TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — A boat carrying migrants from Libya to Europe capsized off Tunisia’s coast, prompting an ongoing rescue operation Wednesday after one body was recovered and dozens of people were reported missing. The International Organization for Migration said that 75 people were unaccounted for and 30 others were rescued after the boat sank off Sfax in southern Tunisia. Mourad Turki, a Sfax courts spokesman, told The Associated Press that those who were rescued were between 18 and 40 years old and of various nationalities, including people from Bangladesh, Egypt, Morocco and Cameroon. Turki added that the initial numbers of those missing were provisional and could increase.

 

*** 

BRASILIA (Al-Jazeera) - At least 11 people have been fatally shot in a Brazilian police raid in an impoverished favela community on the north side of Rio de Janeiro, authorities have said. Police said Tuesday’s early-morning raid in the Vila Cruzeiro favela aimed to capture the leaders of a drug-trafficking organisation. The deaths included a woman who was hit in an exchange of gunfire. Police said 10 suspected gang members who resisted the operation and opened fire on police with automatic weapons were also killed.

 

*** 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About one in five adults aged 18 and older in the United States have a health condition that might be related to their previous COVID-19 illness, according to a new study of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As more people are exposed to and infected by SARS-CoV-2, reports of patients who experience persistent symptoms or organ dysfunction after acute COVID-19 and develop post-COVID conditions have increased, said the study published on Tuesday. These symptoms are commonly referred to as long COVID, affecting multiple systems and including cardiovascular, pulmonary, hematologic, renal, endocrine, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, neurologic, and psychiatric signs and symptoms, according to the CDC.

 

*** 

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Venezuelan government is unwilling to resume negotiations with the country’s opposition on issues such as free elections and lifting economic sanctions if Norway acts as facilitator as it did last year at talks in Mexico, four sources close to the process told media. President Nicolas Maduro’s government has recently insisted on Russia’s presence at any negotiations, two of the sources said. Russia is a strong ally of Maduro’s government. The Venezuelan opposition wants Norway to retain the facilitator role, according to an opposition source who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The Nordic country has successfully brokered accords to resolve past conflicts in Latin America and elsewhere.

 

***

CAPE TOWN (Al-Jazeera) - South African disease experts have said that they did not see a need for a mass vaccination campaign against monkeypox or believe that cases would explode in the same way as COVID-19. The African continent has not recently recorded any confirmed or suspected cases of monkeypox, a usually mild viral infection that is endemic in parts of West and Central Africa. But its health authorities are vigilant after more than 200 suspected and confirmed cases of the virus have been detected in at least 19 countries including Spain, Israel and the United States since early May. “At this time we don’t need mass vaccinations for monkeypox. There’s a lot for us to investigate on the epidemiological point of view,” Adrian Puren, executive director of South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), said on Wednesday.