New York, United States - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria raised $14.25 billion at a donor conference led by US President Joe Biden, as decades of progress against the diseases are set back by Covid.

It was the highest amount ever pledged for a multilateral health organization -- but fell far short of the ambitious goal of $18 billion after the United Kingdom and Italy said their announcements would come later.

The Global Fund was created in 2002, bringing together governments, multilateral agencies, civil society groups and the private sector. Funding cycles last three years.

"What's happened today is actually an unparalleled mobilization of resources for global health," said Global Fund executive director Peter Sands, adding he expected Britain and Italy to make their pledges in due course.

"Thank you all for stepping up, especially in a challenging global economic environment, and I ask you, keep it going," urged Biden.

Among countries, the United States pledged the highest amount, $6 billion, followed by France with 1.6 billion euros, 1.3 billion euros by Germany, $1.08 billion by Japan, Can$1.21 billion by Canada and 715 million Euros by the European Union.

The Gates Foundation pledged $912 million.

The $18-billion goal was based on getting back on track to end AIDS, TB and malaria by 2030, recovering ground lost during the Covid pandemic and saving 20 million lives over the next three years.

The target was 30 percent more than that raised during the organization's sixth and most recent replenishment, hosted by President Emmanuel Macron of France in 2019, which raised a then-record $14 billion.

Camille Spire, president of the French non-profit AIDES, told AFP that when the UK and Italy make their pledges, the sum would still be unlikely to reach the original goal.

"While some are counting their pennies, some are counting the dead," she said, adding she was "angry" and the outcome would mean fewer screening campaigns than had been hoped for, fewer treatments, less funding for community health centers and less strengthening of health systems.

There was also criticism within the UK. Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy tweeted the delay in pledging "will slow the fight against AIDS, TB and malaria and damage the UK's national interest."

- Signs of recovery -

The fund estimates it has reduced the death toll from AIDS, TB, and malaria by 50 percent, saving more than 50 million lives over the past two decades.

Last year, it warned that the Covid pandemic was having a devastating impact on its work, leading to declining results across the board for the first time in its history.

It said in its latest report, however, that the massive resources it had pumped into countering the downturn had paid off and "recovery is underway" against all three diseases.

The Global Fund provides 30 percent of all international financing for HIV programs, 76 percent of funding for TB, and 63 percent of funding for malaria.

Its other areas of focus include improving the resilience of local health systems, and raising funds against Covid-19.

According to US law, the country cannot provide more than one-third of funding for the Global Fund -- a limit that serves as a matching challenge to other nations to double the American pledge.

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Over the decades Mori's luxurious creations were worn by Nancy Reagan, Grace Kelly and countless members of high society.

But she was also a pioneer for Japanese women, one of a tiny number to head an international corporation.

An employee at Mori's office said Thursday that she died at home "of old age" on August 11, and that a private funeral had taken place.

The designer's trailblazing career took her from Tokyo, where she started out making costumes for cinema, to New York and Paris -- and in 1977 her label became the first Asian fashion house to join the rarefied ranks of haute couture.

The exclusive French club sets exacting standards for their hand-crafted, and extremely expensive, garments.

"When humans work with their hands, their creativity expands," Mori told AFP during a 2006 retrospective in Tokyo, where a robot modelled a replica of her classic "Chrysanthemum Pyjamas" -- a kimono-like robe made from hot-pink chiffon and silk.

In January, the designer summed up her feelings toward the industry in a special column for Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun daily.

"Fashion is something that pushes you, gives you courage to spread your wings and allows you to have adventures," she said.

- Encounter with Chanel -

Born in 1926 in a rural corner of western Japan, Mori studied literature at Tokyo Women's Christian University before turning her hand to design.

She opened her first atelier above a noodle shop in Tokyo, and came to specialise in dressing the stars of the silver screen.

As Japan's postwar economy grew, so did her business, which she ran with her husband -- a textile executive who encouraged her to visit Paris and New York when the arrival of television made the film industry less profitable.

