Sabrina Siddiqui

Most of the increases are in African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Uganda.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bill Gates said cuts in global health aid from wealthy countries, including the U.S., deepened the crisis.

A White House spokeswoman said the U.S.

provides more foreign aid than any other country, including this year.

One way to address the shortage of housing in this country, make unloved office buildings into apartments.

And over the last two decades, Manhattan's been at the heart of that push, with the city's developers converting almost 30 million square feet of office space into homes.

The office downturn during the pandemic made those transformations even more popular.

And The Wall Street Journal's Peter Grant says New York developers' breakthroughs on exactly how to carve an apartment out of an office are giving a boost to the pace of conversions across the country.

Nationwide, 78,500 units are in the works, compared with 23,000 in 2022, according to Rent Cafe.

Peter, who covers commercial real estate, joins us now with more.

Peter, how did New York developers figure out a way to make the conversions financially viable?

What are some of the new architectural hacks that they've used?

And where in the city are these conversions happening and why?

That was The Wall Street Journal's Peter Grant.

Peter, thank you.

You can see the changes these buildings are making on WSJ.com.

We'll leave a link in the show notes.

And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon.

Additional sound in this episode, courtesy of Reuters.

Today's show was produced by Pierre Bien-Aimé with supervising producer Tali Arbel.