World

New Delhi, Sep 16 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Samarkand on the sidelines of the 22nd meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

According to a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs, discussions between the two leaders, apart from centering around issues pertaining to bilateral cooperation, also focussed on energy security, global food security and availability of fertilisers in the context of the challenges emanating from the current geo-political situation.

The meeting between Modi and Putin assumes significance in the context of Russian crude forming a significant 13 per cent share of India's overall oil import basket, amid increased supplies from there.

Meanwhile, the statement further said that the leaders appreciated the sustained momentum in bilateral ties, including contacts at various levels.

"President Putin expressed appreciation for Prime Minister's video-message at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok earlier this month," the statement said.

In the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Prime Minister Modi reiterated his call for an early cessation of hostilities and the need for dialogue and diplomacy.

This was the first meeting of both leaders this year, which marks the 75th anniversary year of establishment of diplomatic relations. They agreed to remain in touch, the statement said.

--IANS
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By Ashe O
Washington, Sep 16 (IANS) US President Joe Biden's administration has accelerated the vaccine programme to immunise more Americans in a major effort not to lose the momentum gained in the declining trend in Covid-19 infection outbreak in many parts of the country, ahead of the onset of autumn and winter.


The Biden administration is pushing updated coronavirus booster shots that target the Omicron variants as a way to blunt the expected surges in the winter when most people will stay indoors.

"This week marks an important shift in our fight against the virus," White House Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said as the shots rolled out last week. "It marks our ability to make Covid vaccines a more routine part of our lives as we continue to drive down serious illness and deaths and protect Americans heading into the fall and winter."

The shots target Omicron sub variants BA.4 and BA.5, which are responsible for virtually all new infections in the US. BA.5 has plateaued in the US, maintaining a rate of about 88 per cent of coronavirus cases over the past month. It's believed to be the most transmissible strain yet.

"As 99 per cent of circulating viruses in the United States are BA.5 or BA.4, updating our Covid-19 vaccines to match the circulating variants helps us to better be protected against these variants and future variants that might be closely related to Omicron," Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), told the press.

Meanwhile, the majority of the population should still be wearing a mask while inside public spaces or considering the measure based on their risk for severe Covid-19, the CDC warned in a bulletin.

Nearly 53 per cent of the population lives in an area with a medium or high Covid-19 community level, according to CDC data. According to the agency, people living in those areas should consider taking additional mitigation measures to protect themselves and others, like masking. The percentage has been on the decline for weeks as coronavirus cases, deaths and hospitalization fall, the CDC reported.

--IANS
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Samarkand, Sep 16 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the SCO Summit has pushed for full right to transit within the member countries.

In his address in Hindi, the Prime Minister said: "The pandemic and the crisis in Ukraine caused many obstacles in global supply chains, due to which the whole world is facing an unprecedented energy and food crisis. SCO must make efforts to develop reliable, resilient and diversified supply chains in our region. This will require better connectivity, as well as it will be important that we all give each other full right to transit."

He said that the role of SCO becomes very important as SCO member countries contribute about 30 per cent of global GDP, and 40 per cent of the world's population also lives in SCO countries. India supports greater cooperation and mutual trust among SCO members.

He also said that India's economy is expected to grow by 7.5 per cent this year, which will be the highest among the world's largest economies. A lot of focus is also being given on the proper use of technology in our people-centric development model. We are supporting innovation in every sector.

Today, there are more than 70,000 Start-ups in India, of which more than 100 are unicorns.

"Our experience can also be useful for many other SCO members. For this purpose, we are ready to share our experience with SCO member countries by establishing a new Special Working Group on Start-ups and Innovation," he added.

The PM asserted that India is today one of the most affordable destinations for medical and wellness tourism in the world. WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine was inaugurated in Gujarat in April 2022. This will be WHO's first and only global centre for traditional medicine.


"We must increase cooperation on traditional medicine among SCO countries. For this, India will take the initiative for a new SCO Working Group on Traditional Medicine," he added.

--IANS
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Beijing, Sep 16 (IANS) Typhoon Muifa, the 12th of this season, made a fourth landfall in China on Friday, bringing with it strong winds and rain.

The typhoon made two landfalls on Friday -- in the coastal city of Dalian in Liaoning province at around 12.40 p.m. and at 12 a.m. Friday in Qingdao, Shandong province, reports Xinhua news agency.

The typhoon made its first landfall on the coast of Zhoushan in Zhejiang province on Wednesday night, and the second was in Shanghai's Fengxian district the following day.

The typhoon packed winds of up to 82.8 km per hour near its centew and had a minimum atmospheric pressure of 990 hectopascals at its centre when it landed in Dalian.

Dalian's flood control and drought relief headquarters upgraded the emergency response from Level III to Level II, the second-highest, on Thursday afternoon.

Muifa is expected to become an extratropical cyclone on Friday after entering the Bohai Sea.

