World hunger stopped rising in 2022 after growing for seven years but remains above pre-pandemic levels and far off track to be eradicated by 2030, UN agencies said Wednesday.

Between 691 million and 783 million people faced hunger last year, with a midrange of 735 million, the five agencies said in a report.

The proportion of people facing chronic hunger rose from 7.9 percent of the world population in 2019 — before the pandemic — to 9.2 percent in 2022.

The annual rise “has stalled”, however, with the total falling by about 3.8 million people between 2021 and 2022, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report.

“There is no room for complacency though, as hunger is still on the rise throughout Africa, Western Asia and the Caribbean,” they warned.

The report is “a snapshot of the world still recovering from a global pandemic and now grappling with the consequences of the war in Ukraine, which has further rattled food and energy markets.”

Since 2019, those crises have plunged an additional 122 million people into hunger, according to the UN, with women and those living in rural areas hit particularly hard.

The post-pandemic economic recovery helped improve the situation, “but there is no doubt that the modest progress has been undermined by rising food and energy prices magnified by the war in Ukraine,” said the report.

The report was prepared by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization.

The estimates indicate that hunger “is no longer on the rise at the global level” but it remains “far above pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels and far off track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2” of a world free of hunger, the report said.

The UN agencies warned that if the world fails to redouble and better target its efforts, the “goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 will remain out of reach.”

‘New normal’

“There are rays of hope, some regions are on track to achieve some 2030 nutrition targets,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

“But overall, we need an intense and immediate global effort to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Formulated in 2015 by the UN General Assembly, the Sustainable Development Goals include 17 interlinked objectives including ending hunger and poverty.

If the pace of progress does not pick up, nearly 600 million people could still suffer from hunger in 2030, mostly in Africa.

The UN agencies warned that the major drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition — conflicts, economic shocks, natural catastrophes — as well as glaring inequality seem to become the “new normal”.

“What we are missing is the investments and political will to implement solutions at scale,” said Alvaro Lario, head of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The worst drought in four decades in the Horn of Africa region threatens to create a famine affecting more than 23 million people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the World Food Programme warned in May.

Some 2.4 billion people — three out of 10 people on the planet — suffered from moderate or severe food insecurity in 2022.

The pandemic hit the incomes of many people and the Ukraine war sent prices rising, leaving “billions without access to an affordable healthy diet,” the UN agencies said.

More than 3.1 billion people did not have enough money for a healthy, balanced diet last year, according to UN figures.

“Hunger is rising while the resources we urgently need to protect the most vulnerable are running dangerously low,” the WFP’s executive director Cindy McCain warned on Wednesday.

“As humanitarians, we are facing the greatest challenge we’ve ever seen.”

Source: AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have welcomed Iran’s accession into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as the ninth full member of the influential security and trade alliance.

Iran gained full-fledged membership of the SCO on Tuesday, during the 23rd virtual summit of the SCO hosted by India, becoming the ninth member of the bloc, which also includes China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will now participate in our organization in a full-fledged format. I would like to extend congratulations on this occasion to the president of Iran, Mr. Ebrahim Raeisi, and sincere greetings to him,” Putin said during his address to the one-day-long summit.

“In less than two years, our Iranian partners completed all the necessary procedures and now our shared task is to help our colleagues to productively join in the multifaceted activities taking place within the framework of the SCO,” the Russian leader added.

Being a Eurasian political, economic, international security and defense bloc, the SCO boasts to be the world’s largest regional organization in terms of geographic scope and population, grouping around 40 percent of the world population in approximately 60 percent of Eurasia.

Source: Presstv

The UN Security Council on Friday ended a decade-old peacekeeping mission in Mali, whose military junta has aligned with Russia and demanded the withdrawal of the international force battling jihadists.

Bowing to the principle that peacekeepers need the consent of the host government, the Security Council voted unanimously to start immediately winding down the mission despite fears by Western powers of new instability in the troubled nation.

The vote came two weeks after Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop stunned the Security Council by calling the UN operation known as Minusma a “failure” and urging its immediate end.

Mali’s relations with the United Nations have deteriorated sharply since a 2020 coup brought to power a military regime which also severed defense cooperation with France, the former colonial power.

