wangjinyang
(Xinhua)09:57, November 24, 2020
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) — The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) on Monday told Joe Biden it is ready to begin the formal presidential transition process for him.
President Donald Trump tweeted on the same day that he has recommended that the GSA do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and that he has directed his team to facilitate Bidens transition, although he has not conceded defeat.
(Xinhua)14:28, November 24, 2020
GENEVA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) — There is now real hope that vaccines, in combination with other tried and tested public health measures, will help to end the pandemic, said the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday.
The WHO chiefs remarks came after drugmaker AstraZeneca said Monday that its COVID-19 vaccine, developed with Oxford University, was up to 90 percent effective, making it the third major drug company after Pfizer and Moderna to have reported late-stage data for a potential COVID-19 vaccine.
The significance of this scientific achievement cannot be overstated. No vaccines in history have been developed as rapidly as these. The scientific community has set a new standard for vaccine development, Dr. Tedros added.
He pointed out now the international community must set a new standard for access, as the urgency with which vaccines have been developed must be matched by the same urgency to distribute them fairly.
Worried that the poorest and most vulnerable countries will be trampled in the stampede for vaccines, WHO established the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator to support global efforts in developing vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics, and has joined so far 187 countries in the COVAX facility to collaborate on the procurement and rollout of vaccines, ensuring affordable prices, volumes and timing for all countries.
According to the WHO chief, some 4.3 billion U.S. dollars is needed immediately to support the mass procurement and delivery of vaccines, tests and treatments, while additional 23.8 billion dollars will be needed next year.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that if medical solutions can be made available faster and more widely, it could lead to a cumulative increase in global income of almost 9 trillion dollars by the end of 2025, he said.
(Xinhua)09:01, September 18, 2020
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) — UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock on Thursday asked the Security Council and UN member states to take immediate action to tackle food insecurity and to boost humanitarian aid.
The COVID-19 pandemic is dramatically increasing wider humanitarian need, he told the Security Council in a briefing on conflict-induced hunger.
Things are going to get worse. I dont think we have seen the peak of the pandemic yet. But the indirect impact is already deepening poverty, destroying livelihoods, undermining education, disrupting immunization, and exacerbating food insecurity, fragility and violence, he said.
The humanitarian agencies are in danger of being overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the needs, and that will get worse in the absence of a lot more financial help, he said. So there are concrete measures the Security Council and UN member states more widely can take: first, press for peaceful and negotiated political solutions to bring armed conflicts to an end; second, ensure the parties to conflict respect international humanitarian law; third, mitigate the economic impact of armed conflict and related violence, including by mobilizing international financial institutions.
Most important of all, he said, is to scale up support for humanitarian operations and take bigger and more ambitious steps to support the economies of countries facing severe, large-scale hunger.
Lowcock voiced particular concern about food insecurity in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), northeast Nigeria and the Sahel region.
In the DRC, nearly 22 million people are acutely food insecure, the highest number in the world, as a result of COVID-19 compounding the impact of decades of conflict. In northeast Nigeria, violence by extremist non-state armed groups is largely responsible for driving up humanitarian needs. In the Sahel, an upsurge in violence and armed group attacks has forcibly displaced more than 1 million people, most of whom are dependent on agriculture. In total, some 14 million people are experiencing crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity, the highest figures for a decade, he said.
(Xinhua)09:04, September 18, 2020
BRUSSELS, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) — Europe must lead the way to a green recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic and it must get it right, Frans Timmermans, European Commission Executive Vice President in charge of climate action, said on Thursday.
As chief of the European Union (EU) responsible for the Green Deal and the first European Climate Law, Timmermans said the new EU target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 was doable and achievable if everyone put in their fair share of effort to reach the target.
Presenting the Climate Target Plan at a press conference, he said this level of ambition will put the EU on the right path to reaching climate neutrality by 2050.
The new plan unveils the path towards the ambitious target, with carbon pricing and stronger CO2 standards for transport at the core, according to Timmermans.
