De Croo is set to lead the country’s 7-party Vivaldi coalition of Flemish and Francophone socialists, liberals and greens…Reports Asian Lite News
Flemish liberal leader Alexander De Croo will be Belgium’s new prime minister. It was announced on Wednesday ,16 months after an inconclusive election.
De Croo is set to lead the country’s 7-party Vivaldi coalition of Flemish and Francophone socialists, liberals and greens.
De Croo will spearhead the Vivaldi coalition in steering the country through the aftershocks of the pandemic, and is set to face fierce pushback from the Flemish opposition parties, sidelined from the incoming administration despite making big gains in the election, reported Brussels Times.
The choice of De Croo follows calls for the country’s new Prime Minister to be a Dutch-speaker, since the last PM to lead a full-fledged government, Charles Michel, was Francophone.
As De Croo’s fellow government formator, the Francophone socialist Paul Magnette, who leads the largest party within the Vivaldi coalition, was also tipped for premiership.
Talks are ongoing among parties on the makeup of the federal cabinet, which, according to Le Soir, will comprise seven Dutch-speaking ministers and seven Francophone ministers.
De Croo was elected President of the Flemish liberal party at 34, a position which he filled for three years before stepping down.
De Croo has been a Federal Minister since 2012 in the governments of Elio di Rupo (PS) and Charles Michel (MR), twice clinching a vice premiership position. He is the son of Herman De Croo, a former Federal Minister, Deputy and current President of the House of Representatives and the longest-serving MP.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks in a TV address in Caracas, Venezuela, March 16, 2020. (Venezuela's Presidency/Handout via Xinhua/IANS)
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks in a TV address in Caracas, Venezuela, March 16, 2020. (Venezuela’s Presidency/Handout via Xinhua/IANS)
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, but its oil industry is hobbled by US sanctions which have thrown the country into its worst economic crisis in years...Reports Asian Lite News
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said that US financial sanctions have caused Venezuela’s oil revenue to plunge 99 per cent over the last six years.
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, but its oil industry is hobbled by US sanctions which have thrown the country into its worst economic crisis in years, Press tv reported.
Maduro said on Tuesday that 30 billion dollars have been lost each year since 2015, adding “it’s impossible to imagine the amount of pressure placed on our economy.”
“For every 100 dollars obtained through oil sales in 2014 we receive one today,” which means oil revenues fell from more than 56 billion dollars in 2013 “to less than 400 million dollars last year”, he said.
According to Maduro, Venezuela experienced the “sharpest” foreign exchange losses in its history between 2014 and 2019. “In six years we lost 99% of our foreign exchange revenues,” he said.
The main reason for the huge drop in revenues was “the war declared on oil prices,” to “attack the world’s major producers,” he said.
With most shipowners and oil traders shunning business with Venezuela for fear of the sanctions, Iran has emerged as the only country helping Caracas bring its refineries back to service and cope with an acute fuel shortage.
The Iran-flagged tanker Forest, the first of a group of three tankers transporting some 270,000 barrels of Iranian fuel for Venezuela, entered the waters of the South American nation on Monday, reports said.
The two following Iranian tankers, the Faxon and the Fortune, are estimated to arrive in early October. They are together expected to deliver about 820,000 barrels of gasoline and other fuels, helping to ease shortages in Venezuela.
The same vessels and two additional Iranian tankers delivered 1.5 million barrels of gasoline and diesel fuel to Venezuela between May and June despite US threats to stop them, while the South American nation shipped a cargo vessel carrying alumina to Iran’s Bandar Abbas port.
An Iranian very large crude carrier (VLCC) is expected to leave Venezuela’s Jose port with 1.9 million barrels of Venezuelan heavy oil for sale in Asia.
On Tuesday, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza was quoted as saying that his country had learnt from Tehran how to confront the coercive US measures.
An Iranian supertanker that shipped the country’s first oil cargo to Venezuela last week despite US threats to stop it is loading the Latin American country’s crude for export, Bloomberg reports.
Arreaza also said after talking with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif via a video call that Venezuela’s historic relations with Iran are at their best.
Washington has sought to disrupt the deepening bilateral trade between the two countries.
Last month, the US government went on a full-throttle propaganda campaign, claiming that it had seized 1.116 million barrels of Iranian fuel because it was bound for Venezuela.
Iran, however, asserted that neither were the ships Iranian nor their owners or their cargo had any connection to the Islamic Republic.
