KIGALI, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Domestic resource mobilization will be critical in the coming years for Rwanda and other countries to ensure sufficient and sustainable funding to sustain the gains toward ending AIDS by 2030, a UN official has said.

Hind Hassan, UNAIDS country representative for Rwanda, was speaking during an event Thursday in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, to mark this year's World AIDS Day, which falls on Friday.

GENEVA, Dec 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Climate change is making the fight against malaria even harder, with the campaign already struggling to make up ground lost during the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization warned.

“The changing climate poses a substantial risk to progress against malaria, particularly in vulnerable regions,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as the WHO published its World Malaria Report.

BANGKOK (AP) — About two weeks into a major offensive against Myanmar’s military-run government by an alliance of three well-armed militias of ethnic minorities, an army captain, fighting in a jungle area near the northeastern border with China, lamented that he’d never seen such intense action.

His commander in Myanmar’s 99th Light Infantry Division had been killed in fighting in Shan state the week before and the 35-year-old career soldier said army outposts were in disarray and being hit from all sides.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Anthony Fauci, former chief White House medical adviser, is expected to testify before Congress early next year as part of Republicans’ yearslong investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and the U.S. response to the disease.

Fauci, who served as the nation’s top infectious disease expert before retiring last year, will sit for transcribed interviews in early January and a public hearing at a later date. It will be his first appearance before the Republican-controlled House.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Pressure to phase out fossil fuels mounted Thursday on the oil company chief who took over fragile international climate negotiations that opened in Dubai amid concerns about what some say is contradictory dual roles.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway says the billionaire Haslam family tried to bribe at least 15 executives at the Pilot truck stop chain with millions of dollars to get them to inflate the company’s profits this year because that would force Berkshire to pay more for the Haslams’ remaining 20% stake in the company.

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York appeals court Thursday reinstated a gag order that barred Donald Trump from commenting about court personnel after he continually disparaged a law clerk in his New York civil fraud trial.

The one-sentence decision from a four-judge panel came two weeks after an individual appellate judge had put the order on hold while the appeals process played out.

Trial judge Arthur Engoron, who imposed the gag order, said he now planned to enforce it “rigorously and vigorously.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Someone in China created thousands of fake social media accounts designed to appear to be from Americans and used them to spread polarizing political content in an apparent effort to divide the U.S. ahead of next year’s elections, Meta said Thursday.

The network of nearly 4,800 fake accounts was attempting to build an audience when it was identified and eliminated by the tech company, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The accounts sported fake photos, names and locations as a way to appear like everyday American Facebook users weighing in on political issues.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.N. weather agency said Thursday that 2023 is all but certain to be the hottest year on record, and warning of worrying trends that suggest increasing floods, forest fires, glacier melt, and heat waves in the future.

The World Meteorological Organization also warned that the average temperature for the year is up some 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial times – a mere one-tenth of a degree under a target limit for the end of the century as laid out by the Paris climate accord in 2015.

LONDON (AP) — Saudi Arabia will extend a cut in the amount of oil it sends to the world after a series of previous reductions by members of the OPEC+ alliance of major producing countries failed to prop up prices.

That’s been a good thing for U.S. drivers, who have been able to fill their gas tanks for less money in recent months. But it’s bad news for OPEC+ countries whose oil income bolsters their economies and who have faced setbacks in pushing prices higher despite initial fears that the Israel-Hamas war could affect oil flows.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A defiant Rep. George Santos is refusing to resign and warned on Thursday that his expulsion from Congress before being convicted in a court of law would establish a precedent that “is going to be the undoing of a lot of members of this body.”

The first-term Republican congressman from New York could well become just the sixth member of the House to have been expelled by colleagues. Republicans and Democrats have offered resolutions to remove him, and the House is expected to vote on one of them Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal watchdog will investigate how the Biden administration chose a site for a new FBI headquarters following a contentious competition marked by allegations of conflict of interest.

The Inspector General for the General Services Administration is probing the decision to locate the facility in Greenbelt, Maryland, over a site in Virginia., according to a letter released Thursday by Virginia lawmakers. The new building would replace the FBI’s crumbling headquarters in nearby Washington, D.C.