--IANS
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Jakarta, Sep 16 (IANS) Higher costs are expected to hit Indonesia's tourism sector after the government raised the price of subsidised fuel by about 30 per cent earlier this month.

Tourism operators in the archipelago are now racking their brains under the circumstances.

I Gede Nyoman Sangka, who runs his own travel agency on the resort island of Bali for more than five years, is currently working to improve the operational efficiency of his business.

"Just like any businesses out there, we are also being put in difficult situations after the hiked fuel prices," he told Xinhua news agency.

The fuel price hike came shortly after the rising inflation.

Indonesia's inflation at the end of August reached 4.6 per cent year on year, slightly lower than the previous month's 4.9 per cent, and both figures exceeded the central bank's target range from around 2 to 4 per cent.

In a meeting with provincial government heads this week, President Joko Widodo asked them to allocate 2 per cent of their budget to controlling transportation costs and suppressing inflation, particularly for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises and informal workers.

Bali, one of the world's most famous tourist destinations, is still striving to revive its tourism sector impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic in the past more than two years.

The government has expressed its optimism about achieving an overall target of 3.6 million foreign visitor arrivals this year, although the Southeast Asian country is still grappling with other problems, such as the outbreak of foot and mouth disease among animals and the menace of monkeypox to public health.

Sangka expressed hope that authorities would design a special policy to help boost tourism in Bali.

"Tickets to fly to Bali should be subsidized. Cheaper tickets will bring more visitors and increase the hotel occupancy rate. This is important," he said, adding that the authorities should also temporarily suspend the hotel and restaurant taxes.

Meanwhile, the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry has said that it is preparing strategies to manage the significant impact of the rising fuel prices on the tourism and creative economy sectors.

Earlier this week, Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Sandiaga Uno said his ministry will provide technical guidelines and assistance particularly for small and medium-sized tourism businesses to manage operating costs in more effective ways.

It will also manage special interest tourism activities which have the potential to reduce fuel consumption directly or indirectly, and encourage businesses in the tourism and creative economy sectors to start transitioning to renewable energy.

According to the Minister, the number of visitors from middle-income groups and the upper class to tourist destinations in Indonesia is currently increasing.

"Tourism has become a basic need. It's for healing. A need for refreshment is sometimes needed," Uno said.

--IANS
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Washington, Sep 16 (IANS) Initial jobless claims in the US have dropped for the fifth straight week to reach 213,000 amid continued labour market tightness, the Labour Department reported.

In the week ending September 10, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits decreased by 5,000 from the previous week's downwardly revised level of 218,000, according to a report released on Thursday by the Department's Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS).

The four-week moving average for initial jobless claims, a method to iron out data volatility, also decreased by 8,000 to 224,000, Xinhua news agency quoted the report as saying.

The latest report also showed that the number of people continuing to collect regular state unemployment benefits, which was reported with a one-week lag, increased by 2,000 to 1.4 million during the week ending September 3.

The latest weekly figure of 213,000 was below the 2019 weekly average of 218,000, which was the pre-pandemic level.

In the week ending March 21, 2020, initial jobless claims skyrocketed to 2.9 million.

Jobless claims totalled 166,000 in the week ending March 19 this year, the lowest in decades. In recent months, the figures have been trending up amid surging inflation and rising interest rates.

The latest figure, however, showed that applications for unemployment insurance fell for a fifth week, signaling still robust demand for labour even as economic growth slows.

The number of job openings in the US rose to 11.2 million by the end of July, as the imbalances between labour market supply and demand remained, the Department had reported earlier.

With the increase in job openings, there were nearly two job positions per available worker.

--IANS
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Los Angeles, Sep 16 (IANS) Actress Amber Heard is hit with yet another accusation in the aftermath of the much-publicised defamation trial against Johnny Depp. She is now accused of blackmailing Hollywood men to nab parts, including 'Aquaman' director James Wan.

According to a source close to production producers, the rumours about Heard had been swirling even "before the divorce drama started, it's just a different tune now."

The source went on detailing, "Anybody who is anybody in Hollywood has heard of Amber's wild orgies and sadly that means Depp knew too. He knew and it was slowly killing him."

"He didn't want to confront Heard, he just ran away, went on benders to try and kill his emotions and thoughts with drugs and alcohol."

As "most big studios began distancing themselves from Amber Heard after the messy divorce simply because they didn't want to upset Johnny Depp by hiring her," the source wonders how Heard managed to secure her role in 'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' following her loss in the defamation case, reports aceshowbiz.com.

"A lot of us were actually pretty shocked when we found out that Amber Heard had been cast as Mera in the 'Aquaman' movies - not because of the Johnny Depp situation but because she's not a great actress. I would hesitate to even call her b-list," the source further told Australian gossip site Pop Topic.

