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Jordan’s government said Sunday it has reached a pay deal with the teachers union to end a one-month strike, the country’s longest public sector strike that disrupted schooling for more than 1.5 million students.

The deal came after the strike threatened a deepening political crisis when the government last week began legal steps against the unions after they rejected meager pay hikes they said were “bread crumbs” and the government said it could not afford to give more.

The pay deal that raises allowances from 35% to 60% to teachers from next year comes after weeks of deadlock with the government intransigent over meeting an original 50% pay rise demanded by the unions it said would strain the heavily indebted country’s finances.

Officials said King Abdullah had ordered the government to reach the hefty wage deal which tests the ability of Prime Minister Omar al Razzaz to stay on track in implementing tough fiscal reforms backed by the International Monetary Fund aimed at reducing a record $40 billion public debt.

The government fears new pay demands by other public sector employees, including doctors, and pension increases for retired soldiers would wreck efforts to restore fiscal prudence needed for a sustained economic recovery.

Dozens of activists from the powerful teachers union, whose members succeeded in forcing the government to agree to substantial pay hikes after a four-week standoff, celebrated in front of their headquarters in Amman.

“The teachers got their demands,” said Nasser Al Nawasrah, deputy head of the Jordanian Teachers Syndicate. He called on his organization’s 100,000 members to immediately resume teaching pupils in around 4,000 public schools that had been affected by the strike.

Many parents had kept their children at home out of solidarity with the striking teachers.

In many of the country’s rural areas and smaller cities, traditional heartlands of support for the monarchy, the strike also became a protest against successive governments’ failure to deliver on promises of economic growth.

Growing disenchantment among ordinary Jordanians over tough IMF austerity measures and high taxes spilled into large street protests in the summer of 2018 that railed against corruption and mismanagement of public funds.

Officials say Jordan can no longer afford to sustain a public sector in which salaries eat up much of the central government’s $13 billion budget in a country with some of the world’s highest government spending relative to its economy.

The debt is due, at least in part, to the adoption by successive governments of an expansionist fiscal policy marked by job creation in the public sector.
 

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Extra layers of security, intense on-screen action and a frightening incident inside a New York theater combined to create an unsettling experience for some moviegoers who went to see “Joker” on its opening weekend.

A young man who was loudly cheering and applauding on-screen murders sent some people heading toward exits in a crowded theater in Manhattan’s Times Square on Friday night. Other patrons yelled at the man, who spit on them as they left early, said Nathanael Hood, who was in the theater.

“I was scared. I’m sure a lot of other people were,” Hood said in an interview conducted by private messages.

Social media users posted photos of police, security sweeps and safety notices at theaters in California and Florida. And in Tennessee, a drive-in theater banned moviegoers from wearing costumes to a screening of the R-rated “Joker,” which scored an October box-office record with $13.3 million in earnings.

The Warner Bros. film, directed by Todd Phillips, presents the backstory of the man who becomes Batman’s classic foe. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, it probes the journey of a disturbed man with a penetrating laugh into a killer.

While Phillips has said he hopes the film inspires discussions about guns, violence and the treatment of people with mental illness, some feared the movie could inspire violence, particularly after a mass shooting killed 12 at a Colorado theater during a screening of another Batman movie in 2012.

Hood, who attended an afternoon viewing of “Joker” at AMC Empire 25 in Times Square, said a disruption began in the seats when the action on the screen grew intense.

“About halfway through when Joker started killing people and monologuing about how society is evil he started clapping really loudly and incessantly for a good minute. People started yelling for him to shut up, but he kept clapping and cheering like mad,” Hood said.

The man started clapping and cheering again “really loudly” during a climatic gunfight, he said, and got “belligerent” when people told him to quit.

“Finally security came and got him. He was still being interrogated outside the theater when we came out,” said Hood. Plenty of police were around the theater, he said.

Another moviegoer, Etai Benson, said the loud man was sitting beside him at the start of the movie and poured what appeared to be a full bottle of alcohol into a drink. The man’s behavior “combined with the carnage happening onscreen got people nervous,” he said.

