
-
'Frightening': US restaurants, producers face tariff whiplash
-
Cuba looks to sun to solve its energy crisis
-
Experts warn 'AI-written' paper is latest spin on climate change denial
-
PSG eye becoming France's first 'Invincibles'
-
Late birdie burst lifts Ryder to Texas Open lead
-
Five potential Grand National fairytale endings
-
Trump purges national security team after meeting conspiracist
-
More work for McIlroy even with two wins before Masters
-
Trump hopeful of 'great' PGA-LIV golf merger
-
No.1 Scheffler goes for third Masters crown in four years
-
Where Trump's tariffs could hurt Americans' wallets
-
Trump says 'very close to a deal' on TikTok
-
Trump tariffs on Mexico: the good, the bad, the unknown
-
Postecoglou denies taunting Spurs fans in Chelsea defeat
-
Oscar-winning Palestinian director speaks at UN on Israeli settlements
-
With tariff war, Trump also reshapes how US treats allies
-
Fernandez fires Chelsea into fourth as pressure mounts on Postecoglou
-
South Korea court to decide impeached president's fate
-
Penguin memes take flight after Trump tariffs remote island
-
E.T., no home: Original model of movie alien doesn't sell at auction
-
Italy's Brignone has surgery on broken leg with Winter Olympics looming
-
Trump defiant as tariffs send world markets into panic
-
City officials vote to repair roof on home of MLB Rays
-
Rockets forward Brooks gets one-game NBA ban for technicals
-
Pentagon watchdog to probe defense chief over Signal chat row
-
US tariffs could push up inflation, slow growth: Fed official
-
New Bruce Springsteen music set for June 27 release
-
Tom Cruise pays tribute to Val Kilmer
-
Mexico president welcomes being left off Trump's tariffs list
-
Zuckerberg repeats Trump visits in bid to settle antitrust case
-
US fencer disqualified for not facing transgender rival
-
'Everyone worried' by Trump tariffs in France's champagne region
-
Italy's Brignone suffers broken leg with Winter Olympics looming
-
Iyer blitz powers Kolkata to big IPL win over Hyderabad
-
Russian soprano Netrebko to return to London's Royal Opera House
-
French creche worker gets 25 years for killing baby with drain cleaner
-
UK avoids worst US tariffs post-Brexit, but no celebrations
-
Canada imposing 25% tariff on some US auto imports
-
Ruud wants 'fair share' of Grand Slam revenue for players
-
Lesotho, Africa's 'kingdom in the sky' jolted by Trump
-
Trump's trade math baffles economists
-
Gaza heritage and destruction on display in Paris
-
'Unprecedented crisis' in Africa healthcare: report
-
Pogacar gunning for blood and thunder in Tour of Flanders
-
Macron calls for suspension of investment in US until tariffs clarified
-
Wall St leads rout as world reels from Trump tariffs
-
Mullins gets perfect National boost with remarkable four-timer
-
Trump tariffs hammer global stocks, dollar and oil
-
Authors hold London protest against Meta for 'stealing' work to train AI
-
Tate Modern gifted 'extraordinary' work by US artist Joan Mitchell

Researchers brave relentless violence to work in DR Congo
As Tony Ukety peers into a microscope in an effort to wipe out a devastating tropical disease, he is acutely aware that there is a more immediate threat looming outside the walls of his research centre.
It comes from the militia groups who have wrought terror in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern province of Ituri for more than four years.
The violence in Ukety's remote area, Djugu territory, is so bad that it is too dangerous to reach his lab by road.
Instead, the facility is reached by a 12-seater Cessna, piloted by American pastors.
It takes off from the provincial capital Bunia, flying over hills studded with displaced people's camps, before landing a half-hour later near the Protestant mission at Rethy, near the Ugandan border.
Enemies for Ukety, whose lab opened there in 2009, are the larvae of microscopic parasitic worms, transmitted by flies.
They develop inside the human body, causing a sight-robbing disease called river blindness, formally known as onchocerciasis.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 14 million people, most of them in tropical sub-Saharan Africa, suffer from the horrifying ailment.
Ukety's Centre for Research in Tropical Diseases (CRMT) is leading clinical tests of a key treatment.
The drug is moxidectin -- an anti-parasite formula approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2018.
The first new weapon against river blindness in 20 years, moxidectin is undergoing longer-term tests to fine-tune its effectiveness.
But to do so, scientists have to find volunteers "in areas where nobody has been previously treated," Ukety said.
And this is where the area's extreme isolation, as a result of poor security, turns out to be a blessing.
- Too risky -
Gathered on a January day just outside Rethy in the village of Kanga, a team of scientists was hard at work after a month of forced rest.
"Because of the militia attacks, all the inhabitants had left," and travelling to villages was too risky anyway, said Innocent Mananu, an ophthalmologist on the team.
At the Kanga clinic, the researchers were recruiting volunteers for the study.
Participants took a clinical and ophthalmological exam. Skin samples were then taken to be tested for microfilaria larvae.
Back at the CRMT, lab chief Joel Mande scanned the samples with the latest in microscope technology.
Away from his work, the microbiologist wears another hat as the head of an administrative territory, the Walendu Tatsi, whose inhabitants are mainly members of the Lendu ethnic group.
The area is a stronghold of an armed political-religious sect called CODECO.
Its innocuous-sounding name -- the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo -- belies a bitter ethnic feud between the Lendu, which the group claims to defend, and the Hema community.
Mande has to walk a fine line.
If he gets too close to his study subjects, the authorities may accuse him of fraternising with CODECO.
But if he is deemed to be too pro-government he risks being accused of betraying the Lendu cause.
- Young, stoned, armed -
CODECO fighters can be found less than three kilometres (two miles) from Ukety's lab. They are young, armed, drunk and high on marijuana.
They control all the access roads to nearby Kpandroma and extort money at markets and checkpoints that they set up along roads.
A dozen soldiers are also on hand ostensibly to keep order but, lacking resources, yield to the CODECO.
AFP met some commanders of CODECO's main faction, the Union of Revolutionaries for the Defence of the Congolese People (URDPC), which claims to have more than 30,000 fighters.
The meeting took place at a disused hospital, which troops pillaged in 2020, located at Linga some 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Rethy.
The militia have in recent months been accused of carrying out massacres in camps for displaced members of the Hema community.
Since the long-running ethnic conflict flared anew in 2017, hundreds of people have been killed and more than 1.5 million have fled their homes, according to the Danish Refugee Council.
Back at his research centre, Ukety holds the line.
"The militia's incursions have affected our activities a bit. But we are still here and we are going to see things through," he said, with his study still two years from completion.
L.Miller--AMWN