Rio city hall announced it would open 10 treatment centres for people with dengue.
Daniel Soranz, the city’s health secretary, said the aim was to reduce the number of serious cases and deaths caused by the infection. “Early treatment makes all the difference,” he said.
Health officials have also urged people to prevent being bitten by mosquitos by applying repellent.
Brazil’s Health Minister Nísia Trindade has urged people to make sure they check their homes and get rid of any stagnant water, where the mosquitos which transmit dengue breed.
Fumigators are spraying some of the worst affected areas and public health announcements will be made at the Sambadrome, the venue where Rio’s famous samba schools parade in front of judges to be crowned winner of this year’s Carnival parade. https://merujaksore.com/
Queen Camilla has been the most senior royal still in action, carrying out a series of solo events last week, including in London, Bath and Cambridge.
Before the King came to the throne there had been talk of “slimming down” the Royal Family, but the current challenge is the shrinking number available for public events and an increasingly ageing group of working royals.
Prince William and Catherine are the only working royals below the age of 50.
Apart from her presence on royal visits, in media terms Catherine has been an important public face of the Royal Family, regularly appearing on front pages.
The two engagements for Prince William are close to home – at Windsor Castle and in central London – as his wife recuperates in Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor estate.
The nature of Catherine’s condition was not revealed but it was serious enough to mean she will be recovering away from public duties until after Easter.
The palace previously said it was not cancer related.
Prince William visited his wife at the central London hospital and she was visited by the King before he had his own treatment there. https://merujaksore.com/
The monarch, who left hospital on the same day as the princess, is yet to return to official duties but did attend church in Norfolk on Sunday.
King Charles is thought to have wanted to share the news of his treatment in the hope of encouraging other men to get themselves checked.
NHS England said the “enlarged prostate” page on the NHS website received one visit every five seconds on the day his diagnosis was announced, an interest welcomed by doctors and charities.
The White House blamed the drone attack on an Iran-backed militia group.
The US and UK also launched a new round of joint strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday.
Iran’s foreign ministry said the strikes on Iraq and Syria “will have no result other than intensifying tensions and instability in the region”.
Earlier, Iraq said the US retaliatory strikes would bring “disastrous consequences” for the region.
At least 16 people, including civilians, were killed as a result of the strikes, Iraqi officials said.
A spokesman for Iraq’s prime minister said the strikes were a “violation” of his country’s sovereignty and that they would impact “the security and stability of Iraq and the region”.
While Syria said the US “occupation” of Syrian territory “cannot continue”.
According to a US military statement, the US struck Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and affiliated militias in Iraq and Syria.
Several US aircraft were involved, including long-range bombers that flew over from the US.
Seven locations were hit – four in Syria and three in Iraq – with more than 85 targets being struck, the US military said.
There have been no strikes on Iranian soil.
Since Friday’s US strikes in Iraq and Syria, there has been one attack on American forces, a US defence official told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.
The attack in question targeted US forces based at the Mission Support Site Euphrates in Syria using rockets, but no injuries were reported.
President Joe Biden said the US attacks “will continue at times and places of our choosing” but added his country “does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world”.
The strikes come after three US troops were killed and dozens injured in a drone attack on a US base near Jordan’s border with Syria.
The militant organisation – an umbrella group of multiple militias – is believed to have been armed, funded and trained by the IRGC.
Iran has denied any role in the attack on the US base, saying it was “not involved in the decision making of resistance groups”.
A spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry said US strikes on Iraq, Syria and Yemen “merely provide for the goals of the Zionist regime”, referring to US ally Israel.
Russia has called for an “urgent” meeting of the UN Security Council “over the threat to peace and safety created by US strikes on Syria and Iraq”, Moscow’s diplomat at the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said on social media.
Russia – a permanent council member – has become a close ally of Iran.
Watch: Ros Atkins explains Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’
The US attacks came several hours after Mr Biden attended a repatriation ceremony for William Rivers, 46, Kennedy Sanders, 24, and Breonna Moffett, 23, who died in the attack last weekend.
