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Bill Gates says he has COVID, experiencing mild symptoms
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said Tuesday he has tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms.
Via Twitter, the billionaire philanthropist said he will isolate until he is again healthy.
“I’m fortunate to be vaccinated and boosted and have access to testing and great medical care,” Gates wrote.
Read: Biden sees bigger role for US farms due to Ukraine war
The Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the most influential private foundation in the world, with an endowment of about $65 billion.
Bill Gates has been a vocal proponent for pandemic mitigation measures, specifically access to vaccines and medication for poorer countries. The Gates Foundation in October said it will spend $120 million to boost access to generic versions of drugmaker Merck’s antiviral COVID-19 pill for lower-income countries.
Slain photographer in Afghanistan among Pulitzer winners
A Reuters photographer who was killed while covering fighting in Afghanistan was part of a team that took home the Pulitzer for feature photography.
Danish Siddiqui and his colleagues Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo and Amit Dave won for images depicting the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
Also read: Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian photojournalist killed in Afghanistan
Their work, which was moved from the breaking photography category by the judges, “balanced intimacy and devastation, while offering viewers a heightened sense of place,” the committee wrote.
Siddiqui, 38, had been embedded with Afghan special forces in July and was killed as the commando unit battled for control of a crossing on the border between southern Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Also read: Teen who recorded Floyd s arrest, death wins Pulitzer nod
Saudi king admitted to hospital for medical tests
Saudi Arabia’s octogenarian monarch underwent medical tests on Sunday, state-run media reported, just weeks after he had the battery of his pacemaker changed.
The report in the official Saudi Press Agency did not provide further details about King Salman’s condition or the nature of the medical examinations. It said that the king, 86, was admitted to King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the Saudi port city of Jiddah.
The monarch’s health is closely watched because he holds absolute power in the kingdom.
King Salman ascended to the throne in 2015 and has appointed his 36-year-old son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as his successor. However, he has also already empowered Prince Mohammed to lead day-to-day affairs.
Since his elevation to power, Prince Mohammed has upended the kingdom with dizzying social reforms, sidelined royal rivals and cracked down on perceived opponents, sparking controversy.
Earlier this year, state media reported that King Salman was hospitalized in Riyadh to have the battery of his heart pacemaker replaced. In 2020, he had surgery to remove his gallbladder after a stint in the hospital that revived speculation about the state of his health.
Also read: Saudi King Salman's elder brother, Prince Bandar, dies at 96
Covid 'pushes back' democracy in Africa, Ukraine war raises risks
Already reeling from Covid-19, the Ukraine war has introduced new risks likely to wallop Africa, according to UN development experts.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine will affect food security on the continent, both through the availability and prices of imported food, along with rising uncertainties in global financial markets and supply chains.
Russia and Ukraine, the world's breadbasket, are major players in the export of wheat and sunflower to Africa.
Between them, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan and South Africa, account for 80 percent of all wheat imports, which are projected to reach 76.5 million tonnes by 2025.
UNDP's senior Africa economist Raymond Gilpin said the continent's dependence on imports of food, fuel, medicines and consumer goods made it particularly vulnerable to rising global inflation.
Describing the situation as an "unprecedented crisis for the continent," he said Africa is facing a trifecta of "ongoing effects of Covid, newly felt effects of the Russia-Ukraine war, and climate-related challenges."
Also Read: Global Covid cases near 517 million
"As the cost of fuel becomes more expensive, energy sources, energy prices, don't fall in African countries, we are going to see millions of households going back to unsustainable energy sources in many fragile environments," Raymond said.
"We are going to see a lot more deforestation and a rollback of a significant progress that had been made in the greening of the Sahel."
Also, tensions would likely rise, with a "distinct possibility" of spilling over into violent protests, he added.
The Covid pandemic had already created "immense discontent" across the continent, said Ahunna Eziakonwa, director of the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) Africa bureau, Friday.
Covid has pushed tens of millions of people into poverty and "pushed back" democracy in parts of Africa, she added.
The pandemic has also complicated efforts to overcome insecurity and violence, the UNDP regional director continued, referring to the violent extremism and climate shocks that have destabilised vast areas of the Sahel region in recent years.