“This was most likely a harmless drunk guy, but all the nervousness built around the film made what happened (Friday) night really unsettling,” Benson said in an interview conducted by private messages.

A spokesman for the Kansas-based AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., which operates AMC Theatres, did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The FBI told local police agencies to monitor potentially threatening online posts related to the film.
Photos posted on social media showed officers and a police dog outside a theater where “Joker” was being shown in Orlando, Florida, and a police SUV was parked on the sidewalk outside a cinema in suburban Birmingham, Alabama, during a screening.

In Bristol, Tennessee, the owner of the Twin City Drive-In Theater, Danny Warden, posted a warning on Facebook that anyone wearing a costume or mask to see “Joker” wouldn’t be allowed in, and anyone who smuggled in an outfit would be asked to leave. 

Warden told WJHL-TV that the decision was “common sense” after the film sparked concerns about its violent content. 

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Hundreds of climate activists barricaded themselves into a Paris shopping center Saturday as security forces tried to remove them, ahead of a planned series of protests around the world by the Extinction Rebellion movement.

Campaigners faced off against police and some inconvenienced shoppers as they occupied part of the Italie 2 mall in southeast Paris.

They unfurled banners with slogans like “Burn capitalism not petrol” above restaurants and the window displays fashion boutiques.

The protest comes ahead of planned disruption to 60 cities around the world from Monday in a fortnight of civil disobedience from Extinction Rebellion (XR), which is warning of an environmental “apocalypse.”

As the center tried to close in the evening, security forces ordered the protesters to leave the area, activists told AFP.

According to images broadcast on social networks, police then tried to enter the building, while protesters blocked entrances with tables and chairs.

“I am with XR to say stop this crazy system before it destroys everything,” one young woman told AFP, giving only her first name Lucie.

Other campaign groups also joined in with the Paris shopping center demonstration, including some members of the “yellow vest” anti-government protest group.

Non-violent protests are chiefly planned by XR from Monday in Europe, North America and Australia, but events are also set to take place in India, Buenos Aires, Cape Town and Wellington.

Another protest was held in Berlin Saturday, with campaigners setting up camp near the parliament building.

“To governments of the world: we declared a climate and ecological emergency. You did not do enough. To everybody else: rebel,” XR said on its website ahead of its International Rebellion wave of activism.

“You can’t count on us or Greta to do this for you,” it said, referring to teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. “Look inside yourself and rebel.”

Extinction Rebellion was established last year in Britain by academics and has become one of the world’s fastest-growing environmental movements.

Campaigners want the government to declare a climate and ecological emergency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025, halt biodiversity loss and be led by new “citizens’ assemblies on climate and ecological justice.”
 

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Hawaiian shirt day, doughnuts, shared sheet cake: There are a lot of ways to try to raise morale in the office. But Maxim Moskalkov visited some very special workspaces where workers know the best morale boost comes on four legs. 
 

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The town of Minden, West Virginia looks like many small American towns, yet it is unique in that it is one of the most toxic places in the United States. Here, between 1970s and mid-1980s, the Shaffer Equipment Company used harmful chemicals to build electrical equipment. Those chemicals have been banned since 1979, but traces still remain. Daria Dieguts went there to find out more and filed this report narrated by Anna Rice. 
 

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Mike Stura runs a 230 acre farm about an hour from New York City in the state of New Jersey. He isn’t really a farmer by trade, but he is a rescuer by choice and gives ailing animals a second chance. Anna Nelson visited Stura at Skylands Sanctuary, Anna Rice narrates the story. 
 

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A U.N. human rights expert has expressed concern over the working conditions of North Korean workers abroad in response to VOA’s report that uncovered North Korea’s illicit labor activities in Senegal.

“It’s quite revealing about this situation of the system that exists in North Korea regarding workers abroad,” Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said during an interview with VOA Korean Service Thursday.