More than 40 other service members were injured in the same drone attack, which struck the US Tower 22 base. https://merujaksore.com/
US Republicans criticised the timing of the retaliatory strikes, saying that the US had waited too long to strike back. American officials said any hold up was due to cloudy weather obstructing targets.
The strikes had been expected for several days, and in the interim, the Biden administration began to face questions and criticism from Republicans about the timing and forcefulness of the US response.
But foreign policy experts believed the approach allowed Iran to withdraw personnel, potentially avoiding a wider conflict between the US and Iran.
“This would allow them to degrade the capacity of these Iranian-backed militias to attack US forces, but not escalate,” Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East, told the BBC. “Although it is likely not going to be a deterrent to future attacks.”
The ultimate benefit, he said, would be “to avoid a direct war” between the US and Iran.
The US struck the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and affiliated militias in Iraq and Syria, at seven sites in total. Bombers hit 85 individual targets, according to US defence officials.
“Let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: If you harm an American, we will respond,” President Joe Biden said.
US officials have blamed an Iranian-backed militia group, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, for the Jordan attack. The organisation – an umbrella group of multiple militias – is believed to have been armed, funded and trained by Iran.
Watch: Ros Atkins explains Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’
Iran has denied any involvement in the drone strike, which also injured 41 US troops.
Defence and security officials said that weather had made it difficult to retaliate sooner, with Friday presenting the best conditions for launching strikes.
Arabian Gulf States Institute of Washington fellow Hussein Ibish, said the delay appeared to be the US signalling “what they’re not going to do, which is strike inside Iran”.
Mr Mulroy told the BBC it is possible that the US allowed Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel “to leave the facilities that are going to be struck”.
Experts noted the US must walk a fine line between deterring a country like Iran without igniting a greater conflict.
“Telegraphing” the strikes could allow the US to adopt a “Goldilocks” approach to the operation that is “not too hard and not too soft”, said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Washington DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
That approach “would inflict pain on our adversaries so they stop attacking our forces, but not so much that they feel a need for a massive escalation, thereby avoiding a regional war”.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Friday that Washington won’t “telegraph future operations” but confirmed “there will be additional response action taken in coming days”.
Image caption,More than 100 US troops were injured during Iranian missile attacks on US bases in 2020.
However, Republicans in Congress have been quick to condemn Mr Biden’s approach for being too lenient on Iran.
Speaker Mike Johnson, the most powerful Republican in Congress, said after the attacks that “public handwringing and excessive signalling undercuts our ability to put a decisive end to the barrage of attacks endured over the past few months”.
In a post on X, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas called Mr Biden’s response “anaemic” and claimed “it has only emboldened the ayatollahs further.” https://merujaksore.com/
“Only further, more devastating attacks against Iranian forces will scare the ayatollahs,” he wrote.
Senator Markwayne Mullin invoked the more aggressive actions of past Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, as a contrast to Mr Biden’s plan of attack.
“Deterrence isn’t delayed half-measures,” he wrote on X. “Deterrence is taking the head off the snake.”
But Mr Ibish noted that the Biden administration may be trying to avoid domestic political pitfalls that would come with the US getting dragged into a more serious conflict.
“If they did strike in Iran, the Republican standard bearers like Donald Trump would denounce Biden for being a warmonger,” he said. “It’s a political trap. Everybody gets that, so they’re not going to fall into that trap.”
The “transatlantic statement”, a copy of which was passed to the BBC, says their administrations risk being complicit in “one of the worst human catastrophes of this century” but that their expert advice has been sidelined.
It is the latest sign of significant levels of dissent within the governments of some of Israel’s key Western allies.
One signatory to the statement, a US government official with more than 25 years’ national security experience, told the BBC of the “continued dismissal” of their concerns.
“The voices of those who understand the region and the dynamics were not listened to,” said the official.
“What’s really different here is we’re not failing to prevent something, we’re actively complicit. That is fundamentally different from any other situation I can recall,” added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The statement is signed by civil servants from the US, the EU and 11 European countries including the UK, France and Germany.
