was incompatible with the post-Brexit agreement with the E.U.

“Whilst today’s judgment does not come as a surprise, it does blow the government’s irrational claims that the Rwanda scheme could extend equally to Northern Ireland completely out of the water,” DUP Leader Gavin Robinson said.

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Sunak said that the Good Friday agreement wasn’t intended to be “expanded to cover issues like illegal migration.”

The law was challenged by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and a 16-year-old Iranian boy who crossed the English Channel last year without any parents and claimed asylum in the U.K. The boy, who is living in Northern Ireland, said he would be imprisoned or killed if he’s sent back to Iran.

The judge placed a temporary stay on the ruling until later this month.

Reports that soldiers of Burma’s military government last week carried out a massacre of more than 30 civilians in a village in central Burma were supported Monday in interviews with a local administrator and a man who says he survived the killings.

The bloodshed on Saturday morning in Let Htoke Taw village in Sagaing region’s Myinmu township, reported by independent media, was the latest of three mass killings in the past few days in Burma’s brutal civil war.

REBEL GROUP CLAIMS IT CAPTURED BURMESE COMMAND POST, IMPRISONED HUNDREDS OF GOVERNMENT SOLDIERS

The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify details of what happened, and the military government didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. It has denied past accusations of attacks on civilians and in some cases placed the blame on resistance forces.

Burma has been mired in violence since the military’s February 2021 seizure of power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi prompted nationwide peaceful protests that security forces suppressed with deadly force. The violent repression triggered widespread armed resistance, which has since reached the intensity of a civil war.

The other two recent mass killings involved at least 15 people from a resistance group, along with civilians, who were killed in an airstrike while holding a meeting at a monastery in central Magway region on Thursday, and 32 people killed that same day in disputed circumstances in fighting in Mandalay region, also in the central part of the country.

Thirty-three people, including three 17-year-old boys, two older people and three carpenters from a nearby village, were killed Saturday in an army raid on Let Htoke Taw, said a local administrator loyal to the opposition National Unity Government who managed to escape from the village.

The National Unity Government, the country’s main opposition group, operates as a shadow government and stakes a claim to greater legitimacy than the ruling military.

The administrator, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because he feared for his personal safety, said that at least 11 other villagers were wounded when 100-200 soldiers and armed men believed to be members of an army-affiliated militia entered the village in an apparent search for resistance fighters of the Peoples Defense Force, the loosely organized armed wing of the National Unity Government.

This UGC photo provided by the People’s Defense Force shows a truck transporting bodies of victims allegedly killed by soldiers of Myanmar’s military government, to be buried outside of Let Htoke Taw village in Sagaing region’s Myinmu township, Myanmar, Saturday, May 11, 2024. Reports that soldiers of Myanmar’s military government last week carried out a massacre of more than 30 civilians in a village in central Myanmar were supported Monday in interviews with a local administrator and a man who claims to have survived the killings.  (People’s Defense Force via AP)

A Let Htoke Taw villager told the AP on Monday that panicked residents sought to flee when the soldiers, firing their weapons, attacked shortly after 5 a.m., and those who couldn’t escape the village sought safety in the main building of the local Buddhist monastery.

The 32-year-old villager, also insisting on anonymity for safety’s sake, said that he, his wife and two children and other family members ended up at the monastery, but were held captive in the main building there by the soldiers along with about 100 other villagers.

He said that he and more than 30 other men were brought outside by the soldiers and forced to sit in rows on the ground while they were interrogated with questions about who the local resistance leaders were and where they could be found.

Despite beatings, the men in the front row denied knowing such information, and then the soldiers began shooting them, initially one by one, and then en masse, the villager said.

The villager said that he slumped onto the ground after a man sitting beside him who was shot multiple times fell on top of him. He said he could hear the firing continue from several weapons, and a captain ordering his men to shoot their victims until they were dead. There were 24 dead at the scene, and nine people killed elsewhere in the village, he said. Photos provided to the AP show about that number of corpses, several with wounds visible, laid out in two-and-a-half rows.

The survivor, who was wounded in the left armpit, said that he played dead for a half-hour until the soldiers left the monastery compound around 7 a.m., after burning the bodies of five dead men and taking hostage 17 villagers including his wife and children. The hostages were released outside the village, he said.