Boasting the EU Emissions Trading System as a proven, effective tool to bring down emissions, Timmermans said the Commission will look at expanding the mechanism to road transport and buildings.
Timmermans replied to media questions that he understood those who expected the target to be even more ambitious but insisted that the impact assessment showed that the EU was on the right track with its proposal.
Stressing that the proposed 55 percent target was set following a thorough assessment of the social, economic and environmental impacts, he said the target is realistic and feasible.
He said Europeans will have to rebuild the economies in the aftermath of the pandemic but at the same time continue to fight climate change.
Timmermans said the Commission has tabled an amendment to the proposed European Climate Law, to include the 2030 emissions reduction target. It also sets out the legislative proposals to be presented by June 2021 to implement the new target.
(Xinhua)09:07, September 18, 2020
GENEVA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) — Nearly 428 billion U.S. dollars is required to connect the remaining three billion people aged ten years and above to broadband Internet by 2030, according to a study by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) released on Thursday.
The study, titled Connecting Humanity — Assessing investment needs of connecting humanity to the Internet by 2030, examines the necessary global and regional investments to achieve universal, affordable broadband connectivity.
Meeting the investment necessary to bring every person online by the end of this decade will require an unprecedented and concerted effort from the public and private sectors, said ITU Secretary-General Zhao Houlin.
Current ITU statistics show that over 12 percent of the global unconnected population live in remote, rural locations where traditional networks are not easily accessible, most of them in Africa and South Asia. This connectivity gap is exacerbated by the gender digital divide as more men than women use the Internet across the globe.
According to some of the key definitions used in the study, good quality broadband Internet refers to an average download speed of at least 10 Mbps with technology neutral, meaning data may be transmitted via cable, fiber, satellite, radio, or other technologies. And 4G should be used as the proxy for mobile broadband, and fixed broadband applied where most relevant.
The study admits connecting the remaining global population is an ambitious goal and a major infrastructure investment challenge, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic having exposed different types of inequalities within and across countries and regions, including those related to quality of access, affordability and use of the Internet.
(Xinhua)09:08, September 18, 2020
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) — A report released Thursday by a U.S. civil rights group showed Asian Americans have experienced increased racism since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country more than 6 months ago.
The report was issued by the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center, which was formed in March by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, Chinese for Affirmative Action and San Francisco State Universitys Asian American Studies department, and it collected reports of anti-Asian discrimination.
As of Aug. 5, the report said, 2,583 incidents of anti-Asian discrimination nationwide had been self-reported, in which over 40 percent, namely 1,116 reports, occurred in California.
Reports submitted to the group were likely under-counted, the report noted, citing that 5.4 percent of Asian Americans in California reported being unfairly treated due to race or ethnicity, compared to 2.1 percent of all state residents during pandemic, according to the 2020 California Health Interview Survey released earlier this month.
The report underlined the impact of racism and xenophobia against Asian-American youth during the COVID-19 pandemic, while analyzing 341 incidents of anti-Asian discrimination involving youth reported to the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center from March 19 to July 22, 2020.
In over half (56 percent) of these cases, perpetrators employed anti-Chinese hate speech, including blaming China and Chinese as the source of the virus and mocking Chinese dietary habits. Even though adults were present in almost half of the incidents (48 percent), bystanders intervened in only 10 percent of the cases, the report said.
Tony Thurmond, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, was quoted as saying that country is suffering two pandemics: COVID-19 and racism.
It breaks my heart that so many of our Asian American and Pacific Islander youth and families have been subject to demeaning, discriminatory attacks, he said.
All Asian Americans are being hit hard by the groundswell of anti-Asian rhetoric promoted by our president, but youth are particularly vulnerable, warned Russell Jeung, professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. The hate Asian-American youths are facing could cause irreparable damage to their self-identity and social relationships.
(Xinhua)09:12, September 18, 2020
BERLIN, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) — Sixty-nine percent of German citizens consider the current COVID-19 measures just right, according to a Politbarometer survey published by the German public broadcaster ZDF on Thursday.