It says Israel has shown “no boundaries” in its military operations in Gaza, “which has resulted in tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths; and… the deliberate blocking of aid… putting thousands of civilians at risk of starvation and slow death.”
“There is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide,” it said.
The identities of those who signed or endorsed the statement have not been made public and the BBC has not seen a list of names, but understands that nearly half are officials who each have at least a decade of experience in government.
One retired US ambassador told the BBC that the coordination by dissenting civil servants in multiple governments was unprecedented.
“It’s unique in my experience watching foreign policy in the last 40 years,” said Robert Ford, a former American ambassador to Algeria and Syria.
Watch: Biden’s support for Israel has lost him votes among Arab Americans
He likened it to concerns within the US administration in 2003 over faulty intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq, but said this time many officials with reservations did not want to remain silent.
“[Then there were] people who knew better, who knew that intelligence was being cherry-picked, who knew that there wasn’t a plan for the day after, but nobody said anything publicly. And that turned out to be a serious problem,” he said.
“The problems with the Gaza war are so serious and the implications are so serious that they feel compelled to go public,” he said.
The officials argue the current nature of their governments’ military, political or diplomatic support for Israel “without real conditions or accountability” not only risks further Palestinian deaths, but also endangers the lives of hostages held by Hamas, as well as Israel’s own security and regional stability.
“Israel’s military operations have disregarded all important counterterrorism expertise gained since 9/11… the [military] operation has not contributed to Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas and has instead strengthened the appeal of Hamas, Hezbollah and other negative actors”.
The officials say they have expressed their professional concerns internally but have been “overruled by political and ideological considerations”.
One senior British official who has endorsed the statement told the BBC of “growing disquiet” among civil servants.
The official referred to the fallout from last week’s preliminary ruling by the UN’s International Court of Justice in a case brought by South Africa which required Israel to do all it can to prevent acts of genocide.
“The dismissal of South Africa’s case as ‘unhelpful’ by our Foreign Secretary puts [the international rules-based] order in peril.”
“We have heard ministers dismiss allegations against the Israeli Government seemingly without having received proper and well-evidenced legal advice. Our current approach does not appear to be in the best interests of the UK, the region or the global order,” said the official who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
In response to the statement, the UK Foreign Office said it wanted to see an end to the fighting in Gaza as soon as possible.
The European Union Commission said it was “looking into” the statement. The US State Department has been approached for comment.
The statement suggests that while Israel’s military operation has caused unprecedented destruction of lives and property in Gaza, there appears to be no workable strategy to effectively remove Hamas as a threat, nor for a political solution to ensure Israel’s security in the longer term.
It calls for the US and European governments to “stop asserting to the public that there is a strategic and defensible rationale behind the Israeli operation”.
Israeli officials have consistently rejected such criticism. In response to the new statement, the Israeli embassy in London said it was bound by international law.
It added: “Israel continues to act against a genocidal terrorist organisation which commits war crimes as well as crimes against humanity.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that only full military pressure on Hamas will secure the further release of hostages, while the army says it has destroyed significant underground infrastructure used by the group, including command centres, weapons sites and facilities for holding hostages.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said: “Throughout [the city of] Khan Yunis, we have eliminated over 2,000 terrorists above and below ground.”
Israel has repeatedly rejected claims it deliberately targets civilians, accusing Hamas of hiding in and around civilian infrastructure.
Since the start of the war, more than 26,750 Palestinians have been killed and at least 65,000 injured, according to health officials in the Gaza Strip, which has been governed by Hamas and blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007.
Israeli officials say that 9,000 of those killed were Hamas militants but have not provided evidence for the figure. More than 1,200 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas attacks of October 7th, and a further 100 died of their injuries according to Israeli officials. More than 250 people were taken as hostages into Gaza.
The US administration has repeatedly said that “far too many Palestinians have been killed” in Gaza, and that Israel has the right to ensure October. https://merujaksore.com/
The movie received eight Oscar nominations, including for best picture, best supporting actor and best supporting actress.
