Russia actively supports the activities of the UN and defends the need for strict observance of the norms and principles of its charter…reports Asian Lite News
As one of the founding countries of the United Nations, Russia consistently advocates strengthening the organisation’s central role in addressing global affairs, President Vladimir Putin said.
Russia actively supports the activities of the UN and defends the need for strict observance of the norms and principles of its charter, Putin said in a message to participants in a gathering dedicated to the UN’s 75th anniversary on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.
“The UN has been and remains an uncontested global structure that provides an opportunity for multilateral equal dialogue and partnership in solving the most diverse problems facing humanity,” said the message published by the Kremlin.
“Undoubtedly, only together can we effectively confront the global challenges of the 21st century and ensure the peaceful, prosperous development of mankind,” it read.
A total of 86 bodies have been recovered in Tarhuna since the beginning of a search in June, while Tripoli has seen the recovery of 28 bodies so far, said Jafri….Reports Asian Lite News
Libyan authorities have announced the recovery of 12 unidentified bodies in mass graves in the city of Tarhuna, some 90 km south of the capital Tripoli.
Abdul-Aziz Jafri, spokesman of the General Authority for Research and Identification of Missing Persons, told Xinhua news agency on Sunday that the bodies were recovered from five newly discovered mass graves in the city.
A total of 86 bodies have been recovered in Tarhuna since the beginning of a search in June, while Tripoli has seen the recovery of 28 bodies so far, said Jafri.
The forces of the UN-backed Libyan government have been accusing the rival east-based army of mass killings in Tarhuna.
Tarhuna had been the main military operation centre of the east-based army before the city was taken over by the UN-backed government.
The east-based army and the UN-backed government had been engaged in a deadly armed conflict for more than a year in and around Tripoli, which ended in early June with the UN-backed government announcing takeover of all western Libya after withdrawal of the east-based army.
The fighting has killed and injured hundreds of civilians and displaced more than 150,000 others.
The UNAOC chief stressed that togetherness, peace and tolerance are rooted in religions across the faith spectrum…Reports Asian Lite News
Miguel Moratinos, the high representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), condemned the beheading of a teacher in the northwestern suburbs of Paris on Friday.
“The high representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, Miguel Angel Moratinos, condemns in the strongest terms the decapitation of a French school teacher on Friday in the town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in the north-western suburbs of Paris, France.
The high representative stresses that such heinous crime is unjustifiable whenever, wherever and by whomsoever committed,” according to a press statement issued by his spokesperson Nihal Saad on Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.
The UNAOC chief stressed that togetherness, peace and tolerance are rooted in religions across the faith spectrum.
He reiterated that respect of the other regardless of their culture, religion, belief or race is crucial to living together in just, peaceful, and inclusive societies.
The high representative emphasized that freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression are anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He also stressed that hate speech and stigma sow division and fragments in societies.
The UNAOC chief reiterated that this horrific crime “should not deter our commitment and will to stand against divisive policies and extremist ideologies in all its manifestations.”
Moratinos expressed his heartfelt condolences to the victims’ family and the government and people of France.
On Friday afternoon, a decapitated man was found on the street near a middle school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburban area of northwest Paris. The victim was a 47-year-old history teacher who had reportedly shown to his students as part of a class on “freedom of expression” caricatures of Mohammad.
Wellington, Aug. 17, 2020 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern attends a press conference held in the parliament building Beehive in Wellington, New Zealand, on Aug. 17, 2020. Jacinda Ardern confirmed on Monday that the general election will be held on Oct. 17, four weeks after Sept. 19 when the poll was originally scheduled for. (Xinhua/Guo Lei/IANS)
According to the preliminary count results for the election held on Saturday, the Labour Party won 49 per cent of the vote, which transfers to 64 seats in the 120-member Parliament…Reports Asian Lite News
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Sunday said that she expected to form a new government within the next two to three weeks before the official results of the general elections in which her Labour Party secured a landslide majority, were declared.
