Junior Digest

ANKARA,Dec 27,2022: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged Monday to close the gaps in the border with Syria next year after saying that a porous border created security risks for his country.

“We will make new efforts to mend the gaps in our 30-kilometer (19-mile)-long security line to eliminate threats to our country that are stemming from Syria,” Erdogan said in a national address that followed a cabinet meeting.

Turkey accuses Kurds in neighboring Syria and Iraq of terrorist attacks on its soil. It has conducted inroads into both countries to target PKK and YPG militant groups and is mulling a new ground operation in northern Syria.

Dec 23,2022:Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with COVID-19 on a single day this week, the Bloomberg news agency has reported, citing minutes from an internal meeting of the country’s National Health Commission held on Wednesday.

In all, the report which was published on Friday said about 18 percent of the country’s population – 248 million people – are likely to have contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December.
China is witnessing a dramatic surge in coronavirus cases since it dropped its controversial zero-COVID policy following widespread protests in recent weeks. Under the zero-COVID policy, the country’s authorities were placing entire towns and cities under lockdown if they reported a few cases.

Now with those restrictions mostly lifted, China has also stopped mass-testing policies and no longer reports asymptomatic cases.

This has led to concerns of widespread infections among a population that has largely been unexposed to the actual virus, and that has lost much of the protection it might have gained from vaccine shots taken several months ago.

The country’s health system has also been caught unprepared by the sudden U-turn in the government’s policy, with hospitals and pharmacies struggling to cope.
Concerns over official statistics
On Thursday, health data firm Airfinity estimated that there are likely more than 5,000 daily deaths and upwards of a million daily infections from COVID-19 in the country.

Airfinity said its mortality risk analysis suggested between 1.3 million to 2.1 million people could die in China’s current COVID-19 outbreak.

However, on the same day, China officially reported less than 4,000 new symptomatic local COVID-19 cases nationwide and no deaths from the virus.

The conflicting data has raised concerns in the international community and prompted United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken to request that China maintain “transparency” on the issue during a call with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi on Friday.

Dec 26,2022:A brutal winter storm has killed at least 32 people across the United States and is expected to claim more lives after trapping some motorists inside their cars and knocking out power to several hundred thousand homes and businesses.

Much of the loss of life has centred in and around the city of Buffalo at the edge of Lake Erie in western New York state, as numbing cold and heavy “lake-effect” snow — the result of frigid air moving over warmer lake waters — persisted through the Christmas weekend.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the storm’s confirmed death toll climbed to 12 on Sunday, up from three reported overnight in the Buffalo region. The latest victims included some found in cars and some in snow banks, Poloncarz said, adding that the death tally might rise further.

Despite a ban imposed on driving since Friday, hundreds of Erie County motorists were stranded in their vehicles over the weekend, with National Guard troops called in to help with rescues complicated by white-out conditions and drifting snow, Poloncarz said.

“This is not the Christmas any of us hoped for nor expected,” he said on Twitter. “My deepest condolences to the families who have lost loved ones.”
The scope of the storm has been nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande river along the border with Mexico. About 60 percent of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.
The storm, one of the fiercest in decades, forced the cancellation of more than 2,400 US flights on Sunday, in addition to some 3,500 scrapped Saturday and nearly 6,000 Friday, according to tracking website Flightaware.com.

Travellers remained stranded or delayed at airports throughout Christmas Day, including in the cities of Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit and New York. The airport in Buffalo remained closed, with the National Weather Service saying that the snow total there stood at 109cm (43 inches) on Sunday morning.

Dec 27,2022:Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has given Ukraine an ultimatum: Fulfil Moscow’s demands — including surrendering Ukrainian territory that Russia now controls — or the Russian army will decide the fate of Ukraine.

Speaking a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin once again said he was open to peace talks — and which the United States has described as disingenuous — Lavrov told Kyiv that it should, for its “own good”, comply with Moscow’s wishes.
“Our proposals for the demilitarisation and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia’s security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy,” state news agency TASS quoted Lavrov as saying late on Monday.

“The point is simple: Fulfil them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army,” Lavrov said.

Asked by TASS how long the conflict will last, Lavrov said: “The ball is in the regime’s court and Washington behind it.”