Fans, though, were dismayed she was overlooked for her title role.
But Robbie, who is also one of the movie’s producers, said on Wednesday she was not sad.
Speaking in a SAG-AFTRA discussion with co-stars, the Australian actress and producer said: “There’s no way to feel sad when you know you’re this blessed.”
She said the mission of the movie was to “affect culture” and that is the “biggest reward” that has come out of the film’s success, Variety reported.
Robbie suggested she was more upset about Barbie director Greta Gerwig not receiving an Academy Award nomination for directing. Gerwig has been nominated for best adapted screenplay.
The blockbuster raked in $1.38bn (£1.1bn) at the box office globally, proving industry expert predictions wrong that the Super Mario Bros Movie would be the biggest film of 2023.
The best supporting actor and actress nominees from the film, Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera, both expressed disappointment that the two women were not nominated.
“To say that I’m disappointed that they are not nominated in their respective categories would be an understatement,” Gosling said last week, adding that “there is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie.”
Barbie received nominations for best original song, best costume and best production design, as well.
“Everyone getting the nods that they’ve had is just incredible, and the best picture nod,” Robbie added.
“We set out to do something that would shift culture, affect culture, just make some sort of impact. And it’s already done that and some, way more than we ever dreamed it would. And that is truly the biggest reward that could come out of all of this.” https://merujaksore.com/
Detailed before-and-after imagery also shows how the bombardment of southern and central Gaza has intensified since the start of December, with the city of Khan Younis bearing much of the brunt of Israel’s military action.
Israel has repeatedly told Gazans to move south for their own safety.
Across Gaza, residential areas have been left ruined, previously busy shopping streets reduced to rubble, universities destroyed and farmlands churned up, with tent cities springing up on the southern border to house many thousands of people left homeless.
About 1.7 million people – more than 80% of Gaza’s population – are displaced, with nearly half crammed in the far southern end of the strip, according to the United Nations.
Further analysis, by BBC Verify, reveals the scale of destruction of farmland, identifying multiple areas of extensive damage.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said it is targeting both Hamas fighters and “terror infrastructure”, when challenged over the scale of damage.
Now, satellite data analysis obtained by the BBC shows the true extent of the destruction. The analysis suggests between 144,000 and 175,000 buildings across the whole Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed. That’s between 50% and 61% of Gaza’s buildings.
The analysis, carried out by Corey Scher of City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University, compares images to reveal sudden changes in the height or structure of buildings which indicate damage.
Al-Farra Tower – a 16-storey residential block in the centre of the city, the tallest building in the area – was flattened on 9 January as can be seen in before-and-after images of the city’s skyline. Much of the neighbourhood in which it sits has been levelled by Israeli attacks since late December.
“Israeli forces targeted residential complexes, especially in the downtown Khan Younis area,” said Rawan Qaddah, a 20-year-old resident, who has been displaced and has lost contact with her family.
She named schools among the many buildings which had been damaged. Some were now being used to house displaced people temporarily.
Watch: Drone footage shows the extent of destruction in Khan Younis, Maghazi and Rafah
You can clearly see the level of damage from street level. Once bustling high streets have been left derelict or destroyed.
These images show the front of the Shawarma Sanabel restaurant before Israel’s invasion, and how the same junction looked in a composite image from January after intense bombardment of the area.
The IDF has repeatedly justified its actions by noting that Hamas deliberately embeds itself in civilian areas and explained destruction of buildings in the light of targeting fighters. But questions have been asked about destruction of buildings seemingly firmly in the control of the IDF.
One example was the Israa University, in northern Gaza – initially badly damaged shortly before being blown up completely in what looked like a massive controlled explosion. The video was widely shared on social media and the IDF says the approval process for the blast is now being investigated.
Many of Gaza’s historic sites have suffered extensive damage, including the al-Omari Mosque originally built in the 7th Century.
Mr Scher, one of the academics who worked on the Gaza damage assessment, said it stands out compared with other war zones he’s analysed.
