As the World Health Organization convenes its emergency committee Thursday to consider if the spiraling outbreak of monkeypox warrants being declared a global emergency, some experts say WHO's decision to act only after the disease spilled into the West could entrench the grotesque inequities that arose between rich and poor countries during the coronavirus pandemic.

Declaring monkeypox to be a global emergency would mean the U.N. health agency considers the outbreak to be an "extraordinary event" and that the disease is at risk of spreading across even more borders. It would also give monkeypox the same distinction as the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio.

The number of new coronavirus cases rose in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe last week, while the number of deaths globally dropped by 16%, according to the World Health Organization's latest weekly pandemic report.

The WHO said there were 3.3 million new COVID-19 infections last week, marking a 4% decrease, with more than 7,500 deaths. But cases jumped by about 45% in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and by about 6% in Europe. Southeast Asia was the only region to report a slight 4% increase in deaths, while figures fell elsewhere. Globally, the number of new COVID-19 cases has ben falling after peaking in January.

Hazmat-suited workers poke plastic swabs down millions of throats in China each day, leaving bins bursting with medical waste that has become the environmental and economic levy of a zero-Covid strategy.

Lebanon's Health Ministry said Monday authorities have detected the country's first case of monkeypox in a person who returned from abroad and is now isolating at home.

The ministry said the person is stable and that authorities are tracking the person's contacts. It did not provide further details.

North Korea reported a new "epidemic" of an intestinal disease on Thursday, an unusual announcement from the secretive country that is already contending with a COVID-19 outbreak and severe economic turmoil.

It's unclear how many people are infected in what the official Korean Central News Agency said was "an acute enteric epidemic" in southwestern Haeju city.

The WHO said Tuesday it would hold an emergency meeting on June 23 to determine whether to classify the global monkeypox outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern.

"The outbreak of monkeypox is unusual and concerning. For that reason I have decided to convene the Emergency Committee under the international health regulations next week, to assess whether this outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern," World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists.

Microscopic air pollution caused mostly by burning fossil fuels shortens lives worldwide by more than two years, researchers reported Tuesday. 

China's capital has put school back online in one of its major districts amid a new COVID-19 outbreak linked to a nightclub, while life has yet to return to normal in Shanghai despite the lifting of a more than two-month-long lockdown.

China has stuck to its "zero-COVID" policy requiring mass testing, quarantines and the sequestering of anyone who has come into contact with an infected person in concentrated locations where hygiene is generally poor.

Japan on Friday eased its borders for foreign tourists and began accepting visa applications, but only for those on guided package tours who are willing to follow mask-wearing and other antivirus measures as the country cautiously tries to balance business and infection worries.

Friday is the first day to start procedures needed for the entry and arrivals are not expected until late June at the earliest, even though airport immigration and quarantine offices stood by for any possible arrivals.

A study documenting at least 22,000 Israeli overflights in Lebanon’s skies over the past 15 years has revealed the “huge scale and impact of Israeli incursions over Lebanon” as well as the “psychological effect on the country,” British newspaper The Guardian reported on Thursday.