On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin again said Moscow was open to negotiations and blamed Kyiv and its Western backers for a lack of talks, comments which the US has dismissed as insincere.

Dec 22,2022:China could be struggling to keep a tally of COVID-19 infections as the country experiences a big spike in cases, a senior World Health Organization official has said, amid concerns about a lack of data from the country.

Official figures from China have become an unreliable guide as less testing is being done across the country following the recent easing of the strict “zero-COVID” policy.
“In China, what’s been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling up,” WHO’s emergencies director Mike Ryan said on Wednesday.

“I wouldn’t like to say that China is actively not telling us what’s going on. I think they’re behind the curve.”
WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said he was “very concerned” about the situation in China.

“WHO is very concerned over the evolving situation in China,” Tedros told a weekly news conference, appealing for detailed information on disease severity, hospital admissions and intensive care requirements.

Vaccines from Germany
The WHO said it was ready to work with China to improve the way the country collects data around critical factors such as hospitalisation and death.

China uses a narrow definition of COVID deaths and reported no new fatalities for Tuesday, even crossing one off of its overall tally since the pandemic began, now at 5,241 – a fraction of the tolls of many much less populous countries.

The National Health Commission said only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure in patients who had the virus are classified as COVID deaths.

New Delhi, December 23,2022: In a New Year gift for the country’s poor, the Union Cabinet on Friday decided that more than 80 crore people will now get free foodgrains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA).
Briefing reporters after a meeting of union cabinet here, Food and Consumers Affairs Minister Piyush Goyal said the beneficiaries will not be required to pay a single rupee to get the foodgrains till December 2023.
He said the central government will spend around Rs 2 lakh crore per year on this scheme.
The cabinet meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The government had said last week that India has sufficient food grain stocks under the central pool to meet the requirement under the National Food Security Act and its other welfare schemes as well as for additional allocation of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY).
In a statement, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution said that about 159 LMT of wheat will be available on January 1 2023, which is well above the buffer norm requirement of 138 LMT. Around 182 LMT of wheat is available in the central pool as on December 12.
It said that the government is well aware of the price scenario of wheat and is constantly monitoring it regularly on a weekly basis along with other commodities and taking corrective measures, as and when required.

WASHINGTON/KYIV, Dec 23,2022:Russia said that Ukraine acquiring Patriot missiles from the United States, announced during President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Washington, would not help settle the conflict or prevent Moscow from achieving its goals.

Though the Patriot air defence system is widely regarded as advanced, President Vladimir Putin dismissed it as “quite old”, telling reporters Moscow would find a way to counter it. At the same time, he said Russia wants an end to the war in Ukraine and that this would inevitably involve a diplomatic solution.
“Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” Putin said. “We will strive for an end to this, and the sooner the better, of course.”
These comments drew quick U.S. scepticism. White House spokesman John Kirby said Putin had “shown absolutely zero indication that he’s willing to negotiate” an end to the war.

“Everything he (Putin) is doing on the ground and in the air bespeaks a man who wants to continue to visit violence upon the Ukrainian people (and) escalate the war,” Kirby told reporters.

Dec22,2022:NASA announced that its InSight lander, designed to understand the geologic life story of Mars, has completed its mission on the Red Planet. The spacecraft relied on solar power, and after four years on Mars, its sunlight-collecting panels have built up too much dust to generate enough power to run the lander. For months now, the InSight team have been expecting the lander to fall silent. Now, the robot has missed two calls home; scientists last heard from the robot on Dec. 15. NASA will keep listening, but doesn’t expect to hear anything more from the lander.

“We’ve actually been able to do a whole lot more than what we claimed and promised to do,” Bruce Banerdt, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California and principal investigator of the InSight mission, told Space.com earlier this year. “I feel like, looking back, this has been an enormously successful mission.”
InSight launched in May 2018 and landed six months later; for four years, the $814 million robot quietly listened to the Red Planet’s rumblings.
Unlike its rover siblings Curiosity and Perseverance, which focus on evaluating the Red Planet’s habitability over time, InSight was designed to peer deep inside the planet, measuring the layers from the surface down to the molten core. The mission was also meant to track current geologic activity by feeling for marsquakes.