“We’ve done work over Ukraine, we’ve also looked at Aleppo and other cities, but the extent and the pace of damage is remarkable. I’ve never seen this much damage appear so quickly.”
Destruction to Gaza’s farmlands
Further analysis, carried out by BBC Verify, shows large areas of previously cultivated land across Gaza have been extensively damaged.
As you can see from the satellite image below, several parts of Gaza show the effects of Israeli incursions and bombardment.
Although Gaza was heavily dependent on imports before the start of the war, a lot of its food came from farming and food production inside the strip. Aid agencies say half of Gaza’s population is now facing starvation.
BBC Arabic spoke to one farmer, Saeed, who fled south from Beit Lahia, in the north of Gaza, in mid-November.
The 33-year-old grew guava, figs, lemons, oranges, mint, and basil and earned about $6,000 (£5,535) from these crops every year – the only source of income for him, his father and his sister. He had tended to the farm, inherited from his grandparents, for 15 years.
But days after fleeing, he says he was told by a relative that the farm had been destroyed by the IDF, along with five surrounding homes which belonged to his relatives.
In the north and centre of Gaza, where most agriculture took place before the war, large areas of land appear ruined. In many places the damage corresponds with the construction of temporary Israeli defences, earth banks to protect armoured vehicles, and the clearing of surrounding land.
Some farmers have lost their crops even though their land was not directly hit, the BBC understands.
Mohamed al-Messaddar, a farmer from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, has only been able to go to his farm once since the beginning of the war.
Arriving during the truce in November, oranges were scattered, rotting on the ground. “The date of harvesting oranges coincided with the beginning of the war. No one would have dared to go there.”
He says he lost more than 90% of his orange crop.
Beyond the pattern of land affected by bulldozing of roads and building of defences, there have been allegations of deliberate destruction levelled at the IDF.
In a video posted online on 4 November, Col Yogev Bar-Shesht, deputy head of the Civil Administration, said in an interview from inside Gaza: “Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”
The IDF told us it had found Hamas tunnel entrances and rocket launch sites in various agricultural areas, adding that “operational needs require that these places be destroyed or attacked”.
“Environmental damage may be caused as a result of fighting and exchanges of fire.”
Aid experts fear that the damage to Gaza’s agriculture will be lasting.
Previous conflicts such as those in Syria and Ukraine have shown rehabilitating farmlands can be extremely difficult.
Unexploded weapons make it dangerous for farmers to return and work. There’s also the challenge of cleaning contaminated lands, and rebuilding infrastructure such as water, energy and transport systems.
City of tents emerges
The final pronounced change in Gaza that can be seen from the air is the proliferation of tents and other temporary structures to house displaced people in the south.
Areas of new tents that have sprung up between the start of December and middle of January close to the Egyptian border covered roughly 3.5 sq km, equivalent to nearly 500 Premier League football pitches.
Amy is pacing up and down in a hotel room in Leipzig. “I’m scared, really scared,” she says, fidgeting nervously. “I haven’t slept all week. This is my chance to finally get some answers about what happened to us.”
Her twin sister, Ano, sits in an armchair, watching TikTok videos on her phone. “This is the woman that could have sold us,” she says, rolling her eyes.
Ano admits she is nervous too, but only because she doesn’t know how she will react and if she will be able to control her anger.
It’s the end of a long journey. They have travelled from Georgia to Germany, in the hope of finding the missing piece of the puzzle. They are finally meeting their birth mother.
For the past two years they have been building a picture of what happened. As they unravelled the truth, they realised there were tens of thousands of other people in Georgia who had also been taken from hospitals as babies and sold over the decades. Despite official attempts to investigate what happened, nobody has been held to account yet.
The story of how Amy and Ano discovered each other starts when they were 12.
Amy Khvitia was at her godmother’s house near the Black Sea watching her favourite TV programme, Georgia’s Got Talent. There was a girl dancing the jive who looked exactly like her. Not just like her, in fact, identical.