Quintana said the VOA report reflects that “the system remains as it was conceived since the outset.” 

Human rights groups have often accused North Korea of sending its citizens to foreign countries for forced labor to sustain its economy since the inception of the regime.  The country is known to violate international labor practices when sending workers abroad, putting them to work under harsh conditions.

The VOA report revealed that approximately 30 North Korean workers were laboring under poor conditions at various construction sites in the Senegalese capital of Dakar in September. The North Koreans were doing construction work for private Senegalese companies such as Patisen in violation of international sanctions.

The workers were paid about $120 a month after having to remit a significant portion of their salary to the North Korean government, according to documents reviewed by VOA.  Typically, North Korean government takes approximately 70% of workers’ salaries.

The workers were subject to heavy surveillance by North Korean authorities while working and off duty.  They had limited communications with locals, internet access, and ability to travel, according to the VOA report.

Quintana said poor labor conditions of overseas North Korean workers are “the responsibility of North Korean government.” 

Quintana continued, “The best way to address this issue is to engage with those countries who hosted these workers and to engage those private actors and companies who also have a responsibility.”

The U.N. expert said he recognizes the importance of international sanctions placed on North Korea in an attempt to prevent the country from sending its workers abroad to earn hard currency that could be used for its nuclear weapons program.

At the same time, Quintana believes it is equally important to find ways to protect the rights of North Korean workers who want to work abroad and to create acceptable labor conditions.

Acknowledging that the North Korean system of overseas workers has shortcomings, Quintana said, “We also know that the families of these North Korean workers benefit a lot from the income, even the low income that they receive working abroad.

“So this is something we need to bear in mind when we address the issue of overseas workers,” he continued.

Quintana said he plans to reach out to Senegalese authorities and urge them to comply with basic labor standards.
   
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution in August 2017 banning member states from forming joint entities with North Korea in their territories and hiring North Korean workers, in an effort to curb North Korea’s nuclear weapons program 

A month later, the Security Council passed another resolution asking members to close any existing North Korean entities in their territories.  Then in December of that year, the council urged members to return all North Korean workers home by December 2019. 

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The flu season has started in the Northern Hemisphere. Although it’s still very early in the season, two deaths have been reported. One was a child, the other an adult with a chronic illness, but seemingly healthy people can also die from the flu.

Those most likely to die from the flu are the very young and the very old. But seemingly healthy people die as well.

Jen Ludwin was one of those seemingly healthy people when she caught the virus. She was young — 23 years old with no underlying conditions.

“I figured, ‘You know what, I’ll spend seven days in bed and just fight it off and I’d be OK.’ But I was totally wrong,” she said.

Ludwin’s organs to begin to fail.

“I was already in septic shock, and that my organs were starting to fail,” she said. “On top of that I had ARDS, which is a respiratory distress syndrome, and then DIC, which caused me to bleed internally and clot in my extremities. And all of those complications together led to gangrene in my limbs, and so I became an amputee.”

Researchers Think They Know Why Some Flu Patients Get Heart Problems video player.

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Dr. Eric Adkins at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center says when a virus attacks the body, it’s like an all-out war.

“The body’s response to infection is basically a big inflammatory response that can cause all kinds of problems in the various organs,” he said.

A clue in a protein

It’s a mystery why otherwise healthy people have severe complications from the flu. But researchers at Ohio State University College of Medicine uncovered a clue. Jacob Yount specializes in the study of microbial infection at Ohio State. He says the researchers found a link between a heart complication as a result of getting the flu and a protein that’s critical to fighting it.

“We make this protein and it inhibits viruses from entering our cells,” he said.

But, Yount says, some people have a genetic mutation that blocks the production of that protein, and without it, the flu is more likely to infect the heart and lead to heart failure.

“It can actually block the electrical current that’s traveling through the heart,” he said.

The study found that the mice without this gene were more likely to have heart complications after being infected with the flu virus. Adkins says this finding may help doctors care for flu patients in the future.

