Day: March 21, 2024

Floresville picks up fifth straight win on the road  MaxPreps

The post Рубль упал к евро после ФРС, ждет налоговую поддержку и завтрашний СД ЦБР first appeared on The News And Times.

Over two years into Moscow’s all-out war against its neighbour, Kyiv’s troops are struggling to hold back the Russian army as Western support fails to keep pace with the fighting.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s government will take final steps to suspend the licenses of striking junior doctors next week as they refuse to end their weekslong walkouts that have burdened the country’s medical services, officials said Thursday.

More than 90% of the country’s 13,000 medical interns and residents have been on strike for about a month to protest the government’s plan to sharply increase medical school admissions. Their strikes have caused hundreds of canceled surgeries and other treatments at hospitals.

Officials say it is urgent to have more doctors because South Korea has a rapidly aging population, and its doctor-to-population ratio is one of the lowest in the developed world. But doctors say schools can’t handle an abrupt, steep increase in students, and that it would ultimately undermine the country’s medical services.

The government has been taking a series of administrative steps required to suspend their licenses after they missed a government-set, February 29 deadline to return to work.

The steps include sending officials to formally confirm the absences of strikers, informing them of possible license suspensions and giving them chances to respond.

Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told a briefing Thursday that the government is expected to complete those steps for some of the striking doctors next week and will send them notices about its final decision to suspend their licenses.

Park earlier said that under South Korea’s medical law, the striking doctors could face at a minimum three-month suspensions and even indictments by prosecutors for refusing the government’s back-to-work order.

He urged the striking doctors to return to work immediately, suggesting those who end their strikes could receive softer punishments.

“They should return as soon as possible not only for patients but also for their future careers. This kind of exhaustive walkout from hospitals must not continue any longer,” Park said. “As we’ve said many times, we won’t treat those who return swiftly as equally as those who return late.”

It’s unclear whether and how many striking doctors would return to their hospitals at the last minute. According to Park, none of the strikers who were informed of their possible license suspension has responded.

Senior doctors at major university hospitals recently decided to submit resignations next week in support of the junior doctors. Still, most of them will likely continue to report to work. If they walk off the job, that would hurt South Korea’s medical services severely.

Two senior doctors, who lead an emergency doctors’ committee for the walkouts, were recently given government notices that their licenses would be suspended for three months for allegedly inciting the junior doctors’ walkouts.

The striking junior doctors account for less than 10% of South Korea’s 140,000 doctors. But in some major hospitals, they represent about 30%-40% of the doctors, assisting senior doctors during surgeries and dealing with inpatients while training.

The government aims to increase the country’s medical school enrollment cap by 2,000 starting next year, from the current cap of 3,058 that has been unchanged since 2006.

Wednesday, the government announced detailed plans on how to allocate those additional 2,000 admission seats to universities, a sign that it won’t back down its plan.

Officials say more doctors are required to address a long-standing shortage of physicians in rural areas and in essential but low-paying specialties. But doctors say newly recruited students would also try to work in the capital region and in high-paying fields like plastic surgery and dermatology. They say the government plan would also result in doctors performing unnecessary treatments due to increased competition.

Surveys show that a majority of South Koreans support the government’s push to create more doctors, with critics suspecting that doctors, one of the highest-paid professions in South Korea, worry about lower incomes due to the supply of more doctors.

Johannesburg — South Africa’s governing party has gone to court to try stop a newly created rival party from contesting May elections.

National elections on May 29 are widely expected to be the most fiercely contested ever, with surveys suggesting the African National Congress party will win less than 50 percent of the vote for the first time since the advent of democracy in 1994.

Now, a new opposition party named uMkhonto weSizwe, or MK for short, has infuriated the ANC by naming itself after the ANC’s disbanded armed wing, which was formed by Nelson Mandela and fought against apartheid.

The fact that former president Jacob Zuma, an ANC stalwart, has thrown his weight behind the rival party has only added insult to injury, and the ANC has suspended him.

On Monday, the ANC went to the electoral court arguing the MK party did not meet the necessary criteria when it registered with the electoral commission late last year.

ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula addressed media outside court on Monday, saying the ANC is also taking legal action to try and prevent Zuma from using the storied uMkhonto weSizwe name.

“We are challenging him in two levels in terms of this formation. You must understand this is the beginning,” Mbalula said. “Here today at the electoral court we are challenging him in terms of deregistration of this party.”

Mbalula said the ANC was also pursuing a copyright infringement case against the MK party over the name.

While Zuma was forced to resign as president in 2018 amid corruption scandals, and is currently mired in several court cases, he remains very popular with his fellow ethnic Zulus in KwaZulu-Natal province.

When in July 2021 he was briefly jailed for contempt of court, South Africa saw the worst violence in its post-apartheid history, with more than 300 killed in looting and rioting.

A poll this month by a local research group, the Brenthurst Foundation, showed the ANC getting below 40 percent and the MK party winning 13 percent of the vote.

“Does this mean that South Africa’s going to experience a violent election because it’s more contested? Well that remains to be seen,” Brenthurst Foundation Director Greg Mills said. “It’s undoubtedly going to be very heated. Especially in KwaZulu-Natal province where the MK party…has around one quarter of the vote.”

Some members of the MK party, like the party’s youth leader and Visvin Reddy, a Zuma ally, have threatened violence if they are barred from competing in elections.

“This country will be turned into civil war, the day that MK is not allowed to campaign, and be on the ballot paper. No one will vote, we will make sure of it,” Reddy said at an MK rally earlier this month.

After Monday’s arguments from MK and ANC lawyers, the Electoral Court reserved judgment until a later date. 

An MK spokesman did not reply to multiple requests for comment from VOA.

Kyiv’s army is facing manpower and ammunition shortages on the battlefield amid political wrangling in the US Congress that has raised uncertainty over the future of Western support.

Proposed changes to Russia’s current laws will see military contracts and pardons offered to suspected or convicted criminals who are at any stage of the criminal process.

Over the past day, about 15 localities in the Kharkiv region suffered artillery and mortar attacks by the enemy

US national security advisor pays surprise visit to Ukraine amid halt to military aid | America  Yeni Şafak English

Hungary is going to block the proposal to transfer the profits from the frozen assets of the Russian Federation to purchase weapons for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.