World

Beijing, Sep 2 (IANS) Chinese authorities have sentenced two Tibetan monks to at least three years in prison for possessing photos of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's foremost Buddhist spiritual leader who has been living in exile since 1959, media reports said.

Tenzin Dhargye, a monk in his 30s, was arrested in September 2020, and sources said that several other monks had been arrested along with him, RFA reported.

RFA has since learned that Rigtse, whose age is unknown, was among them. Tenzin Dhargye got three years and six months, while Rigtse was sentenced to three years.

Both monks were among the 250 living at the Barong monastery in Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture's Sershul county. They had photos of the Dalai Lama on their cell phones and have been in custody for the past two years, RFA reported.

"In May of this year they both were convicted of committing an act of 'separatism' by possessing photos of the Dalai Lama," the source said.

"They were both convicted by the People's Court in Sershul county and no one knows how fair the trial was as their families and relatives were not allowed to see them," said the source.

"Tibetans are threatened by the Chinese authorities so they do not share or discuss any information about them, so we don't know about their health or which prison they are detained in."

"Since 2021, the Chinese government has been aggressively inspecting each and every home and threatening Tibetans, telling them that possessing photos of the Dalai Lama is as felonious as possessing arms and guns."

--IANS
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Islamabad, Sep 2 (IANS) As Pakistan's inflation, which just hit a 47-year-high in August at over 27 per cent, is on an upward curve, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned against protests and instability in the country.

"High food and fuel prices could prompt social protest and instability," The News quoted the IMF as saying in an executive summary of the seventh and eighth reviews, released under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF).

The report said that risks to the outlook and programme implementation remain high and tilted to the downside given the very complex domestic and external environment.

It said that the spillovers from the war in Ukraine through high food and fuel prices, and tighter global financial conditions will continue to weigh on Pakistan's economy, pressuring the exchange rate and external stability, The News reported.

The report further said that policy slippages remain a risk, as evident in FY22, amplified by weak capacity and powerful vested interests, with the timing of elections uncertain given the complex political setting.

Apart from the risks of protests, socio-political pressures are expected to remain high and could also weigh on policy and reform implementation, especially given the tenuous political coalition and their slim majority in Parliament, it said.

"All this could affect policy decisions and undermine the program's fiscal adjustment strategy, jeopardising macro-financial and external stability and debt sustainability," it said.

Moreover, elevated near-term domestic financing needs may overstretch the financial sector's absorption capacity and cause market disruption, The News reported.

The IMF said substantial risks stem from higher interest rates, a larger-than-expected growth slowdown, pressures on the exchange rate, renewed policy reversals, weaker medium-term growth, and contingent liabilities related to state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The report also mentioned that the former government of PTI granted a four-month "relief package" in late February that reversed commitments to fiscal discipline made earlier in the year.

The largely untargeted package reduced petrol and diesel prices (through a generous general subsidy and setting fuel taxes at zero taxation); lowered electricity tariffs by Rs5/kwh for almost all households and commercial consumers; and provided tax exemptions and a tax amnesty.

--IANS
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Colombo, Sep 2 (IANS) Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's former President who fled the country after anti-government protesters stormed his official residence on July 13, will return to the crisis-hit island nation on Saturday.

Following months of street protests over the country's worst-ever economic crisis that led to the acute shortage of basic essentials like food, fuel, medicine and cooking gas, Rajapaska, who came to power with a thumping Sinhala Buddhist majority votes in November 2019, announced his resignation two-and-a-half years before the end of his term.

Rajapaksa secretly fled to the Maldives first with the intervention of former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed and then to Singapore.

Following the intervention of the Sri Lankan government, Rajapaksa who holds a diplomatic passport, flew to Thailand where he was allowed a 90-day stay.

Rajapaksa's initial attempt to flee to the US where his son lives with his family, had failed after Washington refused to provide a visa.

A former duel citizen, Rajapaksa had to give up the US citizenship in order to run in the 2019 presidential election.

"The President should not have left the country but he could have given up the presidency while living in Sri Lanka," Jagath Kumara, an MP from Rajapaksa's Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party, told the media on Friday while welcoming the return of the former leader.

"He is a citizen of this country and nobody can take the law into his or her hand," the MP said when he was asked about the safety of the former President.

Incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe had earlier stated that it was not safe for Rajapaksa to return to the country.

--IANS
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Madrid, Sep 2 (IANS) Spain's tourism sector continues to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, with the Statistical Office (INE) confirming that the country welcomed 39.3 million foreign travellers in the first seven months of this year.