According to the preliminary count results for the election held on Saturday, the Labour Party won 49 per cent of the vote, which transfers to 64 seats in the 120-member Parliament in a Mixed-Member Proportional voting system, with the opposition National Party lagging behind at 27 per cent, or 35 seats, reports Xinhua news agency.
While addressing the media in Auckland on Sunday afternoon, Ardern said the work would begin and the Labour caucus will meet on Monday.
“My expectation is that we will form government within the next two to three weeks,” said Ardern.
“We clearly have a mandate on behalf of New Zealand to crack on with government formation.
Wellington, Aug. 17, 2020 (Xinhua) — New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern attends a press conference held in the parliament building Beehive in Wellington, New Zealand, on Aug. 17, 2020. Jacinda Ardern confirmed on Monday that the general election will be held on Oct. 17, four weeks after Sept. 19 when the poll was originally scheduled for. (Xinhua/Guo Lei/IANS)
Besides the general election vote, New Zealanders also cast their ballots for two referendums on end of life choice and legalisation of the recreational use of cannabis.
Preliminary referendum results will be released on October 30, and the official results of the election and referendums will be released on November 6.
Meanwhile, Ardern did not rule out the possibility to form a coalition government with the Green Party, which won 7.6 per cent of the vote or 10 seats in Parliament.
There was a range of options for agreements with the Greens, said Ardern.
After the 2017 general election, the Labour Party, which won 46 seats in Parliament, formed a coalition government with the support from New Zealand First Party and Green party.
Wellington, Aug. 17, 2020 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern attends a press conference held in the parliament building Beehive in Wellington, New Zealand, on Aug. 17, 2020. Jacinda Ardern confirmed on Monday that the general election will be held on Oct. 17, four weeks after Sept. 19 when the poll was originally scheduled for. (Xinhua/Guo Lei/IANS)
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Saturday won a landslide victory in the country’s general elections held earlier in the day, securing her a second term in office.
With most ballots tallied, Ardern’s ruling Labour Party has won 49 per cent of the vote and is projected to win 64 seats – enough for an outright majority, which will be a first in the country since it introduced a voting system known as Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP) in 1996, the BBC reported.
According to the Electoral Commission, opposition centre-right National Party, currently on 27 per cent, has admitted defeat in Saturday’s poll.
The ACT New Zealand and Green parties came in third with 8 per cent of the votes.
Addressing her supporters following the results, Ardern said: “New Zealand has shown the Labour Party its greatest support in almost 50 years.
“We will not take your support for granted. And I can promise you we will be a party that governs for every New Zealander.”
After conceding, National Party’s leader Judith Collins congratulated Ardern and promised her party would be a “robust opposition”, adding “we will be back”.
Saturday’s election was initially scheduled for September 19 but was postponed due to a second Covid-19 outbreak.
The previous Parliament, which was elected on September 23, 2017, was officially dissolved on September 6 paving the way for the polls, Xinhua news agency.
Polling stations across the country opened at 9 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m.
More than a million people have already voted in early polling which opened on October 3.
Besides the general election vote, New Zealanders also cast their ballots for two referendums on end of life choice and legalisation of the recreational use of cannabis.
Preliminary referendum results will be released on October 30, and the official results of the election and referendums will be released on November 6.
Although handwashing with soap is vital in the fight against infectious diseases, including the novel coronavirus, 40 per cent of the world’s population, or 3 billion people, do not have access to it, according to new Unicef estimates.
The estimates issued on Thursday revealed that the number is much higher in the least developed countries, where nearly three-quarters do not have handwashing facilities at home, reports Xinhua news agency.
Kelly Ann Naylor, associate director of water, sanitation and hygiene at Unicef, said that it was “unacceptable” that the most vulnerable communities are unable to use the simplest of methods to protect themselves and their loved ones.
“The pandemic has highlighted the critical role of hand hygiene in disease prevention. It has also stressed a pre-existing problem for many: handwashing with soap remains out of reach for millions of children where they’re born, live and learn.
“We must take immediate action to make handwashing with soap accessible to everyone, everywhere — now and in the future,” she said.