Image caption,Amy (L) aged 12 and Ano (R) also aged 12 during her performance on Georgia’s Got Talent
“Everyone was calling my mum and asking: ‘Why is Amy dancing under another name?'” she says.
Amy mentioned it to her family but they brushed it off. “Everyone has a doppelganger,” her mother said.
Seven years later, in November 2021, Amy posted a video of herself with blue hair getting her eyebrow pierced on TikTok.
Two hundred miles (320km) away in Tbilisi, another 19-year-old, Ano Sartania, was sent the video by a friend. She thought it was “cool that she looks like me”.
Amy instantly knew Ano was the girl she had seen all those years ago on Georgia’s Got Talent.
“I have been looking for you for so long!” she messaged. “Me too,” replied Ano.
Image caption,Amy Khvitia, here aged four, says she always had the feeling that something wasn’t right in her life
Over the next few days, they discovered they had a lot in common, but not all of it made sense.
They were both born in Kirtskhi maternity hospital – which no longer exists – in western Georgia but, according to their birth certificates, their birthdays were a couple of weeks apart.
They couldn’t be sisters, much less twins. But there were too many similarities.
They liked the same music, they both loved dancing and even had the same hairstyle. They discovered they had the same genetic disease, a bone disorder called dysplasia.
It felt like they were unravelling a mystery together. “Every time I learned something new about Ano, things got stranger,” says Amy.
They arranged to meet and a week later, as Amy approached the top of the escalator at Rustaveli metro station in Tbilisi, she and Ano saw each other in the flesh for the very first time.
“It was like looking in a mirror, the exact same face, exact same voice. I am her and she is me,” says Amy. She knew then that they were twins.
“I don’t like hugs, but I hugged her,” says Ano.
Image caption,Ano (L) and Amy (R) met for the first time at Rustaveli metro station – they have often chosen similar hairstyles
They decided to confront their families and for the first time they learned the truth. They had been adopted, separately, a few weeks apart in 2002. https://merujaksore.com/
Amy was upset and felt her whole life had been a lie. Dressed head to toe in black she looks tough, but she fiddles with her studded choker nervously and wipes a mascara-stained tear away from her cheek. “It’s a crazy story,” she says. “But it’s true.”
Ano was “angry and upset with my family, but I just wanted the difficult conversations to be over so that we could all move on”.
Digging deeper, the twins found the details on their official birth certificates, including the date they were born, were wrong.
Unable to have children, Amy’s mother says a friend told her there was an unwanted baby at the local hospital. She would need to pay the doctors but she could take her home and raise her as her own.
Ano’s mother was told the same story.
Neither of the adoptive families knew the girls were twins and despite paying a lot of money to adopt their daughters, they say they hadn’t realised it was illegal. Georgia was going through a period of turmoil and as hospital staff were involved they thought it was legitimate.
Neither family would reveal how much money was exchanged.
The twins couldn’t help wondering if their biological parents had sold them for profit.
Image caption,Tamuna Museridze set up a Facebook group to help people searching for their biological children, siblings and parents
Amy wanted to search for their birth mother to find out, but Ano wasn’t sure. “Why do you want to meet the person that could have betrayed us?” she asked.
Amy found a Facebook group dedicated to reuniting Georgian families with children suspected to have been illegally adopted at birth and she shared their story.
A young woman in Germany replied, saying her mother had given birth to twin girls in Kirtskhi Maternity Hospital in 2002 and that despite being told they had died, she now had some doubts.
DNA tests revealed that the girl from the Facebook group was their sister, and was living with their birth mother, Aza, in Germany.
Amy was desperate to meet Aza, but Ano was more sceptical. “This is the person who could have sold you, she’s not going to tell you the truth,” she warned. Even so she agreed to go to Germany with Amy to support her.
The Facebook group the twins had used, Vedzeb, means “I’m searching” in Georgian. It has countless posts from mothers who say hospital staff told them their babies had died, but later discovered the deaths weren’t recorded and their children could still be alive.
