Month: October 2021

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday that the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic is less than 4,000 short of the 5 million mark. The 4 million tally was reached a little more than four months ago.

India’s prime minister told world leaders at the G-20 summit in Rome that India will produce 5 million COVID-19 vaccines by the end of next year for use in his country and around the world.

Narendra Modi said Saturday, however, that the 5 million doses would be easier to produce if the World Health Organization were to approve India’s Covaxin vaccine and place it on the WHO’s emergency use list. Covaxin is produced by India’s Bharat Biotech.

Meanwhile, Xi Jinping, China’s leader, told the summit Saturday, via a video platform, that China has already produced more than 1.6 billion COVID-19 vaccines that have been distributed around the world.

New York City municipal workers rushed last week to receive COVID-19 vaccines to fulfill the requirements of a mandate that they show proof of being inoculated with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by Friday. One in six, or more than 26,000 workers, however, remain unvaccinated. The unvaccinated workers will be placed on unpaid leave.

Source: Voice of America

G-20 leaders meeting in Rome have agreed to work to reach carbon neutrality “by around mid-century” and pledged to end financing for coal plants abroad by the end of this year; however, they failed to agree on phasing out coal domestically.

“While I welcome the #G20’s recommitment to global solutions, I leave Rome with my hopes unfulfilled — but at least they are not buried,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote on Twitter.

The leaders issued their final communique Sunday at the end of a two-day summit, ahead of talks at a broader U.N. climate change summit, COP26, this week in Glasgow, Scotland.

They also addressed efforts to reach the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, in line with a global commitment made in 2015 with the Paris Climate Accord to keep global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and preferably to 1.5 degrees.

“We recognize that the impacts of climate change at 1.5°C are much lower than at 2°C. Keeping 1.5°C within reach will require meaningful and effective actions and commitment by all countries,” the communique said.

U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking at a press conference in Rome on Sunday, said while people were disappointed that Russia and China leaders didn’t “show up” with commitments about climate change, the leaders who did attend made “significant progress.”

“I think you are going to see we have made significant progress and more has to be done,” he said. “It’s going to require us to continue to focus on what China’s not doing, what Russia is not doing and what Saudi Arabia is not doing.”

The grouping of 19 countries and the European Union accounts for more than three-quarters of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

In October, two dozen countries joined a U.S.- and EU-led effort to slash methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.

Coal, though, is a bigger point of contention. G-20 members China and India have resisted attempts to produce a declaration on phasing out domestic coal consumption.

Climate financing, namely pledges from wealthy nations to provide $100 billion a year to support developing countries’ efforts to reduce emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change, is another key concern. Indonesia, a large greenhouse gas emitter that will take over the G-20 presidency in December, urged developed countries to fulfill their financing commitments both in Rome and in Glasgow.

Also on Sunday, the U.S. and EU announced an end to Trump-era tariffs on EU steel, resolving a dispute that saw the bloc impose retaliatory tariffs on American products including whiskey and power boats.

“Together the United States and the European Union are ushering in a new era of transatlantic cooperation that’s going to benefit all of our people both now, and I believe, in the years to come,” U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters on the sidelines of the G-20 summit.

Global supply chain

Biden held a meeting to address the global supply chain crisis with 14 other members of the group of 20 countries. The 20 members in the summit account for more than 80% of world GDP and 75% of global trade.

The U.S. urged other countries to help reduce supply chain problems and announced new measures to make supply chains more resilient in the United States. The main points of this new effort include streamlining U.S. stockpiling efforts, increasing funding for trade facilitation activities to cut red tape, and organizing a summit for next year with multiple stakeholders and foreign counterparts.

Notably absent at this meeting was China.

Referring to the global dependency on Chinese goods, Biden urged countries to diversify their supply chains, “so that we’re not dependent on any one single source that might cause a failure.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country is considered to be the “world’s factory,” did not attend the summit in person. In his virtual speech to G-20 leaders, Xi proposed holding an international forum on resilient and stable industrial and supply chains.

Addressing global commerce disruptions has been a key focus for the Biden administration, which is concerned that these bottlenecks will hamper post-pandemic economic recovery. To address the U.S.’s supply chain issues, the administration recently announced a plan to extend operations around the clock, seven days a week, at Los Angeles and Long Beach, two California ports that account for 40% of sea freight entering the country.

“Whether you’re talking about medical equipment or supplies of consumer goods or other products, it’s a challenge for the global economy,” said Matthew Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Some of the concrete measures to alleviate global supply chain pressure points may need to be longer term, such as shortening supply chains and rethinking dependencies, said Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and the Americas program at Chatham House, a research institution in London.

“Those are not quick fixes,” she said. “But the G-20 is historically set up really to be dealing with short-term crises. So, I think that there will be considerable effort made to … come to terms with that.”

Source: Voice of America

The G-20 Summit hosted by Italy kicked off Saturday in Rome, where leaders from the world’s major economies discussed issues of mutual concern, including pandemic recovery and climate change.

