LONDON: The World Health Organization on Wednesday classified the EG.5 coronavirus strain circulating in the United States and China as a “variant of interest” but said it did not seem to pose more of a threat to public health than other variants.
The fast-spreading variant, the most prevalent in the United States with an estimated more than 17 percent of cases, has been behind upticks in the virus across the country and also has been detected in China, South Korea, Japan and Canada, among other countries.
“Collectively, available evidence does not suggest that EG.5 has additional public health risks relative to the other currently circulating omicron descendent lineages,” the WHO said in a risk evaluation.
A more comprehensive evaluation of the risk posed by EG.5 was needed, it added.
COVID-19 has killed more than 6.9 million people globally, with more than 768 million confirmed cases since the virus emerged. WHO declared the outbreak a pandemic in March 2020 and ended the global emergency status for COVID-19 in May this year.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said EG.5 had an increased transmissibility but was not more severe than other omicron variants.
“We don’t detect a change in severity of EG.5 compared to other sublineages of omicron that have been in circulation since late 2021,” she said.
Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus deplored that many countries were not reporting COVID-19 data to WHO.
He said that only 11 percent had reported hospitalizations and ICU admissions related to the virus.
In response, WHO issued a set of standing recommendations for COVID, in which it urged countries to continue reporting COVID data, particularly mortality data, morbidity data, and to continue to offer vaccination.
Van Kerkhove said that the absence of data from many countries was hindering efforts to fight the virus.
“About a year ago, we were in a much better situation to either anticipate or act or be more agile,” she said. “And now the delay in our ability to do that is growing. And our ability to do this is declining.”
WHO classifies EG.5 as COVID-19 ‘variant of interest’
https://arab.news/4jz3v
WHO classifies EG.5 as COVID-19 ‘variant of interest’
- WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said EG.5 had an increased transmissibility but was not more severe than other omicron variants
Power outage hits Gabonese capital
For several months last year, electricity supply was disrupted due to significant infrastructure problems
LIBERVILLE: Gabon’s capital Libreville was without electricity for several hours Wednesday following a “major technical incident,” the national energy supplier said.
The early morning power outage “resulted in the loss of all production facilities in the Libreville Interconnected Network (RIC),” the Gabonese Water and Energy Company (SEEG) said without giving further details.
SEEG said it had managed to restore power to around half of its customers in the capital “by early morning,” adding its teams were working to find and analyze the fault, which AFP reporters said also cut Internet and mobile phone coverage.
On Monday, the Gabonese presidency had announced the end of an interim administration of SEEG started in August on the back of a slew of supply cuts.
As of Wednesday, “management of SEEG will be fully transferred” and it will return to its majority shareholder, the Gabonese Strategic Investment Fund (FGIS), the company stated.
For several months last year, electricity supply was disrupted due to significant infrastructure problems.
A rotating load shedding system was established leading to supply cuts in entire neighborhoods for hours at a time, to enable power supply for other parts of the city.
A protocol signed between the Gabonese government and Turkish firm Karpowership for supply of 70 megawatts via two floating power plants to cover greater Libreville saw the situation improve in recent months.
Revamping the network is a top priority for Gabon’s leader Brice Oligui Nguema, a general who overthrew the Bongo dynasty and won 94.85 percent of the vote in April’s election, 19 months on from his August 2023 coup.
Earlier this month he vowed to provide “universal access” to drinking water and electricity.
UN says strong chance average warming will top 1.5C in next 4 years
- The planet is therefore expected to remain at historic levels of warming after the two hottest years ever recorded in 2023 and 2024
- “We have just experienced the 10 warmest years on record,” said the WMO’s deputy secretary-general Ko Barrett
GENEVA: The United Nations warned on Wednesday that there is a 70 percent chance that average warming from 2025 to 2029 would exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius international benchmark.
The planet is therefore expected to remain at historic levels of warming after the two hottest years ever recorded in 2023 and 2024, according to an annual climate report published by the World Meteorological Organization, the UN’s weather and climate agency.
“We have just experienced the 10 warmest years on record,” said the WMO’s deputy secretary-general Ko Barrett.
“Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.”
The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels — and to pursue efforts to peg it at 1.5C.