Both he and the administrator said that soldiers burned down between 170 and 200 homes in the village, a tactic it has been accused of repeatedly employing. They also said the soldiers destroyed the village’s water pumps.

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Sagaing has been a stronghold of armed resistance to the army, which has responded with major offensives using ground troops supported by artillery and airstrikes, burning down villages and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Let Htoke Taw village, which is located about 70 kilometers (45 miles) west of Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city, has been previously targeted by soldiers fighting the resistance, and about 545 houses there were set on fire in May last year.

The vast coin collection of a Danish butter magnate is set to finally go on sale a century after his death, and could fetch up to $72 million.

Lars Emil Bruun, also known as L.E. Bruun, stipulated in his will that his 20,000-piece collection be safeguarded for 100 years before being sold. Deeply moved by the devastation of World War I, he wanted the collection to be a reserve for Denmark, fearing another war.

DENMARK’S NEW MONARCHS VISIT SWEDEN ON FIRST OFFICIAL TRIP ABROAD

Now, over a century since Bruun’s death at the age of 71 in 1923, New York-based Stack’s Bowers, a rare coin auction house, will begin auctioning the collection this fall, with several sales planned over the coming years.

On its website the auction house calls it the “most valuable collection of world coins to ever come to market.” The collection’s existence has been known of in Denmark but not widely, and it has has never been seen by the public before.

“When I first heard about the collection, I was in disbelief,” said Vicken Yegparian, vice president of numismatics at Stack’s Bowers Galleries.

Vicken Yegparian, vice president of numismatics, Stack’s Bowers Galleries, holds a golden coin once belonging to the collection of the Danish king, Frederik VII, now part of L. E. Bruun’s collection, in Zealand, Denmark, May 7, 2024. The vast coin collection of a Danish butter magnate is set to finally go to on sale a century after his death, and could fetch up to $72 million. Lars Emil Bruun, also known as L.E. Bruun, stipulated in his will that his 20,000-piece collection be safeguarded for 100 years before being sold.  (AP Photo/James Brooks)

“We’ve had collections that have been off the market for 100 years plus,” he said. “But they’re extremely well known internationally. This one has been the best open secret ever.”

Born in 1852, Bruun began to collect coins as a boy in the 1850s and ’60s, years before he began to amass vast riches in the packing and wholesaling of butter.

His wealth allowed him to pursue his hobby, attending auctions and building a large collection that came to include 20,000 coins, medals, tokens and banknotes from Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Following the devastation of World War I and fearing another war, Bruun left strict instructions in his will for the collection.

“For a period of 100 years after my death, the collection shall serve as a reserve for the Royal Coin and Medal Collection,” it stipulated.

“However, should the next century pass with the national collection intact, it shall be sold at public auction and the proceeds shall accrue to the persons who are my direct descendants.”

That stipulation didn’t stop some descendants from trying to break the will and cash in, but they were not successful. “I think the will and testament were pretty ironclad. There was no loophole,” Yegparian said.

Yegparian estimates some pieces may sell for just $50, but others could go for over $1 million. He said potential buyers were already requesting a catalogue before the auction was announced.

The collection first found refuge at former Danish royal residence Frederiksborg Castle, then later made its way to Denmark’s National Bank.

Denmark’s National Museum had the right of first refusal on part of the collection and purchased seven rare coins from Bruun’s vast hoard before they went to auction.

The seven coins — six gold, one silver — were all minted between the 15th and 17th centuries by Danish or Norwegian monarchs. The cost of over $1.1 million was covered by a supporting association.

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“We chose coins that were unique. They are described in literature as the only existing specimen of this kind,” said senior researcher Helle Horsnaes, a coin expert at the national museum.

“The pure fact that this collection has been closed for a hundred years makes it a legend,” Horsnaes said. “It’s like a fairytale.”

When he heard that devastating floods hit his village in northern Afghanistan last week, farmer Abdul Ghani rushed home from neighboring Kunduz province where he was visiting relatives. When he got home, he found out that his wife and three children had perished in the deluge.