Other posts are from children like Amy and Ano, looking for their birth parents.
The group has more than 230,000 members and, along with access to DNA websites, has blown wide open a dark chapter in Georgia’s history.
It was set up by journalist Tamuna Museridze in 2021 after she discovered she was adopted. She found her birth certificate with incorrect details when she was clearing out her late mother’s house.
She started the group to search for her own family, but the group has ended up exposing a baby trafficking scandal affecting tens of thousands of people, and spanning decades.
Image caption,The now derelict Gurjaani maternity hospital is one of at least 20 implicated in the sale of babies
She has helped to reunite hundreds of families, but has not yet tracked down her own.
Tamuna discovered a black market in adoption that stretched across Georgia and went on from the early 1970s to 2006.
She believes it was run by organised criminals and involved people from all sections of society, from taxi drivers to people high up in the government. Corrupt officials would fake the documents needed for the illegal adoptions.
“The scale is unimaginable, up to 100,000 babies were stolen. It was systemic,” she says.
Tamuna explains that she calculated this figure by counting the number of people who have contacted her and combining that with the time frame and the nationwide spread of cases.
With a lack of access to documents – some have been lost and others aren’t being released – it is impossible to verify the exact figure.
Tamuna says many parents told her that when they asked to see the bodies of their dead babies they were told they had already been buried in the hospital grounds. She has since learned that cemeteries at Georgian hospitals never existed. In other cases parents would be shown dead babies who had been frozen in the mortuary.
Image caption,Irina Otarashvili gave birth to twins in 1978 – she was told they had died but now thinks she was lied to
Tamuna says it was expensive to buy a child, about 1,000 maneti ($1,400; £1,100) for a girl and 1,500 maneti ($2,100; £1,600) for a boy – about a year’s salary in Georgia. She discovered that some children ended up with foreign families in the US, Canada, Cyprus, Russia and Ukraine.
In 2006 Georgia changed its adoption legislation and strengthened anti-trafficking laws, making illegal adoptions more difficult.
Another person looking for answers is Irina Otarashvili. She gave birth to twin boys in a maternity hospital in Kvareli, in the foothills of Georgia’s Caucasus mountains in 1978.
The doctors told her both boys were healthy but, for reasons that were never explained, they were kept away from her.
Three days after they were born, she was told they had both suddenly died. A doctor said they had respiratory problems.
Irina and her husband couldn’t make sense of it, but especially in Soviet times “you didn’t question authority” she says. She believed everything they said.
Image caption,Irina’s daughter Nino Elizbarashvili says she often thought about the suitcase buried in the garden
They were asked to bring a suitcase to take the infants’ remains away and to bury it in a cemetery or their back garden, as was common for babies at the time. The doctor told them never to open the case as it would be too upsetting to see the bodies.
Irina did as she was told, but 44 years later her daughter Nino found Tamuna’s Facebook group and grew suspicious.
“What if our brothers didn’t really die?” she wondered. Nino and her sister Nana decided to dig up the suitcase.
“My heart was racing,” she says. “When we opened it there were no bones, just sticks. We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
She says local police confirmed the contents were branches from a grape vine and there was no trace of human remains.
She now believes her long-lost brothers could still be alive.
Image caption,The family say that local police confirmed the sticks in the suitcase were vine branches
In the hotel in Leipzig, Amy and Ano prepare to meet their birth mother. Ano says she’s changed her mind and wants to back out. But it’s a momentary wobble and, taking a deep breath, she decides to go ahead.
Their biological mother, Aza, waits nervously in another room.
Amy opens the door hesitantly and Ano follows, almost pushing her sister into the room.
Aza lunges forward and embraces them tightly, one twin on each side. Minutes pass and locked in embrace, no-one speaks.
Image caption,Ano (L), Aza (C) and Amy (R) meet for the first time in Leipzig, Germany where Aza now lives
Tears stream down Amy’s face but Ano remains stoic and unwavering. She even looks a little irritated.
The three of them sit down to talk in private.