The junta instead has rallied behind Russia and brought in the Wagner Group, the ruthless mercenaries involved in a mutiny against President Vladimir Putin last week.

“We deeply regret the transitional government’s decision to abandon Minusma and the harm this will bring to the Malian people,” senior US diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis told the Security Council.

But he said that the United States voted for the resolution as it agreed with the logistical timeline for the withdrawal, which is set to be complete by the end of the year.

Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Anna Evstigneeva, said the authorities in Bamako were seeking to take “full responsibility” for security and that Russia “will continue to provide comprehensive support to Mali for normalizing the situation.”

Under the resolution led by France, the peacekeepers will cease their main activity from Saturday and focus on a departure by the end of the year.

The peacekeepers will still be empowered to protect against “imminent threats of violence to civilian” in areas surrounding them.

Deadly and costly

Minusma has been the most costly mission for the UN, at $1.2 billion a year, and 174 peacekeepers have died since its creation in 2013.

Despite tensions with the junta, the UN mission had widely been expected to be extended until the Malian foreign minister’s intervention. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier in June had proposed renewing Minusma but streamlining its activities.

In a report, Guterres acknowledged shortcomings but called the mission “invaluable.” He noted that several countries in the region saw extremist groups as an “existential threat” whose violence could spill over and wanted to strengthen Minusma.

With 13,000 troops and police in Minusma, its termination will be a Herculean task with the United Nations needing to take away equipment, helicopters and armored vehicles.

“Securing the constructive cooperation of the Malian authorities will be essential to facilitate the process,” said a spokesperson for UN peacekeeping operations.

While the withdrawal was a given, the timeline was the focus of heated negotiations in recent days, according to diplomats.

Mali, with the backing of veto-wielding Russia, had pushed for Minusma to leave as quickly as possible, while some other nations feared that even six months was too rushed.

Richard Gowan, an expert at the International Crisis Group, said that UN officials feared that Wagner will simply take over Minusma facilities once the mission is completed.

Julie Gregory of the Stimson Center said the end of the mission could have a dire effect on civilians.

“It’s likely that violent extremists will take the opportunity to increase violence” with a potential for increased confrontation with national forces, especially in the north,” Gregory said.

Russia has insisted that its paramilitary forces will continue to operate in Mali and other African nations, notably the Central African Republic, despite the aborted mutiny of the Wagner Group’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Russia had long insisted that Wagner was a private group but acknowledged after the rebellion that it had been directly funding its overseas operations, which have been widely criticized by the West and human rights groups.

“Ultimately it is for the Malian transitional authorities to choose its partners,” said James Kariuki, Britain’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations. “But let’s be clear: the Wagner Group, whether operating autonomously or under direct control from Moscow, is not the answer — in Mali or anywhere else.”

Source: AFP

US President Joe Biden said Wednesday that “pariah” Vladimir Putin is “losing” the war in Ukraine, but it is too early to tell whether the Russian president has been weakened by the mercenary Wagner group’s aborted rebellion.

Asked by reporters at the White House whether Putin is now weaker, Biden said: “It’s hard to tell, but he’s clearly losing the war” in Ukraine and “he’s losing the war at home.”

Putin is now “a pariah around the world,” Biden added.

In his brief remarks, Biden mistakenly referred to Russia “losing the war in Iraq” — a gaffe he also made late Tuesday when he told a group of re-election campaign donors that he’d united the West in opposing Moscow’s “onslaught on Iraq.”

The White House remains cautious on interpreting the fallout from last week’s extraordinary events in Russia where the forces from the Wagner group — one of the most capable parts of the Russian military in Ukraine — mutinied and threatened to attack Moscow, before reversing course.

Biden, 80, is leading a Western drive to support Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion launched in February last year.

Source: AFP

The race against time to find a submersible that disappeared on its way to the Titanic wreckage site entered a new phase of desperation on Thursday morning as the final hours of oxygen possibly left on board the tiny vessel ticked off the clock.

Rescuers have rushed more ships and vessels to the site of the disappearance, hoping underwater sounds they detected for a second straight day might help narrow their search in the urgent, international mission. But the crew had only a four-day oxygen supply when the vessel, called the Titan, set off around 6 a.m. Sunday.