Drawing attention to the "global pandemic that upended the world and changed it forever, the bureau chief said: "We have never experienced greater pressure and challenge in our ability to sustain peace and development and a healthy planet, as we experience today."
"We saw how Covid-19 complicated the effort to maintain or to overcome the insecurity that's created by many forces including violent extremism and the impact of this, the consequence, affected lives and livelihoods but also creating an immense discontent about the population which led to a regression in democracy."
It has also resulted in a surge of "pre-existing conditions, rising poverty and inequality," she added.
Ukraine's ports must be reopened to avert looming famine threat: UN
Ports in Odesa of southern Ukraine, which have been closed because of war, must be reopened urgently to prevent the global hunger crisis from spinning out of control, says the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
The move would allow for food produced in the war-torn country, one of the top three grain exporters in the world, to flow freely to other nations as well as save "mountains" of grain from going to waste.
The war caused by Russia's invasion has blocked Black Sea ports in Ukraine – Europe's breadbasket –and stranded millions of tons of grain in silos on land, or on ships that are unable to move.
"Right now, Ukraine's grain silos are full. At the same time, 44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation," WFP Executive Director David Beasley said Friday.
If the ports are not opened soon, Ukrainian farmers will have nowhere to store the next harvest in July and August, the WFP said.
This raises the prospect that mountains of grain will go to waste amid a growing global hunger crisis.
Also Read: Dozens more civilians rescued from Ukrainian steel plant
Around 276 million people worldwide were facing acute hunger at the start of 2022, but this number is expected to rise by 47 million people – namely, affecting sub-Saharan Africa – if the war in Ukraine continues.
"We have to open up the ports so that food can move in and out of Ukraine. The world demands it because hundreds of millions of people globally depend on these supplies," said David Beasley.
"We're running out of time and the cost of inaction will be higher than anyone can imagine. I urge all parties involved to allow this food to get out of Ukraine to where it's desperately needed so we can avert the looming threat of famine."
Before the war, which began on February 24, most of the food produced in Ukraine was exported through the country's Black Sea ports.
More than 50 million metric tonnes of grain transited through the ports in the eight months before the war, and exports were enough to feed 400 million people.
Also Read: FAO records small drop in global food prices in April
The disruption caused by the war has already pushed food commodity prices well above record highs reached earlier this year.
In March, export prices for wheat and maize rose 22 percent and 20 percent on top of steep increases in 2021 and early 2022.
Nearly 1 million COVID-19 deaths: A look at the US numbers
Doug Lambrecht was among the first of the nearly 1 million Americans to die from COVID-19. His demographic profile — an older white male with chronic health problems — mirrors the faces of many who would be lost over the next two years.
The 71-year-old retired physician was recovering from a fall at a nursing home near Seattle when the new coronavirus swept through in early 2020. He died March 1, an early victim in a devastating outbreak that gave a first glimpse of the price older Americans would pay.
The pandemic has generated gigabytes of data that make clear which U.S. groups have been hit the hardest. More than 700,000 people 65 and older died. Men died at higher rates than women.
White people made up most of the deaths overall, yet an unequal burden fell on Black, Hispanic and Native American people considering the younger average age of minority communities. Racial gaps narrowed between surges then widened again with each new wave.
With 1 million deaths in sight, Doug’s son Nathan Lambrecht reflected on the toll.
“I’m afraid that as the numbers get bigger, people are going to care less and less,” he said. “I just hope people who didn’t know them and didn’t have the same sort of loss in their lives due to COVID, I just hope that they don’t forget and they remember to care.”
ELDERS HIT HARD
Three out of every four deaths were people 65 and older, according to U.S. data analyzed by The Associated Press.
READ: Global Covid cases top 515 million
About 255,000 people 85 and older died; 257,000 were 75 to 84 years old; and about 229,000 were 65 to 74.
“A million things went wrong and most of them were preventable,” said elder care expert Charlene Harrington of the University of California, San Francisco. Harrington, 80, hopes the lessons of the pandemic lead U.S. health officials to adopt minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes, “then maybe I can retire.”
SPOUSES LEFT BEHIND
In nearly every 10-year age group, more men have died from COVID-19 than women.
Men have shorter life expectancies than women, so it’s not surprising that the only age group where deaths in women outpaced those in men is the oldest: 85 and older.
