Connect with us

World

G20 leaders endorse tax deal, pledge more vaccines for the poor

Published

on

Leaders of the world's 20 biggest economies endorsed on Saturday a global minimum tax aimed at stopping big business from hiding profits in tax havens, and also agreed to get more COVID vaccines to poorer nations, Reuters reported.

Attending their first in-person summit in two years, G20 leaders broadly backed calls to extend debt relief for impoverished countries and pledged to vaccinate 70% of the world's population against COVID-19 by mid-2022.

However, with a crucial U.N. climate conference due to start in just two days, the G20 appeared to be struggling to throw its weight behind the sort of strong new measures that scientists say are needed to avert calamitous global warming.

According to Reuters Italy, hosting the gathering in Rome, put health and the economy at the top of the agenda for the first day of the meeting, with the more difficult climate discussions set for Sunday.

Underscoring the way the coronavirus crisis has up-ended the world, doctors in white coats and Red Cross workers joined the leaders for their traditional "family" photograph -- a tribute to the sacrifices and efforts of medics across the globe.

Addressing the opening of the meeting, being held in a steel and glass convention centre, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said governments had to work together to face up to the formidable challenges facing their peoples.

"From the pandemic, to climate change, to fair and equitable taxation, going it alone is simply not an option," Draghi said.

The corporate tax deal was hailed as a evidence of renewed multilateral coordination, with major corporations facing a minimum 15% tax wherever they operate from 2023 to prevent them from shielding their profits in off-shore entities, read the report.

"This is more than just a tax deal – it's diplomacy reshaping our global economy and delivering for our people," U.S. President Joe Biden wrote on Twitter.

With the world roiled by rising energy prices and stretched supply chains, Biden was expected to urge G20 energy producers with spare capacity to boost production, notably Russia and Saudi Arabia, to ensure a stronger global economic recovery, a senior U.S. administration official said.

DIMMED HOPES

According to the report like many of the other G20 leaders in Italy, Biden will fly straight to Glasgow on Sunday for the United Nations' climate summit, known as COP26, which is seen as crucial to addressing the threat of rising temperatures.

The G20 bloc, which includes Brazil, China, India, Germany and the United States, accounts for an estimated 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but hopes the Rome meeting might pave the way to success in Scotland have dimmed considerably.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin both decided to follow events only via video link and diplomats looking to seal a meaningful accord said both countries, as well as India, were resisting ambitious new climate goals.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged the G20 and COP26 talks would be difficult, but warned that without courageous action, world civilisation could collapse as swiftly as the ancient Roman empire, ushering in a new Dark Age, Reuters reported.

"It's going to be very, very tough to get the agreement we need," he told reporters, standing next to the ruins of the Colosseum amphitheatre - a symbol of once mighty Rome.

CLIMATE EFFORTS

A draft communique seen by Reuters said G20 countries will step up their efforts to limit global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius - the level scientists have said is necessary to avoid disastrous new climate patterns. read more

The document also acknowledges that current national plans on how to curb harmful emissions will have to be strengthened, but offered little detail on how this should be done.

Additionally, the leaders are set to pledge to halt financing of overseas coal-fired power generation by the end of this year, and to "do our utmost" to stop building new coal power plants before the end of the 2030s, Reuters said.

Apparently relishing in-person diplomacy after months of relative isolation, the leaders held numerous meetings on the sidelines, including discussions between the United States, Britain, Germany and France on Iran's nuclear programme.

"It is great to see all of you here, after a difficult few years for the global community," Draghi said, catching the largely upbeat mood amongst those present.

Far from the conference centre, known as 'The Cloud', several thousand protesters staged a loud, but peaceful demonstration in the city centre to demand action to stem climate change.

"We are holding this protest for environmental and social issues and against the G20, which continues undaunted on a path that has almost led us to social and ecological failure," said protester Edoardo Mentrasti.

World

Gunman shot dead, 3 police injured in shooting near Israeli embassy in Jordan

Police had called on residents to stay in their homes as security personnel searched for the culprits, a security source said.

Published

on

A gunman was dead and three policemen injured after a shooting near the Israeli embassy in neighbouring Jordan, a security source and state media said on Sunday.

Police shot a gunman who had fired at a police patrol in the Rabiah neighbourhood of Amman, state news agency Petra reported, citing public security, adding investigations were ongoing, Reuters reported.

Jordanian police had earlier cordoned off an area near the heavily policed embassy after gunshots were heard, witnesses said. Two witnesses said police and ambulances rushed to the Rabiah neighbourhood, where the embassy is located.

The area is a flashpoint for frequent demonstrations against Israel. The kingdom has witnessed some of the biggest peaceful rallies across the region as anti-Israel sentiment runs high over the war in Gaza.

Police had called on residents to stay in their homes as security personnel searched for the culprits, a security source said.

Many of Jordan’s 12 million citizens are of Palestinian origin, they or their parents having been expelled or fled to Jordan in the fighting that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. Many have family ties on the Israeli side of the Jordan River, read the report.

Jordan's peace treaty with Israel is unpopular among many citizens who see normalisation of relations as betraying the rights of their Palestinian compatriots.

