Guinea-Bissau
A wildly controversial U.S.-funded scheme to trial a hepatitis B vaccine in Guinea-Bissau by denying it to 7,000 newborn babies has been canceled, authorities in the country said. The scheme, championed by U.S. health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr, would have involved 14,000 newborns, with half receiving the vaccine and the other half denied it despite World Health Organization guidance. Nearly a fifth of people in Guinea-Bissau are infected with hepatitis B, which can cause long-term damage, and infants are at the most risk. Critics of the plan called it racist, exploitative and neo-colonial.
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Bangladesh
Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has reiterated a vow to return from exile in India despite being sentenced to death in absentia for a crackdown on youth-led protests that led to her toppling. “If death is my destiny, I would rather die on the soil of my own country, among my own people,” she told AP via email. “So, I will return to Bangladesh. That decision has not changed.” The 79-year-old, who was prime minister from 2009 to 2024 and has said she intends to go back next month, did not specify how she would return. Almost 1,400 people were killed during the protests, according to the U.N. Hasina’s Awami League party, a longtime force in Bangladeshi politics, was later banned.
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Bahrain
Repression of Shia Muslim clerics in Bahrain is accelerating due to the illegal U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, according to rights groups and activists. Alarmed by the ability of Iran to strike its territory with precision, the government is targeting citizens it believes support Tehran. At least 69 Bahrainis of Iranian heritage have already been stripped of citizenship. Bahrain is the only Gulf country that is ruled by a Sunni Muslim family despite having a Shia majority, and opponents say the latest crackdown is another worrying sign in a nation that brutally suppressed protests during the so-called Arab Spring in 2011. Bahrain says it is responding to attempts by Iran to undermine and eventually topple the government.
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