Venezuela pledged to continue trade with Iran after the US announced new sanctions on Iranian official entities as well as President Maduro this month.
The World Health Organization (WHO) will roll out at least 120 million affordable, high-quality rapid Covid-19 tests for low and middle-income countries, said in an announcement on Monday
According to a statement , the organisations involved in agreement include the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), Global Fund, Unitaid, and the WHO.
The WHO and the leading partners will ahead with the project despite it not being fully funded yet.
“As part of this comprehensive, end-to-end effort, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has executed separate volume guarantee agreements with rapid diagnostic test (RDT) producers Abbott and SD Biosensor.
“These two arrangements will make available to LMICs 120 million antigen rapid diagnostic tests (Ag RDTs) over a period of six months,” the WHO statement said.
It further said that these tests provide results in 15-30 minutes, rather than hours or days, and will enable expansion of testing, particularly in countries that do not have extensive laboratory facilities or trained health workers to implement molecular (polymerase-chain reaction or PCR) tests.
An emergency-use listing was issued by the WHO last week for the antigen-based rapid Covid-19 diagnostic tests which cost $5 each.
“High-quality rapid tests show us where the virus is hiding, which is key to quickly tracing and isolating contacts and breaking the chains of transmission,” Monday’s statement quoted WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as saying.
“The tests are a critical tool for governments as they look to reopen economies and ultimately save both lives and livelihoods.”
As of Tuesday, the overall number of global coronavirus stood at 33,273,720 million, while the deaths have increased to 1,000,825, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
The global death toll from the coronavirus has passed one million.With over one million lives having succumbed to COVID-19 globally, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that while the “agonising milestone” is a “mind-numbing figure”, the world must never lose sight of each and every individual life.
“They were fathers and mothers, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues,” he said in a statement on Monday.
The pain has been multiplied by the “savageness” of the disease, the Secretary-General added, noting that the risk of infection kept families from being with their loved ones, and the process of mourning and celebrating a life was often made impossible.
“How do you say goodbye without holding a hand, or extending a gentle kiss, a warm embrace, a final whisper ‘I love you’?”
At the same time, still there is no end in sight to the spread of the virus, the loss of jobs, the disruption of education, the upheaval to our lives, said Guterres.
“However, we can overcome this challenge,” he urged, underlining the need to “learn from the mistakes”.
“Responsible leadership matters. Science matters. Cooperation matters – and misinformation kills. As the relentless hunt for a vaccine continues – a vaccine that must be available and affordable to all – let’s do our part to save lives,” Guterres added.
“As we remember so many lives lost, let us never forget that our future rests on solidarity – as people united and as united nations.”
Meanwhile, a new COVID-19 diagnostic test, which can provide reliable results quickly, at a lower price and with less sophisticated equipment, will help expand capacity to detect cases in low- and middle-income countries, the UN World Health Organisation, WHO, has announced.
Through agreements between WHO and partners, 120 million such tests will be made available to these countries, over a period of six months.
“This will enable the expansion of testing, particularly in hard-to-reach areas that do not have lab facilities or enough trained health workers to carry out PCR tests,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a media briefing on Monday, adding that it would be “a vital addition” to countries’ testing capacity and is especially important in areas of high transmission.
“The quicker COVID-19 can be diagnosed, the quicker action can be taken to treat and isolate those with the virus and trace their contacts,” said Tedros.
With agreement and seed funding already secured, the need now is the full amount of funds to buy the tests, stressed the WHO Director-General.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that the country has signed a deal to secure 20 million more Covid-19 vaccine doses.
Addressing the media here, Trudeau said the agreement was signed with AstraZeneca for access to a vaccine prospect now being developed at Oxford University, CBC News reported.
“We’ve been guided by science since the very beginning and right now, both the Covid-19 vaccine task force and the immunity task force are doing important work to help us identify the most promising vaccine options and strategies,” he said.
Canada prime minister Justin Trudeau.
With the new deal, the Trudeau government has secured access to six leading vaccine candidates so far.
However, none of the candidates has been shown to work so far.
Health Canada has said that it will review the evidence on safety, efficacy and manufacturing quality for each vaccine to determine if individual vaccines will be approved for use in the country before they are made available to citizens.
This latest development came days after Trudeau announced that a second coronavirus wave has started in the country amid concerns over a possible national lockdown.
