World leaders expect Washington to prove commitment to accord after four years of inaction
The US is back in the Paris climate accord, just 107 days after it left.
While Friday’s return is heavily symbolic, world leaders say they expect the US to prove its seriousness after four years of being mostly absent. They are especially keen to hear an announcement from Washington in the coming months on the US’s goal for cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2030.
Continue reading...We can rise to the challenge of a green, resilient and inclusive recovery from Covid, but only if critical changes are made
The numbers are well-publicised but bear repeating. Around 120 million more people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020, a number that could rise to 150 million in 2021. An estimated 250 million jobs have been lost around the world, and the number of people affected by acute food insecurity was estimated to have doubled to 272 million by the end of last year. A decade of progress in the most fragile countries wiped out.
Let’s put a human dimension on these numbers. More than a billion children have been out of school during the Covid-19 pandemic, and girls are much less likely to return to the classroom.
Continue reading...Pressure mounts for patent waivers to allow poorer countries to develop their own manufacturing capacity to boost availability
The domination of global medicine by major pharmaceutical companies needs to be confronted to provide fairer access to vaccines, a leading South African official has said.
The scramble over Covid vaccines should alert rich countries to the power of profit-driven companies that control production of crucial medicines, said Mustaqeem De Gama, South Africa’s delegate at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on intellectual property rights.
Continue reading...While the UK and US strive for herd immunity, Russia and China are leveraging their Covid jabs
“Today it is easier to get a nuclear weapon than to get a vaccine,” the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, declared in January. He was bragging. The Balkans country had just received its first shipment of almost 1m Covid-19 vaccine doses from Sinopharm, a state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company.
Since then, Serbia has augmented its stockpile with tens of thousands of shots of Russia’s Sputnik V, signed an agreement to build a bottling plant for the Russian vaccine and now boasts the fastest vaccination rate in continental Europe.
Continue reading...Ted Cruz has sparked outcry after the Republican senator from Texas left the state for a trip to the sunny Mexican tourist resort of Cancún, as millions of his constituents endure deadly power outages and freezing temperatures.
Cruz was spotted waiting for, then later boarding, a flight to Cancún on Wednesday night. After photos of Cruz on the plane went viral on Twitter, prompting fierce criticism, the senator returned to Texas on Thursday, saying the trip was “obviously a mistake”.
Continue reading...Tehran yet to answer European invitation seeking reinstatement of 2015 agreement torn up by Donald Trump
The US has agreed to take part in multilateral talks with Iran hosted by the EU, with the aim of negotiating a return by both countries to the 2015 nuclear deal that is close to falling apart in the wake of the Trump administration.
The state department spokesman, Ned Price, said the US would accept the invitation of the EU high representative for discussions with Iran and the five other countries that agreed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by which Iran accepted strict constraints on its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.
Continue reading...Italy, Austria and Bulgaria report no-shows for appointments as France, Germany and Sweden also register public resistance
Marriages are becoming increasingly rare in Italy, all the more so during the pandemic, official data shows.
In the first quarter of 2020 – when the country was struck by the virus – the number of Italians who tied the knot was down by about 20% year on year, the national statistics office Istat said.
The World Health Organization has urged nations producing Covid vaccines not to distribute them unilaterally but to donate them to the global Covax scheme to ensure fairness, Reuters reports.
The WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, made the plea as China makes agreements across Africa, Russia distributes shots in Latin America and the EU eyes giving vaccines to poorer countries, all outside of the Covax facility.
What we can do, if that comes through Covax, is the earmarked donation can go to those countries and the Covax stocks can go to other countries. So we can strike a balance.
Continue reading...Statement made no mention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor but Canada has tried to build global support to secure their release
China has lashed out against Canada for signing a declaration denouncing the arbitrary detention of foreign citizens, describing the move as a “despicable and hypocritical act” as relations between the two countries remain tense.
Earlier this week, Canada and 57 other nations, including the US, UK, Australia, Germany and Sweden, jointly signed a declaration condemning the use of arbitrary detention for political purposes.
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More details on Cancun-gate: Ted Cruz’s office reportedly contacted the Houston Police Department to request security assistance at the airport yesterday.
The HPD told ABC News that its officers “monitored his movements through the terminal.” Cruz then boarded a flight to Cancun, as his state deals with a winter storm and widespread blackouts.
JUST IN from @houstonpolice, via @emcabcnewsprod:
"Cruz’s staff contacted HPD personnel at IAH on Wednesday ... and requested assistance upon the Senator’s arrival at the airport."
"HPD officers monitored his movements through the terminal."
In case you missed it this morning: the number of initial weekly jobless claims in the US rose to 861,000 last week, the labor department announced.
The number represents an increase of 13,000 from the previous week, the latest sign that the US economy continues to suffer as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...Thousands more civilians could be displaced due to attacks by Houthi rebels in Marib province
The conflict in Yemen has taken a “sharp escalatory turn” and the country is speeding towards the worst famine the world has seen in decades, UN officials have warned, as the US under Joe Biden takes a renewed interest in finding a diplomatic solution to the war.