The situation is also alarming at schools: 43 per cent globally (70 percent in the least developed countries) lack a handwashing facility with water and soap, affecting hundreds of millions of children, according to the estimates.
Against this backdrop, Unicef, along with the World Health Organization, launched the “Hand Hygiene for All” initiative to support the development of national roadmaps to accelerate and sustain progress toward making hand hygiene a mainstay in public health interventions.
The initiative brings together international, national, and local partners, to ensure affordable products and services are available and sustainable, especially in vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.
The estimates coincided with the Global Handwashing Day marked annually on October 15, which serves as a platform to raise awareness on the importance of handwashing with soap.
The global campaign is dedicated to raising awareness of handwashing with soap as a key factor in disease prevention.
Air Pollution: People walk on the streets of Sarajevo - the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina wearing masks so as to avoid breathing polluted air. (File Photo: Xinhua/Haris Memija/IANS)
Air Pollution: People walk on the streets of Sarajevo – the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina wearing masks so as to avoid breathing polluted air. (File Photo: Xinhua/Haris Memija/IANS)
Researchers have found that lockdowns initiated to curb the spread of Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic improved air quality, averting tens of thousands of deaths in regions where air pollution has a significant impact on mortality.
The study, published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health, found that particulate matter concentrations in China dropped by an unprecedented 29.7 percent, and by 17.1 percent in parts of Europe, during lockdowns.
“This unique, real-world experiment shows us that strong improvements in severely polluted areas are achievable even in the short term, if strong measures are implemented,” said study author Paola Crippa from the University of Notre Dame in the US.
New Delhi (Photo: IANS)
Particulate matter (PM2.5) — tiny airborne particles smaller than 1/10,000 of an inch in diameter — comes from various combustion-related sources including industrial emissions, transportation, wildfires and chemical reactions of pollutants in the atmosphere.
The research team integrated advanced computer simulations with measured particulate matter concentrations from more than 2,500 sites in Europe and China between January 1, 2016, to June 30, 2020.
It included the period (January 2020-June 2020) during which both regions initiated lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
From February to March, the study found that an estimated 24,200 premature deaths associated with particulate matter were averted throughout China compared to 3,309 reported Covid-19 fatalities.
“Improvements in air quality were widespread across China because of extended lockdown measures,” the authors wrote.
The study found the situation in Europe to be quite different.
While Covid-19 related deaths were far higher in Europe compared to what was reported in China, an estimated 2,190 deaths were still avoided during the lockdown period when compared to averages between 2016 and 2019.
Coronavirus.
The averted fatalities figures become much larger (up to 287,000 in China and 29,500 in Europe) when considering long-term effects, which will depend on the future pathway of economic recovery.
“In China, we saw that lockdowns implied very significant reductions in PM2.5 concentrations, which means that policies targeting industrial and traffic emissions might be very effective in the future,” Crippa said.
“In Europe those reductions were somewhat smaller but there was still a significant effect, suggesting that other factors might be considered to shape an effective mitigation strategy,” Crippa noted.
Accelerated by Covid-19 disruption, the global spending on overall Cloud services will surpass $1 trillion in 2024, sustaining a double-digit compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.7 per cent, according to a new IDC report.
The total worldwide spending includes the hardware and software components underpinning cloud services and the professional and managed services opportunities around cloud services.
The strongest growth in cloud revenues will come in the [cloud] as a service category – public (shared) cloud services and dedicated (private) cloud services.
This category, which is also the largest category in terms of overall revenues, is forecast to deliver a five-year CAGR of 21 per cent, accounting for more than 60 per cent of all cloud revenues worldwide by 2024, the whole cloud forecast from IDC said late on Thursday.
“Cloud in all its permutations – hardware/software/services/as a service as well as public/private/hybrid/multi/edge – will play ever greater, and even dominant, roles across the IT industry for the foreseeable future,” said Richard L Villars, group vice president, Worldwide Research at IDC.
