Argentinian President Javier Milei has criticised the global health body for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Argentina has finalised its decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO), following in the footsteps of the United States and formally severing ties with the global health body.

On Tuesday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Pablo Quirno confirmed Argentina’s withdrawal from the international agency, which monitors health trends, tracks disease, promotes healthcare access, and trains medical providers.

The move was first announced in February last year, and a month later, Quirno explained that the government of right-wing President Javier Milei had issued a formal notice to the WHO.

“Today, Argentina’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) takes effect, marking one year since the formal notification was made by our country,” Quirno wrote in his social media post on Tuesday.

“Argentina will continue to promote international cooperation in health through bilateral agreements and regional forums, while fully preserving its sovereignty and its capacity to make decisions regarding health policies.”

Milei’s decision to pull Argentina out of the WHO echoes a similar decision made under his right-wing ally, US President Donald Trump.

Both leaders have lashed out at international organisations that they accuse of advancing progressive policies in areas such as health and medicine.

Last year’s announcement that Argentina would step back from the global health agency came roughly a month after Trump made a near-identical move.

In a statement at the time, the libertarian Milei blasted the organisation for its health advice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Measures to limit the spread of the virus, such as masking, social distancing and vaccinations, became a common target of right-wing ire in countries around the world.

In a social media post, Milei accused the WHO of being a “nefarious organization” that executed “the greatest experiment in social control in history”, referring to COVID safety measures.

The WHO, however, is largely an advisory body, and it does not dictate policies to member states.

As of Tuesday, the agency listed 194 members, including Argentina, on its website.

The US formalised its withdrawal in January for similar reasons, a decision lamented by WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue,” Ghebreyesus said in a social media post at the time.

“The notification of withdrawal makes both the US and the world less safe.”

EXCLUSIVE

Member of the public shares photos with lawmakers, speculating they are dug-up burial sites, emails show.

A member of the public claims to have seen “grave-like plots” at Jeffrey Epstein’s former ranch in New Mexico and has shared photos of the purported burial sites with lawmakers investigating the late American sex offender.

The tipster shared the images with the two state lawmakers last month amid renewed scrutiny of Epstein’s activities at the Zorro Ranch.

The claims, which have not been independently verified, have not been previously reported and do not appear to be included in the Epstein files publicly disclosed by the United States Department of Justice.

The department had releases millions of pages related to criminal investigations of the financier in late January, some of which referenced Epstein’s New Mexico ranch.

Al Jazeera obtained the tipster’s correspondence and photos via a public records request with the New Mexico Department of Justice.

In an email on February 16, a member of the public whose name has been redacted told Democratic Representatives Andrea Romero and Marianna Anaya that he or she had broken into Epstein’s former ranch in 2020 and come across multiple plots that “were dug up”.

The tipster, who included two photos of purported plots with the email, speculated that bodies had been “removed” from the sites.

“I realize this might be illegal,” the person wrote, referring to their act of venturing onto the property, “but men like that don’t deserve the protection of the law.”

The tipster also shared photos of the exterior of Epstein’s mansion and a white yurt located on the grounds of the property, as well as pictures of a defibrillator and a statue of a man of African appearance purportedly taken from inside the tent.

“In the White Yurt, they must have been doing rituals where they felt like they needed a defibrillator,” the person wrote.

Romero, who is leading a bipartisan commission looking into Epstein’s activities in New Mexico, forwarded the correspondence to Kyle Hartsock, the director of special investigations at the New Mexico Department of Justice, who assured the lawmaker that the tip was “being looked into”.

When contacted, Romero said she could not provide further information about the credibility of the claims.

“We will get details on the veracity of any claims as we conduct our investigation,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I cannot provide any additional context or clarification regarding the email you’re referencing.”

Anaya and Hartsock did not respond to requests for comment about the claims, which Al Jazeera was unable to verify.

Last month, New Mexico State Attorney General Raul Torrez ordered authorities to reopen inquiries into the Zorro Ranch after the US Justice Department’s latest tranche of files surfaced unverified claims about Epstein’s time at the property.