Even those who expressed optimism warned that many obstacles remain: from pinpointing the vessel’s location, to reaching it with rescue equipment, to bringing it to the surface — assuming it’s still intact. And all that has to happen before the passengers’ oxygen supply runs out.

The full area being searched was twice the size of Connecticut in waters as deep as 13,200 feet (4,020 meters). Captain Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District said authorities were still holding out hope of saving the five passengers onboard.

“This is a search and rescue mission, 100%,” he said Wednesday.

The area of the North Atlantic where the Titan vanished Sunday is also prone to fog and stormy conditions, making it an extremely challenging environment to conduct a search-and-rescue mission, said Donald Murphy, an oceanographer who served as chief scientist of the Coast Guard’s International Ice Patrol.

Meanwhile, newly uncovered allegations suggest there had been significant warnings made about vessel safety during the submersible’s development.

Frederick said while the sounds that have been detected offered a chance to narrow the search, their exact location and source hadn’t yet been determined.

“We don’t know what they are, to be frank,” he said.

Retired Navy Capt. Carl Hartsfield, now the director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Systems Laboratory, said the sounds have been described as “banging noises,” but he warned that search crews “have to put the whole picture together in context and they have to eliminate potential manmade sources other than the Titan.”

The report was encouraging to some experts because submarine crews unable to communicate with the surface are taught to bang on their submersible’s hull to be detected by sonar.

Ninety-six hour oxygen supply

The U.S. Navy said in a statement Wednesday that it was sending a specialized salvage system that’s capable of hoisting “large, bulky and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels.”

The Titan weighs 20,000 pounds (9,071 kilograms). The U.S. Navy’s Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System is designed to lift up to 60,000 pounds (27,216 kilograms), the Navy said on its website.

Lost aboard the vessel are pilot Stockton Rush, the CEO of the company leading the expedition. His passengers are a British adventurer, two members of a Pakistani business family and a Titanic expert. OceanGate Expeditions oversaw the mission.

Authorities reported the 22-foot (6.7-meter) carbon-fiber vessel overdue Sunday night, setting off the search in waters about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s.

Officials have said the vessel had a 96-hour oxygen supply, giving them a deadline of early Thursday morning to find and raise the Titan.

Frank Owen, a submarine search and rescue expert, said the estimated oxygen supply is a useful “target” for searchers, but is only based on a “nominal amount of consumption.” Owen said the diver on board the Titan would likely be advising passengers to “do anything to reduce your metabolic levels so that you can actually extend this.”

At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck.  

One of the company’s first customers characterized a dive he made to the site two years ago as a “kamikaze operation.”

“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” said Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”

During the 2.5-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick.

The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10.5 hours.

‘Like being in a snow cave’

OceanGate has been criticized for the use of a simple commercially available video game controller to steer the Titan. But the company has said that many of the vessel’s parts are off-the-shelf because they have proved to be dependable.

“It’s meant for a 16-year-old to throw it around,” and is “super durable,” Rush told the CBC in an interview last year while he demonstrated by throwing the controller around the Titan’s tiny cabin. He said a couple of spares are kept on board “just in case.”

The submersible had seven backup systems to return to the surface, including sandbags and lead pipes that drop off and an inflatable balloon.

Jeff Karson, a professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences at Syracuse University, said the temperature is just above freezing, and the vessel is too deep for human divers to get to it. The best chance to reach the submersible could be to use a remotely operated robot on a fiber optic cable, he said.

“I am sure it is horrible down there,” Karson said. “It is like being in a snow cave and hypothermia is a real danger.”

Documents show that OceanGate had been warned there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way the experimental vessel was developed.

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, said in a 2018 lawsuit that the company’s testing and certification was insufficient and would “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.”

The company insisted that Lochridge was “not an engineer and was not hired or asked to perform engineering services on the Titan.” The firm also says the vessel under development was a prototype, not the now-missing Titan.