For some families who lost breadwinners, economic hardships have added to their grief, said Rima Samman, who coordinates a COVID-19 memorial project that began as a tribute to her brother, Rami, who died in May 2020 at age 40.
“A widow is losing her home, or she’s losing the car she drove the kids to school with, because her husband died,” Samman said. “Little by little, you’re getting pulled down from middle class to lower class.”
RACE, ETHNICITY AND AGE
White people made up 65% of the total deaths, the largest proportion of any race by far.
This isn’t that surprising because there are more white people in the U.S. than any other race. American Indians, Pacific Islanders and Black people had higher death rates when looking at COVID-19 deaths per capita.
Death rates per capita still leave out a characteristic that is crucial to understanding which groups were disproportionately affected — COVID-19 is more deadly for the elderly.
In the U.S. there are many more elderly white people than elderly people of other races. To evaluate which race has been disproportionately affected, it’s necessary to adjust the per-capita death rate, calculating the rates as if each race had the same age breakdown.
After the share of COVID-19 deaths are age-adjusted in this way, we can compare that with the race’s share of the total population. If the age-adjusted share of COVID-19 deaths is higher than the share of the U.S. population, that race has been disproportionately affected.
When considering age, it’s apparent that Black, Hispanic, Pacific Islander and Native American people suffered disproportionately more from COVID-19 deaths than other groups in the U.S.
Looking at deaths per capita, Mississippi had the highest rate of any state.
“We’ve lost so many people to COVID,” said Joyee Washington, a community health educator in Hattiesburg. “The hard thing in Mississippi was having to grieve with no time to heal. You’re facing trauma after trauma after trauma. ... Normal is gone as far as I’m concerned.”
Communities pulled together. Churches set up testing sites, school buses took meals to students when classrooms were closed, her city’s mayor used social media to provide reliable information. “Even in the midst of turmoil you can still find joy, you can still find light,” she said. “The possibilities are there if you look for them.”
Native Americans experienced higher death rates than all other groups during two waves of the pandemic. For Mary Francis, a 41-year-old Navajo woman from Page, Arizona, the deaths reinforce a long-held value of self-sufficiency.
“It goes back to the teachings of our elders,” said Francis, who helps get vaccines and care packages to Navajo and Hopi families. “Try to be self-sufficient, how to take care of ourselves and how to not rely so much on the government (and) other sources that may or may not have our interests at heart.”
RURAL VS URBAN
The surge that began in late 2020 was particularly rough for rural America.
Americans living in rural areas have been less likely to get vaccinated than city dwellers, more likely to be infected and more likely to die.
“I’ve had multiple people in my ambulance, in their 80s and dying,” said paramedic Mark Kennedy in Nauvoo, Illinois. “Some did die, and when you ask if they’ve been vaccinated, they say, ‘I don’t trust it.’”
Surges swamped the thin resources of rural hospitals. During the delta surge, Kennedy transferred patients to hospitals in Springfield, which is 130 miles away, and Chicago, 270 miles away.
“Every day you had multiple transfers three and four hours away in full protective gear,” Kennedy said.
The recent omicron wave felt even harder to David Schreiner, CEO of Katherine Shaw Bethea Hospital in Dixon, Illinois.
“In the first wave, there were signs throughout the community about our health care heroes. ... People loved us the first time around,” Schreiner said. But by this past winter, people had COVID-19 fatigue.
“Our people have been through so much. And then we would get a patient or a family member who would come to the hospital and refuse to put a mask on,” Schreiner said. “It’s a little bit hard to take.”
Explosion at luxury Havana hotel kills 22, injures dozens
A powerful explosion apparently caused by a natural gas leak killed at least 22 people, including a child, and injured dozens Friday when it blew away outer walls from a luxury hotel in the heart of Cuba’s capital.
No tourists were staying at Havana’s 96-room Hotel Saratoga because it was undergoing renovations, Havana Gov. Reinaldo García Zapata told the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
“It’s not a bomb or an attack. It is a tragic accident,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who visited the site, said in a tweet.
Dr. Julio Guerra Izquierdo, chief of hospital services at the Ministry of Health, told reporters that at least 74 people had been injured. Among them were 14 children, according to a tweet from Díaz-Canel’s office.