Dec 23,2022:The House of Representatives January 6 committee’s final report asserts that former United States President Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.

The 845-page report (PDF) released on Thursday concludes an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago.
“It’s basically it’s the all-encompassing summary of the 18 months of work and hearings, the over 1,000 witnesses, the over one million pages, we’re told, of documents,” Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi, reporting from Washington, said.

Rattansi noted the congressional committee can’t launch criminal proceedings, but said the report could prove irresistible to prosecutors.

“It follows the same narrative structure that we saw during the committee hearings, which wove that story of how Donald Trump, even as votes were being counted on election night, hatched a plan to try and steal the election, Rattansi added. “He did not want to appear a loser. He knowingly disseminated false information, he pressured the vice president, members of Congress, local state officials for extra votes, to fudge what constitutional process is, and he ultimately failed.”

It comes after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained millions of pages of documents.

Dec 23,2022:Nataša Pirc Musar, a 54-year-old lawyer, was sworn in as Slovenia’s first woman president at a ceremony at the National Assembly on 22 December, a day before she takes over as the country’s fifth president from her predecessor Borut Pahor.

Taking her oath to respect the constitutional order, to act according to her conscience and work to the best of her abilities for Slovenia’s prosperity, Pirc Musar pledged to continue to fight for human rights and the rule of law.

She promised to be the voice of citizens every time when sovereignty, equality, justice and welfare state are at stake. She also pledged to advocate the autonomy of society’s sub-systems.

“Police, armed forces, diplomacy, healthcare and education are our property. We should therefore care deeply about how these subsystems are treated. We all need to know where politics must stop, and we need to remember again and again every day that these subsystems are there to serve us, the citizens, not the rulers,” she said.

Listing the many challenges at home and abroad, Pirc Musar promised to work hard for a multilateral world order and a strong Europe made up of democratic and inclusive societies.

“You will recognise me in the international community as a champion of human rights, of the coexistence of nature and human, of understanding the opportunities and dangers of new technologies, of bringing together the strong, the like-minded for the rights of the weak, of a free and professional media, and of the fight against disinformation and hate speech,” she announced.

She promised to work with parliament and the government as Slovenia takes its share of responsibility for the stability of the international community.

She mentioned Slovenia’s candidacy for a non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council, describing the country as an excellent candidate. She strongly supports the bid and plans to actively campaign for it.

She said faint heart or silence never brought about change. “And no change will ever please everyone. Not even criticism. We must strive to make change acceptable to the majority – with clear condemnation of unacceptable practices and the hope of looking forward together.”

Pirc Musar also thanked her predecessor Pahor for his work and mission, praising in particular his efforts in the Western Balkans.

Dec 21,2022:Elon Musk has announced he will step down as Twitter’s chief executive after finding a replacement.

“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk said in a tweet late on Tuesday. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”
Musk’s announcement comes after Twitter users voted for him to step down in a poll created by the platform’s billionaire owner.

More than 17.5 million votes were cast in the Twitter poll, with 57.5 percent in favour of Musk stepping down. Musk conducted his poll after Twitter’s announcement that it would no longer allow the “free promotion” of other social media platforms sparked a backlash among users.

Musk, who purchased Twitter in October for $44bn, has courted controversy with his decisions since taking control of the influential social media platform.

BEIJING, Dec 2,2022: Beijing faces a surge in severe COVID-19 cases over the next two weeks, a respiratory expert said, amid concerns over the potential toll and knock-on effects for the world economy after the surprise ditching of China’s tough virus policies.

Following widespread protests, the country of 1.4 billion people this month began dismantling its “zero-COVID” regime of lockdowns and testing that had largely kept the virus away for three years, at great economic and psychological costs.
The easing coincided with a jump in COVID cases that experts say will likely gather pace through winter, with projections suggesting China could face more than a million deaths next year.
China, which uses a narrow definition of what can be classified as COVID fatalities, reported no new COVID deaths for Dec. 20, compared with five the previous day.