Two of his sons survived but another son, who is 11, is still missing. “I couldn’t even find the road to my village,” he said, describing how he turned back and went another way to reach his district of Nahrin in Baghlan province.

TALIBAN REPORTS AT LEAST 50 DEAD AS FLASH FLOODS WREAK HAVOC IN NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN

Across Baghlan, others like Ghani and survivors of the disaster were still searching for their missing loved ones and burying their dead on Monday.

“Roads, villages and lands were all washed away,” Ghani said. His wife, his 7-year-old and 9-year-old daughters and a 4-year-old son died.

People are seen near to their damaged homes after heavy flooding in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan Saturday, May 11, 2024. Flash floods from seasonal rains in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan killed dozens of people on Friday, a Taliban official said.  (AP Photo/Mehrab Ibrahimi)

“My life has turned into a disaster,” he said, speaking to The Associated Press over the phone.

The U.N. food agency estimates that the unusually heavy seasonal rains in Afghanistan left more than 300 people dead and thousands of houses destroyed, most of them in Baghlan, which bore the brunt of floodings on Friday.

Survivors have been left with no home, no land, and no source of livelihood, the World Food Organization said. Most of Baghlan is “inaccessible by trucks,” said WFP, adding that it is resorting to every alternative it can think of to get food to the survivors.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has expressed condolences to the victims, said a statement on Sunday, adding that the world body and aid agencies are working with the Taliban-run government to help.

“The United Nations and its partners in Afghanistan are coordinating with the de facto authorities to swiftly assess needs and provide emergency assistance,” according to the statement.

The dead include 51 children, according to UNICEF, one of several international aid groups that are sending relief teams, medicines, blankets and other supplies. The World Health Organization said it delivered 7 tons of medicines and emergency kits to the stricken areas.

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Meanwhile, the U.N. migration agency has been distributing aid packages that include temporary shelters, essential non-food items, solar modules, clothing, and tools for repairs to their damaged shelters.

The latest disaster came on the heels of a previous one, when at least 70 people died in April from heavy rains and flash floods in the country. The waters also destroyed about 2,000 homes, three mosques and four schools in western Farah and Herat, and southern Zabul and Kandahar provinces.

Rescuers recovered more bodies Monday after monsoon rains triggered flash floods on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island over the weekend, bringing down torrents of cold lava and mud that left at least 44 people dead and another 15 missing.

The heavy rains, along with a landslide of mud and cold lava from Mount Marapi, caused a river to breach its banks. The deluge tore through mountainside villages along four districts in West Sumatra province just before midnight Saturday.

The floods swept away people and submerged hundreds of houses and buildings, while forcing more than 3,100 to flee to temporary government shelters in Agam and Tanah Datar districts, said National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari.

INDONESIA’S MOUNT IBU VOLCANO ERUPTS, AUTHORITIES PREPARE TO EVACUATE THOUSANDS

Cold lava, also known as lahar, is a mixture of volcanic material and pebbles swept by rainwater down a volcano’s slopes.

Additional bodies were recovered Monday, bringing the death toll to 44, Muhari said in a news conference. At least 19 others were injured in the flash floods and rescuers were searching for 15 villagers, he said.

Television reports showed relatives wailing as they watched rescuers pull a mud-caked body from a devastated hamlet. It was placed in an orange and black bag and taken away for burial.

People inspect buildings damaged by a flash flood in Agam, West Sumatra, Indonesia, on May 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Fachri Hamzah)

Authorities struggled to get tractors and other heavy equipment to the area over washed-out roads after flash floods covered the hilly hamlets with mud and rocks, said Abdul Malik, who heads the search and rescue office in Padang, the provincial capital.

Hundreds of police, soldiers and residents dug through the debris with their hands, shovels and hoes as rain, damaged roads and thick mud hampered their progress.

“The devastated area is so vast and complicated, we badly need more excavators and mud pumps,” Malik said.

Videos released by the National Search and Rescue Agency showed roads that were transformed into murky brown rivers and villages covered by thick mud, rocks, and uprooted trees.

Muhari said the search and rescue operation was halted late Monday due to darkness and rains that made the devastated areas along the rivers unstable. The operation will resume early Tuesday.