"This was a kind of turning point for me," she once said of the trips in the early 1960s, during which she met Coco Chanel in Paris.

It turned out to be an inspirational encounter.

When she stepped into Chanel's studio the iconic designer suggested she wear something in bright orange to contrast with her black hair.

Taken aback, it got Mori thinking.

"The whole Japanese concept of beauty is based on concealment... I suddenly realised that I should change my approach and make my dresses help a woman stand out," she said, according to the Washington Post.

- 'East Meets West' -

In 1965, Mori unveiled her first collection abroad, in New York, under the theme "East Meets West".

Her designs combined traditional patterns like cranes and cherry blossoms -- and her trademark butterflies -- with Western styles, from woollen suits to sharp satin tailoring.

Mori moved her brand from Tokyo to Paris in the late 1970s and was quickly embraced by fashion insiders.

She saw a distinction between herself and her Japanese peers who later made a global name for themselves -- such as Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons fame.

"The young Japanese designers who live in Paris are passionately avant-garde," she told the Washington Post. "I am not. I love to follow the traditional way."

Mori built her brand into a business empire, which in its heyday occupied a whole building in Tokyo designed by the architect Kenzo Tange -- later torn down and replaced with another structure at typical Japanese speed.

From the loss of the building to the retirement of her fashion house from haute couture, "not everything was positive", she reflected in her Yomiuri column.

"It was like my butterfly wings were torn off. But this butterfly was able to fly all over the world for 70 years, because I loved making clothes."

- 'Wanted to be different' -

Mori designed the gown worn by princess Masako -- now empress -- at her 1993 wedding, as well as uniforms for Japan Airlines flight attendants.

And in 1985, she created stage costumes for, appropriately, "Madame Butterfly" performed at La Scala in Milan.

But with growing losses in the early 2000s, her empire was largely sold off and she shuttered her Paris atelier in 2004 after her last couture show there.

Hanae Mori boutiques remain open in Tokyo and her fragrances are still sold worldwide.

As a powerful businesswoman, Mori was a rarity in Japan, where boardrooms are still heavily male-dominated.

Speaking of her early married life, she once remarked that she was never invited out with her husband's friends.

At that time "Japan was a gentlemen's country", she said, but "I wanted to be different".

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The ursine intruder successfully navigated the handle on the outside of the door -- possibly in a hunt for food -- but seemingly couldn't work out how to open it again from the inside.

"It was there from a little after eleven at night to almost seven in the morning," Mike Pilati told KTVQ in Red Lodge, Montana.

"Every once in a while you'd hear a crunch. I thought it had a garbage can it was chomping on or something. But it was my car it was crunching up," Pilati said.

Pilati and his wife, Maria, called the local sheriff to report the bear break-in, and were told that wildlife officials would be out the following day.

But Pilati needed to get things moving a bit quicker, so early the next morning he gingerly opened the car door with a stick from the safety of a building.

"I reached through that side door there and reached out and popped the door of the car, and the bear came roaring out," he said.

Footage shows the black bear jumping out of the car before scampering off to find her young cubs, who were nearby.

Having got rid of their unwanted guest, the Pilatis went to inspect the damage -- a shattered windshield, a chewed dashboard, a mangled passenger door and a whole lot of smell.

"Bears are stinky creatures," Mike Pilati told the broadcaster.

While the Subaru car -- a brand favored by outdoorsy types -- is no longer in pristine condition, Maria Pilati says the couple have still found reason to smile.

"Now we call a Su-bear-ru," she said.

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"The Book of Five Rings" was written in 1645 by the master Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, and when Prochazka was handed a copy about eight years ago he finally found the focus to "become a warrior" after a wildly misspent youth.

"You have to look into yourself, and you have to follow the rules -- be honest, be brave, be calm in hard situations," said the 29-year-old Prochazka, of what he has learned from the book and from the "Bushido" Samurai code of discipline that it encourages.

Prochazka became the UFC's first Czech world champion after a thrilling back-and-forth battle with Brazilian light heavyweight Glover Teixeira that went deep into the fifth and final round in Singapore in June.

