Reuters World News - Gaza hunger, women's health research, Gambia FGM and Italy’s news kiosks

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Famine is imminent in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave, according to a U.N.-backed report. President Biden signs an executive order seeking to erase the gender gap in government research. Gambia moves towards overturning a landmark ban on female genital cutting. And in Italy, the country’s iconic newspaper kiosks face demise.    Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, famine is imminent in northern Gaza. Biden seeks to erase the gender gap in government research, as Gambia edges towards a world first, reversing a ban on female genital cutting. And in Italy, falling newspaper sales are crushing the country's iconic newspaper kiosks. It's Tuesday, March 19th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes,

every weekday. I'm Carmel Crimmons. In Dublin, food shortages in parts of the Gaza Strip are so severe that they've already exceeded famine levels. That's the assessment of the Global Hunger Monitor, whose findings are relied on by UN agencies. The group says that without an immediate ceasefire and surge of food to areas cut off by fighting, mass death is imminent. In all, 1.1 million Gazans, around half the population, are experiencing catastrophic shortages of food. UN humanitarian coordinator James McGoldrick says any incursion into Rafa by Israeli forces

would even further complicate getting aid in. And if there was to be an encouraging, that would be that system we have which is already precarious and intermittent would then be broken. We are not in a position to contingency plan that. We're not a position to preposition shelter material, food, medical supplies and especially water during this very, very hot period. So it will be a real problem for us. The prospect of a man-made famine in Gaza has brought the strongest criticism of Israel from Western allies since it launched its war against Hamas.

On Monday, President Biden spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and warned him a military operation in Rafah would deepen anarchy in Gaza. Netanyahu agreed to send a team of officials to Washington to hear the administration's concerns. Donald Trump's efforts to secure a bond to cover a $454 million judgment in a New York civil fraud case is, not going well. His lawyers say he's been rejected by 30 companies who would be on the hook for any payout if Trump loses his appeal and proves unable to pay. The former president must either pay the sum out of his own pocket or post a bond to stave off the possibility of having his property seized by the state.

Britain's Princess of Wales has been spotted in public and there's video to prove it. The Sun newspaper has published footage of Kate carrying shopping bags with Prince William at a farm shop near their home. It's the first sighting of the princess since she underwent surgery two months ago and comes after weeks of speculation about her health. Elon Musk says his ketamine prescription is good for Tesla's investors.

The billionaire defended his use of the drug in a video interview with former CNN anchor Don Lemon. Musk says it helps him manage a negative chemical state similar to depression. The era of cheap money is officially over. The Bank of Japan has ended its negative interest rate policy with its first rate hike in 17 years. More than 60% of U.S. abortions last year were done by pill,

according to a Gutmacher Institute report. The increase follows a dramatic decline in surgical abortion access after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Think of all the breakthroughs we made in medicine across the board, but women have not been the focus. President Biden has signed a new executive order, expanding government research into women's help. The order seeks to erase gender gaps in research

while pledging $200 million next year to better understand issues including menopause and sexual and reproductive conditions. First Lady Jill Biden highlighting those gaps. Even though women are half the population, women's health research has been underfunded and understudied. Too many of our medications, treatments, and medical school textbooks are based on men and their body.

but that ends today. Biden has also asked Congress for $12 billion in new funding for women's health research. But odds of getting that money are slim in the politically divided legislator, especially during an election year. Trevor Honeycutt is at the White House. Trevor, what does this order do? So what it's going to do is it requires federal agencies from the Defense Department to the National Institutes of Health to

do a better job of accounting for the money that they get for medical research and making sure that they are sending grants to issues and conditions that face women and accounting for gender-specific issues when they are spending that money. So historically, there's been just less money that's been allocated to conditions that affect primarily women. Menopause is a great example of this because it's something that every woman undergoes at a certain point, if she lives long enough, including a lot of women who are in the workforce, and it causes symptoms that force people to leave work. But scientists and medical researchers actually don't understand terribly much about what menopause does to the human body besides the most obvious side

effects. And so what the NIH wants to do, the National Institutes of Health, what they want to do is better study those things to get a grasp on what's happening in the human body during menopause. Sticking with women's help, but this time in Gambia, where a ban on female genital cutting is at risk of being overturned. Lawmakers in the West African country have voted to advance a bill, repealing the ban on female genital mutilation, known as FGM. It's now under review by parliamentary committees. Anne Mawafé is in Kenya.

Anne, why is Gambia looking at doing this now? They said they want to be able to practice their culture and their religion freely. one of the placards that the demonstrators were carrying yesterday said, we will not sell our religion for widely gains. So sort of insinuating that this is a practice that is, you know, very respected in this community. And this kind of messaging sort of implies that the ban on FGM is a Western idea imposed on the women. And now they are sort of seeking emancipation. And if the events in Parliament yesterday are anything to go by,

then this is highly likely that Gambia will become the first nation globally to roll back protections against FGM. What's the potential impact of this move in other countries? Within communities, there are conversations like, can we be allowed to cut the girls? And I'll just let you in on some of the conversations around FGM, especially in my country, Kenya, that the challenge now is the medicalization of FGM.

So yes, it was banned. There is a law that is very clear. on what will happen if you practice FGM on your child. But communities went under. So they do take their girls for cutting. Some of them are taking them to health facilities. Some of them are staging parties, but inviting these traditional cutters to come and cut their girls.

So it just further complicates the FGM journey. It just adds to an already difficult journey in ending FGM in the continent. Italy's iconic news kiosks are dying. An industry body says two-thirds of them have shuttered over the past two years, with the sharp decline in newspaper sales to blame. Crispian Balmer is in Rome. Well, no street corner or cobbl piazza in Italy is complete without an adikula, a kiosk. They're often octagonal, they're often green,

and they're often just bedecked with newspapers, magazines. They're kind of as much a part of the urban fabric as, you know, your fire hydrants in New York or your pavement cafes in Paris. The trouble is that Italy, as in many other countries, has seen an unbelievable fall-off in newspaper sales over the past two decades. And whereas newspaper editors have been able, to some degree, to shift readers online, it's much harder for a kiosk owner to reinvent themselves.

Fabiano Pompei, whose family has been running a news kiosk, close to Rome's John Lutheran Basilica, since just after World War II. He took over from his father but has had to pull down the shutters for one last time. He told me that you can make sacrifices up to a certain point.

But after a while, if you're earning little or no money, you have to shut up shop and try to do something else, even if it's gut-wrenching. The old cities, where the tourists go, have been able to a degree to reinvent themselves to become basically sellers of tourist trinkets and those cartoons with handsome priests in them

that tourists love to buy. A couple of places in Rome, if they've got a big enough square in front of them, have been able to turn themselves into sort of bars and cultural centres. But lots of the kiosks just don't have the physical space around them to make that a safe proposition. So they're vanishing at quite a fast rate, and none of the kioskona as I spoke to

really thought that they had any future, that in 10 years' time there might be none left. That's it for Tuesday. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show. If you want to stay ahead of what's happening in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.