The nation’s overall fatalities since the pandemic began were revised to 5,241.
Severe cases rose by 53 across China on Tuesday, versus an increase of 23 the previous day. China does not provide absolute figures of severe cases.
INTERNATIONAL CONCERNS
Amid doubts over China’s tiny COVID death toll by global standards, the National Health Commission on Tuesday clarified only people whose death is caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after contracting the virus are classified as COVID deaths.
The NHC also played down concerns raised by the United States and some epidemiologists over the potential for the virus to mutate, saying the possibility of new strains that are more pathogenic is low.

Dec 22,2022:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has delivered a defiant wartime message in Washington, DC, in which he thanked US leaders and “ordinary Americans” for supporting his country’s fight against Russia and reminded them that military assistance to Ukraine was not “charity” but an “investment” in a democratic world.

Invoking memories of the United States’s victory over Nazi Germany in a key World War II battle, Zelenskyy also said there could be “no compromises” in trying to bring an end to Russia’s war on his country.
In his first trip outside of Ukraine since the war began in February, Zelenskyy told a joint session of the US Senate and House of Representatives on Wednesday that he hoped they would continue to support his country’s war effort on a bipartisan basis.

“Your money is not charity,” Zelenskyy said in English, clad in his customary khaki fatigues.

“It is an investment in the global security and democracy,” he said.

His bi-partisan appeal comes as Republicans are due to take the majority in the US House in January and when some in the party have voiced concern over the soaring levels of assistance sent to Kyiv.

The US has so far sent about $50bn in assistance to Kyiv, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken announcing another $1.85bn in military aid on Wednesday, including the Patriot air defence system. The Patriot missile system is deemed to be one of the most advanced US air defence systems, offering protection against attacking aircraft as well as cruise and ballistic missiles.

Dec 26,2022:CPN-Maoist Centre chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal “Prachanda” was appointed Nepal’s new Prime Minister on Sunday, December 25. This was after the former guerrilla leader dramatically broke away from the five-party ruling alliance led by the Nepali Congress, ending the political uncertainty after last month’s general elections failed to produce a clear winner. Prachanda, the 68-year-old leader of former communist rebels, was appointed as the Prime Minister of Nepal, according to a statement issued by the President’s Office here.
The President had called any member of the House of Representatives, who can garner a majority with support from two or more parties as stipulated in the Article 76 clause 2 of the Constitution to submit a claim for the Prime Minister’s post by 5 pm on Sunday. Prachanda submitted the claim before the deadline given by the President expired. The swearing-in ceremony of the newly-appointed Prime Minister will take place at 4 pm on Monday, according to the President’s Office.

Prachanda along with his rival-turned ally CPN-UML chairman Oli, Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) president Ravi Lamichhane, Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) chief Rajendra Lingden among other top leaders earlier went to the President’s Office with a proposal to appoint him as the new Prime Minister, sources said. Prachanda has the support of 169 lawmakers in the 275-member House of Representatives.
Prachanda, who is being appointed as the Prime Minister of Nepal for the third time, is seen as pro-China. He has, in the past, said a new understanding with India needed to be developed on the basis of “changed scenario” in Nepal and after addressing all outstanding issues, like revision of the 1950 Friendship Treaty and resolving Kalapani and Susta border disputes.

Dec 21,2022:Afghanistan’s Taliban-run higher education ministry has said that female students would not be allowed access to the country’s universities until further notice.

A letter, confirmed by a spokesperson for the higher education ministry on Tuesday, instructed Afghan public and private universities to suspend access to female students immediately, in accordance with a Cabinet decision.
“You all are informed to immediately implement the mentioned order of suspending the education of females until further notice,” said a letter issued to all government and private universities, signed by the Minister for Higher Education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem.
The spokesman for the ministry, Ziaullah Hashimi, who tweeted the letter, confirmed the order to several news agencies including AFP and the Associated Press.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric described the move as “troubling”.

“It’s clearly another broken promise from the Taliban,” Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday.

“We have seen since their takeover … a lessening of space for women, not only in education, but access to public areas,” he said.

“It’s another very troubling move and it’s difficult to imagine how a country can develop, can deal with all of the challenges that it has without the active participation of women and their education.”

The announcement came as the United Nations Security Council met in New York on Afghanistan. The United States and British UN envoys both condemned the move during the council meeting.