Month: November 2022

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has departed for London after wrapping up his two-day visit to Egypt,

Vital decisions are expected in the next 24 hours as PM Shehbaz meets PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif after he arrives in London. Sources said that in his meeting with the PML-N chief, the premier will discuss the long march issue apart from the political and economic situation.

The premier’s two-day visit concluded following high-level engagements at the summit and its sidelines where he also conducted bilateral meetings with his counterparts.

The minister for information and broadcasting, Marriyum Aurangzeb, said that the PM has set out on a private visit to London after attending the COP27 conference.

In Egypt, PM Shehbaz attended the Climate Implementation Summit, COP-27. “Off to Pakistan,” the prime minister wrote on Twitter after delivering a speech at the COP27 summit.

At the airport, senior officials of the Egyptian government and Pakistan’s embassy in Egypt saw off the prime minister and his delegation.

During the visit, he participated in several high-level events, held bilateral meetings with his counterparts and also interacted with the international media. During the visit, he was accompanied by the ministers of foreign affairs, climate change, and information, as well as the minister of state for foreign affairs.

Special assistants to PM Syed Fahd Hussain and Syed Tariq Fatemi were also part of his delegation.

At the climate summit, the prime minister co-chaired a high-level roundtable discussion on “Climate Change and the sustainability of vulnerable communities,” with his Norwegian counterpart.

He attended the “Middle East Green Initiative Summit” hosted by Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman.

The regular component of the COP-27 conference will continue till 18th November.

In its capacity as the incumbent Chair of the Group of 77 & China, Pakistan is leading the developing countries in the climate change negotiations, including in thematic areas such as climate finance, adaptation, mitigation, and capacity building.

Pakistan suffers losses worth $30b: Shehbaz

Yesterday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif spoke at the COP27 UN climate summit and said, “In Pakistan, more than 30 million people have been severely affected; floods caused widespread destruction due to unusual rains; 8-thousand-km-long roads, 3-thousand-km-long railway tracks were affected.”

Climate change is joint responsibility,he said.

At the summit — alongside Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre — the premier co-chaired a high-level roundtable discussion on “Climate Change and the sustainability of vulnerable communities.”

World leaders, policymakers and delegates from nearly 200 countries are in Egypt at the summit, which kicked off with a deal to discuss compensating poor nations for mounting damage linked to global warming.

The prime minister highlighted that Pakistan has suffered losses worth $30 billion despite its carbon emissions being one of the lowest in the world.

He told the world leaders that the massive flooding plus unusual rains caused widespread destruction. Nearly 8,000 km long roads and 3,000 km long railway tracks have been affected by floods in Pakistan, he said.

In his address to the COP27 climate summit at the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm El Sheikh, Antonio Guterres said businesses, as well as cities and regions, should update their voluntary net zero pledges within a year to comply with recommendations by UN experts, as he trained his sights on fossil fuel firms and “their financial enablers”.

“Using bogus `net-zero’ pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible. It is rank deception,” he said at the launch of the report at the conference.

“This toxic cover-up could push our world over the climate cliff. The sham must end.”

The UN expert panel, convened by Guterres after climate talks in Glasgow last year, set its sights on drawing a “red line” around greenwashing in net zero targets from companies, cities and regions.

A huge surge in decarbonisation pledges in recent months means that around 90 percent of the global economy is now covered by some sort of promise of carbon neutrality, according to Net Zero Tracker.

The report lists a slew of recommendations, including calling on governments to begin putting in place binding regulations.

The Myanmar-flagged Lady 3 fishing vessel encountered difficulties around 250 nautical miles off Vung Tau on Vietnam’s southern coast, according to Vietnam’s Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Centre which said the boat was thought to be heading to Canada, about 6,000 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean.

“There was an issue with the ship which meant water flowed into the engine room and could not be fixed since November 5,” the centre said.

After the captain called for help on Monday, Vietnamese authorities asked a Japanese-flagged ship sailing nearby to rescue the Sri Lankans. The vessel was drifting with a lot of panicked people gathering on the deck, the rescue centre said.

All 303 people, including 20 children, were brought safely to Vung Tau.

Foreign debt-ridden Sri Lanka has for months faced severe shortages of food, fuel and medicines — along with rampant inflation and running blackouts — after running out of foreign exchange to import essential goods. Security officials have said the spiralling economic crisis may be encouraging unlawful emigration.

A surge in people-smuggling attempts to Australia by boat prompted Canberra and Colombo to set up a special monitoring centre after fitting fishing boats with GPS tracking devices to curb dangerous human trafficking journeys.

UN warns of food crisis

The United Nations on Tuesday warned of a worsening food crisis in bankrupt Sri Lanka and said the number of people needing urgent humanitarian help had doubled to 3.4 million.

UN agencies had estimated in June that 1.7 million out of the 22 million population in Sri Lanka required help.

The UN agencies in Colombo in a joint statement said they had raised $79 million to feed those in need, but the increasing number of poor people meant they needed an additional $70 million. “Food insecurity in Sri Lanka has increased dramatically due to two consecutive seasons of poor harvests, foreign exchange shortages, and reduced household purchasing power,” the statement said.

Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948 and has been enduring runaway inflation, power blackouts, and fuel rationing since last year. The country defaulted on its $51 billion external debt in mid April and is in talks with the IMF for a $2.9 billion bailout.

Months of protests against high prices and shortages of food and medicines led to the toppling of president Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July.

The UN said its revised plan aims at feeding 2.1 million people, including pregnant mothers and school children and providing livelihood support to 1.5 million farmers and fishermen. It also said that the poverty rate in the South Asian nation has doubled to 25.6 percent this year, up from 13.1 percent last year.

As polls closed in the midterm elections, Republicans were projected to have picked up at least two seats in the House of Representatives but did not immediately show evidence of a major nationwide wave ahead of what is expected to be a long count.

With Republicans hammering Biden over stubbornly high inflation, his Democratic Party’s slender majorities in the House and Senate were on the line but the clearest early results were in the governors’ races.

 

DeSantis, who has made a name in Florida by railing against Covid mitigation measures and transgender rights, was projected to have secured a landslide win of up to 20 points against a folksy former governor, four years after squeaking by in his longtime swing state.

“We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob,” DeSantis told a victory rally, using a derisive term for social justice campaigners.

“Florida is where woke goes to die,” he said.

But if the 44-year-old views his victory as a mandate for the White House in 2024, he will likely face a stiff challenge from another Florida resident — Donald Trump.

 

The former president went to the polls teasing an announcement next week of a potential new White House run, telling reporters that November 15 “will be a very exciting day for a lot of people.”

“I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly,” Trump separately told Fox News, of DeSantis.

Among other gubernatorial races, two solidly Democratic states, Massachusetts and Maryland, elected Democrats to succeed popular moderate Republican incumbents.

And the incoming leader of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, will make history as the first openly lesbian governor in the United States.

Trump again alleges fraud

Trump, who is facing criminal probes over taking top secret documents from the White House and trying to overturn the 2020 election, has returned to his playbook of airing unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

In Arizona, expected to be one of the closest states, Trump and his chosen candidate for governor, Kari Lake, alleged irregularities after problems with voting machines.

“I hope it’s not malice,” Lake told reporters. “When we win, there’s going to be a come-to-Jesus for elections in Arizona.”

Officials in Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix metropolis, said about 20 per cent of the 223 polling stations experienced difficulties related to printers but that no one was denied the right to vote.

A judge denied a Republican bid to keep the polls open later.

Biden has warned that Republicans pose a dire threat to democracy with more than half their candidates repeating Trump’s debunked claims of cheating in the 2020 election.

In his final pitch, Biden vowed that the Democrats would defend pensions, health care and the freedom to have an abortion, after a Supreme Court transformed by Trump rescinded the right to choose.

“It’s all on the ballot. This election is too important to sit out,” Biden tweeted in a last-minute bid to drive voters to the polls.

 

The president’s party has traditionally lost seats in midterm elections and Biden’s favorability ratings are hovering in the low 40s.

Narrow margins

All eyes are on a handful of closely fought Senate races including in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Ohio, with a single seat enough to swing control of the Senate — now evenly divided and controlled by Democrats only through the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The outcome may also determine whether Biden, who turns 80 this month and is the oldest president ever, will seek a second term in 2024.

 

Voting in Phoenix, Kenneth Bellows, a 32-year-old law student, said runaway inflation is “hurting Americans who are just trying to get by”.

“We don’t need any of the crazy woke rhetoric that’s going on right now. What we really need is focusing on everyday kitchen-table politics, to make sure taxes are low,” he said.

But at a restaurant serving up soul food in Pittsburgh, Lasaine Latimore, 77, said that Democrats were the best placed to help people.

“I just want my medical insurance and more money for dental and glasses,” she said.

If both the House and Senate flip, Biden’s legislative agenda would be paralysed as Republicans launch aggressive investigations and oppose his spending plans.

That would raise questions over everything from climate policies, which the president will be laying out at the COP27 conference in Egypt this week, to Ukraine, where some Republicans are reluctant to maintain the current rate of US military support.

The campaign was marred by scattered violence with an intruder espousing far-right beliefs breaking into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and bludgeoning her husband with a hammer.

Pelosi said the Democrats hoped to prevail but would accept any election outcome.

Election Day is “a day where the sanctity of the vote is revered, where people vote, and we have to respect the results of that,

The army eventually pushed the militants out of the base in Qayib, a village captured from Al Shabaab last week, defence ministry spokesperson Abdullahi Ali Anod told the state news agency SONNA.

Major Mohamed Farah, a military officer in the nearby town of Bahdo, said 10 soldiers and 20 Al Shabaab fighters were killed. “Our forces are now pursuing the Al Shabaab fighters in the jungles. There is sporadic gunfire as we chase them,” he said.

Ahmed Hassan, another military officer in Bahdo, said the attack began with two suicide car bombs at around 5am (0200 GMT), followed by hours of heavy fighting.

