Category: World News

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Jacinda wins second term in landslide victory

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.

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-Top News COVID-19 World News

40% World’s population lack access to handwashing facilities: UNICEF

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.

Also read:463 mn children unable access remote learning: UNICEF

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Environment India News Lite Blogs World News

Study: Lockdown Improved Air Quality

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.

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Business World News

Global spending on cloud set to cross $1 trillion: Report

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.

Also Read: Microsoft and Telstra partner to harness next-gen Cloud, IoT

“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.

Also Read: ‘Accenture Cloud First’ gets $3 Billion Investment

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”.

Also Read: Wipro, IBM Partner To Offer Cloud Solutions

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COVID-19 World News

Aussie Health Minister calls for easing Covid curbs

Greg Hunt (Photo: IANS file)

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.

Also read:Australia to reinitiate ‘trans-Tasman’ travel bubble plans

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Economy World News

G30 calls for collective efforts to tackle debt crisis

Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.

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.

Also read:IMF Foresees Steep Fall And Rise For India’s GDP

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COVID-19 Economy World News

Poorest countries need support : World Bank

New Delhi: World Bank President David Malpass addresses a press conference in New Delhi on Oct 26, 2019. (Photo: IANS)

Malpass highlighted the significance of the G20 debt relief program, saying that there’s been progress both in terms of fiscal benefits and also transparency benefits..Reports Asian Lite News

  • New Delhi: World Bank President David Malpass addresses a press conference in New Delhi on Oct 26, 2019. (Photo: IANS)

The global economy is experiencing a K-shaped recovery, as advanced economies have been able to provide support while the poorest countries are facing an increasingly desperate recession, World Bank Group President David Malpass said.

“What we’re seeing so far is sometimes described as a K-shaped recovery,” Xinhua news agency quoted Malpass as saying at a virtual press conference on Wednesday on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“That means the advanced economies have been able to provide support, especially for their financial markets and for people that have jobs that can be done by working from home,” he said.

  • New Delhi: World Bank President David Malpass addresses a press conference in New Delhi on Oct 26, 2019. (Photo: IANS)

But for the developing countries, especially the poorest developing countries — the downward leg in the K — people are facing an increasingly desperate recession, “because of the loss of jobs, the loss of income, and also the loss of remittances coming from workers working outside the country”, the World Bank chief said.

Malpass highlighted the significance of the G20 debt relief program, saying that there’s been progress both in terms of fiscal benefits and also transparency benefits.

In April, the G20 endorsed the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) to help the poorest countries manage the impact of the pandemic, allowing them to suspend payments on official bilateral debt until the end of 2020.

In a virtual meeting earlier on Wednesday, G20 finance ministers and central bank governors agreed to extend the DSSI by another six months, and to examine by April 2021 if the economic and financial situation requires further extension.

Malpass further said he would propose a $25 billion supplemental Covid-19 emergency financing package to support most indebted IDA countries, the poorest countries drawing on the World Bank’s International Development Association.

Also read:IMF Foresees Steep Fall And Rise For India’s GDP

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Social Media World News

Facebook allocates £1mn to ‘birthplace of computer’

Facebook. (File Photo: IANS)

The wartime code-breaking centre in Milton Keynes ,considered as the “birthplace of the computer’ has been hit hard by a drop in visitors and revenue this year due to Covid-induced challenges…Reports Asian Lite News

Facebook has announced a donation of 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) to Bletchley Park, a heritage attraction and museum that served as the British code-breaking hub during World War Two.

Now considered the “birthplace of the computer,” the wartime code-breaking centre in Milton Keynes has been hit hard by a drop in visitors and revenue this year due to Covid-induced challenges, pushing it toward difficult decisions about its future.

The donation by Facebook is aimed towards keeping the centre open to the world.

“By figuring out how to crack the Nazis’ secret communications, the almost 10,000 people who worked at Bletchley Park during World War II – 75 per cent of them women — changed the course of the war and saved millions of lives,” Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer, wrote in a blog post on Monday.

“They did it by building the world’s first programmable digital computer and laying the foundations of modern computer science,” Schroepfer wrote.

Ideas developed at Bletchley Park remain at the heart of cutting-edge research in fields like Artificial Intelligence (AI), online security and cryptography today, more than 80 years after the first codebreakers set up shop there.

Facebook said that it simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park.