The Marine Technology Society, which describes itself as “a professional group of ocean engineers, technologists, policy-makers, and educators,” also expressed concern that year in a letter to Rush, OceanGate’s chief executive. The society said it was critical that the company submit its prototype to tests overseen by an expert third party before launching in order to safeguard passengers. The New York Times first reported on those documents.

The passengers lost on the Titan are British adventurer Hamish Harding; Pakistani nationals Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, whose eponymous firm invests across the country; and French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet.

Retired Navy Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, who is now deputy director of the Institute for Security Policy and Law at Syracuse University, said the disappearance underscores the dangers associated with operating in deep water and the recreational exploration of the sea and space.

“I think some people believe that because modern technology is so good, that you can do things like this and not have accidents, but that’s just not the case,” he said.

Source: AP

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday called on Ukraine and Russia to de-escalate their conflict, as he arrived in the war-torn country on a mission to broker peace.

Ramaphosa is one of a group of African leaders that arrived in the Ukrainian capital earlier on Friday as air raid sirens sounded and explosions were reported in the city.

“This war must be settled and there should be peace through negotiations,” he told reporters after talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“We argue that there must be de-escalation on both sides.”

Culled from France 24

US President Joe Biden tripped and fell while handing out diplomas at a graduation ceremony for the US Air Force Academy in Colorado on Thursday.

Mr Biden, who is the nation’s oldest serving president at 80, was seen being helped up by Air Force officials and walking back to his seat unassisted.

The president had been standing for about an hour and half to shake hands with each of the 921 graduating cadets.

The White House communications director said “he’s fine”.

“There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands,” Ben LaBolt wrote on Twitter.

A White House press pool report also earlier said Mr Biden had tripped on a black sandbag while moving on stage.

Footage of the incident shows Mr Biden appearing to point at the sandbag as he gets back on his feet.

He was seen jogging back to his motorcade, apparently uninjured, when the ceremony ended shortly after the accident.

Critics have said he is too old to run for a second term as president.

Recent polls have suggested a majority of US voters are concerned about his advanced age. He would be 82 at the start of a second term if he wins.

This fall, in addition to previous stumbles off his bicycle and on the way up the Air Force One stairs, may add to concerns.

Source: BBC

The largest Colombian “narco sub” ever recorded — some 30 meters (100 feet) long and three meters wide — has been decommissioned in the Pacific, with three tons of cocaine found on board, the country’s navy reported Friday.

The semi-submersible vessel was intercepted Tuesday on its way to Central America, one of the most common routes for drug smuggling to the United States, the world’s largest consumer of Colombian cocaine.

The detained crew — aged 45, 54 and 63 — are all Colombians and claimed to have been “forced by a drug trafficking organization” to take the sub to Central America, the navy said in a statement.

In three decades, the Colombian navy has seized 228 such drug-laden semi-submersibles, which are never fully underwater but used by traffickers to elude detection by coast guard and other authorities.

Some were bound for the United States, while others were intercepted in the Atlantic, headed for Europe.

This was the largest Colombian narco sub decommissioned since records began in 1993.

The seizure represented a blow of some $103 million to the drug trade, the navy said.

The law in Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producer, punishes the use, construction, marketing, possession or transportation of a semi-submersible by up to 14 years in prison.

In 2021, cultivation of the coca plant — from which cocaine is extracted — stretched over 204,000 hectares (505,000 acres), according to the United Nations.

This was the highest figure since monitoring began 21 years earlier, and went hand-in-hand with a rise in cocaine production from 1,010 tons in 2020 to 1,400 tons.

Source: AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that “a real war” has been unleashed against Russia as he addressed a Victory Day parade in Moscow on Tuesday. Officials in Kyiv said Russia fired a dozen cruise missiles at the capital city overnight, a day after launching its biggest drone swarm yet in a renewed air campaign targeting Ukrainian cities.

Correspondingly, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has urged Europe to stand strong against Moscow’s war on Ukraine, responding to Russia’s bombastic military parade.

“In Moscow, 2,200 kilometres northeast from here, Putin is parading his soldiers, tanks and rockets. Let us not be intimidated by such a show of force,” Scholz told the European Parliament, referring to Russia’s Putin.

“Let’s stay steadfast in our support for Ukraine – as long as it is necessary,” he said.

Source: France 24