Climate Change Performance Index: How far have we come?

No country has yet achieved the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to the Climate Change Performance Index from NGOs Germanwatch and the NewClimate Institute.


In a repeat of 2019, the three top spots on this year's Climate Change Performance Index have been left conspicuously empty. Quite simply, according to the more than 100 experts who assessed the 58 countries — and the EU — responsible for 90% of global CO2 emissions, because their climate protection efforts are lacking.

The nations on the list are scored on the basis of energy consumption per person, as well as their strategies used to reduce it, the percentage of renewables in the energy mix, the pace of clean expansion, and what policymakers are doing to implement the climate change agreement at home and internationally.

"There is gradual progress in almost every area. But this is far too slow and does not correspond to the urgency that is necessary to protect our planet," said Professor Niklas Höhne of the Cologne-based NewClimate Institute, which analyzes the climate protection activities of countries around the world.

"One thing that stands out is that the EU has improved significantly,” he said. "The EU is trying to move forward on policies with long-term goals, and the new short-term goal is to try to bring other countries along for the ride." Thanks to a much higher scoring climate policy, the EU has advanced six places to 16, and has received the overall rating "good."


This puts the EUwell ahead of two other major emitters, the United States and China. Just like last year, the US occupied the last place (61) with China in 33rd place in the middle of the playing field. The oil-dependent nations of Saudi Arabia (60) and Iran (59) were also at the bottom of the index.

Which countries are 'good?'

According to the index, Sweden is the international role model for the fourth year in a row. While the Nordic nation did not do well enough to occupy one of the top three slots, and still has some way to go to achieving the Paris climate goals, it has set high standards in CO2 emissions, renewable energy and climate policy.

Not only was Sweden's last coal-fired power station shut down this year, but the country has set a good example to the world with a high CO2 tax of roughly €115 ($139) per ton, providing incentives to develop alternatives to coal, oil and gas. Only the very high per capita energy consumption prevented an even better ranking.

Sweden is followed by the UK, Denmark, Morocco, Norway, Chile and India — in that order — all with the rating "high." Finland, Malta, Latvia, Switzerland, Lithuania and Portugal also got the same ranking.
Germany and Brazil only in the middle

Until 2009, Germany was a role model in climate protection, even taking the top spot in 2008. But in the years that followed, its performance has largely been on a downward trajectory. The only exceptions were 2012 and 2013, when the expansion of renewable energies boomed in Germany following the nuclear disaster in Fukushima.

By 2018, Germany had slipped to 27th place out of 61. In this latest list, however, it has climbed back up to the 19th spot. According to the authors of the index, Germany is flailing on the expansion of renewables, is making slow progress on CO2 reduction in the transport sector, and needs to reduce its per capital energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

"The ‘medium' rating could be improved with more ambitious expansion targets for renewable energy and significant corrections in the transport and building sectors, as well as in the coal phase-out," says Jan Burck, lead author of the report from the environmental and development NGO Germanwatch.

Also around the middle of the list are Croatia (18), Ukraine (20), Egypt (22), France (23), Indonesia (24) and Brazil (25).


"The problem with Brazil is the increase in deforestation," climate researcher Höhne says. "And the Amazon is not only relevant for greenhouse gas emissions, but also for the entire global climate."

If too much deforestation takes place in the Amazon rainforest, there could be a tipping point because the climate is changing throughout the region — with far-reaching consequences for the supply of drinking water and the global climate.

"The rainforest would then no longer be a rainforest, and drought and fires would occur," Höhne continues. "That would be catastrophic. That is why this is not just important for Brazil but for the whole world. And there is a very, very negative trend."

Coronavirus aid package are decisive on future of the climate

In recent months, China and a number of other countries have declared their intention to reduce their high CO2 emissions to zero — most by 2050, China by 2060. US president-elect Joe Biden wants to make the US climate-neutral by 2050 and the power supply climate-neutral by 2035.

The climate index experts see these announcements as a very important signal that the urgency of the issue has been noted and that countries really do want to do more for the climate.

"The sheer volume of countries that have understood the importance of becoming climate-neutral, means it is no longer possible to ignore it," Höhne said. "The argument that 'there is no point doing something because others are not' no longer applies."

Höhne sees "gentle progress" and says the coronavirus crisis offers the opportunity to make an about-turn. What is important now is how the billions set aside for aid to recover from the pandemic will be spent and whether the money is invested in building a carbon-neutral economy.

