World
UN relief chief urges G20 to step up support to avert crises in fragile countries
The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession are set to trigger the first increase in global poverty in three decades, pushing 265 million people to the point of starvation by the end of the year, the UN’s top humanitarian official warned on Friday.
Mark Lowcock, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, called on the world’s leading industrial nations, the G20, to step up support, as he released an updated US$10.3 billion appeal to fight coronavirus spread in 63 low-income countries.
“The pandemic and associated global recession are about to wreak havoc in fragile and low-income countries”, he said.
“The response of wealthy nations so far has been grossly inadequate and dangerously short-sighted. Failure to act now will leave the free to circle round the globe, undo decades of development, and create a generation’s worth of tragic and exportable problems.”
“It doesn’t have to be like this – this is a problem that can be fixed with money from wealthy nations and fresh thinking from the shareholders of international financial institutions and supporters of UN agencies, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and NGOs,” he said.
As of Thursday, there were more than 13 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, and nearly 580,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
Lowcock fears that unless G20 countries act now, they will face a series of human tragedies more brutal and destructive than the direct health impacts of the pandemic.
“Rich countries have thrown out the rulebook when it comes to protecting their own economies. They must apply the same exceptional measures to countries that need help”, he declared.
“The prospect of cascading crises more brutal and destructive than anything the virus alone can do must jolt us all out of our comfort zone.”
UN agencies estimate that due to disruptions to health systems caused by the pandemic, some 6,000 children could die every day from preventable causes, while annual deaths from HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, could double.
Meanwhile, humanitarians said the first confirmed case of the disease was reported in Idlib, Syria, last week, sparking fears of a devastating outbreak in crowded camps housing millions of people displaced by the country’s nearly decade-long conflict.
The COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan addresses the humanitarian impacts of the pandemic in 63 low- and middle-income countries and supports their efforts to combat it.
The plan prioritizes the world’s most vulnerable citizens, including older persons, people with disabilities, displaced people, and women and girls.
It was initially launched in late March, shortly after WHO declared the global pandemic.
While $1.7 billion has been raised since then, the update includes a supplementary $300 million, to bolster rapid response from NGOs, $500 million for famine prevention, and a sharper focus on preventing gender-based violence.
This comes after two Rome-based UN agencies sounded the alarm in a joint report published on Friday stating that hunger threatens to soar to devastating levels in 25 countries in the coming months due to the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned the greatest concentration of need is in Africa, but countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Asia – including middle-income nations – are also being ravaged by crippling levels of food insecurity.
WFP announced that it is scaling up food assistance to an unprecedented 138 million people who face desperate levels of hunger as COVID-19 tightens its grip on some of the world’s most fragile countries.
“Three months ago at the UN Security Council, I told world leaders that we ran the risk of a famine of biblical proportions”, said WFP Executive Director David Beasley.
“Today, our latest data tell us that, since then, millions of the world’s very poorest families have been forced even closer to the abyss”, Beasley said.
“Livelihoods are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate and now their lives are in imminent danger from starvation”, he said.
“Make no mistake – if we do not act now to end this pandemic of human suffering, many people will die.”
Most of the 25 “hotspots” named in the report stretch from West Africa and across the Sahel (north Africa) to East Africa, including the Sahel, as well the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.
It also identifies, in the Middle East, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen; in Asia, Bangladesh; and in Latin America and the Caribbean, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Citing some examples, the report says that COVID-19 is compounding a raft of existing problems in South Sudan, making the prospect of famine loom ever larger in areas where inter-communal fighting makes humanitarian access tough or impossible.
In the Middle East, the pandemic is exacerbating Lebanon’s worst-ever economic crisis, where food insecurity is growing fast not only among citizens but also 1.5 million Syrians and other refugees.
Hardest hit in Latin America are more than five million Venezuelan migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers in neighboring countries, the report says, adding that worsening economic conditions in host countries could well make matters worse.
According to WFP estimates, the number of people living in acute food insecurity in countries affected by conflict, disasters or economic crises could jump from 149 million before the pandemic took hold to 270 million by year’s end if assistance is not provided urgently.
World
One dead in new attack on Saudi airport, a day after Houthi strike kills 13
US aviation authorities issued a notice to US airlines to use caution while flying to or over the kingdom, Reuters reported.
One person was killed and nearly a dozen hurt in a new attack Riyadh’s international airport on Sunday, Saudi authorities reported, a day after a strike claimed by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis that killed 13 people and wounded more than 300, Reuters reported.
Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen said an unidentified projectile had targeted Riyadh’s international airport Terminal 4 on Sunday, causing a fire. Eleven people were wounded in addition to the fatality, the Saudi civil aviation authority said.
Coalition forces also said Saudi air defences had intercepted a cruise missile in the vicinity of King Khalid International Airport. They later added that a drone had been intercepted and destroyed in the country’s Eastern Province, and a ballistic missile launched towards Khamis Mushait had been intercepted. Emergency alerts were also issued in Abha, in the south, early on Monday but the danger had since passed, the Saudi Civil Defense said.
The strikes have exposed vulnerabilities in Saudi defence capabilities as the kingdom wages an air campaign against the Houthis, who are fighting a ground war in Yemen against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government.