The tips included an anonymous email from 2019 that claimed the bodies of two foreign girls had been buried outside the ranch on the orders of Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

The anonymous tipster, who claimed to be a former Zorro Ranch employee, also offered to provide videos of Epstein abusing minors in exchange for a payment of one Bitcoin, worth about $8,000 at the time.

It is unclear if there is any connection between the person behind the more recent tip and the person who sent the 2019 email.

State authorities began searching the Zorro Ranch last week, saying in a statement that investigators would “follow the facts wherever they lead”.

Epstein owned the ranch, located about 50km (31 miles) south of Santa Fe, from 1993 until his death in prison in 2019 after his indictment on sex-trafficking charges.

Nearly a dozen Epstein accusers have said they were abused at the property, although he was never charged with any crimes in New Mexico while he was alive.

New Mexico closed an initial probe into Epstein in 2019 at the request of federal prosecutors, who indicted the financier that July on charges of trafficking minors for sex and conspiracy to traffic minors for sex.

Epstein, whose death in a Manhattan jail cell a month later was ruled a suicide, had been facing up to 45 years in prison for allegedly abusing dozens of girls, some of them as young as 14.

Pakistani minister ‘strongly refutes and rejects’ Afghan government’s accusation, saying his country only targets military sites.

Islamabad has denied the accusations of Afghanistan’s Taliban government that Pakistani forces hit a hospital treating drug users in the Afghan capital, Kabul, saying that its strikes in the neighbouring country have avoided civilian sites.

“We strongly refute and reject these allegations,” Pakistani Minister of Information Attaullah Tarar told Al Jazeera Arabic on Tuesday. “Pakistan has only targeted terrorist infrastructure and military locations.”

On Monday, Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban government, said Pakistan’s military struck Kabul’s Omar Addiction Treatment Hospital at about 9pm local time (16:30 GMT).

The hospital is a 2,000-bed facility, and the raid destroyed large sections of the building, he wrote on X.

“Unfortunately, the death toll has so far reached 400, while around 250 others have been reported injured. Rescue teams are currently at the scene, working to control the fire and recover the remaining bodies of the victims,” he added.

In a series of posts on X, Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid denounced the assault as a “crime against humanity”.

He accused the Pakistani military of intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure to “perpetrate horrors”, later saying that those killed and injured in the strike were patients receiving treatment at the facility.

The latest wave of violence between the two countries began late last month, with repeated cross-border clashes and Pakistan’s air strikes inside Afghanistan.

Pakistan often accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing safe haven to the Pakistan Taliban, also known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, as well as to outlawed Baloch separatist groups and other groups who frequently target security forces and civilians across Pakistan. Kabul denies these claims.

A United Nations Security Council resolution, adopted unanimously on Monday, did not name Pakistan, but condemned “in the strongest terms all terrorist activity including terrorist attacks” from within Afghanistan. The resolution also extended the UN political mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, for three months.

On Sunday, the World Food Programme (WFP) said it had begun mobilising to provide “immediate lifesaving food” to more than 20,000 families that have been displaced in Afghanistan due to the conflict.

United States Senator Chris Murphy and House Representative Greg Casar are set to introduce legislation to rein in prediction markets after bettors cashed in on geopolitical conflicts, including the joint strikes the US and Israel launched against Iran and the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

On Tuesday, the two lawmakers announced their intent to introduce the Banning Event Trading on Sensitive Operations and Federal Functions (BETS OFF) Act, which would prohibit wagers on “government actions, terrorism, war, assassination, and events where an individual knows or controls the outcome”.

“Our legislation is pretty simple. It simply says that these markets cannot allow people to make bets on government decision-making and frankly on other instances where there is one single individual who controls and knows the outcome of a market,” Murphy told reporters.

The bill comes amid a slate of legislation to put guardrails on prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, which allow users to wager money on the outcomes of real-life events.

Already, bets on the platforms have been placed on US military strikes and monetary policy.

