Category:

Eco/Invest/Demography

COVID-fuelled child labour crisis spurs call for global social protection fund

The pandemic has pushed many countries – from the United States to Rwanda – to spend trillions of dollars on short-term measures, including payments to businesses and poor families, to cushion their populations from economic shocks. A fraction of this cash could be used to start a fund offering basic income like cash transfers to the poor, pensions for the elderly and disability, unemployment and child benefits, campaigners said at an online event.”Social protection is absolutely fundamental,” said Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation. “If we have a fund to build those social protection systems for the 55% of the world’s people who have no social protection, and for the 72% who have little or no social protection, then it returns money and jobs to the economy,” she said.

read more

Vaccine certification for travel must meet ‘minimum criteria’, says UK

Travelers who are not fully vaccinated, or vaccinated in a country such as India currently not on the UK government’s recognized list, must take a pre-departure test, pay for day two and day eight PCR tests after arrival in England, and self-isolate for 10 days, with an option to “test to release” after five days following a negative PCR test.

read more

‘We can end the pandemic’, UN chief says in new call for global vaccine plan

Although more than 5.7 million doses have been administered globally, 73 per cent have been in just 10 countries, and just three per cent of people in Africa have had innoculations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s plan calls for at least doubling vaccine production to ensure 2.3 billion doses are equitably distributed through the vaccine solidarity initiative, COVAX.

The goal is to reach 40 per cent of people worldwide by the end of this year, and 70 per cent in the first half of 2022, per targets set by WHO.

read more

Kharif foodgrain output estimated at record 150.50 mn tonne this year: Govt

Releasing the first advance foodgrain production estimate for the ongoing kharif season, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said: “A record foodgrain production is estimated at 150.50 million tonne in kharif season.”

Bumper crop is being achieved on account of tireless hard work of farmers and scientists besides farmer-friendly government policies, he said.

read more

German auto giants place their bets on hydrogen cars

Stephan Herbst, general manager of Toyota in Europe, speaking in his role as a member of the Hydrogen Council business group, which forecasts that hydrogen will power more than 400 million cars by 2050, said he was confident that now governments had set ambitious carbon-reduction targets, they would push hydrogen alongside battery electric cars.

“We strongly believe this is not a question of either or,” he added. “We need both technologies.”

read more