A battered Prochazka seemed on the verge of defeat to Teixeira, but somehow drew on reserves of strength to apply a choke hold and force the Brazilian veteran into submission.

"Some people say my style is unpredictable," Prochazka told AFP.

"But I'm not doing unpredictable things. I am calm and I just look for the space for attack -- where is the weak point of my opponent -- and I attack."

- Spartan surroundings -

Prochazka was speaking via video phone call from a remote cottage in a forest retreat 30 minutes drive away from his birthplace in the southern Czech city of Brno.

His spartan surroundings, Prochazka explained, are so he can be alone with his training. The cottage has electricity but no running water, forcing Prochazka to take daily trips to a well.

Prochazka pointed his phone outside the cottage to show the Dojo, or fight ring, he has carved out of the forest floor and the gym equipment frames he has fashioned from local timber.

"You have to find the way that is best for you and this is what's best for me," said Prochazka, whose hair is styled in the "chonmage" top-knot favoured by Japan's ancient Samurai warriors.

"I meditate, and I train, and I live the life I want to be living."

- 'Never stop learning' -

The sense of calm and purpose wasn't always with Prochazka.

As a teenager he fell in with the local Ultras -- football hooligan gangs -- supporting FC Zbrojovka Brno and fought in more than 100 street battles with rival fans.

"It was a part of my life and without that there would be no me like I am today," said Prochazka of his youth. "I had to be that guy to become the guy I am now."

At 17, Prochazka discovered Muay Thai kickboxing at a local gym and that he could fight legally.

After winning a national title at 19 he turned to MMA as the sport began to grow in global popularity.

Prochazka's talent led him to Japan with the Rizin Fighting Federation where he was advised by a coach to read Musashi and the history of the ways of the Samurai.

Prochazka started winning in Japan and his life turned around. A Rizin MMA title was followed by a call from the Las Vegas-based Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2020.

Two straight knockout wins gave him the chance to face the 42-year-old Teixeira for the world title at UFC 275 in Singapore and Prochazka grabbed it.

Back in his cottage, recovering from a knuckle break suffered against Teixeira, Prochazka was plotting the next phase of his career and a possible rematch with the Brazilian.

"I am still going forward," said Prochazka.

"In our lives we all have to fight at some time, in different ways. So I am still learning and I think we should never stop learning."

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Paris, France - Italian Samantha Cristoforetti became the first European woman astronaut to embark on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station o, NASA footage showed.

Cristoforetti was joined by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev on the spacewalk which began just before 1500 GMT, with the pair expected to spend around six and half hours more than 400 kilometres (248 miles) above Earth.

Among their tasks is work on a Europe-made robotic arm which just a week ago became embroiled in tensions between Russia and the West over Moscow's war in Ukraine.

Early last week the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin, furious at the European Space Agency's decision to cut ties with Moscow on a Mars rover mission, told cosmonauts on the ISS to stop using the European Robotic Arm.

But President Vladimir Putin dismissed Rogozin as Roscosmos chief, and hours later Washington and Moscow said they would renew flights together to the ISS.

On Thursday, the spacewalkers will continue work on setting up the robotic arm, which was installed a few months ago after being launched into orbit in July 2021 following numerous delays.

The 11-metre long robot, which looks like a pair of compasses, is one of three such robots on the ISS, but it is the only one that can reach the station's Russian segment.

Once fully set-up, the arm will perform numerous tasks mostly on the Russian segment, and can be controlled from inside or outside the space station, or even from back on Earth.

Thursday was the third spacewalk that involved work on the arm.

The pair will also carry out work on the Russian Nauka laboratory module.

It was Artemyev's sixth spacewalk, but his first not alongside a fellow Russian.

Cristoforetti, a 45-year-old European Space Agency astronaut and former Italian air force pilot, arrived for her second tour on the ISS in April.

She holds the record for the longest stay in space by a woman after spending 199 days in orbit in 2014 and 2015.