“The work of its most brilliant scientist, Alan Turing, still inspires our tens of thousands of engineers and research scientists today, and is foundational to the entire field of computing, which has and will continue to shape the lives of billions of people,” Schroepfer said.

Also read:ICC videos most viewed on Facebook

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Arab News World News

UN mourns loss of late Amir of Kuwait

United Nations General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir praised the late Amir as a pioneer of preventive diplomacy, due to his commitment to peace and conflict resolution through dialogue…Reports Asian Lite Newsdesk

Nations mourned the passing of the late Amir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, during a United Nations General Assembly special session on Tuesday.

Global delegates stood for a minute of silence to mourn the loss of the virtuous ruler, once granted a ‘Humanitarian Leader’ award by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, in memory of his legacy in humanitarianism, diplomacy, peace-making and conflict resolution.

United Nations General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir praised the late Amir as a pioneer of preventive diplomacy, due to his commitment to peace and conflict resolution through dialogue.

For his part, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the late Amir as a distinguished statesman, a distinguished human being, a builder of bridges and a messenger of peace, saying he prioritised cooperation and pluralism.

Throughout his reign, His Highness gained everyone’s appreciation and respect for his outstanding leadership and commitment to keeping peace. He has always been ready to build bridges between religions, cultures and countries in the neighborhood and beyond, and thanks to insight, political wisdom and perseverance, His Highness formed the preventive diplomatic line of Kuwait in the region and at the international level, Guterres added.

Guterres indicated that Sheikh Sabah played a vital role in mediating, facilitating dialogue and spreading messages of peace, tolerance and coexistence, describing him as a close friend of the UN.

Also read:China loses support in UN Human Rights Council

Also read:Staggering rise in climate disasters: UN report

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World News

Staggering rise in climate disasters: UN report

Faridpur, July 20, 2020 (Xinhua) -- Photo shows flood-affected houses in Faridpur, Bangladesh, July 19, 2020. Floods triggered by heavy seasonal rains and onrush of water from hills have worsened again in parts of Bangladesh, including central Faridpur district, some 101 kilometers away from the capital Dhaka. (Xinhua/IANS)

Over the last 20 years, major recorded disaster events claimed 1.23 million lives, impacting 4.2 billion people, many on more than one occasion, resulting in approximately almost $3 trillion in global economic losses…Reports Asian Lite News

A new UN report has revealed that the first 20 years of this century have seen a staggering rise in climate disasters, .

The report, titled ‘Human Cost of Disasters 2000-2019’, published by the UN Office on Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) on Monday, showed that there has been a dramatic rise in disasters over the last 20 years, due to a rise in climate-related disasters, including extreme weather events, reports Xinhua news agency.

The last 20 years have seen the number of major floods “more than double”.

The report also records major increases in storms, drought, wildfires and extreme temperature events.

Over the last 20 years, major recorded disaster events claimed 1.23 million lives, impacting 4.2 billion people, many on more than one occasion, resulting in approximately almost $3 trillion in global economic losses.

  • (181010) — POSO, Oct. 10, 2018 (Xinhua) — A stranded wooden boat is seen after an earthquake and tsunami at Pantoloan port in Poso, Central Sulawesi Province, Indonesia, on Oct. 10, 2018. The earthquakes and the tsunami have killed at least 2,010 people, left over 5,000 others missing and triggered massive damage and a huge evacuation, according to the national disaster management agency. (Xinhua/Zulkarnain) (dtf)

The report said that disaster management agencies “are fighting an uphill battle against” an ever-rising tide of extreme weather events.

More lives are being saved but more people are being impacted by the expanding climate emergency.

Although better recording and reporting of disasters may help explain some of the increase in the last two decades, researchers insisted that the significant rise in climate-related emergencies was the main reason for the spike, with floods accounting for more than 40 per cent of disasters – affecting 1.65 billion people – storms 28 per cent, earthquakes 8 per cent, and extreme temperatures 6 per cent.

“This is clear evidence that in a world where the global average temperature in 2019 was 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period, the impacts are being felt in the increased frequency of extreme weather events including heatwaves, droughts, flooding, winter storms, hurricanes and wildfires,” according to the report.

Currently, “the world is on course for a temperature increase of 3.2 degrees Celsius or more”, unless industrialized nations can deliver reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 7.2 per cent annually over the next 10 years in order to achieve the 1.5 degree target agreed in Paris.

Also read:UN plans aid for Syrian wildfire victims