"There is a lot of room for maneuver in the right direction, but also in the wrong direction," says Höhne. "If things go wrong, it will be very difficult to save the climate. I am convinced of that — simply because we are not going to spend money like that again for the next 10 years."

This article was translated from German

Germanwatch

@Germanwatch

#EU improves ranking by six places, shifting from overall “medium” ranking to “high” in #CCPI2021. With the ratification of the #EUGreenDeal, aiming to realize net-zero #GreenhouseGas #emissions by 2050, EU boosted its rating in #ClimatePolicy.

https://germanwatch.org/en/19552

3:02 AM · Dec 7, 2020

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INTERNATIONAL ART CONSPIRACY
Police helicopters circling a city are environmental terrorism

Five artists and scientists are tracking police helicopter surveillance’s effects on Los Angeles’s residents

Léon Dische-Becker

December 8, 2020

New Nature is ​​a series of encounters between contemporary artists, filmmakers, immersive and VR creators, technologists, and climate scientists from Canada, Germany, Mexico and the US. (The project is an initiative by the Goethe-Institut Montreal, realized with the support of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany.)

The skies over Los Angeles are the densest net of helicopter surveillance in the world. The LAPD’s aerial division is a constant presence over the city, particularly its poorest neighborhoods. The glaring searchlights and cutting noises keep residents up at night, communicating an air of supremacy and control. These birds have long been a focal point for social justice groups seeking to end police brutality/surveillance in Southern California, and are attracting renewed scrutiny in the era of efforts to defund the police. Emblems of bloated police departments, they stick out in city budgets as much as they do in LA’s nightly cityscape.

With all this in mind, a group of interdisciplinary artists are seeking to capture the material, environmental and human costs of this constant aerial surveillance. LA Birdwatchers — comprised of artist Suzanne Kite, technologist Ladan Mohamed Siad, designer Aljumaine Gayle, UCLA anthropologist Nick Shapiro, and mapper Michelle Servin — are using a combination of data collection methods to try and get an overview of the LAPD’s helicopter division. The goal of this art-science project is to capture the sonic stress of aerial surveillance, its areas of concentration, and its disproportionate contributions to climate change. Massive sat down with two members of the project to find out how exactly they plan to surveil the surveillors.

Léon Dische Becker: What inspired this artistic investigation? How did you get interested in the environmental and human impact of police helicopters?

Suzanne Kite: The protests were just beginning in Los Angeles [when we conceived of the project] and the helicopters were viciously loud. We were on a Zoom marathon as part of Goethe’s New Nature project and the helicopter noise kept interrupting the event. You could hear them in our microphones. As the situation in LA grew more and more serious, I found it difficult to stay inside. I brought cameras to the protests [for counter-surveillance purposes]. I knew that I had enough computational power at home to collect a bunch of data in a very quick turnaround. I was looking for a way to contribute to defunding the LAPD, and the more I looked at the helicopters, I realized that they were a huge waste of money. I also realized that they’re flying below FAA regulation heights. That’s why they’re so loud.

Nick Shapiro: It became clear that studying those helicopters could be a useful way to understand the climate impacts of policing and surveillance itself. The helicopters seemed to be at the nexus of these two vital issues. A lot of work in my lab is about prisons and their environmental health hazards. It was important, for me, to go upstream to policing and surveillance, as some of the institutions that make mass incarceration possible in the US.


(pictured: A visualization of a single LAPD helicopter flight during police accountability marches in Los Angeles, 2020. Courtesy of Nick Shapiro.)

SK: Helicopters turn urban spaces into prisons. I experienced that during the [Standing Rock] pipeline protests, how the helicopters create borders and move people around from the sky. That also happens to be a way that the police move around protestors, or the homeless population, in Los Angeles. And these practices are completely intertwined with climate problems. We think of this as just one little art-science project in a sea of very serious long-term coalitions and efforts, but it does help us learn more about what’s going on the ground and the different efforts to defund the police.

How will you go about collecting and representing this data? What role is data collection going to play in your project?

SK: It’s the baseline. We have been trying to collect as much information as possible about the weeks when the protests were at their height. Even more helicopters were swarming over town. This was a time for LAPD to flex their budget — so they can ask for more next year. The artistic challenge is turning that data into a tangible thing. How do you make that as real to people as possible?