“By the end of 2021, based on lessons learned in the pandemic, most enterprises will put a mechanism in place to accelerate their shift to cloud-centric digital infrastructure and application services twice as fast as before the pandemic,” he added.
The services category, which includes cloud-related professional services and cloud-related management services, will be the second largest category in terms of revenue but will experience the slowest growth with an 8.3 per cent CAGR.
This is due to a variety of factors, including greater use of automation in cloud migrations.
The smallest cloud category, infrastructure build, which includes hardware, software, and support for enterprise private clouds and service provider public clouds, will enjoy solid growth (11.1 per cent CAGR) over the forecast period, the IDC said.
The Covid-19 pandemic has largely proven to be an accelerator of cloud adoption and extension and will continue to drive a faster conversion to cloud-centric IT.
“The adoption of cloud services should enable organisations to shift IT from maintenance of legacy IT to new digital transformation initiatives, which can lead to new business revenue and competitiveness as well as create new opportunities for suppliers of professional services,” the IDC report mentioned.
Hybrid Cloud has become central to successful digital transformation efforts by defining an IT architectural approach, an IT investment strategy, and an IT staffing model “that ensures the enterprise can achieve the optimal balance across dimensions without sacrificing performance, reliability, or control”.
The national death toll remained unchanged at 904…Reports Asian Lite News
Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt has issued a renewed call for Covid-19 restrictions to be eased in the state of Victoria.
As of Thursday afternoon there had been 27,362 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Australia, with 23 new cases detected in the last 24 hours, according to the latest data from the federal health ministry.
Victoria, the hardest-hit state by the Covid-19 pandemic in the country, reported six new cases on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.
New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, confirmed another 11 cases, five of which were recently returned travellers in hotel quarantine and two of which have remained under investigation.
The national death toll remained unchanged at 904.
Hunt said on Wednesday that Victoria had recorded an average of fewer than the threshold of 10 new Covid-19 cases for re-opening.
“We have a Commonwealth definition in terms of hotspots, and that’s a rolling average of less than 10 cases. Victoria is below that rolling average,” Hunt told reporters in Canberra.
“Victoria has reached the Commonwealth standard to go to the next stage,” he said.
The G30 urged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to mobilize global liquidity on a larger scale than ever before, scale up its crisis lending in low-income countries, and use far more of its existing non-concessional resources to mitigate economic fallout from Covid-19….Reports Asian Lite News
Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.
The G30 has said that rising debts have threatened funding for development priorities and called for urgent policy response to support the most vulnerable countries.
The G30, established in 1978, is an independent global body comprising economic and financial leaders from the public and private sectors and academia, reports Xinhua news agency.
The international response to the ongoing pandemic in middle- and low-income countries pales by comparison to the domestic policy response in advanced economies, former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, co-chair of the working group’s steering committee, said in a webinar on Wednesday.
Summers, who is also a professor at the Harvard University, noted that new creditors represent the bulk of debt payments from low-income countries in the wake of the pandemic shock.
Washington, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) — Photo taken on Feb. 3, 2020 shows International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in Washington, D.C., the United States. (IMF/Handout via Xinhua/IANS)
Adapting the international financial architecture to these and other new stakeholders will take time, but urgent responses to the pandemic cannot wait for this process to run its course, according to the report, which called on the international community to adapt system to ensure proper role for the new creditors.
The G30 urged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to mobilize global liquidity on a larger scale than ever before, scale up its crisis lending in low-income countries, and use far more of its existing non-concessional resources to mitigate economic fallout from Covid-19.
New Delhi: World Bank President David Malpass addresses a press conference in New Delhi on Oct 26, 2019. (Photo: IANS)
Debt relief and supporting the poorest are among the issues being discussed during the ongoing virtual annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank Group, which runs from October 12 through October 18.
World Bank Group President David Malpass welcomed the G20’s extension of debt relief program, calling for further efforts to help the poorest countries.
“Some core DSSI-related problems are still unresolved, notably lack of participation by private creditors and incomplete participation by some official bilateral creditors,” said the World Bank chief.
