The cost of cuts: Western reductions in foreign aid are creating a worldwide crisis in healthcare

Domestic spending on vaccines and medications, subsidies for paying medical staff, and programs supporting mothers and newborns are being rapidly reduced in the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. At the same time, global health aid to low-income countries has fallen to its lowest level in 15 years, dropping by half since the end of the Covid pandemic. Funding for efforts to combat the three most widespread diseases — HIV, tuberculosis and malaria — are shrinking as well, leaving millions of the most vulnerable adults and children worldwide at risk. Bill Gates, the globe’s largest private donor, predicts that “2025 will be the first year since the start of the century when child mortality not only fails to decline, but actually rises.” If these trends are not reversed, a new wave of increasingly desperate migrants could soon be arriving in the same countries that have recently reduced their budgets for foreign aid.

Unraveling Havana Syndrome: New evidence links the GRU's assassination Unit 29155 to mysterious attacks on U.S. officials and their families

A yearlong investigation by The Insider, in collaboration with 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel, has uncovered evidence suggesting that unexplained anomalous health incidents, also known as Havana Syndrome, may have their origin in the use of directed energy weapons wielded by members of Russian GRU Unit 29155. Members of the Kremlin’s infamous military intelligence sabotage squad have been placed at the scene of suspected attacks on overseas U.S. government personnel and their family members, leading victims to question what Washington knows about the origins of Havana Syndrome, and what an appropriate Western response might entail.

Dogs of war. Ukrainian volunteers are trying to find new owners for orphaned animals from frontline regions of the country

A dog is being evacuated from Vovchansk, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on 17 May 2024. Photo: Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy / Ukrinform / Abaca Press / Vida Press

Stopping the clock. Why has Russia massively increased its funding of anti-ageing research?

An elderly woman walks past a street art exhibition called We Bring Peace! in Moscow, Russia, 5 April 2024. Photo: EPA / YURI KOCHETKOV

A cure for wellness. Described as torture by the UN, gay conversion therapy is nevertheless thriving in contemporary Russia

It’s now over two years since Russia’s Supreme Court deemed the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organisation, effectively outlawing any form of public identification with or support for what is referred to by the Kremlin as “non-traditional sexuality”.