NS: We’re working with a variety of different data sources. During the protest, Kite was listening to the helicopter radio chatter, pilots talking to each other. She was doing a kind of counter-surveillance and video collection. That kicked off our research. The LAPD has 19 helicopters, the Sheriff has four, Pasadena and El Monte have four in total and there is one interagency chopper. We’ll be able to calculate how much money these 20-hour a day patrols cost and, based on their fuel burn rate, their CO2 contributions. We’ve also been utilizing flight navigation data, which captures speed, elevation and geo-positioning, so we can see what neighborhoods are disproportionately targeted and sonically burdened by these aerial patrols.

In your project statement, you say that you’re not only trying to measure the environmental impact of policing, but also explore the limits of this kind of environmental critique. What do you mean by that?

NS: I think we would like to expand what counts as environmental impact. It’s not just the climate footprint; it’s about how people experience their environment. The hypothesis we are testing is that a lot of the sonic impact these helicopters have on the people is heavily focused on neighborhoods of color, which are, at least, vexed and, at most, terrorized by these rotary blades slapping the air over them all night long. We intend to do spatial analysis to see which neighborhoods are most impacted day and night. We’re also curious how the flight patterns changed during the protests

.
The LA Birdwatchers team: Suzanne Kite, Ladan Mohamed Siad, Alijumaine Gayle, and Nick Shapiro
Courtesy of Nick Shapiro

SK: You can see right now where the two patrolling LAPD helicopters are. One is right south of USC, in a neighborhood that is heavily policed, and it’s doing circles and circles and circles and circles, looking for someone, burning fuel.

NS: We see that there are limitations to that kind of environmental critique. If we replace 19 helicopters with one predator drone, we’re going to reduce the carbon footprint, but would that be a real improvement in people’s lives? Police helicopters certainly help us understand the knotted history of cars, climate, racism, and aerial surveillance. The history of the police helicopter in LA is heavily tied to racialized surveillance. They were first used for full-time patrol work in 1965 during and after the Watts riots, but first used by the police a decade earlier to monitor traffic. The internal combustion engine and auto-mobility made the militarization of policing and its impact on racialized bodies possible. Transitioning to mass transportation promises not just climate benefits but also benefits for reducing policing from the ground to the sky.

SK: A lot of environmental critique is presented separately from the immediate experiences of people. As I researched policing from an Indigenous perspective, their operation on contentious land — the environmental violence and physical violence perpetrated on Indigenous people, women in particular — I realized that these are 100% the same issue. Our project is a way of saying that you shouldn’t ignore the human — and, by the way, non-human — impact. This one little part of the police budget speaks to a much larger problem.


(pictured: A radar view tracking a single LAPD helicopter flight during police accountability marches in Los Angeles, 2020. Courtesy of Nick Shapiro.)

How do you plan to represent the human impact of this constant surveillance on communities?

SK: We’re thinking of ways to capture the Sonic terror. Installation art and screenable art could be really powerful techniques to communicate that kind of thing. When I was listening to the helicopter police’s radios during the protests, I found that the pilots did not speak like they were public servants and the people below them were citizens. They are aggressive. And I think that’s reflective of the culture of the Los Angeles Police Department. The ongoing investigation into LAPD, gangs inside the LAPD, is just one little sliver of the underlying cultural problem there. My fantasy goal is that this helps defund this program and eventually ends the entire program, ending this constant surveillance.

How did you personally become aware of these issues, and involved in this struggle?

SK: Aside from my personal experiences, walking around LA doing teenager stuff, dealing with the LAPD, I was a research assistant for the Indigenous protocols and artificial intelligence working group and position paper. I’m always interested in linking my artistic practice with broader research questions. The question of artificial intelligence is huge. It’s one tiny slice of data collection and the use of data against people.

NS: My lab [at UCLA] has been working on something that we’ve been calling the Carceral Ecologies project. We’re trying to test the hypothesis: can you have mass incarceration without mass environmental hazard for incarcerated people? I’ve been thinking about what role science has to play in thinking about a different future for criminal justice. If your only point is that prisons are toxic spaces, you can just move prisoners to a non-toxic one where you, you know, clean up the septic tank. Or you just build another, perhaps bigger, prison. And so, a lot of times this environmental critique ends up making bad systems stronger, more resistant to critique. That’s been giving me pause. Maybe we need different kinds of critique. For me, this project is a way of trying to understand: should science even have a seat at the table for rolling back the surveillance state and our policing state?

I know you’re in the early stages of planning, but how do you envision the final artwork?

SK: I think the dream exhibition is a huge video installation — really extravagant, well-funded, well-attended, huge crowd. Ideally, we would project the noise of helicopters with huge speakers on the West Side — projecting phantom helicopters onto Beverly Hills. I think it’ll live beautifully as a website, though.