In one of his more downbeat monthly assessments, the UN special envoy Martin Griffiths told the security council attacks by the Houthi rebels in Marib province are threatening to displace tens of thousands of civilians, many of whom had fled to Marib from fighting elsewhere in Yemen.
Continue reading...Protesters try to block movement of security forces and civil servants, while hackers targets military
Some of the busiest streets in Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon, have been brought to a standstill for a second day running by slow-moving and “broken-down” cars, as part of an evolving civil disobedience movement against the military coup.
Cars were parked across roads to block the movement of security forces and prevent civil servants from travelling to work. Some protesters walked in circles around a pedestrian crossing at a busy intersection. “Don’t attend the office, leave it. Join the civil disobedience movement,” protesters chanted.
Continue reading...UN report offers bedrock for hope for broken planet, says António Guterres
Humanity is waging a “senseless and suicidal” war on nature that is causing human suffering and enormous economic losses while accelerating the destruction of life on Earth, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has said.
Guterres’s starkest warning to date came at the launch of a UN report setting out the triple emergency the world is in: the climate crisis, the devastation of wildlife and nature, and the pollution that causes many millions of early deaths every year.
Continue reading...French proposal comes after accusations wealthier nations have ordered more than they need
As Britain prepares to host the G7 club of wealthy nations on Friday under the chairmanship of Boris Johnson, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has proposed that 5% of its vaccines are sent to poorer countries, especially in Africa.
Johnson is expected to advance a parallel plan to cut the amount of time it takes to create vaccines, and may be unimpressed it has been upstaged by Macron.
Continue reading...Planned update to Burgos Cathedral prompts online petition signed by more than 31,000 people
Plans to mark the 800th anniversary of Burgos’s magnificent gothic cathedral with three enormous new bronze doors have ushered in an unholy row, with Unesco advising against the project and critics attacking the €1.2m portals as an “artistic outrage”.
Cathedral authorities in the northern Spanish city say the new doors, designed by the renowned, award-winning artist Antonio López, are a work of contemporary art that will complement “a monument already rendered in five artistic styles that are the fruit of each stage of its eight centuries”. They also point out that the current wooden doors are old and in a poor state of repair.
Continue reading...Trade group chairman says robust regulation is needed to rein in monopolistic tech firms
Facebook’s move to block all media content in Australia shows why countries need robust regulation to stop tech firms behaving like a “schoolyard bully”, the head of the UK’s news media trade group has said.
Henry Faure Walker, the chair of the News Media Association, said Facebook’s ban during a pandemic was “a classic example of a monopoly power being the schoolyard bully, trying to protect its dominant position with scant regard for the citizens and customers it supposedly serves”.
Continue reading...Increasing land grabs endangering forest communities and wildlife as governments expand mining and agriculture to combat economic impact of Covid
Indigenous communities in some of the world’s most forested tropical countries have faced a wave of human rights abuses during the Covid-19 pandemic as governments prioritise extractive industries in economic recovery plans, according to a new report.
New mines, infrastructure projects and agricultural plantations in Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Indonesia and Peru are driving land grabs and violence against indigenous peoples as governments seek to revive economies hit by the pandemic, research by the NGO Forest Peoples Programme has found.
Continue reading...Western foreign ministers to discuss response to Iranian plan to ban snap intrusive inspections
The future of the Iran nuclear deal is hanging in the balance as the west prepares its response to Iranian plans to increase pressure on Washington by banning snap intrusive inspections of its nuclear sites.
The German, French and British foreign ministers are to confer urgently with the US secretary of state, Tony Blinken, on how to respond to Iran’s plans, which it is expected to implement on Tuesday.
Continue reading...LDP’s attempt to demonstrate gender equality after Olympic sexism row backfires
It was a move designed to show that Japan’s ruling party was committed to gender equality after the sexism row that forced one of its former prime ministers, Yoshiro Mori, to resign as head of Tokyo’s Olympic organising committee.
The time had come to give female members of the Liberal Democratic party (LDP) more prominence at key meetings, the party’s secretary general, Toshihiro Nikai, said this week, days after Mori had stepped down following his claim that meetings attended by “talkative women” tended to “drag on”.
Continue reading...Comments on singer’s Instagram account say wearing likeness of god is cultural appropriation
The singer Rihanna has angered the Hindu community with a “disrespectful” Instagram picture in which she wears a diamond-studded pendant featuring the Hindu god Ganesha.
Commenters on her Instagram account have called the wearing of the likeness of the god around her neck cultural appropriation.
Continue reading...Health experts call for regular testing of staff and animals after coronavirus found at 400 breeding units across Europe
All mink farms are at risk of becoming infected with Covid-19 and spreading the virus, and staff and animals should be regularly tested, EU disease and food safety experts said on Thursday.
Mink are highly susceptible to coronavirus, which spreads rapidly in intensive farms that often breed thousands of animals in open housing caged systems (outdoor wire cages covered with a roof). Humans are the most likely initial source of infection.
Denmark, the world’s largest exporter of mink fur, announced that it would cull up to 15 million mink in November, after discovering a mutated variant of the virus that scientists feared might have jeopardised the effectiveness of future vaccines.
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