Also read: Explosions rock Kyiv again as Russians rain fire on Ukraine
Díaz-Canel said families in buildings near the hotel affected by the explosion had been transferred to safer locations.
Cuban state TV reported the explosion was caused by a truck that had been supplying natural gas to the hotel, but did not provide details on how the gas ignited. A white tanker truck was seen being removed from the site as rescue workers hosed it down with water.
Tourism Minister Juan Carlos García said the hotel was scheduled to reopen Tuesday.
The blast sent smoke billowing into the air around the hotel with people on the street staring in awe, one saying “Oh my God,” and cars honking their horns as they sped away from the scene, video showed. It happened as Cuba is struggling to revive its key tourism sector that was devastated by the coronavirus pandemic.
Cuba’s national health minister, José Ángel Portal, told The Associated Press the number of injured could rise as the search continues for people who may be trapped in the rubble of the 19th century structure in the Old Havana neighborhood of the city.
“We are still looking for a large group of people who may be under the rubble,” Lt. Col. Noel Silva of the Fire Department said.
A 300-student school next to the hotel was evacuated. García Zapata said five of the students suffered minor injuries.
Police cordoned off the area as firefighters and rescue workers toiled inside the wreckage of the emblematic hotel about 110 yards (100 meters) from Cuba’s Capitol building.
The hotel was first renovated in 2005 as part of the Cuban government’s revival of Old Havana and is owned by the Cuban military’s tourism business arm, Grupo de Turismo Gaviota SA. The company said it was investigating the cause of the blast and did not immediately respond to an email seeking more details about the hotel and the renovation it was undergoing.
The Hotel Saratoga has been used frequently by visiting VIPs and political figures, including high-ranking U.S. government delegations. Beyoncé and Jay-Z stayed there during a 2013 visit to Cuba.
Photographer Michel Figueroa said he was walking past the hotel when “the explosion threw me to the ground, and my head still hurts.... Everything was very fast.”
Worried relatives of people who had been working at the hotel showed up at a hospital in the afternoon to look for them. Among them was Beatriz Céspedes Cobas, who was tearfully searching for her sister.
“She had to work today. She is a housekeeper,” she said. “I work two blocks away. I felt the noise, and at first, I didn’t even associate” the explosion with the hotel.
Yazira de la Caridad said the explosion shook her home a block from the hotel: “The whole building moved. I thought it was an earthquake.”
Besides the pandemic’s impact on Cuba’s tourism sector, the country was already struggling with the sanctions imposed by the former U.S. President Donald Trump that have been kept in place the Biden administration. The sanctions limited visits by U.S. tourists to the islands and restricted remittances from Cubans in the U.S. to their families in Cuba.
Tourism had started to revive somewhat early this year, but the war in Ukraine crimped a boom of Russian visitors, who accounted for almost a third of the tourists arriving in Cuba last year.
The explosion happened as Cuba’s government hosted the final day of a tourism convention in the iconic beach town of Varadero aimed at drawing investors.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is scheduled to arrive in Havana for a visit late Saturday and Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the visit would still take place.
García Zapata said structures adjacent to the hotel were being evaluated, including two badly damaged apartment buildings. The neighboring Martí Theater, the Yoruba Association and the Capitol had broken glass and damaged masonry.
Mayiee Pérez said she rushed to the hotel after receiving a call from her husband, Daniel Serra, who works at a foreign exchange shop inside the hotel.
She said he told her: “I am fine, I am fine. They got us out.” But she was unable to reach him after that.
Dozens more civilians rescued from Ukrainian steel plant
Dozens more civilians were rescued Friday from the tunnels under the besieged steel mill where Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol have been making their last stand to prevent Moscow’s complete takeover of the strategically important port city.
Russian and Ukrainian officials said 50 people were evacuated from the Azovstal plant and handed over to representatives of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Russian military said the group included 11 children.
Russian officials and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said evacuation efforts would continue Saturday. The latest evacuees were in addition to roughly 500 other civilians who got out of the plant and city in recent days.
The fight for the last Ukrainian stronghold in a city reduced to ruins by the Russian onslaught appeared increasingly desperate amid growing speculation that President Vladimir Putin wants to finish the battle for Mariupol so he can present a triumph to the Russian people in time for Monday’s Victory Day, the biggest patriotic holiday on the Russian calendar.