“What happens to us spiritually when every moral question in this country becomes a market? Don’t we lose something? Don’t we rot a little bit inside when the question of famine in Gaza isn’t a question of what is right and what is wrong, but whether you can make money or lose money?” Murphy added.

“I think it’s really important that there are certain matters that are not monetised by prediction markets.”

Making a profit on war?

Critics have pointed to the trends on the online betting platforms that suggest links between upcoming government actions and increases in the number of bets made.

For example, in the hours leading up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran in late February, 150 new accounts appeared on Polymarket and made wagers on the then-looming strikes.

Of those accounts, 109 made more than $10,000, and one made more than half a million dollars, according to Casar and Murphy.

As Al Jazeera previously reported, one Polymarket user, known as Magamyman, made more than $500,000 with a wager that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be out of power. That bet was placed only hours before the February 28 strike.

That echoes what happened in the lead-up to the January 3 attack to topple Maduro.

A trader profited from the attack by predicting Maduro’s ousting only hours before US forces abducted him. The payout, in that case, was $400,000.

On Polymarket, in particular, users can wager anonymously, raising questions about whether government officials might be profiting from insider knowledge.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Murphy alleged that the recent bets on the Iran war and the Venezuela attack must have come either from the White House or someone close to the administration.

“It seems pretty clear what happened. People inside the White House — or those close to the White House with knowledge of the attack that was imminent — cashed in,” the Connecticut senator said.

Casar, who represents parts of San Antonio and Austin, Texas, suggested that the prospect of profiting from online bets could even influence government decisions.

“We shouldn’t be living in a country where someone is sitting in the situation room, making decisions on whether to invade or to bomb, decisions about war and peace, life and death — that those decisions could be driven by the fact that they have hundreds of thousands of dollars riding on the decision,” Casar added.

Al Jazeera followed up with Murphy’s office to ask if the lawmakers had proof that the White House or someone close to the White House made the bets, but the office has yet to respond.

The White House, meanwhile, pushed back on allegations that President Donald Trump or his officials were involved in the high-stakes bets.

“The only special interest guiding the Trump Administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Al Jazeera in a statement.

The president’s son is actively involved in the prediction markets, however.

In August 2025, Donald Trump Jr joined Polymarket’s board. The venture capital firm 1789 Capital, which lists Trump Jr as a partner, backed Polymarket only a month after the Department of Justice dropped its investigation into the platform.

Trump Jr is also a strategic adviser to Kalshi. He joined in January 2025, only months before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission withdrew an appeal to block a federal court decision allowing Kalshi to offer bets on US elections.

A wave of legislation

Concerns about prediction markets extend far beyond bets on government actions, though.

The legislation Murphy and Casar have proposed would also ban bets on outcomes that can be controlled, including the results of award shows.

“The people who benefit in these markets are always the powerful,” Murphy said. “The people who know who know who is going to perform at the Super Bowl, the people who know what words the president is going to use in a speech are very powerful people.”

Casar added that he is not opposed to gambling in general, but that he and Murphy are simply trying to ensure a level playing field.

“I think we should have the ability for folks to go to a casino and play a poker game or play a game of roulette, but we have rules that say the house cannot rig the poker game,” Casar said.

“When people get on their phone and see these prediction markets, they expect that there are rules to make sure the game isn’t rigged against them.”

Their legislation is part of a slate of bills and regulatory pushes to increase oversight across the entire prediction market industry.

Just this month, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced legislation that would establish federal consumer protections for the prediction market industry, including through age verification for usage and a ban on advertisements targeting underage users.

Senators Jeff Merkley and Amy Klobuchar, both Democrats, also put forward legislation that would bar elected officials from profiting from prediction markets.

And lawmakers in Minnesota are pushing to ban prediction markets altogether, as a violation of state gambling laws. Arizona, meanwhile, filed criminal charges against Kalshi on Tuesday, citing similar reasons.

“I hope we take a comprehensive look at the way that prediction markets are rigging our entire economy and government actions,” Murphy said.

Neither Kalshi nor Polymarket, the two largest prediction market platforms, responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.