“In our four biggest provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec), the second wave isn’t just starting, it’s already underway. We’re on the brink of a fall that could be much worse than the spring,” Trudeau said a televised address to the nation on September 23.
The country witnessed a sudden spike in the number of coronavirus cases, from about 300 per day in August to a record high of 1,248 on September 22.
Canada has so far reported more than 148 coronavirus cases, with 9,242 deaths.
Paris, Sept. 4, 2020 (Xinhua) -- People wearing masks walk on the Trocadero Place near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, Sept. 3, 2020. The French government aims to mobilize 100 billion euros (118 billion U.S. dollars) in a recovery plan "of historic size" to help the country recover from the coronavirus pandemic crisis, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Thursday. Ecological transition, competitiveness and social cohesion were identified as the three pillars of the plan dubbed "France Relaunch," which Castex said was "the most massive announced to date among major European countries." (Xinhua/Gao Jing/IANS)
The second coronavirus wave in France could “overwhelm” the country amid exhaustion of the front line workers battling the pandemic, a senior health official has warned.
“The second wave is arriving faster than we thought,” the Guardian reported on Sunday citing Patrick Bouet, head of the National Council of the Order of Doctors, as saying to the weekly Journal du Dimanche.
Bouet added that last week’s warnings by Health Minister Olivier Veran had not been taken seriously.
On September 23, Veran had warned that restrictions in the “red zones” across the country will be tightened due to a spike in the number of confirmed cases.
Since September 19, 53 departments in the country, where the Covid-19 incidence or the number of positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants over a week is greater than 50, have been classified as “zone of alert” or “red zone”.
In “zone of enhanced alert” where the incidence is above 150, now including Paris and eight other cities, starting from Saturday, bars started to close at 10 p.m., limit of attendance to public events was cut from 5,000 to 1,000 and gatherings of more than 10 people were prohibited in public spaces such as beaches and parks.
In Marseille and Guadeloupe, now “zone of maximum alert” as the incidence there has gone above 250, in addition to the measures envisaged for the enhanced alert zones, bars and restaurants will be totally closed, according to the Mnister.
Meanwhile, the French Le Monde newspaper said in a report that a third of the new clusters in the country were in schools and universities, the Guardian reported.
The latest figures from health officials indicated that 32 per cent of the 899 clusters under investigation concern schools and universities.
As of Sunday, the total number of coronavirus cases in France has increased to 552,454, while the death toll stood at 31,675.
Napoleon is normally associated as citing Britain as a nation of shopkeepers when in fact the phrase was first coined in the late 18th Century by Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac, the French revolutionary. Little did they both know that eventually, Britain would become a nation of Asian shopkeepers!
Point being that it is long accepted South Asians have a much higher propensity to own and run independent retail shops and outlets, certainly within the Grocery, CTN sectors alongside a host of various other professions in which South Asians have proven to be resourceful and ambitious in demonstrating how they have a natural flair at succeeding as entrepreneurs.
I distinctly recall joking as a kid how Asians were never any good at football because every time they received a corner, they would open up a shop! In such politically correct times, I’m not sure I can cut such wise cracks anymore! Back to the present day, the UK’s South Asian community over the decades has matured with many penetrating senior positions in the Corporate world, often internationally, again exhibiting higher incidence in Law, IT and Finance work disciplines to name but a few when compared vs the White Caucasian average base.
Though as with all other industry sectors, none have been immune to the economically debilitating effect of the pandemic on the wider Business community in terms of their motivation, movement and outlook. It is this area I would like to hone in on by providing a snap shot of the observed effects of Covid-19 impacting Business audiences globally and how they may interact with the world within a media perspective.
Shorter term switch to domestic/short haul business travel raises in-market media scope
International businessmen are long renowned for travelling by air, hence the evolution of Business Class! Airports therefore have become a endemic second home for business people and their reliance on air travel has resulted in acute market changes during the pandemic. Looking Far East, China’s easing of air travel restrictions between Chinese provinces has led to business travel demand being the first to rebound, recovering by 50% overall.
Some of China’s cities with the highest abundance of migrant workers, like Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu, have already surged close to this level. Albeit generally, Asia is culturally geared more towards physical face-to-face dealings. Still, this points to a blueprint for replication across the West, whilst broadening out to encompass short haul travel bubbles as air bridges come into fruition between UK and the rest of the EU.