Continue Reading

World

Powerful Israeli airstrike shakes central Beirut, 11 dead

Published

on

A powerful airstrike killed 11 people in central Beirut on Saturday, the Lebanese civil defence said, shaking the capital as Israel pressed its offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

The attack destroyed an eight-storey building and caused a large number of fatalities and injuries, Lebanon's National News Agency said. Footage broadcast by Lebanon's Al Jadeed station showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it, Reuters reported.

Israel used bunker buster bombs in the strike, leaving a deep crater, the agency said. Beirut smelled strongly of explosives hours after the attack.

The blasts shook the capital at around 4 a.m. (0200 GMT). Security sources said at least four bombs were dropped in the attack.

It marked the fourth Israeli airstrike this week targeting a central area of Beirut, in contrast to the bulk of Israel's attacks on the capital region, which have hit the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs. On Sunday an Israeli airstrike killed a Hezbollah media official in the Ras al-Nabaa district of central Beirut.

Rescuers searched through rubble, in an area of the city known for its antique shops.

HOSPITALISED DAUGHTER

A man whose family was hurt tried to comfort a traumatized woman outside a hospital. Car windows were shattered.

"There was dust and wrecked houses, people running and screaming, they were running, my wife is in hospital, my daughter is in hospital, my aunt is in the hospital," said the man, Nemir Zakariya, who held up a picture of his daughter.

"This is the little one, and my son also got hurt - this is my daughter, she is in the American University (of Beirut Medical Centre), this is what happened."

Israel launched a major offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon in September, following nearly a year of cross-border hostilities ignited by the Gaza war, pounding wide areas of Lebanon with airstrikes and sending troops into the south.

Israeli strikes killed at least 62 people and injured 111 in Lebanon on Thursday, bringing the toll since October 2023 to 3,645 dead and 15,355 injured, Lebanon's health ministry said. The figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government accuse Israel of indiscriminate bombing that kills civilians. Israel denies the allegation and says it takes numerous steps to avoid the deaths of civilians.

Hezbollah strikes in the same period have killed more than 100 people in northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. They include more than 70 soldiers killed in strikes in northern Israel and the Golan Heights and in combat in southern Lebanon, according to Israel.

The conflict began when Hezbollah, Tehran's most important ally in the region, opened fire in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas after it launched the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.

A U.S. mediator travelled to Lebanon and Israel this week in an effort to secure a ceasefire. The envoy, Amos Hochstein, indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz.

Continue Reading

World

North Korea’s Kim accuses US of stoking tension, warns of nuclear war

Published

on

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has accused the United States of ramping up tension and provocations, saying the Korean peninsula has never faced a greater risk of nuclear war, state media KCNA said on Friday.

The comments came amid international criticism over increasingly close military co-operation between Pyongyang and Moscow, and assertions that North Korea sent more than 10,000 troops to Russia to support its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Previous negotiations with Washington have only highlighted its "aggressive and hostile" policy toward North Korea, Kim said in a speech at a military exhibition in Pyongyang, the capital, the KCNA news agency said.

"Never before have the warring parties on the Korean peninsula faced such a dangerous and acute confrontation that it could escalate into the most destructive thermonuclear war," he said on Thursday.

"We have already gone as far as we can on negotiating with the United States," he said, adding that the talks had only shown its aggressive and hostile policy toward North Korea could never change.

North Korean state media have not yet publicly mentioned the re-election of Donald Trump, who held three unprecedented meetings with Kim during his first term, in Singapore, Hanoi, and at the Korean border, in 2018 and 2019.

But their diplomacy yielded no concrete outcome due to the gap between U.S. calls for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and Kim's demands for sanctions relief.

Trump has long touted his ties with Kim, saying last month the two countries would have had "a nuclear war with millions of people killed", but he had stopped it, thanks to his ties with the North's leader.

Hong Min, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said Kim could be trying to underscore the North's nuclear capabilities ahead of Trump's second term, while leaving the door open for diplomacy.

"He might be suggesting Trump should show his 'willingness to co-exist' before re-opening any talks and calling for a change in the U.S. hostile attitude," Hong said.

MILITARY EXHIBITION

Kim also called for developing and upgrading "ultra-modern" versions of weaponry, and vowed to keep advancing defence capabilities to bolster the North's strategic position, KCNA said.

Strategic and tactical weapons were on display at the event, called the Defence Development Exhibition.

KCNA pictures showed the Hwasong-19 and 18 intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Chollima-1 rocket used in a successful satellite launch in November 2023, and the Saetbyol-9 multi-purpose attack drone, which resembles the U.S. Reaper.

Hong said the pictures also included several weapons needed by or presumed to already have been supplied to Russia for its war in Ukraine, such as 240mm multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers, anti-tank systems and drones.

North Korea has shipped additional arms to Russia, the South's lawmakers said on Thursday, after being briefed by the national intelligence agency.

Last year, when he was defence minister, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu accompanied Kim to a defence fair that showcased missiles and weapons.

Last week, Kim urged the North's military to improve its war-fighting capabilities, blaming the United States and its allies for stoking tension to "the worst phase in history" and calling the Korean peninsula "the world's biggest hotspot".

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2024 Ariana News. All rights reserved!