The ISS space station has long symbolised closer ties between Russia and the US in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Now it remains one of the last areas of cooperation between Russia and the West, which has imposed sanctions over Moscow's war in Ukraine.

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Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - A futuristic Saudi megacity is to feature two skyscrapers extending across a swathe of desert and mountain terrain, according to the latest disclosures on the project by the kingdom's de facto ruler.

The parallel structures of mirror-encased skyscrapers extending over 170 kilometres (more than 100 miles), known collectively as The Line, form the heart of the Red Sea megacity NEOM, a plank of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's bid to diversify the Gulf state's oil-dependent economy.

First announced in 2017, NEOM has consistently raised eyebrows for proposed flourishes like flying taxis and robot maids, even as architects and economists have questioned its feasibility.

In a presentation Monday night, Prince Mohammed sketched out an even more ambitious vision, describing a car-free utopia that would become the planet's most liveable city "by far".

Analysts noted, though, that plans for NEOM have changed course over the years, fuelling doubts about whether The Line will ever become reality.

NEOM was once touted as a regional "Silicon Valley", a biotech and digital hub spread over 26,500 square kilometres (10,000 square miles).

Now it's a vehicle for reimagining urban life on a footprint of just 34 square kilometres, and addressing what Prince Mohammed describes as "liveability and environmental crises".

"The concept has morphed so much from its early conception that it's sometimes hard to determine its direction: scaling down, scaling up, or making an aggressive turn sideways," said Robert Mogielnicki of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

- Population boom -

Officials had earlier said NEOM's population would top one million, but Prince Mohammed said the number would actually hit 1.2 million by 2030 before climbing to nine million by 2045.

The eye-popping total is part of a hoped-for nationwide population boom that Prince Mohammed said would be necessary to make Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest crude exporter, an economic powerhouse.

The goal for 2030 is to have 50 million people -- half Saudis and half foreigners -- living in the kingdom, up from roughly 34 million today.

By 2040 the target is 100 million people, he said.

"That's the main purpose of building NEOM, to raise the capacity of Saudi Arabia, get more citizens and more people in Saudi Arabia. And since we are doing it from nothing, why should we copy normal cities?"

The site will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy and feature "a year-round temperate micro-climate with natural ventilation", a promotional video released Monday said.

Past environmental pledges by the kingdom, such as a vow to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2060, have sparked scepticism from environmentalists.

NEOM is well-positioned to harness solar and wind energy, and plans are also afoot for the city to host the world's largest green hydrogen plant, said Torbjorn Soltvedt of risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft.

"But the feasibility of NEOM as a whole is still unclear given the unprecedented scale and cost of the project," he said.

- Finding funds -

At just 200 metres (yards) wide, The Line is intended to be Saudi Arabia's answer to unchecked and wasteful urban sprawl, layering homes, schools and parks on top of each other in what planners term "Zero Gravity Urbanism".

Residents will have "all daily needs" reachable within a five-minute walk, while also having access to other perks like outdoor skiing facilities and "a high-speed rail with an end-to-end transit of 20 minutes", according to a statement.

Though NEOM will operate under its own founding law, which is still being prepared, Saudi officials say they have no plans to waive the kingdom's alcohol ban.

An airport is already operational at NEOM, and authorities announced in May it would begin receiving regular flights from Dubai, but it is unclear whether major construction of the megacity itself has commenced.

NEOM said Tuesday it would create 380,000 jobs by the end of the decade "whilst providing the ultimate work-life balance".

The "first phase" of the project, lasting until 2030, will cost 1.2 trillion Saudi riyals (roughly $319 billion), Prince Mohammed said.

Besides government subsidies, potential sources of funding include the private sector and an initial public offering for NEOM expected in 2024, he said.

Securing the necessary financing remains a potential challenge, though the current climate is more favourable than during the coronavirus pandemic that lowered oil prices.

"But funding is only part of the equation... demand is harder to buy, especially when you're asking people to be part of an experiment on living and working in the future," Mogielnicki said.

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