“If you know that they’re missing the gene ahead of time, then you may tailor your medical therapy differently,” he said.

Millions affected

The researchers say that millions of people worldwide are likely to have this genetic mutation, including about one-fifth of those of Chinese descent.

Now that scientists understand what might be causing the problem, they are searching for treatments that might prevent or reverse these heart complications in the future. Right now, though, the best protection is getting a flu shot
 

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Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi promised to listen to people’s grievances in a televised address after three days of deadly protest in Baghdad and several other cities. Hundreds of protesters rallied in the capital for a third consecutive day Thursday, defying a curfew, to call for jobs, improved services and an end to widespread corruption. About 30 people have been killed so far and hundreds others have been injured in clashes between the police and protesters. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the authorities authorities have extended a curfew in several southern cities as the death toll rises.
 

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By the late 19th century, slavery was over, but the American South was still rife with discrimination and injustice for rural African American sharecroppers.

“They could only shop at one store, the country store, where prices were high,” says Louis Hyman, an economic historian and assistant professor at Cornell University.

“It often was the case that the landlord also owned the store, and their lives were ruled by credit. They basically could only shop at that store because their accounts would not be reconciled until the cotton crop came in. Because of that, they didn’t really have cash, and they really didn’t have an alternative way to get credit.”

Enter Sears, the department store chain founded by Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck in 1893, which had a catalog that offered black sharecroppers an alternative. Sears let customers buy on credit, which gave African Americans the option to bypass the local country store, where black customers had to wait until the white customers were served.

“They couldn’t buy the same clothes as white people. They couldn’t buy the same food as white people…This was part of the sort of everyday white supremacy of Jim Crow,” Hyman says. “And so, the Sears catalog allowed them a way to buy clothes that were nicer than were available in that country store, to buy food that the white people ate… It offered them a choice where they didn’t have to feel second-class in their shopping lives.”

The Jim Crow laws, which were in effect from the 1880s to the 1960s, were state and local mandates that enforced racial segregation in the American South. The most common types of these laws outlawed intermarriage and required businesses and public institutions to separate their black and white patrons.

Sears, the department store founder, was not motivated by social justice. As a businessman, he was in it for the money. Once Sears realized that African Americans were using the catalog to avoid discrimination at the hands of white supremacists, he took steps to make sure they could continue to shop the catalog. 

Sears set up systems that gave black patrons the option to go directly to the postal carrier, completely bypassing the country store, which in some cases, was also the post office. 

Rumors spread that Sears and Roebuck were black, presumably to convince white shoppers that they shouldn’t shop at Sears. Sears and Roebuck published pictures to prove they were white.

“It’s easy to think of Jim Crow as just taking away the vote from African Americans, but it was part of an everyday kind of experience of difference that legitimates a kind of hierarchy,” Hyman says, adding that African Americans have always had a less equal access to the market.

“This is what racial segregation is all about. You see that today. Where are the food deserts? In cities. Why don’t black people have access to the same kinds of stores that white suburbanites do? And a lot of the experience of black people is an experience of monopoly, not being able to get to a bank, having to rely on a check-cashing place, not being able to get to that slightly better-paying job because they’re isolated in terms of transportation or neighborhood.”

Last October, Hyman tweeted about the Sears catalog’s role in battling white supremacy. The thread went viral on Twitter and was seen by millions. Actor LeVar Burton was among those who retweeted it. 

“I think the reason it connected with people is that people still shop while black, they still get trailed through stores,” Hyman says. “We still have this daily experience of not being welcome and being forced to feel second-class.”  

Hyman says it’s not a coincidence that the Sears catalog began to decline after the end of the Jim Crow era. Some on the Twitter thread suggested that Amazon shopping can play a similar role for African American customers today as the Sears catalog did more than a century ago.

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On a recent day in a remodeled brick church in the Rio Grande Valley, a caregiver tried to soothe a toddler, offering him a sippy cup. The adult knew next to nothing about the little 3-year-old whose few baby words appeared to be Portuguese. Shelter staff had tried desperately to find his family, calling the Brazilian consulate and searching Facebook.