Only 11 percent described the current measures as exaggerated, while 18 percent wanted health measures to be stricter, according to the survey of more than 1,200 German citizens.
On Thursday, COVID-19 infections in Germany rose by 2,194, the highest single-day jump since late April. The total number of confirmed cases reached 265,857, while the nationwide death toll increased by three to 9,371, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
According to the Politbarometer survey, 61 percent of Germans believe that the number of COVID-19 infections would increase significantly in the near future, while 34 percent did not expect an increase.
The COVID-19 pandemic dominates the political agenda in Germany and ranks as the countrys most important problem with 56 percent of the respondents, followed by the issue of refugees and asylum policy with 35 percent, the survey found.
After the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos was destroyed by a major fire last week, Germany vowed to take in 1,553 asylum-seekers (408 families) from there entitled to protection, the government said on Tuesday.
While 43 percent of Germans thought that their country should definitely take in a larger number of refugees from the Greek islands, 46 percent said that Germany should receive more refugees only if other European countries also participated, according to the survey.
(Xinhua)09:12, September 18, 2020
BERLIN, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) — German pharmaceutical company BioNTech said Thursday it would acquire the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis production facility in Marburg, western Germany, to manufacture a potential COVID-19 vaccine.
Once fully operational, the manufacturing site would expand BioNTechs COVID-19 vaccine production capacity by up to 750 million doses per year, BioNTech said in a statement.
The transaction is expected to be closed in the fourth quarter of 2020.
In the first half of 2021, BioNTech plans to produce up to 250 million doses of the vaccine candidate BNT162b2, pending regulatory approval and licensing, in the Marburg facility which currently employs around 300 people.
The Marburg plant is the third site in BioNTechs production network in Germany, producing BNT162 for global supply, said the company.
The BNT162 vaccine program includes five vaccine candidates currently in clinical trials in the United States, Europe, South America and China. BioNTech and its partner U.S. company Pfizer are testing the lead vaccine candidate BNT162b2 in a global Phase 3 study, according to the statement.
(Xinhua)09:18, September 18, 2020
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) — The U.S. House on Thursday passed a resolution condemning all forms of anti-Asian sentiment as related to COVID-19.
The passage of the resolution by a 243-164 vote came as Democratic lawmakers have long been condemning President Donald Trump for referring to the novel coronavirus as the Chinese virus. The lawmakers said the rhetoric has led to escalating discrimination against Asian Americans.
Spearheaded by Democratic congresswoman Grace Meng of New York, the resolution argued against connecting the virus with a specific geographic location, citing warnings from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that doing so creates a stigma.
Sadly this bigotry is being fueled by some in Washington, and you would think, I thought this would be almost unanimous consent to condemn violence against Asian Americans. Even from the White House itself, which uses dangerous, false, and offensive terms to describe the coronavirus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said ahead of the vote.
The World Health Organization and the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, have explicitly warned against linking infectious diseases to specific ethnicities because of the stigmatizing effects, which has serious impacts on health and defeating the virus. As the CDC medical officer has said, stigma is the enemy of public health, the California Democrat said.
Republicans, for their part, blamed the Democrats for introducing what they said was a nonbinding resolution at a time when political gridlock on Capitol Hill continued to impede the passage of a new coronavirus relief bill.
(Xinhua)09:22, September 18, 2020
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) — The United States on Thursday announced sanctions against 45 Iranian nationals and two entities, accusing them of conducting malign cyber activities.
The Treasury Department said in a statement that it had designated Iranian cyber threat group Advanced Persistent Threat 39 (APT39), 45 associated individuals, and Rana Intelligence Computing Company (Rana).
According to the statement, APT39 and Rana were blacklisted due to being owned or controlled by Irans Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
The Iranian regime uses its Intelligence Ministry as a tool to target innocent civilians and companies, and advance its destabilizing agenda around the world, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement.
All property and interests of the property of the designated individuals in the United States have been blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging any transactions with them, said the statement.