Although this is still below the 48 million visitors registered in the same period of 2019, it is three times more than the 9.8 million tourists who visited Spain in January-July 2021, reports Xinhua news agency citing the INE as saying.

This year so far, foreign visitors to the country spent 47.6 billion euros, over four times more than in 2021 but still less than in the same period of 2019 (52.2 billion euros).

Juan Carlos Higueras, professor at the EAE Business School, explained to Xinhua that the increase in tourist numbers is a direct response to the elimination of restrictions introduced during the pandemic and commented that "the comparison and growth should be looked at in relation to the years prior to Covid".

The expert also highlighted that, although everything points to the tourist market remaining buoyant over the autumn, macroeconomic factors, such as rising inflation and fuel bills, could play a role.

"Everything will depend on how the market evolves and the inflation that is already causing problems for families.

"We have to take into account that rising costs have had an impact on the profit margin of the tourism sector, although it has tried to alleviate the situation by increasing prices," he said.

The main source markets for Spain in the first seven months of 2022 were the UK (with about 8.4 million tourists and an annual increase of 908.5 per cent), followed by Germany (5.5 million arrivals) and France (5.3 million).

--IANS
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New York, Sep 2 (IANS) For the first time, astronomers have used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system.

The exoplanet called 'HIP 65426 b' is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and could not be habitable.

The exoplanet is about six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter, and these observations could help narrow that down even further.

It is young, about 15 to 20 million years old, compared to our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth.

"This is a transformative moment, not only for Webb but also for astronomy generally," said Sasha Hinkley, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Exeter in the UK.

The image, as seen through four different light filters, shows how Webb's powerful infrared gaze can easily capture worlds beyond our solar system, pointing the way to future observations that will reveal more information than ever before about exoplanets, the space agency said in a statement.

This image shows the exoplanet 'HIP 65426 b' in different bands of infrared light.

A set of masks within each instrument, called a coronagraph, blocks out the host star's light so that the planet can be seen.

Astronomers discovered the planet in 2017 using the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile and took images of it using short infrared wavelengths of light.

Webb's view, at longer infrared wavelengths, reveals new details that ground-based telescopes would not be able to detect because of the intrinsic infrared glow of Earth's atmosphere.

Since 'HIP 65426 b' is about 100 times farther from its host star than Earth is from the Sun, it is sufficiently distant from the star that Webb can easily separate the planet from the star in the image.

"It was really impressive how well the Webb coronagraphs worked to suppress the light of the host star," Hinkley said.

Taking direct images of exoplanets is challenging because stars are so much brighter than planets.

The 'HIP 65426 b' planet is more than 10,000 times fainter than its host star in the near-infrared, and a few thousand times fainter in the mid-infrared.

"Obtaining this image felt like digging for space treasure," said Aarynn Carter, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In July, James Webb Space Telescope produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date.

--IANS
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New York, Sep 2 (IANS) Amid the shortage of monkeypox vaccines, the US holds nearly 80 per cent of the Jynneos jab used to fight monkeypox, despite having only 35 per cent of the global cases of the virus, a report said on Friday.

According to the Public Citizen analysis, the US has 22 times more doses than the EU and the UK.

"Once again, vaccines for an outbreak are not available in the vast majority of countries, including in the African states that have fought monkeypox for years," Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines Programme, said in a statement.

"We still are waiting for President Biden to put forward a plan to fight global monkeypox and avoid the tragic mistakes of the Covid crisis," Maybarduk added.

The analysis compared vaccine access and monkeypox cases in more than a dozen countries.

For example, African countries where monkeypox is endemic, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, neither have access to doses nor orders secured, despite recording multiple deaths.

The report mentioned that no countries in Africa have any doses on hand or any orders placed. And Brazil, which has reported close to one in twelve cases globally, has no doses available.

As of August 25, the US had already obtained 1,100,000 vaccine doses for 16,602 cases -- or 66 doses for every case, with nearly 7 million in total ordered so far.

Earlier this month, advocates urged the Biden administration to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up and accelerate production of additional finished Jynneos vaccine doses and support expansion and diversification of vaccine production capacity globally.

--IANS
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Beijing, Sep 2 (IANS) More than 21 million people are under a Covid lockdown in Chengdu after a fresh outbreak was detected in the Chinese city, the media reported.

On Thursday, Chengdu, the capital of the southern Sichuan province, reported 157 new Covid-19 cases, including 51 asymptomatic, the BBC reported.

The lockdown came into effect on Thursday, with residents being asked to remain indoors while just one person per household has been allowed to step out for essential shopping.

Authorities have also imposed a ban on people leaving or entering the city as health officials have termed the current situation as "extremely complex and severe" and blamed the outbreak on mass gatherings.