Nearby, infants in strollers were rolled through the building, pushed by workers in bright blue shirts lettered “CHS,” short for Comprehensive Health Services, Inc., the private, for-profit company paid by the U.S. government to hold some of the smallest migrant children.

Sheltering migrant children has become a growing business for the Florida-based government contractor. More than 50 babies, toddlers and teens were closely watched on this day inside this clean, well-lit shelter surrounded by chain link fences.

A joint investigation by The Associated Press and FRONTLINE has found that the Trump administration has started shifting some of the caretaking of migrant children from mostly religious-based nonprofits to private, for-profit contractors.

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Editor’s  Note: This story is part of an ongoing joint investigation between The Associated Press and the PBS series FRONTLINE on the treatment of migrant children, which includes an upcoming film.

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So far, the only private company caring for migrant children is CHS, owned by beltway contractor Caliburn International Corp. In June, CHS held more than 20% of all migrant children in government custody. And even as the number of children has declined, the company’s federal funding for their care has continued to flow. That’s partly because CHS is still staffing a large Florida facility with 2,000 workers even though the last children left in August.

Trump administration officials say CHS is keeping the Florida shelter on standby and that they’re focused on the quality of care contractors can provide, not about who profits from the work.

“It’s not something that sits with me morally as a problem,” said Jonathan Hayes, director of the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. “We’re not paying them more just because they’re for-profit.”

Asked about AP and FRONTLINE’s investigation during a White House visit Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar pushed back and said the findings were “misleading.” But he did not address the government’s ongoing privatization of the care for migrant children.

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly joined Caliburn’s board this spring after stepping down from decades of government service; he joined the Trump administration as secretary of Homeland Security, where he backed the idea of taking children from their parents at the border, saying it would discourage people from trying to immigrate or seek asylum.

Critics say this means Kelly now stands to financially benefit from a policy he helped create.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said the retired general told him first-hand that he believed enforcing a “zero tolerance” policy would serve as a deterrent.

“What’s really the motivator, the deterrence or the dollar?” said Acevedo, who signed an Aug. 14, 2019, letter with dozens of law enforcement leaders asking Trump to minimize the detention of children. “I would question that if he’s getting one dollar for that association.”

Kelly did not respond to requests for comment. But in a statement, Caliburn’s President Jim Van Dusen said: “With four decades of military and humanitarian leadership, in-depth understanding of international affairs and knowledge of current economic drivers around the world, General Kelly is a strong strategic addition to our team.”

Earlier this year after leaving government, Kelly was widely criticized by activists who spotted him in a golf cart at Homestead. The facility was at least temporarily shut down in August after numerous lawmakers said holding that many children in a single facility was abusive.

Meanwhile, CHS was getting more business housing migrant children. Today it’s operating six shelters including three “tender age” shelters that can house the youngest, infants and toddlers, in the Rio Grande Valley. And the company has plans underway to run another 500 bed shelter in El Paso, the company said.

Melissa Aguilar, the executive director of CHS’s shelter care programs, said they’re not separating children, they’re caring for children.

“We’re doing the best that we possibly can,” she said. “The children are borrowed. They’re borrowed for our purpose, right? So a lot of times when something is borrowed, you take care of them better than you would something that is your own.”

Overall, the federal government spent a record $3.5 billion caring for migrant children over the past two years to run its shelters through both contracts and grants.

During that time, CHS rapidly moved into the business of caring for migrant children, an AP analysis of federal data found. In 2015, the company was paid $1.3 million in contracts to shelter migrant children, and so far this year the company has received almost $300 million in contracts to care for migrant kids, according to publicly available data. The company also operates some shelters under government grants.

So far this fiscal year, ORR funded 46 organizations running more than 165 shelters and foster programs to care for over 67,000 migrant children either separated from their parents or caregivers at the border, or who came to the U.S. on their own.

