SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The South Korean government on Wednesday warned thousands of striking doctors to return to work immediately or face legal action after their collective walkouts caused cancellations of surgeries and disrupted other hospital operations. About 7,800 medical interns and residents in South Korea have walked off their jobs this week to protest the government’s push to recruit more medical students. Officials say they want to increase the nationwide medical school admissions cap by 2,000 from next year to brace for South Korea’s rapidly aging population. But doctors’ groups have refuted the plan, saying universities aren’t ready to offer quality education to that many students. They argue the government’s plan would lead to increased public medical expenses.

 

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LONDON (AFP) – Lawyers for the United States on Wednesday urged a UK court to block a last-ditch bid by Julian Assange to appeal his extradition to the country to face espionage charges. Washington indicted the WikiLeaks founder multiple times between 2018 and 2020 over its publication of hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic files on the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The long-running legal saga in Britain’s courts is now nearing a conclusion after Assange lost successive rulings in recent years. If he fails with this latest appeal bid, he could be extradited within weeks. 

 

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PARIS (AP) — Striking workers again closed down the Eiffel Tower on Wednesday, the third day running that the landmark expected to be at the heart of celebrations for the Paris Olympics has been off-limits to visitors. A message on the tower’s website also warned of more possible disruptions Thursday, if strikers continue their push for salary hikes and other concessions. “We apologize for the inconvenience,” it said. One of the strikers’ representatives, Denis Vavassori of the CGT union, has previously warned that their protest action “could go on for several days, even weeks.”

 

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GENEVA (Reuters) — More than half the world’s countries will be at high or very high risk of measles outbreaks by the end of the year unless urgent preventative measures are taken, the World Health Organization warned. Measles cases have been increasing across most regions mainly due to missed vaccinations during the COVID-19 years when health systems were overwhelmed and fell behind on routine vaccinations for preventable diseases. “What we are worried about is this year, 2024, we’ve got these big gaps in our immunization programmes and if we don’t fill them really quickly with the vaccine, measles will just jump into that gap,” the WHO’s Natasha Crowcroft, a Senior Technical Adviser on Measles and Rubella, told a Geneva press briefing. Measles is a highly contagious, airborne virus that mostly affects children under five years old. It can be prevented by two doses of vaccine and more than 50 million deaths have been averted since 2000, according to the WHO. Cases last year were already up 79 percent to over 300,000, according to WHO data, - thought to represent just a fraction of the total.

 

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TIRANA (Euro News) – Thousands of supporters of Albania’s opposition took to the streets of the capital Tirana to protest against alleged government corruption. The demonstration, which marked the 33rd anniversary of the toppling of the main statue of the country’s late communist director, Enver Hoxha, followed months of protests from opposition lawmakers in parliament, Euronews reported. At issue is the refusal of the ruling left-wing Socialists to investigate alleged cases of corruption involving Prime Minister Edi Rama and other top officials. The cabinet was asked to create parliamentary commissions to investigate the allegations, but refused to do so.