International

Climate change will fuel diseases, warns Global Fund

Illustrative image

| By AFP |

Climate change will end up killing people by fuelling infectious diseases, the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said Tuesday.

Executive director Peter Sands said that in 2022, the fund had witnessed the “escalating impact” of climate change on health.

While upsurges in malaria had hitherto been seen due to the increasing frequency and devastation of tropical storms, “with the flooding in Pakistan it was taken to a completely different scale”, he said.

“What we are seeing is that the mechanism by which climate change will end up killing people is through its impact on infectious disease.”

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Sands said that parts of Africa which previously were unaffected by malaria are now becoming at risk as temperatures rise and allow mosquitos to thrive, notably at higher altitudes.

However, the population in such areas will not have immunity, with the resulting risk of a higher mortality rate.

“It’s quite alarming,” Sands told a briefing with the UN correspondents’ association.

Other threats include tuberculosis spreading among the increasing number of displaced people around the world.

“TB is a disease that thrives on having concentrations of highly-stressed people in close confines with inadequate food and shelter,” he said.

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“The more that we see climate change-driven displacement of people, the more I think that will translate into the conditions that will at least make it more likely.”

Sands also said food insecurity would make people more vulnerable to disease.

As for whether the world was better prepared for the next pandemic than it was for Covid-19, Sands said it was, but added: “That doesn’t mean we are well prepared: we’re just not as badly prepared as we were before.”

By the end of 2022, Sands said the Global Fund will have invested around $5.4 billion, which is significantly more than it has ever done before.

The Geneva-based organisation’s largest donors are G7 governments, led by the United States and France.

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“For the people we serve in the poorest, most marginalised, most vulnerable communities in the world, 2022 was a brutal year,” said Sands.

“In the poorest communities in the world, HIV, TB and malaria are killing many more people than Covid-19.”

Related Topics:Climate change Diseases Global Found

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International

FBI Warns of Possible Iranian Drone Attack on U.S. West Coast

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned police departments in California about a possible Iranian plan to carry out a drone attack against the west coast of the United States, according to a report published Wednesday by ABC News.

The warning was issued through a memorandum sent to agencies participating in a Joint Terrorism Task Force, outlining the possibility of a surprise attack involving unmanned aerial vehicles launched from a vessel off the U.S. coastline.

According to the document, intelligence suggested that in early February 2026 Iran may have considered an attack against unspecified targets in California if the United States carried out airstrikes on Iranian territory.

However, the memo also noted that authorities lack additional details about the timing, method, specific targets, or individuals responsible for the alleged plan.

Reports cited by U.S. media indicate that the alert coincided with the start of a military offensive by the administration of Donald Trump against the Iran, a development that has heightened tensions across the Middle East.

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Law enforcement sources with counterterrorism experience told the Los Angeles Times that the warning is part of a routine precautionary advisory based on information from the U.S. Coast Guard.

The sources emphasized that there is no credible indication of an imminent attack and no evidence that Iran currently has the capability to successfully carry out such an operation.

California is home to the largest Iranian community in the United States. According to the Migration Policy Institute, more than half of Iranian immigrants in the country lived in the state in 2019, including around 140,000 people in Los Angeles County alone.

The city also hosts a neighborhood widely known as “Tehrangeles,” where a large Iranian community began settling in the 1960s and continued to grow following the Iranian Revolution.

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International

Trump Says Iran Is Welcome at 2026 World Cup but Warns of Security Concerns

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, said Thursday that the national football team of Iran is “welcome” to participate in the 2026 World Cup, although he suggested it might be safer for the team not to take part in the tournament.

“The Iranian national soccer team is welcome at the World Cup, but I really don’t think it’s appropriate for them to be there, for their own safety,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

His comments came a day after Iran’s sports minister, Ahman Donyamali, said that there are currently no conditions for the country to participate in the tournament following the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, during a military offensive launched on February 28 by Israel and the United States.

“After the corrupt government killed our leader, there are no conditions that allow us to take part in the World Cup,” the Iranian official said. He added that the country has faced two wars in the past eight or nine months, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths, making participation in the tournament unlikely.

On Tuesday, the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, met with Trump at the White House.

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Following the meeting, Infantino said that Trump reiterated that Iran’s national team would be allowed to compete in the FIFA World Cup 2026.

“We discussed the current situation in Iran and the fact that the Iranian team has qualified to participate in the FIFA World Cup 2026. During the conversation, President Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States,” Infantino wrote on Instagram.

International

Iran issues threat to Trump as conflict escalates over Strait of Hormuz

The head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, threatened U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, warning him to “beware of being eliminated.”

The Republican president had warned on Monday that he would strike Iran “very hard” if the Islamic Republic blocked oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which has effectively been closed since the war began eleven days ago.

“Iran is not afraid of your empty threats. Others more powerful than you tried to destroy the Iranian nation and failed. Beware that you are not eliminated,” Larijani wrote on X.

Earlier, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards — the ideological military force of the Islamic Republic — also said their forces would move to block oil exports from the Gulf.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military offensive against Iran is far from over.

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“Our aspiration is that the Iranian people free themselves from the yoke of tyranny; ultimately, that depends on them. But there is no doubt that with the measures taken so far we are breaking their bones, and we are not finished yet,” Netanyahu said in a statement.