This article has been produced as part of New Nature, a project by the Goethe-Institut realized with the support of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany. To find out more: http://www.goethe.de/canada/newnature

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING

 

Coronavirus: Egyptian man invents robot nurse he says will lower infection rates of hospital workers

 

Your robot vacuum cleaner could be picking up private conversations along with the dust and dirt in your home.

Computer scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have shown how a common robot vacuum cleaner and its built-in light detection and ranging (Lidar) sensor could be used to “spy” on private conversations, the university said on Monday

An NUS research team led by Assistant Professor Jun Han has shown that the Lidar sensor on a robot vacuum cleaner can be repurposed as a tool to spy on private conversations at home or in the office. Photo: NUS handout

The method, called LidarPhone, repurposes the Lidar sensor that a robot vacuum cleaner normally uses for navigating around a home into a laser-based microphone to eavesdrop on private conversations.

The research team, led by Assistant Professor Jun Han and his doctoral student Sriram Sami, managed to recover speech data with “high accuracy”, NUS said.

“The proliferation of smart devices – including smart speakers and smart security cameras – has increased the avenues for hackers to snoop on our private moments,” said Mr Sami.

”Our method shows it is now possible to gather sensitive data just by using something as innocuous as a household robot vacuum cleaner. Our work demonstrates the urgent need to find practical solutions to prevent such malicious attacks.”

The core of the LidarPhone “attack method” is the Lidar sensor, a device which emits an invisible scanning laser to create a map of its surroundings.

The research showed that by reflecting lasers off common objects, such as a dustbin or a takeaway bag located near a person’s computer speaker or television soundbar, hackers could obtain information about the original sound that made the objects’ surfaces vibrate.

“Using applied signal processing and deep learning algorithms, speech could be recovered from the audio data, and sensitive information could potentially be obtained,” NUS said.

Yes, your smart home devices are listening to you
13 Oct 2020


In their experiments, the researchers used a common robot vacuum cleaner with two sources of sound – the voice of a person reading out numbers played from a computer speaker and music clips from television shows played through a television soundbar.

The team collected more than 19 hours of recorded audio files and passed them through “deep learning algorithms” that were trained to either match human voices or identify musical sequences.

“The system was able to detect the digits being spoken aloud, which could constitute a victim’s credit card or bank account numbers. Music clips from television shows could potentially disclose the victim’s viewing preferences or political orientation,” NUS said.

The system achieved a classification accuracy rate of 91 per cent when recovering spoken digits and a 90 per cent accuracy rate when classifying music clips. These results are “significantly higher” than a random guess of 10 per cent, NUS said.

The NUS scientists also experimented with common household materials to test how well they reflected the Lidar laser beam and found that the accuracy of audio recovery varied between different materials – the best material for reflecting the laser beam was a glossy polypropylene bag, while the worst was glossy cardboard.

NUS students Dai Yimin and Sean Tan Rui Xiang, as well as Assistant Professor Nirupam Roy from the University of Maryland, contributed to the research. The research was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2020) on November 18, where the team clinched the Best Poster Runner Up Award.

To prevent Lidars from being misused, people with robot vacuum cleaners are advised to not connect them to the Internet.

The NUS team also recommends that Lidar sensor manufacturers incorporate a mechanism that cannot be overridden to prevent the internal laser from firing when the Lidar is not rotating.

Did Amazon Echo personal assistant witness murder?
20 Jul 2018



“In the long term, we should consider whether our desire to have increasingly ‘smart’ homes is worth the potential privacy implications,” said Assistant Professor Han. “We might have to accept that each new Internet-connected sensing device brought into our homes poses an additional risk to our privacy, and make our choices carefully.”

The team is working on applying these LidarPhone findings to autonomous vehicles, which also use Lidar sensors. This technology could be used to eavesdrop on conversations happening in nearby cars through minute vibrations of the windows, NUS said.

The researchers are also looking into the vulnerability of active laser sensors found on the latest smartphones, which could reveal further privacy issues, the university added.

Read the original story at Today Online

PAKISTAN

Illegal recruitment, lavish spending bring University of Peshawar to bankruptcy: report

Mohammad Ashfaq 07 Dec 2020

University of Peshawar has financially sunk owing to illegal or irregular appointments of 2,756 employees during the past one decade and lavish expenditures. — File photo

PESHAWAR: University of Peshawar has financially sunk owing to illegal or irregular appointments of 2,756 employees during the past one decade and lavish expenditures, including payment of several kinds of allowances to unauthorised staffers, according to the report of a high level inquiry committee.

