Month: May 2026

The talks are focused on a system intended to ensure countries quickly share pathogens that could cause pandemics while receiving fair access to vaccines, tests and treatments that result from their use, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

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Known as the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) annex, it governs how countries share data and samples of pathogens that pose public health risks and seeks to ensure equitable access to vaccines and treatments.

Without agreement on PABS, the pandemic accord, which is intended to help the world respond more effectively to future pandemics in the wake of COVID-19, cannot come into effect.

The World Health Assembly adopted the Pandemic Agreement in May 2025 to strengthen global prevention, preparedness and response to future pandemics.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said progress had been made but urged countries to keep working with urgency, saying the next pandemic was “a matter of when, not if.”

The outcome will be presented to the World Health Assembly later in May. The assembly will be asked to allow negotiations to continue, with any agreement to be submitted to the next assembly in May 2027 or earlier at a special session in 2026.

Member states agreed to set aside this section when adopting the main treaty last year after negotiations proved contentious.

The post Pathogen-sharing conflict causes WHO to delay pandemic treaty​ appeared first on azeritimes.com.

Prosecutors said Venezuela’s state-run oil company hired Rivera’s consulting firm for a $50m (£37m) fee to lobby members of Congress to help improve US relations with Venezuela, News.Az reports, citing BBC.

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The six-week trial saw testimony from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a friend of Rivera’s, as well as Texas Congressman Pete Sessions, both of whom said they had no idea of Rivera’s lobbying.

Defense lawyers had said the lobbying was for a US subsidiary of the oil company, not the Venezuelan government.

Rivera, who served in Congress from 2011 to 2013, was ordered to be detained after prosecutors argued he posed a flight risk. He showed little emotion when the verdict was read, according to US media outlets.

Jurors also convicted Rivera’s associate, political consultant Esther Nuhfer.

Federal prosecutors in Florida said Rivera and Nuhfer engaged in a “secret political influence campaign”, receiving a $50m contract for three months of work on behalf of a US-based subsidiary of Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA, which is also known as Citgo.

“As long as the money kept coming in, they didn’t care from where,” prosecutor Roger Cruz said of the defendants during closing arguments.

Prosecutors alleged that, in 2017 and 2018, at the behest of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, Rivera and Nuhfer attempted to lobby Rubio – then still a senator and former housemate of Rivera’s – as well as Kellyanne Conway, a prominent former White House advisor.

The lobbying came as relations between the two countries were tense during President Donald Trump’s first administration, when he imposed sanctions on Venezuela.

Defense lawyers for Rivera and Nuhfer argued that the pair did not need to register as foreign agents because their contract was with a US-based subsidiary of a Venezuelan state company.

An attorney for Rivera also said that his client was actually focused on trying to oust Maduro rather than improve US-Venezuela ties.

“He was working every possible angle to get Nicolás Maduro out,” defense attorney Ed Shohat said during closing arguments, according to the Associated Press. “There was not a word in the chats about normalizing relations.”

In January, Trump launched a military strike in Venezuela leading to the capture of Maduro, who is awaiting trial alongside his wife in New York on drug-related charges.

Rubio, who was not implicated in the wrongdoing, testified during the trial that he was close friends with Rivera but was unaware he was working as a lobbyist.

“He’s someone I’ve known for a long time,” Rubio told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, in an interview before the trial. “We’ve worked closely together but not on this, and there’s not a single person claiming otherwise.”

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The Kremlin is reportedly trying to strike a deal with the Trump administration that would see a relaxation of U.S. sanctions on Russia, with Moscow offering the prospect of a ceasefire in Ukraine as leverage, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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According to reporting by RBC-Ukraine, which cites a well-informed source within the Ukrainian government, one possible scenario is that a temporary truce could be used as a pretext for the partial lifting of sanctions.
The reported proposal involves a short-term cessation of hostilities-perhaps lasting for a week-during which the Russian side expects the U.S. to remove some restrictions.
“America would get headlines about calm on the front lines, while Putin would gain partial sanction relief and substantial financial benefits,” the source told RBC-Ukraine.
The source emphasized there would be no meaningful security guarantees for Ukraine under such an arrangement and noted the Ukrainian government finds this scenario unacceptable.
These alleged discussions are linked to U.S. domestic politics, particularly the upcoming Congressional elections, according to the source.
As a precedent, the source pointed to Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko reportedly promised to release some political prisoners in exchange for a gradual easing of U.S. sanctions, but failed to implement real political changes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an interview with Bloomberg, has previously suggested that such scenarios might be possible. Zelensky stated that Russia might propose a ceasefire in exchange for lifting restrictions on select companies or restoring Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT system.

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After the account setup process completes, the shared mailbox will display in your account list in Outlook for iOS or Outlook for Android. To remove a shared mailbox, go to Settings > Accounts. Then tap on the shared mailbox and select Delete Account.

A presentation of the feature film “Taghiyev: School” took place on May 1 at the Heydar Aliyev Center, AzerNEWS reports.

Zohran Mamdani and the Armenian stress test  The Armenian Weekly