Heavy rains cause frequent landslides and flash floods in Indonesia, an archipelago nation of more than 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near floodplains.

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The weekend disaster came just two months after heavy rains triggered flash floods and a landslide in West Sumatra, killing at least 26 people and leaving 11 others missing.

A surprise eruption of Mount Marapi late last year killed 23 climbers. The mountain’s sudden eruptions are difficult to predict because the source is shallow and near the peak, according to Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation.

Marapi has been active since an eruption in January 2024 that caused no casualties. It is among more than 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia. The country is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

Old foes Turkey and Greece will test a five-month-old friendship initiative Monday when Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visits Ankara.

The two NATO members, which share decades of mutual animosity, a tense border and disputed waters, agreed to sideline disputes last December. Instead, they’re focusing on trade and energy, repairing cultural ties and a long list of other items placed on the so-called positive agenda.

Here’s a look at what the two sides hope to achieve and the disputes that have plagued ties in the past:

NEW YORK MUSEUM CURATOR DETAINED IN TURKEY FOR ALLEGED SPIDER SMUGGLING CLAIMS TO HAVE GOVERNMENT PERMITS

FOCUSING ON A POSITIVE AGENDA

Mitsotakis is to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Monday as part of efforts to improve ties following the solidarity Athens showed Ankara after a devastating earthquake hit southern Turkey last year.

The two leaders have sharp differences over the Israeli-Hamas war, but are keen to hold back further instability in the eastern Mediterranean as conflict also continues to rage in Ukraine.

“We always approach our discussions with Turkey with confidence and with no illusions that Turkish positions will not change from one moment to the next,” Mitsotakis said last week, commenting on the visit. “Nevertheless, I think it’s imperative that when we disagree, the channels of communication should always be open.”

Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, left, welcomes Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before their meeting at Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, on Dec. 7, 2023.  Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited Ankara, Turkey, on May 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis, File)

“We should disagree without tension and without this always causing an escalation on the ground,” he added.

Ioannis Grigoriadis, a professor of political science at Ankara’s Bilkent University, said the two leaders would look for ways “to expand the positive agenda and look for topics where the two sides can seek win-win solutions,” such as in trade, tourism and migration.

EASY VISAS FOR TURKISH TOURISTS

Erdogan visited Athens in early December, and the two countries have since maintained regular high-level contacts to promote a variety of fence-mending initiatives, including educational exchanges and tourism.

Turkish citizens this summer are able to visit 10 Greek islands using on-the-spot visas, skipping a more cumbersome procedure needed to enter Europe’s common travel area zone, known as the Schengen area.

“This generates a great opportunity for improving the economic relations between the two sides, but also to bring the two stable societies closer — for Greeks and Turks to realize that they have more things in common than they think,” Grigoriadis said.

A HISTORY OF DISPUTES

Disagreements have brought Athens and Ankara close to war on several occasions over the past five decades, mostly over maritime borders and the rights to explore for resources in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean seas.

The two countries are also locked in a dispute over Cyprus, which was divided in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence in the island’s northern third.

The dispute over the exploration of energy resources resulted in a naval standoff in 2020 and a vow by Erdogan to halt talks with the Mitsotakis government. But the two men met three times last year following a thaw in relations and a broader effort by Erdogan to re-engage with Western countries.

The foreign ministers of the two countries, Hakan Fidan of Turkey and George Gerapetritis of Greece, are set to join the talks Monday and hold a separate meeting.

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RECENT DISAGREEMENTS

Just weeks before Mitsotakis’ visit, Erdogan announced the opening of a former Byzantine-era church in Istanbul as a mosque, drawing criticism from Greece and the Greek Orthodox church. Like Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia, the Chora had operated as a museum for decades before it was converted into a mosque.

Turkey, meanwhile, has criticized recently announced plans by Greece to declare areas in the Ionian and Aegean seas as “marine parks” to conserve aquatic life. Turkey objects to the one-sided declaration in the Aegean, where some areas remain under dispute, and has labelled the move as “a step that sabotages the normalization process.”

Grigoriadis said Turkey and Greece could focus on restoring derelict Ottoman monuments in Greece and Greek Orthodox monuments in Turkey. “That would be an opportunity” for improved ties, he said.