The cash-strapped UoP has currently been facing Rs1 billion budget deficit due to its excessive expenditure. The 63-page inquiry report, prepared by Provincial Inspection Team (PIT), has established that the UoP administration has been paying huge amount every year to its employees in different heads for which they are not entitled.

Out of the 2,756 appointments, the UoP created 1,451 extra posts for administrative and ministerial staff in violation of the criteria of Higher Education Commission, while it recruited 1,305 employees without proper creation of posts and in excess of sanctioned strength of posts, says the report.

The PIT has also detected giving unauthorised financial benefits to the university employees in shape of orderly allowance; MS, MPhil, PhD allowance; conveyance allowance during vacation; POL charges; medical allowance; extra duty allowance; honorarium; house requisition and house subsidy; and residential telephone facility to employees not performing administrative jobs etc.

Probe panel urges govt to refer the matter to NAB

The committee has recommended to the provincial government that the matter may be referred to National Accountability Bureau for action against the responsible authorities for the illegal, irregular and unjustified acts.

The university administration during the process of inquiry denied providing requisite information to PIT regarding the appointments and awarding illegitimate allowances to the employees.

The inquiry report states that from July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2018, the UoP recruited 2,085 employees of various cadres and 1,305 of were over and above their sanctioned budget strength.

“During the instant probe, UoP was time and again asked verbally as well as in writing to justify that the relevant posts were properly sanctioned in the budget along with justification for creation of posts and also confirm their vacancy at the time of recruitments, but it failed to do so,” states the report.

The university administration also didn’t justify the procedure for recruitment process like advertisement of posts, scrutiny of documents as per eligibility criteria, screening tests, short-listing of candidates, interview, meeting of selection boards/ committee and merit list etc.

In its findings, the PIT revealed that the university administration allocated Rs121 million for the current year for contingent paid staff/daily wages despite the presence of 1,305 over and above staff. Similarly, it allocated Rs1,38.87 million for contingent paid staff/daily wagers in the financial year 2018-19 besides an allocation of Rs6.93 million for extra duty staff.

The PIT observed that the UoP administration followed the federal law regarding pension instead of provincial law having huge financial impact on the university’s budget.

As per policy of the provincial government, states the report, orderly allowance is allowed only to officers in BS-20 and above working in the civil secretariat and not to any offices like district health offices, principals, college professors and chief engineers etc. But contrary to the policy, the UoP has allowed orderly allowances to all its employees in BS-20 and above having annual financial impact of Rs34.4 million for the financial year 2020-21.

Besides, the pre-retirement orderly allowance has also been granted to the retired officers in BS-20 and above of the university that put financial impact of Rs30 million on the UoP during the financial year 2020-21. “The total financial impact of orderly allowance is Rs64.48 million during financial year 2020-21,” states the report.

The inspection team in its report has also declared payment of MS, MPhil and PhD allowances as unjustified which the UoP administration pays in millions every year. For the current year, the UoP has allocated Rs40.62 million in the head of MS, MPhil and PhD allowances.

The UoP administration has also been giving conveyance and computer allowance to its teachers in violation of the provincial government’s policies.

The report also states that an amount of Rs5 million has been paid illegally and unjustifiably as honorarium in financial year 2019-20. The UoP has allowed residential telephone/mobile phone facility to its employees other than administrative staff which is unjustified and against the policy of the provincial government.

The university administration, syndicate and senate are responsible to create a balance between the receipts and expenditures of the university but they have failed to do so, the report states.

In its recommendations, the PIT states that the issue of budget deficit can only be resolved by immediately taking some hard steps to get rid of the 2,756 irregular/illegal appointments after completing all codal formalities and no additional funds may be provided to the university till resolution of this matter.

Keeping in view the present weak financial status of UoP, it is strongly recommended to immediately discontinue the allowances to unauthorised employees that will enable the university to save about Rs402.64 million.

It states that the government may also look into suitability of necessary amendments to KP Universities Act, 2012 and statutes of all the public sector universities regarding posting of officers of provincial government as vice-chancellors, registrars, treasurers etc because they have better know-how of the establishment and financial rules, managerial skills and experience in dealing with government entities.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2020

PAKISTAN

A job-killing pandemic

Afshan Subohi

Updated 07 Dec 2020

DAWN.COM


While horrors of the rising number of Covid-19 cases and sudden painful deaths in isolation wards instil fear into the bravest of hearts, the pandemic-induced economic insecurity is now pushing families to the edge in Pakistan.

