When top executives of large US companies met External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on May 27 under the aegis of US India Business Council (USIBC) and US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) in Washington, even as they acknowledged the magnitude of India’s second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, most of their questions and concerns focused on the role of India in global economic recovery.Free from partisan views and knowledgeable about the actual ground situation, they looked beyond raw numbers and assessed the economic outlook after the second wave. Most agreed with the Minister’s view that since lockdowns were local and…
Author: Mike Harrison
Three months ago Britain, France and Germany scrapped a U.S.-backed plan for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors to criticise Iran for failing to fully explain the origin of the particles. Reuters | , Vienna PUBLISHED ON MAY 31, 2021 11:36 PM IST Iran has failed to explain traces of uranium found at several undeclared sites, a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog showed on Monday, possibly setting up a fresh diplomatic clash between Tehran and the West that could derail wider nuclear talks.Three months ago Britain, France and Germany scrapped a U.S.-backed plan for the International…
China on Monday announced a new relaxation to its family planning rules allowing couples in the country to have upto three children now, an increase from the two children allowed previously. The new measures were announced after the latest data in this month from the National Bureau of Statistic in Beijing showed that the annual births plummeted to historic low of 12 million in the year 2020, news agency AFP reported.The fertility rate in the world’s populous nation currently stands at 1.3 which is beneath the levels needed to maintain a stable population, the latest data showed. The decision was…
The Japanese government approved Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for ages 12 to 15 on Monday, the media reported.According to the Japanese Kyodo news agency, this newly approved age group will not be getting the vaccine instantly as the country is still vaccinating medical staff and senior citizens. So far, an estimated 6% of the Japanese population has taken at least one shot of a vaccine, which is lower when compared to other developed nations.Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has promised to speed up the effort and ensure complete vaccination of the elderly before the commencement of the Tokyo Olympics in July.In…
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) called on Monday for launching negotiations this year on an international treaty to boost pandemic preparedness, as part of sweeping reforms envisioned by member states.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, told its annual ministerial assembly that the UN agency faced a “serious challenge” to maintain its Covid-19 response at the current level and required sustainable and flexible funding.Earlier in the day – the last of the week-long assembly – health ministers agreed to study recommendations for ambitious reforms made by independent experts to strengthen the capacity of both the WHO and countries to…
Heat is a killer — and climate change is driving up its body count. On average, about 37 percent of heat deaths can be tied back to human-caused climate change, according to a new study in Nature Climate Change. The study looked at data from 732 places in 43 countries over a period of about three decades, from 1991-2018. They used information including heat deaths and temperature readings from those places to build computer models that calculated how many deaths could be attributed to climate change. The numbers varied depending on location, with a larger percentage of climate-change related deaths…
The vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd. was effective in controlling Covid-19 in a mass-inoculation study in a small Brazilian town after 75% of adults were covered with a second shot.The study carried out by the Sao Paulo state government in the small town of Serrana — population 45,000 — may offer clues for other developing nations on how much of the public needs to be vaccinated in order to begin moving past the pandemic that continues to wreak havoc in Latin America and beyond.The full results will be released during a press conference later on Monday with initial data…
Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny asked a court Monday to halt the hourly night-time checks he has been subjected to in his penal colony.Speaking to the court in a video link from prison, Navalny charged that he has done nothing that would warrant the authorities’ decision to designate him as a flight risk that has resulted in checks.“I just want them to stop coming to me and waking me up at night-time,” he told the judge in remarks that were broadcast by the independent Dozhd TV. “What did I do: Did I climb the fence? Did I dig up…
US President Joe Biden plans to rebuild and expand legal immigration by cutting processing time, costs and security hoops; cut backlogs; and fix the H-1B visa programme that allows US companies to hire foreign employees, which have been overwhelmingly from India.The New York Times has reported citing a blueprint that this effort will run parallel to the White House-backed ambitious immigration reform legislation before US Congress. The blueprint, titled “DHS Plan to Restore Trust in Our Legal Immigration System” (DHS is the department of homeland security, which oversees immigration), is only in draft stage and will go through several versions…
External affairs minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi are set to come face to face, albeit in a virtual format, on Tuesday during a meeting of foreign ministers of the BRICS grouping that is expected to focus on the response to the Covid-19 pandemic and global and regional issues.India is hosting the virtual meeting of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa group (BRICS) as its current chair. It will also be joined by Brazil’s Carlos Alberto Franco França, Russia’s Sergey Lavrov and South Africa’s Grace Naledi Mandisa Pandor. The rotating BRICS chair will pass to China in 2022.The meeting is…