As the holiday commemorating the Soviet Union’s World War II victory over Nazi Germany approached, cities across Ukraine prepared for an expected increase in Russian attacks, and officials urged residents to heed air raid warnings.
“These symbolic dates are to the Russian aggressor like red to a bull,” said Ukraine’s first deputy interior minister, Yevhen Yenin. “While the entire civilized world remembers the victims of terrible wars on these days, the Russian Federation wants parades and is preparing to dance over bones in Mariupol.”
Also Read: Defenders inside Ukrainian steel mill refuse to surrender
By Russia’s most recent estimate, roughly 2,000 Ukrainian fighters are holed up in the vast maze of tunnels and bunkers beneath the Azovstal steelworks, and they have repeatedly refused to surrender. Ukrainian officials said before Friday’s evacuations that a few hundred civilians were also trapped there, and fears for their safety have increased as the battle has grown fiercer in recent days.
Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband, Denys Prokopenko, commands the Azov Regiment troops inside the plant, issued a desperate plea to also spare the fighters. She said they would be willing to go to a third country to wait out the war but would never surrender to Russia because that would mean “filtration camps, prison, torture and death.”
If nothing is done to save her husband and his men, they will “stand to the end without surrender,” she told The Associated Press on Friday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “influential states” are involved in efforts to rescue the soldiers, although he did not mention any by name.
“We are also working on diplomatic options to save our troops who are still at Azovstal,” he said in his nightly video address.
Also read: 7.7 million people displaced inside Ukraine
U.N. officials have been tight-lipped about the civilian evacuation efforts, but it seemed likely that the latest evacuees would be taken to Zaporizhzhia, a Ukrainian-controlled city about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol where others who escaped the port city were brought.
Some of the plant’s previous evacuees spoke to the AP about the horrors of being surrounded by death in the moldy, underground bunker with little food and water, poor medical care and diminishing hope. Some said they felt guilty for leaving others behind.
“People literally rot like our jackets did,” said 31-year-old Serhii Kuzmenko, who fled with his wife, 8-year-old daughter and four others from their bunker, where 30 others were left behind. “They need our help badly. We need to get them out.”
Fighters defending the plant said Friday on the Telegram messaging app that Russian troops had fired on an evacuation vehicle on the plant’s grounds. They said the car was moving toward civilians when it was hit by shelling, and that one soldier was killed and six were wounded.
Moscow did not immediately acknowledge renewed fighting there Friday.
Russia took control of the rest of Mariupol after bombarding it for two months. Ahead of Victory Day, municipal workers and volunteers cleaned up what remains of the city, which had a prewar population of more than 400,000. Perhaps 100,000 civilians remain there with scarce supplies of food, water electricity and heat. Bulldozers scooped up debris, and people swept streets against a backdrop of hollowed-out buildings. Russian flags were hoisted.
The fall of Mariupol would deprive Ukraine of a vital port. It would also allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free some Russian troops to fight elsewhere in the Donbas, the eastern industrial region that the Kremlin says is now its chief objective. Its capture also holds symbolic value since the city has been the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war and a surprisingly fierce resistance.
While they pounded away at the plant, Russian forces struggled to make significant gains elsewhere, 10 weeks into a devastating war that has killed thousands of people, forced millions to flee the country and flattened large swaths of cities.
Ukrainian officials said the risk of massive shelling increased ahead of Victory Day. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said authorities would reinforce street patrols in the capital. A curfew was going into effect in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, which was the target of two missile attacks Friday.
The Ukrainian military’s general staff said Friday that its forces repelled 11 attacks in the Donbas region and destroyed tanks and armored vehicles, further frustrating Putin’s ambitions after his abortive attempt to seize Kyiv. Russia made no acknowledgement of the losses.
The Ukrainian army also said it made progress in the northeastern Kharkiv region, recapturing five villages and part of a sixth. Meanwhile, one person was reported dead and three more were wounded Friday as a result of Russian shelling in Lyman, a city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Workers' rights, collective bargaining essential for global recovery: ILO
After two years of Covid lockdowns and amid increasing pressures on the classic "9 to five" business model – from zero-hours contracts to telework – voluntary negotiations known as collective bargaining had proved their worth, according to the International Labour Organization’s Director-General Guy Ryder.
