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WHO, Africa CDC Launch Response Plan to Mpox Outbreak

This handout photograph taken and released by the European Union's Press Service on September 5, 2024, journalists work during the reception of a batch of mpox vaccines donated by European Union at the tarmac of Kinshasa International Airport in the Nsele district of Kinshasa. (AFP / European Union handout)
This handout photograph taken and released by the European Union's Press Service on September 5, 2024, journalists work during the reception of a batch of mpox vaccines donated by European Union at the tarmac of Kinshasa International Airport in the Nsele district of Kinshasa. (AFP / European Union handout)
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WHO, Africa CDC Launch Response Plan to Mpox Outbreak

This handout photograph taken and released by the European Union's Press Service on September 5, 2024, journalists work during the reception of a batch of mpox vaccines donated by European Union at the tarmac of Kinshasa International Airport in the Nsele district of Kinshasa. (AFP / European Union handout)
This handout photograph taken and released by the European Union's Press Service on September 5, 2024, journalists work during the reception of a batch of mpox vaccines donated by European Union at the tarmac of Kinshasa International Airport in the Nsele district of Kinshasa. (AFP / European Union handout)

The Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization launched on Friday a continent-wide response plan to the outbreak of mpox, three weeks after WHO declared outbreaks in 12 African countries a global emergency.

The estimated budget for the six-month plan is almost $600 million, with 55% allocated to mpox response in 14 affected nations and boosting readiness in 15 others, while 45% is directed towards operational and technical support through partners, Africa CDC director-general Dr. Jean Kaseya told reporters on Friday.

The plan focuses on surveillance, laboratory testing and community engagement, Kaseya said, underscoring the fact that vaccines aren't enough to fight the spreading outbreak.

The organization said that since the start of 2024, there have been 5,549 confirmed mpox cases across the continent, with 643 associated deaths, representing a sharp escalation in both infections and fatalities compared to previous years. The cases in Congo constituted 91% of the total number. Most mpox infections in Congo and Burundi, the second most affected country, are in children under age 15.

The plan comes a day after the first batch of mpox vaccines arrived in the capital of Congo, the center of the outbreak. The 100,000 doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine, manufactured by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic, have been donated by the European Union through HERA, the bloc’s agency for health emergencies. Another 100,000 are expected to be delivered on Saturday, Congolese authorities said.

“These vaccines are vital in safeguarding our health workers and vulnerable populations, and in curbing the spread of mpox,” Kaseya said Thursday.

The 200,000 doses are just a fraction of the 3 million that doses authorities have said are needed to end the mpox outbreaks in Congo, the epicenter of the global health emergency. The European Union countries pledged to donate more than 500,000 others, but the timeline for their delivery remained unclear.

Emmanuel Lampaert, Doctors Without Borders representative in Congo, said that vaccination was an additional tool, and that basic health measures were still crucial to combat the outbreak, and there were obviously challenges with that in many parts of Congo.

Congo issued an emergency approval of the vaccine, which has already been used in Europe and the United States in adults, but it remained unclear on Friday when the vaccination campaign would begin. For the moment, the rollout would be reserved for adults, Kaseya said, with priority targeted groups being those who have been in close contact with infected people and sex workers.

The European Medicines Agency is examining additional data to be able to administer it to children ranging in age from 12 to 17, which could happen at the end of the month, HERA Director-General Laurent Muschel said.

“We don’t have all the answers,” Muschel told reporters on Friday. “We learn by doing. We are going to adapt the strategy depending on the impact of the vaccination campaign."

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Varieties

End of the Line for Finland’s Analogue Phone Network

Countries across the world have rolled out fiber optic cable that can handle both internet services and voice calls. (Reuters)
Countries across the world have rolled out fiber optic cable that can handle both internet services and voice calls. (Reuters)
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End of the Line for Finland’s Analogue Phone Network

Countries across the world have rolled out fiber optic cable that can handle both internet services and voice calls. (Reuters)
Countries across the world have rolled out fiber optic cable that can handle both internet services and voice calls. (Reuters)

Finland on Tuesday pulled the plug on analogue landline phone calls after almost 150 years, the latest country to push forward in a global transition towards digital infrastructure.

Estonia, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain have already made the jump, as countries across the world roll out fiber optic cable that can handle both internet services and voice calls.

Finland's fixed-line network began operating in the 1880s, but like everywhere else the digital revolution has swallowed up the old technology based on copper wires.

And the Nordic country, home of mobile phone pioneer Nokia, has seen the use of landline phones gobbled up by mobile technology.

Elisa, the country's last major telecom operator with a fixed-line copper-wire network, marked the end of its service with a call between the firm's CEO Topi Manner and Jarkko Saarimaki, head of the country's communication and transport agency.

The two chatted about their memories of landline phones, with Manner recalling his time as a teenager in London in the 1980s when he would call home once a week at an agreed time to make sure the family were all there.

They also discussed the future of mobile technologies, before ending the call with a casual "kuulemiin", meaning "speak later" in Finnish.

When announcing its decision to retire the network in January -- a move its competitors had already made earlier -- Elisa said its customers had just a "few thousand" landline-only plans, with no new ones being sold in years.