Footage released by Saudi state television of the Saturday attack on the Riyadh airport showed scores of religious pilgrims lined up at a gate as they prepared to travel to Islam’s two holiest sites. A bright orange flash sent people running in panic, while parts of the roof appeared to cave in, read the report.
The airport was closed after the attack, the deadliest in the kingdom in more than a decade.
In a televised speech on Sunday, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack and said the group had also struck the airport in Dammam in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province and two facilities of Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco.
The Saudi government’s media office and Aramco did not respond to requests for comment.
The Saudi civil aviation authority confirmed the strike on Dammam’s King Fahd International Airport late on Sunday, adding that “damage assessments and safety inspections of airport facilities are under way.”
An eyewitness aboard a taxiing aircraft at Dammam told Reuters that around 8:30 p.m. (1730 GMT) on Sunday, they saw a projectile strike the tarmac beside several parked aircraft, causing a fire. The witness said the aircraft returned to the gate. Passengers disembarked and were told to leave.
Flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed several delays and cancellations on Sunday for arrivals and departures at Dammam airport, the kingdom’s third-largest.
The Houthis earlier on Sunday had renewed their warning against using Saudi airports. “We urge everyone to take our warnings seriously, and Saudi Arabia bears responsibility for any failed interceptions,” the group said.
Britain’s embassy in Saudi Arabia in a post on X advised British citizens against all but essential travel to Jeddah, Dammam and all airports in the kingdom except the airport in Medina.
US aviation authorities issued a notice to US airlines to use caution while flying to or over the kingdom, Reuters reported.
Saudi Arabia has recently stepped up its military involvement in Yemen, launching strikes against the Houthis and backing a government counteroffensive after the Houthis seized strategic territory along the Red Sea coast last month.
The Houthis said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia carried out 124 air strikes in Yemen in the past 24 hours. “Unless the Saudi enemy stops its aggression and interference in Yemen, worse is yet to come, God willing,” Yemen’s Houthi-run foreign ministry said in statements carried by Al Masirah television.
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday the United States was considering joining Saudi strikes on the Houthis in the conflict, a spillover from the wider war with Iran that the US and Israel launched in February.
In a post on Telegram, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi said he told his Saudi counterpart that Tehran was ready to help facilitate dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
A five-day conference of international energy organization WPC Energy opened as planned on Sunday at a convention centre about 10 km (6 miles) from the Riyadh airport, the Saudi energy ministry said.
A ministerial meeting of the International Energy Forum also went ahead, according to a media advisory from the ministry. It was not clear which ministers attended.
Italy’s energy minister, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, whose country was co-hosting, had said on Friday he would participate remotely via video link.
German officials were trying to organise a return flight for economy minister Katherina Reiche, read the report.
She was supposed to return to Berlin from Riyadh on Monday but the ministry said it appeared likely her flight would be unable to take off.
Separately, Saudi authorities announced that in-person classes at schools in Riyadh would be shifted to remote learning from Sunday until Thursday.
Sunday’s attack brought the death toll in attacks on Riyadh’s airport to 18 for the week. In Saturday’s attack, the dead included four Saudis while the remainder were foreign nationals, Saudi authorities said.
World
14 killed in two separate mass shootings across the United States
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro expressed his support for the affected community, describing the incident as a tragic loss of life.
At least 14 people have been killed in two separate mass shootings in the United States within hours of each other, according to local authorities.
Five people were shot dead at a home in Douglas, Georgia, on Friday evening, police said.
In a separate incident in Erie, Pennsylvania, nine people were killed, including two children and a pregnant woman. Authorities confirmed that the suspected assailant was also among the dead.
Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah described the scene as one of the most devastating incidents of his career, saying the motive for the shooting had not yet been established.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro expressed his support for the affected community, describing the incident as a tragic loss of life.
Authorities are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding both shootings.
World
Zelenskiy says letting Russia sell diesel to US is ‘investment in war’
“Gifts to Putin will not bring peace or any benefit to the civilised world,” Zelenskiy wrote on the X social media platform.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy criticised an accord on Friday between the US and Russia allowing Moscow to provide the US with diesel, calling it “an investment in a war that must be ended.”
He dismissed the accord, which was announced while a Ukrainian delegation was in the US to discuss how to seek a resolution of the war with Russia, as “a weak decision on the part of strong partners”.
“Gifts to Putin will not bring peace or any benefit to the civilised world,” Zelenskiy wrote on the X social media platform.
“Russia will ‘repay’ the diesel with further terror and perfidy. Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged. What is needed is real de-escalation with Russia on a reciprocal basis,” Zelenskiy said.
Trump said in a post on social media that he had agreed in a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia would immediately supply diesel to the US and global marketplace. Trump said lower prices for Americans “is my Greatest Priority”.
Zelenskiy, speaking to reporters later on WhatsApp, said the accord would provide Moscow with additional funds to wage war and undermine any attempts to work towards a settlement.
“I believe our team is simply being used as a front. And that is certainly not fair, nor is it how partners should treat each other,” he said. “In my view, it is a weak decision on the part of strong partners.”
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