• Barbara Nabulo, a sickle cell disease patient, has emerged as a dedicated advocate for others facing the same condition in rural Uganda.
• Despite her own challenges with the disease, Nabulo serves as a counselor to fellow patients, offering them encouragement and hope.
• Nabulo regularly visits sickle cell patients in the hospital ward, providing them with guidance and reassurance.

Barbara Nabulo was one of three girls in her family. But when a sister died, her mother wailed at the funeral that she was left with just one and a half daughters.

The half was the ailing Nabulo, who at age 12 grasped her mother’s meaning.

“I hated myself so much,” Nabulo said recently, recalling the words that preceded a period of sickness that left her hospitalized and feeding through a tube.

‘REMARKABLE’ GENE-EDITING TREATMENT FOR SICKLE CELL DISEASE IS APPROVED BY FDA

The scene underscores the lifelong challenges for some people with sickle cell disease in rural Uganda, where it remains poorly understood. Even Nabulo, despite her knowledge of how the disease weakens the body, spoke repeatedly of “the germ I was born with.”

Barbara Nabulo cleans clothes at her home in Busamaga-Mutukula village in Mbale, Uganda, on April 25, 2024. Nabulo, a sickle cell disease patient, has emerged as a dedicated advocate for others facing the same condition. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)

Sickle cell disease is a group of inherited disorders in which red blood cells — normally round — become hard, sticky and crescent shaped. The misshapen cells clog the flow of blood, which can lead to infections, excruciating pain, organ damage and other complications.

The disease, which can stunt physical growth, is more common in malaria-prone regions, notably Africa and India, because carrying the sickle cell trait helps protect against severe malaria. Global estimates of how many people have the disease vary, but some researchers put the number between 6 million and 8 million, with more than 5 million living in sub-Saharan Africa.

The only cure for the pain sickle cell disease can cause is a bone marrow transplant or gene therapies like the one commercially approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December. A 12-year-old boy last week became the first person to begin the therapy.

EX-NFL STAR TEVIN COLEMAN’S DAUGHTER ‘COULDN’T BREATHE ON HER OWN,’ PUT ON VENTILATOR AMID SICKLE CELL FIGHT

Those options are beyond the reach of most patients in this East African nation where sickle cell disease is not a public health priority despite the burden it places on communities. There isn’t a national database of sickle cell patients. Funding for treatment often comes from donor organizations.

In a hilly part of eastern Uganda that’s a sickle cell hot spot, the main referral hospital looks after hundreds of patients arriving from nearby villages to collect medication. Many receive doses of hydroxyurea, a drug that can reduce periods of severe pain and other complications, and researchers there are studying its effectiveness in Ugandan children.

Nabulo, now 37, is one of the hospital’s patients. But she approaches others like her as a caregiver, too.

After dropping out in primary school, she has emerged in recent years as a counselor to fellow patients, speaking to them about her survival. Encouraged by hospital authorities, she makes weekly visits to the ward that has many children watched over by exhausted-looking parents.

Nabulo tells them she was diagnosed with sickle cell disease at two weeks old, but now she is the mother of three children, including twins.

Such a message gives hope to those who feel discouraged or worry that sickle cell disease is a death sentence, said Dr. Julian Abeso, head of pediatrics at Mbale Regional Referral Hospital.

Some men have been known to divorce their wives — or neglect them in search of new partners — when they learn that their children have sickle cell disease. Frequent community deaths from disease complications reinforce perceptions of it as a scourge.

BONE MARROW TRANSPLANTS CAN REVERSE ADULT SICKLE CELL DISEASE

Nabulo and health workers urge openness and the testing of children for sickle cell as early as possible.

Abeso and Nabulo grew close after Nabulo lost her first baby hours after childbirth in 2015. She cried in the doctor’s office as she spoke of her wish “to have a relative I can call mine, a descendant who can help me,” Abeso recalled.

“At that time, people here were so negative about patients with sickle cell disease having children because the complications would be so many,” the doctor said.

Nabulo’s second attempt to have a child was difficult, with some time in intensive care. But her baby is now a 7-year-old boy who sometimes accompanies her to the hospital. The twin girls came last year.

