FILE - Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, speaks at the Reaching The Last Mile Forum on Nov. 19, 2019, at the Louvre in Abu Dhabi.(Jonathan Gibbons/Reaching the Last Mile Forum via AP Images)
The head of the World Health Organization says he will begin an independent evaluation of the U.N. health agency’s response to the coronavirus pandemic “at the earliest appropriate moment.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the pledge Monday after an independent oversight advisory body published its first interim report about the U.N. health agency’s response to COVID-19 from January to April.
The 11-page report raised questions such as whether WHO’s warning system for alerting the world to outbreaks is adequate, and suggested member states might need to “reassess” WHO’s role in providing travel advice to countries.
The advisory body’s review and recommendations appeared unlikely to appease the United States administration, which has been scathing in its criticism of WHO — in part over President Donald Trump’s allegation that it had criticized a U.S. travel ban that he ordered on people arriving from China, where the outbreak first appeared late last year.
Trump ordered a temporary suspension of funding for WHO from the United States — the health agency’s biggest single donor — pending a review of its early response. But the review panel, echoing comments from many countries, said such a review during the “heat of the response” could hurt WHO’s ability to respond to it.
Republican Tom Emmer abruptly abandoned his bid to become House speaker, withdrawing hours after winning the internal party nomination once it became clear he would not have enough support from GOP colleagues for the gavel.
Eighty-five-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz spoke of a “hell that we never knew before and never thought we would experience” as she described the harrowing Oct. 7 assault on her kibbutz by Hamas militants and the terror of being taken hostage into the Gaza Strip.
Jenna Ellis, an attorney and prominent conservative media figure, reached a deal with prosecutors Tuesday and pleaded guilty to a reduced charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez returns to court Monday to enter an expected not guilty plea to a conspiracy charge alleging he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Hamas militants on Friday freed two Americans -- a mother and her teenage daughter who had been held hostage in Gaza since militants rampaged through Israel two weeks ago, the Israeli government said.
