Some 50 world leaders call for post-pandemic cooperation
UNITED NATIONS, United States — World leaders on Thursday called for resilience and cooperation after the pandemic recedes, during a UN videoconference in which the United States, China and Russia did not participate.
About 50 leaders took part in the event on development financing, with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte saying in a recorded message that the goal must be to "leave no one behind."
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said "we need to be innovative, think outside the box," echoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Canada and Jamaica organized the conference.
Sustainable development goals for 2030 "are more crucial than ever," said European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. "We have to work and fight together."
Several leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, said the crisis could be an opportunity to grow a "more resilient" economy to aid the fight against global warming.
Deploring a "deep questioning of multilateralism," Macron stressed "cooperation is essential" as well as "support for the most fragile countries," especially in Africa.
Mauritania President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani called for the "systematic and immediate cancellation of debt."
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres asked leaders to "go further" than they already have on debt relief for vulnerable countries, in a spirit of "needs-based solidarity and transparency."
Guterres applauded the meeting, playing down the absence of the three missing world powers.
He told reporters that the United States, China and Russia would participate in six working groups created at Thursday's session, for which meetings are scheduled for July, September and December.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he hoped the world would "build back better," adding "we must work together across borders" to avoid a new pandemic and to help global recovery.
Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada said the world after COVID-19 should be dominated by "solidarity, not profit."
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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