With Harsh Anti-L.G.B.T.Q. Law, Uganda Risks a Health Crisis
Health

With Harsh Anti-L.G.B.T.Q. Law, Uganda Risks a Health Crisis

For decades, Uganda’s campaign against H.I.V. was exemplary, slashing the country’s death rate by nearly 90 percent from 1990 to 2019. Now a sweeping law enacted last year, the Anti-Homosexuality Act, threatens to renew the epidemic as L.G.B.T.Q. citizens are denied, or are too afraid to seek out, necessary medical care.The law criminalizes consensual sex between same-sex adults. It also requires all citizens to report anyone suspected of such activity, a mandate that makes no exceptions for health care providers tending to patients.Under the law, merely having same-sex relationships while living with H.I.V. can incur a charge of “aggravated homosexuality,” which is punishable by death.Anyone who “knowingly promotes homosexuality” — by hiring or housing an L.G.B.T.Q. person, or by not repo...
Remembering the Zambia air disaster – ‘The boys would say: ‘This plane will kill us”
Sports

Remembering the Zambia air disaster – ‘The boys would say: ‘This plane will kill us”

“The spirit of the 1993 team will always be there for Zambia.”Kalusha Bwalya, Zambia’s former football captain, is reflecting on the day that changed his life forever.On April 27, 1993, a military aircraft taking 18 of his team-mates and their coach to a World Cup qualifier against Senegal crashed shortly after refuelling in Gabon. All 30 people aboard died.Bwalya would have been on the plane, too, but for the fact that he was playing for PSV Eindhoven at the time. Being based in the Netherlands meant he made his own way to the match from Europe and ultimately saved his life — although it did not spare him from crushing, numbing grief.“You couldn’t imagine the whole team you play with are not there anymore,” Bwalya tells The Athletic. “It didn’t feel real.”Zambian football could have been ...
Astrobotic’s Peregrine Moon Lander Burns Up in Earth’s Atmosphere
Technology

Astrobotic’s Peregrine Moon Lander Burns Up in Earth’s Atmosphere

A spacecraft that was headed to the surface of the moon has ended up back at Earth instead, burning up in the planet’s atmosphere on Thursday afternoon.Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh announced in a post on the social network X that it lost communication with its Peregrine moon lander at 3:50 p.m. Eastern time, which served as an indication that it entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific at around 4:04 p.m. “We await independent confirmation from government entities,” the company said.It was an intentional, if disappointing, end to a trip that lasted 10 days and covered more than half a million miles, with the craft traveling past the orbit of the moon before swinging back toward Earth. But the spacecraft never got close to its landing destination on the near side of the ...
A Fed Governor Reiterates That Rate Cuts Are Coming
Business

A Fed Governor Reiterates That Rate Cuts Are Coming

A prominent Federal Reserve official on Tuesday laid out a case for lowering interest rates methodically at some point this year as the economy comes into balance and inflation cools — although he acknowledged that the timing of those cuts remained uncertain.Christopher Waller, one of the Fed’s seven Washington-based officials and one of the 12 policymakers who get to vote at its meetings, said during a speech at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday that he saw a case for cutting interest rates in 2024.“The data we have received the last few months is allowing the committee to consider cutting the policy rate in 2024,” Mr. Waller said. While noting that risks of higher inflation remain, he said, “I am feeling more confident that the economy can continue along its current trajectory.”Mr. Wa...
U.S. Moves to Bar Alejandro Giammattei, Ex-Guatemalan Leader
World

U.S. Moves to Bar Alejandro Giammattei, Ex-Guatemalan Leader

The State Department said on Wednesday that Alejandro Giammattei, Guatemala’s president until a tumultuous transfer of power this week, was barred from entering the United States because of what officials said was information indicating that he had accepted bribes.The announcement signaled that the United States was moving quickly to support the anticorruption drive led by Guatemala’s new president, Bernardo Arévalo. Guatemala was recently engulfed in protests over attempts to prevent Mr. Arévalo from taking office, and Mr. Giammattei refused to appear at his successor’s inauguration on Monday.“No one, especially a public official, is above the law,” said Brian Nichols, the top State Department official for the Western Hemisphere.The Treasury Department also announced sanctions on Wednesda...
King Charles’s Prostate Treatment Is Common Among Men His Age
Health

King Charles’s Prostate Treatment Is Common Among Men His Age

King Charles III will have a procedure to address an enlarged prostate at a hospital next week. The 75-year-old British monarch’s diagnosis is common among men his age, and experts say that typical treatments are not dangerous.An enlarged prostate, known also as benign prostatic hyperplasia, or BPH, is a noncancerous condition that occurs frequently among older men. By age 60, more than half of men have at least mild BPH symptoms, which include difficulty urinating and a sense of urgency to urinate. But often the symptoms are not severe enough to require treatment.The condition is analogous to menopause in women, said Dr. Peter Albertsen, a urologist and prostate specialist at the University of Connecticut. Menopause usually begins around age 50 when levels of testosterone and estrogen sta...