Mass testing will begin in the coming days, the BBC said but added that there was no immediate information on when the lockdown will end.

This latest development is in line with China's "zero Covid policy" require cities to enter strict lockdowns, even if just a handful of cases are reported.

In March, China imposed its largest lockdown in Shanghai which lasted for two months and led to widespread reports of food shortages and poor living conditions in quarantine centres, the BBC reported.

Wuhan, the city where the virus originated in late 2019, went into a lockdown in July after the discovery of four positive cases.

Other restrictions currently in force elsewhere in China include Shenzhen in the south and Dalian in the north-east.

Although the Covid pandemic originated in China, the country so far has reported a total of 243,822 cases and 5,226 deaths, way less than the worst-hit countries like the US, Brazil and India.

--IANS
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Ottawa, Sep 2 (IANS) Health Canada has authorised an adapted version of the Moderna Spikevax Covid-19 vaccine which targets the original SARS-CoV-2 virus from 2019 and the Omicron (BA.1) variant.

According to a statement issued by the agency on Thursday, this vaccine, known as a "bivalent" vaccine, is authorised for use as a booster dose in individuals aged 18 years or above.

This is the first bivalent Covid-19 vaccine authorised in Canada, said the agency, adding that the bivalent Moderna Spikevax booster is safe and effective with the same mild adverse reactions that resolved quickly, Xinhua news agency reported.

Clinical trial results showed that a booster dose of the bivalent Moderna Spikevax vaccine triggers a strong immune response against both Omicron (BA.1) and the original SARS-CoV-2 virus strain, the agency added.

It was also found to generate a good immune response against the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, and is expected to extend the durability of protection, Health Canada said.

--IANS
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United Nations, Sep 2 (IANS) The UN Security Council has called on all parties in Libya to preserve the prevailing calm on the ground, and to refrain from violence or other actions that could escalate tensions.

In a press statement on Thursday, the council members condemned the violent clashes perpetrated by armed groups in Libya's Tripoli on August 27, which resulted in civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure.

The council members "called on all parties to preserve the prevailing calm on the ground," said the statement.

They also called on the parties to refrain from violence or any other actions that could escalate tensions and undermine the political process or the ceasefire agreement reached in October 2020, which they said "should be implemented in full, including through the withdrawal of all foreign forces, foreign fighters, and mercenaries from the country without further delay".

The council members reiterated that there can be no military solution in Libya and urged all Libyan parties, facilitated by the UN, to agree a pathway to deliver presidential and parliamentary elections across the country as soon as possible through dialogue, compromise and constructive engagement, in a transparent and inclusive manner.

They called upon the UN Secretary-General to appoint a special representative immediately, Xinhua news agency reported.

In the press statement, the council members stressed "the importance of an inclusive, comprehensive national dialogue and reconciliation process aimed at, inter alia, forming a unified Libyan government able to govern across the country and representing the whole people of Libya".

They urged Libyan parties to respect international law, particularly regarding the protection of civilians, and called on all parties to allow and facilitate full, safe and unhindered humanitarian access.

--IANS
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United Nations, Sep 2 (IANS) Fighting in northern Ethiopia, routing tens of thousands of people from their homes, challenges humanitarian relief delivery, a UN spokesman said.

"We and our partners continue to provide humanitarian aid in the north, including in Afar, where more than 31,000 people were reached with food," said Stephane Dujarric, the chief spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, on Thursday.

"More than 8,000 people have received health services since August 24."

Northernmost Tigray and the neighbouring regions of Afar and Amhara pay the heaviest toll in the country's north, Xinhua news agency reported.

However, Dujarric added that while the main road into Mekelle is impassable and UN Humanitarian Air Service flights into Tigray's capital grounded, blocking relief from outside the region, aid workers distributed 17 truckloads of fertilisers this week to support farmers within the region during the planting season.

The disruption failed to block humanitarians from distributing food assistance to more than 39,000 people in Tigray's Northwestern Zone since last week, he said.

The tens of thousands of people forced by conflict from their homes last week lived in the Yallo and Gulina districts, bordering Tigray, and Chifra district, bordering the Amhara region, he added. The situation is reported calm in Amhara's Dessie town following the movement of people arriving on Wednesday from elsewhere in the region.

The spokesman said that a 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in several Amhara towns impacting the movement of people, limits access to emergency health services and commercial activities.

"We continue to call on all parties to the conflict to take constant care to spare civilians and civilian objects, including by allowing civilians to leave for safer areas, in accordance with international humanitarian law," he said.

"Rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access to all those in need across northern Ethiopia remains critical."

--IANS
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