Like elsewhere, the protection and creation of jobs is perhaps the second biggest challenge after the health crisis in Pakistan. The neglect of this issue in the current environment may prove to be suicidal as dismissing the coronavirus as a sham.

Learning from the lessons of the first wave, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government has decided in principle not to impose a complete lockdown during the current rising wave and instead identify Covid-19 hotspots for a smart lockdown. The premier pronounced categorically that factories and businesses must follow standard operating procedures (SOPs) to keep the wheels of the economy turning for shielding both lives and livelihoods.

During the first lockdown in April that stretched for three months, businesses were offered incentives via cheap loans to cover wage bills and retain workers. Beyond that the government at all tiers seems to have done little in the way of keeping itself abreast of the labour market situation for apt policy interventions.

PIDE projects job losses of up to 18.5m depending on the intensity of Covid-19 and the government’s containment strategy

In the absence of credible data on employment, the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), for a change, made a commendable effort to project Covid-19–triggered unemployment. In a series of Covid-19 bulletins using modern research techniques on occupational employment counts based on data from the Labour Force Survey 2017-18, PIDE dissected and deduced valuable trends. It tried to capture the transformation in the labour market during the pandemic, identified vulnerable sectors, projected probable job losses at different levels of the health crisis intensity and extrapolated findings to share province-wise expected job cuts besides other dynamics.

In an earlier bulletin, PIDE projected Covid-19–triggered job losses of up to 18.5 million depending on the intensity and the containment strategy. The latest addition of the PIDE bulletin projected higher job losses in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa than Sindh and Balochistan.

The exercise provided valuable insight into the changing labour market dynamics. The government hierarchy, including labour secretaries and ministers, were too busy to dwell on the findings of PIDE research or use it for better informed interventions.

Talking to Dawn from the United States by phone, PIDE Vice Chancellor Dr Nadeem ul Haque expressed frustration over the lack of seriousness in society and the government towards vital issues. He blamed the under-utilisation and misallocation of precious human resources for the under-performance of the economy. “We are lazy and delusional. We wish to succeed without working systematically towards this end. The flawed system of nepotism is deep-seated and often efforts and resources are misdirected. The low productivity rates in the country are not accidental. Unless we get serious, the future will continue to elude this country,” he said.

He believes that charity by individuals, businesses or the government can at best provide a temporary relief to the poor. Only the gainful employment can break the poverty trap for employable teeming millions in Pakistan.

Attempts to obtain formal comments from provincial labour ministers and secretaries did not succeed. Insiders in Sindh and Punjab privately told Dawn that the relevant political leaders and officers are innocently ignorant of the work been done by PIDE or others in this regard. A senior in the Sindh government pointed out that the Planning Commission is not releasing the Labour Force Survey 2018-19 as numbers suggesting rising unemployment were found to be politically embarrassing.

The office of Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar promised a response to Dawn queries but it did not arrive till the filing of this report.

“It is painful to watch a party that assumed power on the platform of rooting out corruption, vacating the elite siege of the state and creating 10 million jobs in his tenure is commanding retrenchments from state-owned enterprises and watching helplessly as cartels play the market.

“The government doled out precious billions to woo the private sector without binding them to reward workers fairly and generate new jobs and more tax revenue. Historically, easy money from the government lands in speculative trading in the capital and property markets for quick returns with zilch job or revenue gains,” commented a market watcher, hinting at General Musharraf’s era when barons, bankers and brokers colluded to multiply their wealth several folds at the cost of the industry and agriculture.

As the economy stagnated and the GDP growth rate plummeted from over 5 per cent in 2017-18 to 1.5pc in 2018-19 to negative 0.4pc in 2019-20, former finance minister Dr Hafiz Pasha raised a red flag about job losses on multiple occasions. Even before the pandemic struck, he projected the impact of economic deceleration on the working masses. He estimated 2.2m job losses over the next two years after 1m were rendered unemployed in the preceding year.

According to the sixth edition of the International Labour Organisation monitor titled Covid-19 and World of Work, “… as widespread and severe labour market disruptions have continued, the global working-hour losses are projected 8.6pc instead of 4.9pc projected earlier in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to the same period last year, which corresponds to 245m full-time equivalent jobs”.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, December 7th, 2020

TIME's first ever TEENAGER Kid of the Year is only 15

"I was 10 when I told my parents I wanted to research carbon nanotube sensor technology. My mom was like what?" said Gitanjali Rao

PUBLISHED 05 DEC, 2020 DAWN.COM

At only 15, Gitanjali Rao has been selected from a field of more than 5,000 US nominees as TIME’s first ever Kid of the Year.