Similarly, Skit’s most recent research highlights how US domestic market, as restrictions start to ease in certain states, has reported 5% uptick in passenger traffic during May, which includes business passengers. Notwithstanding switch envisaged to using more in-country and/or cross boarder train services serving main business hubs already well connected, e.g. London-Paris gateway onto Frankfurt-Amsterdam. While train modes offer business targeting opportunities, they may not provide the prestigious, stature building sites and endorsement afforded by airport environments.
Smarter, more efficient techniques to track n’ trace Business audiences
Future mobility is likely to be increasingly influenced by ongoing global pandemic, potential recurrences, various geopolitical tension and impacts continuing to take hold. This requires greater flexibility in ways in which business audiences are typically engaged.
Burgeoning digitisation of out of home inventory (namely digital billboards) with application of advanced audience data will enable purer audience-led implementational methods outside of airport environments. Such programmatic approaches are delivering significant efficiencies by zoning in on key times and areas where there is likely to be a higher propensity for business audiences to persist.
This ties in with the aforementioned in-market emphasis where role of key financial city hubs and central business districts will provide fertile ground to minimise wastage when following and reaching business audiences, to compliment and work alongside any in-airport activations targeting this group.
Forecasted rise of extreme business travel segment creates new, focal media pit stops
Even with virtual communication tech prevailing, face-to-face meetings are still deemed irreplaceable, e.g. US’s National Car Rental survey, 81% said business travel helps build key business relationships that otherwise cannot be had. The role of airline rewards programmes, currently under-developed commercially, could provide fresh ways to hone in on a more concentrated level of Business practitioners taking essential, necessary travel that shape business travel recovery.
Within this, how will Business users further meld tightening leisure trips when travelling on business? 51% of C-suites already travel 1st or Business during leisure trips. This segment are purportedly driving private jet usage too which has soared +40% YOY since March – 70% of users were already business according to Private Jet Media, though it is reported just over 4% of Global C-suite use private flying methods (skewed US @ 7.8%, 3.5% Europe).
Even APAC’s C-suite, where just 2% use personal planes, Singapore-based My Jet Asia has witnessed an c. 90% upswing. However, its viability as a media channel remains challenging, i.e. de-centralised vendors, chiefly static inventory, low dwell time, splash n’ dash use, nominal reach volumes and much higher cost to reach audience. Sustainability angle may need consideration too given pressure this puts of Corporate Social Responsibility obligations.
Flying privately does little to reduce carbon footprints! That aside, reported correlations suggest private jets attract super-high business performers, e.g. those that use private aviation out of S&P’s 500 outperform those that don’t by 70%. Reducing entry costs relatively may also fuel further usage, e.g. ”very light jet” for up to four now costs “just” $2,400 (Paramount Business Jets).
Sources used where not quoted: Forward Keys 2020, TGI GBI 2019, Private Jet Media in-house data.
The Spanish government has urged authorities in Madrid to tighten coronavirus restrictions across the city, warning of a “serious risk” to residents if they do not.
Madrid extended restrictions in Covid-19 hotspots on Friday but rejected calls for a city-wide lockdown, the BBC reported.
On Saturday Spain’s Health Minister Salvador Illa said current restrictions did not go far enough.
He said it was “time to act with determination” to control the pandemic.
“There is a serious risk for inhabitants, for the neighbouring regions,” Illa said, calling on the capital’s regional authorities to “put the health of citizens first” and impose a partial lockdown on the entire city.
Spain’s regions are in charge of healthcare and so the central government does not have the power to impose the restrictions it prefers.
Madrid is again at the epicentre of Spain’s coronavirus outbreak, as it was during the first peak earlier this year. The country recorded a further 12,272 cases on Friday, bringing the official total to 716,481, the highest infection tally in western Europe.
Spain and many other countries in the northern hemisphere have seen a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in recent weeks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a stark warning about the resurgence of the virus in Europe and elsewhere as winter approaches.
European countries were seeing “worrying increases of the disease”, with “a small uptick in deaths in older people” that will inevitably increase, Dr Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies team, said on Friday.
Dr Ryan questioned whether European countries had “really exhausted all the tools” at their disposal to prevent a second round of national lockdowns.
“Lockdowns are almost a last resort – and to think that we’re back in last-resort territory in September, that’s a pretty sobering thought,” Dr Ryan told reporters at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva.