Speaking outside the one-room home she shares with her husband and children, Nabulo said many people appreciate her work despite the countless indignities she faces, including unwanted stares from people in the streets who point to the woman with “a big head,” one manifestation in her of the disease. Her brothers often behave as if they are ashamed of her, she said.

Once, she heard of a girl in her neighborhood whose grandmother was making frequent trips to the clinic over an undiagnosed illness in the child. The grandmother was hesitant to have the girl tested for sickle cell when Nabulo first asked her. But tests later revealed the disease, and now the girl receives treatment.

“I go to Nabulo for help because I can’t manage the illness affecting my grandchild,” Kelemesiya Musuya said. “She can feel pain, and she starts crying, saying, ‘It is here and it is rising and it is paining here and here.'”

Musuya sometimes seeks reassurance. “She would be asking me, ‘Even you, when you are sick, does it hurt in the legs, in the chest, in the head?’ I tell her that, yes, it’s painful like that,” Nabulo said.

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Nabulo said she was glad that the girl, who is 11, still goes to school.

The lack of formal education is hurtful for Nabulo, who struggles to write her name, and a source of shame for her parents, who repeatedly apologize for letting her drop out while her siblings studied. One brother is now a medical worker who operates a clinic in a town not far away from Nabulo’s home

“I am very happy to see her,” said her mother, Agatha Nambuya.

She recalled Nabulo’s swelling head and limbs as a baby, and how “these children used to die so soon.”

But now she knows of others with sickle cell disease who grew to become doctors or whatever they wanted to be. She expressed pride in Nabulo’s work as a counselor and said her grandchildren make her feel happy.

“At that time,” she said, recalling Nabulo as a child, “we didn’t know.”

• Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska visited Serbia on May 13, 2024.
• Serbia claims neutrality regarding the war in Ukraine. There are reports that Serbia has delivered weapons to Ukraine through intermediary countries even as it appears to grow closer to China and Russia.
• The visit may represent an improving relationship between Ukraine and Serbia, which has maintained a friendly relationship with Russia despite condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba made a surprise visit to Russia-friendly Serbia on Monday, together with Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, in a sign of warming relations between the two states.

On his first visit to Serbia since the start of the Russian aggression on Ukraine in 2022, Kuleba met Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and new Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic, whose government includes several pro-Russian ministers, including two who have been under U.S. sanctions.

A statement issued by the prime minister’s office after the talks said that “Serbia is committed to respecting international law and the territorial integrity of every member state of the United Nations, including Ukraine.”

UKRAINE’S KHARKIV RESIDENTS REMAIN DEFIANT AS RUSSIA LAUNCHES NEW OFFENSIVE

Although Serbia has condemned the Russian aggression on Ukraine, it has refused to join international sanctions against Moscow and has instead maintained warm and friendly relations with its traditional Slavic ally.

Serbia has proclaimed neutrality regarding the war in Ukraine, and its authorities repeat that Serbia does not supply weapons to any parties. However, there are reports that Serbia has delivered weapons to Ukraine through intermediary countries.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, left, and Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska, right, made a surprise visit to Serbia. The trip drew heavy criticism in the Russian media. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic (left), Getty Images/Anna Moneymaker (right))

The visit by Kuleba and Zelenska, who toured the Serbian capital with Serbian first lady Tamara Vucic on Sunday, was met with criticism in Moscow. Comments by readers in the Russian state-run media such as “shameful” were published by RIA Novosti.

In what appears to be damage control, soon after his talks with Kuleba on Monday, Vucevic was to meet the Russian ambassador to Belgrade and the two were to tour a big storage facility for Russian gas that is being imported to Serbia.

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Pro-Russian President Vucic has informally met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy three times on the sidelines of international conferences. Serbia has supplied Ukraine with humanitarian and financial aid.

Vucic has for years claimed to follow a “neutral” policy, balancing ties among Moscow, Beijing, Brussels and Washington. Although he has repeatedly said that Serbia is firm on its proclaimed goal of seeking European Union membership, under his authoritarian rule the Balkan country appears to be shifting closer to Russia and especially China.

During a high-stakes visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Belgrade last week, China and Serbia signed an agreement to build “ironclad” relations and a “shared joint future.”