"Workers want to keep their heads above the water, as prices rise, as they are right now, and they want to ensure workplace safety and secure the paid sick leave that has proved so critical over the last two years," he told journalists in Geneva Thursday.
"Employers for their part have welcomed agreements that have allowed them to retain skilled and experienced workers so that they could restart, recover and rebound."
Ryder added: "The higher the percentage of employees covered by collective agreements, the lower the wage inequality. And the more equality and diversity there is likely to be in the workplace."
According to a new report by the UN agency, over one in three employees in 98 countries now have their wages, working hours and other professional conditions set by collective agreements.
But there is a considerable variation across countries, the ILO said, ranging from over 75 percent of workers having a collective agreement in many European countries and Uruguay, to below 25 percent, in around half the countries where data was available.
Also Read: One-in-four people do not feel valued at work: ILO
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, ILO's Social Dialogue Report 2022 indicated that collective bargaining agreements had helped protect people's jobs and income.
"Collective bargaining has played a crucial role during the pandemic in forging resilience by protecting workers and enterprises, securing business continuity, and saving jobs and earnings," Ryder said, noting that joint accords had also helped allay the concerns of millions of workers by boosting occupational safety and health in the workplace, together with paid sick leave and healthcare benefits.
Flexible working arrangements and leave provisions were negotiated so that workers, particularly women, could balance work with additional care responsibilities relating to school closures or sick family members, he said. "And workers on temporary work had their contracts extended or converted to permanent ones so that they could maintain their earnings."
After two years of upheaval in the workplace caused by the coronavirus, post-pandemic collective agreements have now evolved to reflect the new realities of working from home and other "hybrid" work practices, the ILO director-general said.
FAO records small drop in global food prices in April
After reaching an all-time high in March amid repercussions from the war in Ukraine, world food prices decreased slightly last month, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Friday.
The FAO Food Price Index averaged 158.2 points in April, down 0.8 percent from the surge in March, but remained nearly 30 percent higher than in April 2021.
The Index tracks monthly changes in the international prices of a basket of food commodities, and the decrease was led by a slight decline in the prices of vegetable oils and cereals.
The small decrease in the index is a welcome relief, particularly for low-income food-deficit countries, but still, food prices remain close to their recent highs, reflecting persistent market tightness and posing a challenge to global food security for the most vulnerable, said Máximo Torero Cullen, FAO chief economist.
The Vegetable Oil Price Index registered a 5.7 percent drop in April, shedding almost a third of the increase in March.
Demand rationing pushed down the prices for palm, sunflower, and soy oils, the FAO said, while uncertainties surrounding export availability from Indonesia – the world's leading exporter of palm oil – contained further declines in prices on the international market.
Also Read: PM proposes formation of Int’l Seed Bank to avert food crisis
The FAO Cereal Price Index declined by 0.7 points in April, due to a 3.0 percent decline in world maize prices.
Wheat prices rose 0.2 percent, strongly affected by the continued blockage of ports in Ukraine. The country, together with Russia, accounts for some 30 percent of global wheat exports.
Other factors behind the increase included concerns over crop conditions in the US, though tempered by larger shipments from India and higher-than-expected exports from Russia.
Meanwhile, international rice prices increased by 2.3 percent, bolstered by strong demand from China and the Near East.
The FAO also released updated forecasts for world cereal supply and demand which indicate that although stocks are rising, trade is likely to decline this year.
Global wheat production is predicted to grow to 782 million tonnes, which incorporates an expected 20 percent decline in harvested area in Ukraine as well as declines due to drought in Morocco.
The FAO said the Sugar Price Index rose 3.3 percent in April, mainly due to higher ethanol prices and concerns over the slow start of the 2022 harvest in Brazil, the world's largest sugar exporter.
The FAO Meat Price Index reached a new record high last month, increasing by 2.2 percent as prices rose for poultry, pig and bovine meat.
Poultry costs were affected by disruptions to exports from Ukraine and rising avian influenza outbreaks in the northern hemisphere.
The Dairy Price Index also jumped by 0.9 percent, driven by what FAO described as "persistent global supply tightness," with milk output in Western Europe and Oceania continuing to track below seasonal levels.
The UN agency reported that world butter prices rose the most, influenced by rising demand associated with the current shortage of sunflower oil and margarine.