Later, the twins say that their mother explained she had been ill after giving birth and fell into a coma. When she awoke, hospital staff told her that shortly after the babies were born, they had died.
She said that meeting Amy and Ano has given her life new meaning. Although they are not close, they are still in touch.
In 2022, the Georgian government launched an investigation into historic child trafficking. It told the BBC it has spoken to more than 40 people but the cases were “very old and historic data has been lost”. Journalist Tamuna Museridze says she has shared information but the government hasn’t said when it will release its report.
It has made at least four attempts to get to the bottom of what happened. These include an investigation in 2003 into international child trafficking which led to a number of arrests but little information has been made public. And in 2015, after another investigation, Georgian media reported that the general director of the Rustavi maternity hospital, Aleksandre Baravkovi, was arrested but cleared and returned to work.
The BBC approached the Georgian Interior Ministry for further information on individual cases but we were told that specific details would not be released due to data protection.
Tamuna has now joined forces with human rights lawyer Lia Mukhashavria to take the cases of a group of victims to the Georgian courts. They want the right to access their birth documents – something not currently possible under Georgian law.
They hope that this will help lay ghosts to rest. “I always felt like there was something or someone missing in my life,” says Ano. “I used to dream about a little girl in black who would follow me around and ask me about my day.” That feeling disappeared when she found Amy.
Both sides are in FA Cup fourth-round action this weekend, with Fulham hosting Newcastle on Saturday and Liverpool at home to Norwich on Sunday.
Chelsea booked their place at Wembley on Tuesday with a 6-1 win over Championship club Middlesbrough, who won the first leg 1-0.
Liverpool get the job done
Despite some good Fulham play, Liverpool were looking comfortable until the 75th minute and could have led by more – but got over the line despite a nervy finale.
Liverpool are into a record 14th League Cup final and only 90 minutes away from getting back to lifting silverware after a trophyless 2022-23.
Klopp has built an excellent new-look team, and the Premier League leaders’ hopes of a domestic treble go on. They have only lost once domestically all season, at Tottenham in the Premier League on 30 September.
They have strength in depth too, making 191 changes to their starting 11 in all competitions this season, 56 more than any other Premier League club.
Diaz’s early strike settled any immediate nerves and Liverpool had several chances to put the tie to bed, with Darwin Nunez going close on several occasions.
Colombia’s Diaz had the ball in the net a second time but the goal was ruled out with Nunez flagged offside. https://merujaksore.com/
Andy Robertson was an unused substitute as the Liverpool left-back was involved in a squad for the first time since injuring a shoulder in October.
It was a big night for Fulham, bidding to reach the final of this competition for the first time. Fans were given flags to wave as the players came out and there was a feeling it could be a special night at Craven Cottage.
Andreas Pereira went desperately close when he hit the post from a tight angle after Tosin Adarabioyo had beaten Kelleher to the ball with his head.
When substitute Wilson picked out Diop, who nudged the ball home with his thigh for his first goal since October 2022, it gave the hosts renewed hope.
But in the end they failed to create a clear-cut chance to send the game to an extra 30 minutes.
“I felt like they were much calmer than us and to them it was just another game,” said Silva.
“With most of our players it is new to them to play in a semi-final of this competition.
“I think the club is going to grow in these type of moments, and the players as well
Such abandoned buildings are often left without basic services such as water and electricity or fire safety measures – and are sometimes “hijacked” or taken over by criminals who make demands on residents.
The City of Johannesburg owned the Usindiso building and on Monday, Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda said 188 “bad” buildings were being investigated, with 134 of them in the inner city.
The public inquiry into the disaster is taking evidence on the fire and the wider issue of unsafe buildings and is due to report later this year. https://merujaksore.com/
Shortly after the fire President Cyril Ramaphosa said it had been a “wake up call” for South Africa and the city of Johannesburg had to get to grips with issues around housing and services in Johannesburg’s inner city.
South Africa faces a chronic housing shortage, with an estimated 15,000 people believed to be homeless in Johannesburg.