The red carpet was rolled out at “La Nuvola,” Rome’s convention center, as Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi welcomed U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders amid strict COVID-19 protocols.

This weekend’s summit is the leaders’ first face-to-face meeting in two years, following last year’s virtual summit hosted by Saudi Arabia. Notably absent are Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. They will join virtually, citing pandemic concerns at home.

Global minimum tax

On day one, G-20 leaders voiced their support for a global corporate minimum tax deal agreed to by finance ministers from 136 countries earlier this month after four years of negotiations led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The deal would mean a sweeping overhaul of international tax rules. Under the deal, countries will apply a minimum global corporate tax rate of 15% for companies with annual revenues of more than $870 million, while large multinational companies must pay taxes where they operate, not just where they are headquartered.

“The president emphasized the importance of this historic deal during his intervention,” a senior administration official said.

“G-20 members are right to celebrate this deal,” said Matthew Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. The question is whether and how soon G20 members can implement the agreement within their respective domestic legal frameworks.

“That’s going to be, frankly, quite challenging in the United States and several other countries,” said Goodman.

Pandemic response and prevention

On Friday, G-20 health and finance ministers released a communique committing to bringing the pandemic under control globally as soon as possible, and strengthening collective efforts to prepare for, prevent, detect, and respond to future pandemics. The communique says the G-20 will take all necessary steps needed to advance global goals of vaccinating at least 40% of the population in all countries by the end of 2021 and 70% by mid-2022, as recommended by the World Health Organization.

The ministers announced the formation of a new panel to improve the global response to future pandemics but did not specify any funding for the task force. They could not reach agreement on a separate financing mechanism proposed by the U.S. and Indonesia to prepare for future pandemics.

“We’re looking for not the ultimate final product of a financing mechanism or the ultimate final product of a taskforce or a board that would operate as kind of a global coordinating body going forward,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told VOA aboard Air Force One on Thursday. “So the hope is to have in the communiqué a statement of intent that we will work towards these two outcomes.”

Climate change

On Sunday, G-20 leaders will shift their focus to climate change. From Rome, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the summit an opportunity to “put things on track” ahead of the UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow that G-20 leaders will participate in following their Italy meeting.

“There is a serious risk that Glasgow will not deliver,” Guterres said. “The current nationally determined contributions — formal commitments by governments — still condemn the world to a calamitous 2.7-degree increase,” he said referring to the pledge made at the 2015 Paris Climate Accord to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, ideally to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Countries are expected to announce more emissions reduction pledges to reach the target of net-zero emissions by around mid-century. But some analysts are skeptical of these voluntary commitments that come without enforcement mechanisms.

“There’ll be pledges, the best-case scenario something along the lines of what we saw in Paris,” said Dalibor Rohac, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Rohac added that to make progress on climate change, the world needs tangible actions. “Rather than to proceed with this habit of looking for a Big Bang multilateral solution, to pursue sound domestic policies that accelerate decarbonization.”

A key issue to watch is whether G-20 members can agree on coal. The U.N. has called for wealthy countries to phase out coal by 2030, but G20 environment ministers have failed to agree on a timeline.

Guterres also called on wealthy nations to uphold commitments to provide funding to help developing nations mitigate the impacts of climate change. Under the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, wealthy nations pledged a minimum of $100 billion per year in climate funding to lower-income countries. Much of that money has not been delivered. enario something along the lines of what we saw in Paris,” said Dalibor Rohac, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Rohac added that to make progress on climate change, the world needs tangible actions.

“Rather than to proceed with this habit of looking for a big-bang multilateral solution, to pursue sound domestic policies that that accelerate decarbonization,” he said.

A key issue to watch is whether G-20 members can agree on coal actions. The U.N. has called for wealthy countries to phase out coal by 2030, but G-20 environment ministers have failed to agree on a timeline.

Guterres also called on wealthy nations to uphold commitments to provide funding to help developing nations mitigate the impacts of climate change. Under the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, wealthy nations pledged a minimum of $100 billion per year in climate funding to lower-income countries. Much of that money has not been delivered.

Source: Voice of America

A fireworks show that has nothing to do with the Fourth of July and everything to do with the cosmos is poised to be visible across the northern United States and Europe just in time for Halloween.

On Thursday, the sun launched what is called an “X-class solar flare” that was strong enough to spark a high-frequency radio blackout across parts of South America. The energy from that flare is trailed by a cluster of solar plasma and other material called a coronal mass ejection, or CME for short. That’s heading toward Earth, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to issue a warning about a potentially strong geomagnetic storm.

It might sound like something from a science fiction movie. But really, it just means that a good chunk of the northern part of the country may get treated to a light show this weekend called the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights.

Geomagnetic storms as big as what might be coming can produce displays of the lights that can be seen at latitudes as low as Pennsylvania, Oregon and Iowa. It could also cause voltage irregularities on high-latitude power grids as the loss of radio contact on the sunlit side of the planet.

Source: Voice of America