“Al Shabaab torched the telecommunication station of the town, and so it is off the air now,” Hassan said. One car bomb hit a military truck guarding the base entrance, while the other was blown up outside, he said.

In a statement, Al Shabaab spokesperson Abdiasis Abu Musab said the group launched the assault in Qayib using suicide car bombs before its fighters attacked from different directions. The fighters killed 37 soldiers and stole weapons and military vehicles, he added.

The government’s and Al Shabaab’s casualty numbers often differ. Government forces, supported by clan militias, have made a number of battlefield gains against Al Shabaab in the last three months, regaining territory long held by the group.

In response, Al Shabaab killed at least 120 people in twin car bombs at the education ministry in the capital Mogadishu on Oct 29, the deadliest blasts in five years.

The Al Qaeda-linked group has killed tens of thousands since 2006 in its fight to overthrow Somalia’s Western-backed central government and implement its interpretation of Islamic law.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said that Pakistan faced serious damage, primarily as a result of the severe flooding brought on by climate change this year. He urged the international community to assist Pakistan while the government deals with a variety of difficulties.

Speaking to a US news channel on Monday, the minister said that the world has to address the issues caused by climate change.

It was the shared responsibility of the global community to find solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change, he added.

He continued saying that Pakistan saw the most severe flooding this year, and he added that combating global climate change is a difficult task. Pakistan is one of the nations impacted by climate change.

He said Pakistan contributed less than one percent of the global carbon footprint. However, it was the 8th most stressed country on the planet, which is an incredible injustice to the country, he stressed.

“We bear the brunt of the damages caused by climate change,” he explained.

Following the flood, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited Pakistan and appealed to the world for assistance to the flood victims, he said.

The foreign minister also mentioned the Ukraine war, saying that the Ukraine crisis had an effect on the economy of Pakistan. He emphasized that the Pakistani prime minister’s trip to Russia had been misconstrued.

“Pakistan, across the political divide,  has decided to stay neutral in this conflict. We don’t want to be dragged into yet another conflict. We have so many devastating issues back home to deal with,” he added.

It is irrelevant what went wrong in the Ukraine war, he said. As a result of the Ukraine war, Pakistan faces food security issues and increased fuel prices, he said.

He said that he condemned the attempt on Imran Khan’s life in unequivocal terms. “There absolutely needs to be a free, fair and impartial investigation that brings the facts forward,” he said.

The foreign minister said that Pakistan has won the anti-terrorism war. A stable Afghanistan is essential for the security and progress of the entire region, he noted.

According to Bilawal, everyone agrees that the crisis in Ukraine should end so that the world can focus on the existential risks to the human race. This subject should bring everyone together so that climate change may be addressed.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH: Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged the international community to help Pakistan in the rehabilitation of the affected people by the unpreceded floods, caused by climate change.

Addressing a joint press conference, UNSG Antonio Guterres said Pakistan deserves massive support directly from the international community for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of flood-affected areas.

The UN secretary-general said the loss and damage suffered by Pakistan deserve to be considered as a reality and recognized through financial mechanisms, hoping the climate implementation conference will be able to decide it, Radio Pakistan reported.

He stressed that Pakistan should have access to effective debt relief and concessional funding to carry out the huge task of reconstruction and rehabilitation.

He appealed to the international financial institutions and the G-20 countries to create conditions for mechanisms of debt relief for middle-income countries impacted by natural disasters to allow resources to be invested in resilience and in recovery and reconstruction.

The UNSG said Pakistan being a middle-income country has not benefited from debt relief at the level that should be necessary for the country. He said he has been making proposals for debt swaps for countries like Pakistan so that investments could be made in rehabilitation and recovery and reconstruction from a natural disaster.

Expressing full solidarity, he said the UN will be side by side with Pakistan.

He said the UN is proud to be associated with Pakistan for the international donor conference in which we will try to obtain massive support from the international community for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the areas impacted by the tragic events.

He said the climate implementation summit also needs to define a clear roadmap to deal with the issue of climate change. This should include the creation of an institutional framework and financing in order to address the problems of loss and damage. He hoped that Pakistan will be able to benefit from these developments.

‘Millions of people are going into winter without shelter’

In his remarks, PM Shahbaz Sharif also stressed collective efforts to deal with the challenge of climate change.

Referring to the devastation caused by the floods, the prime minister said millions of people in Pakistan are going into winter without shelter or livelihood which is their fundamental right. He said women and children are still looking to us to protect their needs.

Alluding to the problems posed by floods such as stagnant water and waterborne diseases, he said Pakistan is grateful to the UN agencies and development partners for supporting us in this unprecedented crisis but this climate carnage is very huge.

Shahbaz Sharif mentioned that our journey to recovery will be held back by increasing public debt, rising international energy prices and no real access to adaptation funds.

He said the government has allocated urgent cash transfers worth $316 million to the vulnerable families providing $113 to each affected family. Appreciating the UN flash appeals, the prime minister said, “There is still a long way to go in sheltering and feeding millions of people.”