"Also, being one of the leads in the film and only banking approximately USD$2 million for the part, that just doesn't seem right," the source added, hence the allegations that she's blackmailed Wan.

"A lot of us are starting to wonder whether she slept with James Wan and that's how she secured this role, especially after seeing in an intimate setting with him and Elon Musk. We know what kind of wild things the two of them got up to."

"The studio has wanted her gone since before the trial. She's a terrible actress. They tried to execute a clause in a contract which would have gotten her fired, but James Wan fought to keep her in."

"So, the executives decided to just limit her role in the entire film by cutting her screen time to just 10 minutes," according to the source, who claimed that "again, James Wan fought to restore her scenes. Something about his artistic direction and what-not."

"I am almost positive she slept with him, but I'm even more certain that 'Aquaman 2' will be the last Hollywood movie you'll ever see Amber Heard in, Hollywood has blacklisted her," the source additionally noted.

Following the verdict in the defamation case, Heard denied rumours that her role could be completely cut from the 'Aquaman' sequel.

A spokesperson for the 36-year-old told Entertainment Tonight in June, "The rumor mill continues as it has from day one - inaccurate, insensitive, and slightly insane."

During the trial, Heard also said that she "fought really hard" to save her role in the upcoming movie, though her part was reduced significantly.

--IANS
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Budapest, Sep 16 (IANS) Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's right-wing Fidesz party slammed the European Parliament (EP) for "being occupied with attacking Hungary even in the midst of the current crises".

"While the people of Europe are suffering from an energy crisis due to the failed Brussels sanctions, the most important thing for the leftist European Parliament, even in this crisis situation, is to attack Hungary," Fidesz said in a statement on Thursday, reacting to a rule-of-law vote in EP against his government earlier in the day.

The EP adopted a report by French MEP Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield on the "Existence of a clear risk of a serious breach by Hungary of the values on which the Union is founded".

The vote was 433 in favour, 123 against and 28 abstentions.

The EP resolution, which is a non-binding political statement, stipulates that Hungary can no longer be considered "a full democracy".

The current report does not result in a new procedure, but the EP firmly condemned both the European Commission and the Council, arguing that it was also their responsibility that full democracy in a member state could have been abolished.

It called on both bodies not to transfer money to Hungary's government until the situation improves.

The Commission must decide by September 22 what to do with the conditionality mechanism it launched in April against the government of Hungary.

Based on this mechanism, the transfer of tens of billions of euros in European funds could be denied to Budapest because of rule of law problems.

--IANS
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Brussels, Sep 16 (IANS) The European Commission has presented a proposal for Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), a new European Union (EU) law aiming at guaranteeing cyber security in connected devices and software sold on the single market.

"The Cyber Resilience Act will ensure the connected objects and software we buy comply with strong cybersecurity safeguards," Margrethe Vestager, executive vice president of the European Commission for a Europe fit for the digital age, said on Thursday.

"Computers, phones, household appliances, virtual assistance devices, cars, toys, each and every one of these hundreds of millions of connected products is a potential entry point for a cyberattack. And yet, today most of the hardware and software products are not subject to any cyber security obligations," European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton explained.

Based on the principle of "security by design", the new law will address three areas of action to ensure the safety of users: cyber security will become mandatory; the manufacturer will remain responsible for their product's cyber security throughout its life cycle; and consumers will be better informed about these parameters while choosing a product with digital elements, reports Xinhua news agency.

Producers will be able to self-assess 90 per cent of their products. These include photo editing, word processing, smart speakers, hard drives and games.

The remaining 10 per cent -- critical products such as password managers, firewalls, operating systems, microcontrollers and industrial firewalls --will be assessed by a third party.

The CRA will be enforced through a progressive set of measures, according to Breton.

The Commission will first ask the producer to comply with the CRA, then the product will either be recalled or permanently withdrawn, and finally a fine equivalent to 2 to 5 per cent of the company's global turnover will be applied.

The Commission's proposal for the CRA will now be examined by the European Parliament and the Council.

If adopted, EU member states and companies will have two years to transpose the regulation into national law.

--IANS
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Los Angeles, Sep 16 (IANS) More than 14.6 million children in the US have tested positive for Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to the latest report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children's Hospital Association.

More than 340,000 of these cases have been added in the past four weeks. Nearly 6.7 million reported cases have been added in 2022, according to the report.

For the week ending September 8, nearly 83,300 child Covid-19 cases were reported, but the reported cases are likely a "substantial undercount" of Covid-19 cases, according to the report.

There is an urgent need to collect more age-specific data to assess the severity of illness related to new variants as well as potential longer-term effects, said the AAP as quoted by Xinhua news agency report.

"It is important to recognise there are immediate effects of the pandemic on children's health, but importantly we need to identify and address the long-lasting impact on the physical, mental, and social well-being of this generation of children and youth," the AAP added.

--IANS
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