After Tuesday, the only providers of landline plans in Finland will be local operators, currently covering a few thousand plans for local calls, public broadcaster Yle said.

Varieties

Japan Police Investigate Another Suspected Fatal Bear Attack

Brown bears at Hexentanzplatz Zoo are given fruit in ice to cool off during a heatwave, in Thale, Germany, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Matthias Bein/dpa via AP)
Brown bears at Hexentanzplatz Zoo are given fruit in ice to cool off during a heatwave, in Thale, Germany, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Matthias Bein/dpa via AP)
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Japan Police Investigate Another Suspected Fatal Bear Attack

Brown bears at Hexentanzplatz Zoo are given fruit in ice to cool off during a heatwave, in Thale, Germany, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Matthias Bein/dpa via AP)
Brown bears at Hexentanzplatz Zoo are given fruit in ice to cool off during a heatwave, in Thale, Germany, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Matthias Bein/dpa via AP)

Japanese police are investigating another suspected fatal bear attack, a local official told AFP on Tuesday, as the number of such deaths remains unusually high.

Bear attacks have been on the rise in Japan in recent years, something scientists attribute to a spike in the animals' population and a declining number of people in rural areas.

Authorities in northern Aomori prefecture said on Monday that a man found dead on a mountain that day may have been attacked by a bear.

"Police are still investigating the cause" of the man's death, but bear bite marks had been found on his body, a local official told AFP on Tuesday, not giving his name in line with common practice in Japan.

Fatal maulings in the last three months have jumped fivefold compared to last year, according to government data.

Five people have died due to bear attacks since April, according to separate statistics from the environment ministry.

Publicly available ministry data, dating back to the fiscal year ending March 2018, shows that this year is the first to see more than two deaths in the period from April to June.

A record 13 people were killed by bears in Japan last year, and there has been a jump in encounters as the animals emerge hungry from hibernation.

In the year to March, bear sightings nationwide topped 50,000 -- more than double the previous record set two years earlier, according to official data.

Earlier this month, dozens of police officers, hunters and city officials were deployed in the city of Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo, to catch a bear that roamed the streets for four days, forcing mass school closures.

In the Fukushima region this month, a bear attacked four people at two factories and in a residential area, before escaping hunters.

Varieties

Bird Nests of Fiber-Optic Cables Show War’s Impact on Ukraine

Bird's nests made with fragments of optic fiber, which were found by a Ukrainian serviceman on the front line and then passed to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, lie on a table in a museum, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 23, 2026. (Reuters)
Bird's nests made with fragments of optic fiber, which were found by a Ukrainian serviceman on the front line and then passed to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, lie on a table in a museum, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 23, 2026. (Reuters)
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Bird Nests of Fiber-Optic Cables Show War’s Impact on Ukraine

Bird's nests made with fragments of optic fiber, which were found by a Ukrainian serviceman on the front line and then passed to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, lie on a table in a museum, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 23, 2026. (Reuters)
Bird's nests made with fragments of optic fiber, which were found by a Ukrainian serviceman on the front line and then passed to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, lie on a table in a museum, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 23, 2026. (Reuters)

Woven from fiber-optic cable and grass, a small bird's nest found near the front line of the war in Ukraine shows how the more than four-year-old conflict is reshaping the natural environment, researchers say.

Areas along the 1,200-km (746-mile) front line are covered with ultra-thin fiber-optic cables, which are used by Ukrainian and Russian troops to guide aerial attack drones to make them impervious to electronic jamming.

The cables, which can stretch for 20 km, lie tangled in trees and scattered across fields and on the rooftops ‌of towns in ‌Ukraine's frontline regions, glistening in the sunlight like giant spider ‌web.

Birds ⁠have begun repurposing ⁠the discarded cables to weave their nests, says Yana Hrynko, a senior researcher at Kyiv's War Museum, cautiously examining two delicate nests which the armed forces sent to the museum from the front line.

"Objects such as bird nests with fragments of optic fiber demonstrate the change in the nature of war," said Hrynko.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 with tanks, armored vehicles and artillery. Trying to counter ⁠Russia's advantage in such conventional equipment, Ukraine has poured resources ‌into developing aerial drones. Drones now dominate ‌the battlefield.

Hrynko said researchers did not know which birds made the nests nor how they ‌had gathered the long cables.

"The first nest mainly contains dry grass ‌and fiber-optic cable. And it's pretty tightly twisted," she said.

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Reuters spoke to several Ukrainian servicemen in the frontline regions of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia who had found such nests and posted their pictures and videos online.

One of the two nests ‌will remain in Kyiv as a part of the War Museum's war collection, and the other will be sent ⁠for study in the ⁠Netherlands and later returned, researchers said.

Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a 33-year-old biologist based in the Dutch city of Leiden who specializes in artificial nest materials, said Ukraine had rich avian biodiversity and there were many species that could have built the nests.

"We're going to look for DNA traces still in a nest to determine who actually made the nest," she said. "I have never seen nests like this before - and I have seen many, many bird nests."

The impact of the fiber-optic on birds could be mixed, Hiemstra said. It could cause harm as the birds could become entangled but it could also benefit them by helping them make a strong nest. "And by documenting this nest, we're also documenting the impact of war on nature in Ukraine," Hiemstra said.