Rao's astonishing work includes using technology to tackle issues ranging from contaminated drinking water to opioid addiction and cyberbullying, with her mission to create a global community of young innovators to solve problems the world over standing out as an inspiration to many.

"I was like 10 when I told my parents that I wanted to research carbon nanotube sensor technology at the Denver Water quality research lab, and my mom was like, A what?” the young scientist told actor and activist Angelina Jolie in an interview over Zoom from her home in Colorado.

"I'm a very curious person if there's one thing you need to know about me. I just love learning about the environment, the ecology, I just like learning in general so everything in school is super fun," she revealed, saying she cannot see a world filled with kindness without science and technology being involved.

One of her latest innovations, an app called Kindly, is here to help prevent cyberbullying.

"I started to hard-code in some words that could be considered bullying, and then my engine took those words and identified words that are similar," Rao revealed, talking about how the app worked.

"You type in a word or phrase, and it’s able to pick it up if it’s bullying, and it gives you the option to edit it or send it the way it is. The goal is not to punish. As a teenager, I know teenagers tend to lash out sometimes. Instead, it gives you the chance to rethink what you’re saying so that you know what to do next time around."

In a way, Gitanjali thinks this is not micro-managing teenagers but instead giving them an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

She also spoke about how her goal had shifted not only from creating her own devices to solve the world’s problems, but inspiring others to do the same as well, since she wanted to see more people like her in the field.

"I don’t look like your typical scientist. Everything I see on TV is that it’s an older, usually white man as a scientist. It’s weird to me that it was almost like people had assigned roles, regarding like their gender, their age, the color of their skin."

"It’s not easy when you don’t see anyone else like you. So I really want to put out the message that If I can do it, you can do it, and anyone can do it."

Gitanjali also revealed currently working on an easy way to help detect bio-contaminants in water—things like parasites.

"I’m hoping for this to be something that’s inexpensive and accurate so that people in third-world countries can identify what’s in their water."

"I recently hit my goal of 30,000 students who I have mentored, which is super exciting. It’s like creating a community of innovators. I really hope the work that all of these kids are doing identifies innovation as a necessity and not something that’s a choice anymore. I hope I can be a small part of that."

Rao also has an inspiring message for other youngsters: “Don’t try to fix every problem, just focus on one that excites you."

TO ME A KID IS ANY CHILD UP TO TWELVE OF AGE

‘I literally don’t know’: Operation Warp Speed scientist can’t explain Trump’s vaccine order

It remains unclear how the president’s directive would be enforced.

By QUINT FORGEY
12/08/2020

The chief scientist of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed was unable to explain President Donald Trump’s latest executive order Tuesday, which aims to prioritize shipment of the coronavirus vaccine to Americans over other countries.

Moncef Slaoui, who Trump tapped in May to head up the administration’s efforts to hasten vaccine development, appeared puzzled when asked to clarify the president’s order during an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“Frankly, I don’t know, and frankly, I’m staying out of this. I can’t comment,” Slaoui said. “I literally don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” asked anchor George Stephanopoulos.

“Yes,” Slaoui said.

“But you’re the chief science adviser for Operation Warp Speed,” Stephanopoulos pressed.

“Our work is, you know, rolling,” Slaoui replied. “We have plans. We feel that we can deliver the vaccines as needed. So I don’t know exactly what this order is about.”

Indeed, it remains unclear how Trump’s executive order would be enforced, as drugmakers are already making agreements to deliver supplies for other countries.

Slaoui was similarly dismissive when asked about the executive order in another interview Tuesday, telling Fox News that “what the White House is doing is what the White House is doing.”

Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, speculated Tuesday on CNBC that there may be “authorities that the administration could invoke” to compel vaccine makers to break distribution agreements with other countries.

But Gottlieb also cautioned that “the countries that the vaccine was sold to are our close allies,” and said the U.S. will rely on those nations as part of the “global supply chain” of vaccine materials in the coming weeks and months.

The White House is hosting a vaccine summit Tuesday, at which Trump is expected to congratulate Operation Warp Speed officials and others involved in the U.S. vaccine distribution effort.

However, representatives from vaccine developers Pfizer and Moderna, which have already filed for emergency authorization of their shots from the FDA, will not be in attendance.

