13-05-2022

FrIDAY, MAY 13, 2022
7
President Joe Biden speaks during a visit to O'Connor Farms, Wednesday,
May 11, 2022, in Kankakee, Ill. Biden visited the farm to discuss food supply
and prices as a result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Photo: AP
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Biden co-hosting 2nd COVID summit
as world's resolve falters
WASHINGTON : President Joe Biden
will appeal for a renewed international
commitment to attacking COVID-19 as
he convenes the second global COVID-
19 summit at a time when faltering
resolve at home jeopardizes that global
response, reports UNB.
Eight months after he used the first
such summit to announce an ambitious
pledge to donate 1.2 billion vaccine
doses to the world, the urgency of the
U.S. and other nations to respond has
waned.
Momentum on vaccinations and
treatments has faded even as new,
more infectious variants rise and
billions across the globe remain
unprotected. Congress has refused to
meet Biden's request to provide
another $22.5 billion in what he has
called critically needed aid funding.
The White House said Biden will
address the opening of the virtual
summit Thursday morning with
prerecorded remarks and will make the
case that addressing COVID-19 "must
remain an international priority." The
U.S. is co-hosting the summit along
with Germany, Indonesia, Senegal and
Belize.
The U.S. has shipped nearly 540
million vaccine doses to more than 110
countries and territories, according to
the State Department - by far more
than any other donor nation.
After the delivery of more than 1
billion vaccines to the developing
Ukraine shuts off Russian pipeline
amid talk of annexation
ZAPORIZHZHIA: Ukraine
shut down a pipeline
Wednesday that carries
Russian natural gas to homes
and industries in Western
Europe, while a Kremlininstalled
official in a southern
region seized by Russian
troops said the area will ask
Moscow to annex it, reports
UNB.
The immediate effect of the
energy cutoff is likely to be
limited, in part because Russia
can divert the gas to another
pipeline and because Europe
relies on a variety of suppliers.
But it marked the first time
since the start of the war that
Ukraine disrupted the flow
westward of one of Moscow's
most lucrative exports.
Meanwhile, the talk of
annexation in Kherson - and
Russia's apparent willingness
to consider such a request -
raised the possibility that the
Kremlin will seek to break off
another piece of Ukraine as it
tries to salvage an invasion
gone awry. Russia annexed
Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula
in 2014.
"The city of Kherson is
Russia," Kirill Stremousov,
deputy head of the Kherson
regional administration
installed by Moscow, told
Russia's RIA Novosti news
agency. He said regional
officials want Russian
world, the problem is no longer that
there aren't enough shots, but a lack of
logistical support to get doses into
arms. According to government data,
more than 680 million donated vaccine
doses have been left unused in
developing countries because they were
set to expire soon and couldn't be
administered quickly enough. As of
March, 32 poorer countries had used
fewer than half of the COVID-19
vaccines they were sent.
U.S. assistance to promote and
facilitate vaccinations overseas dried
up earlier this year, and Biden has
requested about $5 billion for the effort
through the rest of the year.
"We have tens of millions of
unclaimed doses because countries lack
the resources to build out their cold
chains, which basically is the
refrigeration systems; to fight
disinformation; and to hire
vaccinators," White House press
secretary Jen Psaki said this week. She
added that the summit is "going to be
an opportunity to elevate the fact that
we need additional funding to continue
to be a part of this effort around the
world."
"We're going to continue to fight for
more funding here," Psaki said. "But we
will continue to press other countries to
do more to help the world make
progress as well."
Congress has balked at the price tag
for COVID-19 relief and has thus far
President Vladimir Putin to
make Kherson a "proper
region" of Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov said that it would be
"up to the residents of the
Kherson region" to make such
a request, and that any move
to annex territory would
would have to be closely
evaluated by experts to make
sure its legal basis is
"absolutely clear."
Russia has repeatedly used
annexation or recognition of
breakaway republics as tactics
in recent years to gain pieces of
fellow former Soviet republics
Ukraine and Georgia. Russia
annexed Crimea in 2014 after
holding a referendum on the
peninsula over whether it
wanted to become part of
Russia.
Kherson, a Black Sea port of
roughly 300,000, provides
access to fresh water for
neighboring Crimea and is
seen a gateway to wider
Russian control over southern
Ukraine. It was captured early
in the war, becoming
Ukraine's first major city to
fall.
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refused to take up the package because
of political opposition to the impending
end of pandemic-era migration
restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Even after a consensus for virus
funding briefly emerged in March,
lawmakers decided to strip out the
global aid funding and solely focus the
assistance on shoring up U.S. supplies
of vaccine booster shots and
therapeutics.
Biden has warned that without
Congress acting, the U.S. could lose out
on access to the next generation of
vaccines and treatments, and that the
nation won't have enough supply of
booster doses or the antiviral drug
Paxlovid for later this year. He's also
sounding the alarm that more variants
will spring up if the U.S. and the world
don't do more to contain the virus
globally. "To beat the pandemic here,
we need to beat it everywhere," Biden
said last September during the first
global summit.
The virus has killed more than
995,000 people in the U.S. and at least
6.2 million globally, according to
figures kept by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention and the World
Health Organization. Demand for
COVID-19 vaccines has dropped in
some countries as infections and
deaths have declined globally in recent
months, particularly as the omicron
variant has proved to be less severe
than earlier versions of the disease.
Dhaka Water Supply & Sewerage Authority (DWASA)
Invitation for e-Tenders
Passengers injured as
plane leaves runway in
western China
BEIJING : A Chinese
passenger jet left the runway
upon takeoff and caught fire
in western China on
Thursday morning, and
several people were injured,
reports UNB.
Tibet Airlines said it
happened at 8:09 a.m. (0009
GMT) as the flight to the city
of Nyingchi in the Tibetan
Autonomous Region was
preparing to take off from the
western city of Chongqing.
The Airbus A319-115 jet
had 113 passengers and nine
flight crew onboard, all of
whom were safely evacuated
with some taken to a hospital
with minor injuries, the
airline said in an statement.
The plane itself had fire
damage, it said.
"In the process of taking
off, the flight crew discovered
an abnormality with the
aircraft and stopped the
takeoff, after which the
aircraft left the runway," the
statement said.
The incident follows the
crash of a Chinese Eastern
Boeing 737-800 in
southeastern China on
March 21 in which all 132
people on board were killed.
That accident, in which the
plane went into a sudden
nosedive and slammed into
the ground in a mountainous
area, remains under
investigation.
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