The Obama administration also grappled with how to handle large numbers of children crossing the border. In fiscal year 2014, some 68,000 migrant kids were apprehended at the border, as compared to 72,000 this year, but Obama’s head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Gil Kerlikowske said five years ago they were quickly reunited, almost always with their families or other sponsors.

The numbers of children in shelters grew under Trump in part because of new requirements to screen every adult in a potential home significantly slowed reunifications.

Confidential government data obtained by the AP shows that in June about one in four migrant children in government care was housed by CHS. That included more than 2,300 teens at Homestead, Florida, and more than 500 kids in shelters in southern Texas.

Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, who until recently helped run adult custody programs at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said some former ICE staffers now at HHS have brought the agency the concept of privatizing migrant child detention. He said it mirrors a similar shift that occurred with ICE’s adult immigration detention centers, where populations soared after immigrants were moved from county jails and into for-profit, private facilities.

After 18 years of government service, he recently quit in frustration about the agency’s actions including the treatment of migrant children. He went to work for nonprofit Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services which places migrant children in foster homes.

“These aren’t commodities,” he said. “This isn’t Amazon.com. You can’t just order up migrant care.”

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Groups of women had traveled for days to find care for their starving children in Chad, blankly staring in exhaustion and with little hope. But other women smiled, relieved to see their children “fattened” by a new and simplified initiative for hunger.

In an interview with The Associated Press, actress Mia Farrow recounted the scene during her visit to the Central African nation’s Mangalme area as an envoy for the International Rescue Committee.

“Once you see a child dying of hunger in a world where it isn’t necessary, in a world of abundance … you have frustration,” she said. “When I saw this simple solution … I said yes, there is an answer.”

She is promoting the IRC’s approach to treating severe and moderate acute malnutrition, one that contrasts with the widespread method using two different products administered by two different agencies.

UNICEF provides a fortified peanut butter treatment to children with severe acute malnutrition, while the World Food Program, another United Nations agency, provides a blended flours treatment to children with moderate acute malnutrition. A child with moderate acute malnutrition could arrive at a facility that only serves severe cases and not receive treatment.

Efficiency, cost

In Chad, about 350,000 children are suffering from acute malnutrition. That number could grow as the landlocked Sahel nation faces a growing extremist threat in its Lake Chad region and refugees continue to arrive from neighboring countries. Rapid desertification exacerbates the hunger and poverty.

Chad ranks 186th of 189 countries in the 2018 Human Development Index and has one of the world’s highest levels of hunger, according to the World Food Program. More than 66% of the population of 15.5 million lives in severe poverty.

The IRC hopes to make treating malnutrition more efficient and less costly. CEO David Miliband has said the new approach could save millions of lives over the next decade since only 20% of some 50 million acutely malnourished children worldwide have access to treatment.

The IRC hopes its pilot programs in Chad and Mali can help inform World Health Organization guidelines on treating malnutrition and allow health workers to deliver the treatments within communities and not just at clinics.

“We don’t have to watch children die,” Farrow said.

‘Promising’ approach

World Food Program spokesman Herve Verhoosel said the agency “fully supports testing and building the evidence for simplified approaches such as the one being put forward by IRC. The approach shows promise, and we’re enthusiastic about it as one of the strategies that may help improve treatment of acute malnutrition.”

Malnutrition is a major cause of maternal and child illness and death in Chad, he said. He acknowledged that in remote settings some women and children may walk for hours or days to a clinic only to find treatment for one type of malnutrition available — and could be turned away if they don’t fit the criteria.

“Simplified protocols could provide a promising solution to these issues,” he said. For them to be effective, “we need to ensure that these services are also available in communities, not just in health clinics.”

He noted that some evidence gaps remain on the effectiveness of the approach but said U.N. agencies are working with the IRC to generate needed data.

The IRC pilot in Chad is being carried out in partnership with Chad’s health ministry, WFP and UNICEF. Nearly 2,000 malnourished children already have been admitted.
 

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