Slaoui’s remarks also come amid fallout from a New York Times story published Monday, which reports that administration officials turned down an offer from Pfizer to purchase additional vaccines in July.

Now, Pfizer may be unable to supply the U.S. with sufficient vaccines before next June because of subsequent deals with other countries, the Times reported.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany denied the Times report Tuesday, telling Fox News that “it’s just simply not the case that we were offered more [vaccines] and rejected them.”

And despite concerns over purchasing availability, McEnany said the U.S. “will get the next batch in short order,” adding that “those negotiations are ongoing.”

Sarah Owermohle contributed to this report.

Nurse who gave first Covid jab ‘proud to be Filipino making history’

May Parsons has been working for the NHS for 17 years, after moving from the Philippines.

Margaret Keenan with nurse May Parsons (Jacob King/PA)

By Megan Baynes, PA BELFAST TELEGRAPH

December 08 2020 

The nurse who administered the world’s first Covid-19 vaccination said she was “very proud to say to everyone I am a Filipino-Briton making history”.

May Parsons, who has been working for the NHS since immigrating from the Philippines 17 years ago, said the start of the vaccination rollout on Tuesday was a “massive historical event”.

She has been widely praised by British and Filipino politicians after she gave 90-year-old grandmother Margaret Keenan the first coronavirus vaccination outside of a clinical trial.

Margaret Keenan receives the Pfizer/BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine at University Hospital, Coventry, administered by May Parsons (Jacob King/PA)

Speaking afterwards, she told Good Morning Britain: “I am really glad to be telling all the Filipinos, in this country and everywhere in the world, we can make a difference and we do offer positive contributions to humanity, as it were.

“I think it is a historical event for Filipinos all across the globe for making sure that we are proud of what we have achieved and what we contribute to everyone and the care we give.”

Ms Parsons said she has had “lots of practice” administering vaccinations during her 24-year nursing career.

Teddy Locsin Jr, the Philippines’ secretary of foreign affairs, said he was “so proud” of Ms Parsons.

Filipino healthcare workers have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and the PA news agency has verified the names of 26 frontline medical staff, of known Filipino heritage, who have died.

There have been calls for better protection, as it was claimed in May that more workers of Filipino heritage had died working in the UK health and care system during the coronavirus crisis than in the Philippines.

Foreign Office minister Nigel Adams said: “Great to see Matron May Parsons, originally from #Philippines deliver world’s first vaccine shot.

“Our NHS is proud to have such dedicated health workers.”

Daniel Pruce, the British ambassador to the Philippines, said this morning was a “fantastic moment”.

He tweeted: “Great to see that the vaccine is administered by Nurse May Parsons from the Philippines – one of the many thousands of Filipino healthcare workers making such an enormous contribution to the #NHS.”

The British Embassy in Manila added: “We salute all the Filipino frontliners in the UK, Philippines and around the world.”

THE VIRUS IS GLOBALIZATION

‘Fantastic moment’: Filipino nurse

injects historic COVID-19 vaccine 

to British grandma

ABS-CBN News

Posted at Dec 08 2020 05:33 PM

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Pinoy nurse May Parsons injected the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to the 90-year-old British grandmother, the first in the world who received the vaccine outside clinical trials. Screenshot from Reuters video

MANILA — The British ambassador to Manila on Tuesday lauded a Pinoy nurse after administering Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine to the first person in the world who received it outside clinical trials. 

In a tweet, Ambassador Daniel Pruce said it was great news that Pinoy nurse May Parsons injected the vaccine to the 90-year-old British grandmother. 

The ambassador also thanked the Filipino medical frontliners in the United Kingdom who made an “enormous contribution” to the country’s National Health Service (NHS). 

“A fantastic moment! And great to see that the vaccine is administered by Nurse May Parsons from the Philippines - one of the many thousands of Filipino healthcare workers making such an enormous contribution to the #NHS,” Pruce said. 

In a separate tweet, British personality Piers Morgan also praised Parsons, who he said has been working for the NHS for 24 years. 

“How wonderful that this historic global moment happened in the UK, at University Hospital, Coventry,” Morgan said. 

Britain was the first country to begin mass inoculations on Tuesday with a shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

British health minister Matt Hancock, meanwhile, said he hoped life would get back to normal beginning spring of next year, following the roll-out of a vaccine against coronavirus.

"Because we've been able to get this vaccination program running sooner than anywhere else in the world, we will be able to bring that date forward a bit. I have great hopes for summer 2021 and I hope we can lift restrictions from the spring," Hancock told the BBC.