The targets are calculated relative to the 1850-1900 average, before humanity began industrially burning coal, oil and gas, which emit carbon dioxide (CO2) — the greenhouse gas largely responsible for climate change.
The more optimistic 1.5C target is one that growing numbers of climate scientists now consider impossible to achieve, as CO2 emissions are still increasing.
The WMO’s latest projections are compiled by Britain’s Met Office national weather service, based on forecasts from multiple global centers.
The agency forecasts that the global mean near-surface temperature for each year between 2025 and 2029 will be between 1.2C and 1.9C above the pre-industrial average.
It says there is a 70 percent chance that average warming across the 2025-2029 period will exceed 1.5C.
“This is entirely consistent with our proximity to passing 1.5C on a long-term basis in the late 2020s or early 2030s,” said Peter Thorne, director of the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units group at the University of Maynooth.
“I would expect in two to three years this probability to be 100 percent” in the five-year outlook, he added.
The WMO says there is an 80 percent chance that at least one year between 2025 and 2029 will be warmer than the current warmest year on record: 2024.
To smooth out natural climate variations, several methods assess long-term warming, the WMO’s climate services director Christopher Hewitt told a press conference.
One approach combines observations from the past 10 years with projections for the next decade (2015-2034). With this method, the estimated current warming is 1.44C.
There is no consensus yet on how best to assess long-term warming.
The EU’s climate monitor Copernicus believes that warming currently stands at 1.39C, and projects 1.5C could be reached in mid-2029 or sooner.
Although “exceptionally unlikely” at one percent, there is now an above-zero chance of at least one year in the next five exceeding 2C of warming.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever seen such an event in our computer predictions,” said the Met Office’s Adam Scaife.
“It is shocking” and “that probability is going to rise.”
He recalled that a decade ago, forecasts first showed the very low probability of a calendar year exceeding the 1.5C benchmark. But that came to pass in 2024.
Every fraction of a degree of additional warming can intensify heatwaves, extreme precipitation, droughts, and the melting of ice caps, sea ice and glaciers.
This year’s climate is offering no respite.
Last week, China recorded temperatures exceeding 40C (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas, the United Arab Emirates hit nearly 52C (126F), and Pakistan was buffeted by deadly winds following an intense heatwave.
“We’ve already hit a dangerous level of warming,” with recent “deadly floods in Australia, France, Algeria, India, China and Ghana, wildfires in Canada,” said climatologist Friederike Otto of Imperial College London.
“Relying on oil, gas and coal in 2025 is total lunacy.”
Davide Faranda, from France’s CNRS National Center for Scientific Research, added: “The science is unequivocal: to have any hope of staying within a safe climate window, we must urgently cut fossil fuel emissions and accelerate the transition to clean energy.”
Arctic warming is predicted to continue to outstrip the global average over the next five years, said the WMO.
Sea ice predictions for 2025-2029 suggest further reductions in the Barents Sea, the Bering Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk.
Forecasts suggest South Asia will be wetter than average across the next five years.
And precipitation patterns suggest wetter than average conditions in the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, and drier than average conditions over the Amazon.
Turkiye’s foreign minister to visit Kyiv after talks in Moscow on peace efforts
- In Kyiv, Fidan is expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
- Fidan will repeat an offer to host further peace talks between Russia and Ukraine
ANKARA: Türkiye’s foreign minister will travel to Kyiv on Thursday for a two-day visit after discussing peace efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in Moscow earlier this week, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said on Wednesday.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held talks in Moscow on Monday and Tuesday, meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials, including Moscow’s top negotiator at talks in Istanbul earlier this month aimed at ending the three-year war.
In Kyiv, Fidan is expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha, and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who is also Kyiv’s top negotiator with Russia, the source said.
During the talks, Fidan will repeat an offer to host further peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, the source added.
He will “point to the increasingly heavier negative effects of the Russia-Ukraine war, emphasising the need for the war to end through diplomacy, and for a fair and lasting peace to be achieved,” the source said.
Fidan will also discuss bilateral ties, in relation to trade, energy, defense and security, while conveying Turkiye’s readiness to take part in Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction.
Russia is under increasing pressure to agree a ceasefire, and Ankara has repeatedly said the sides need to continue talks after the first direct contact between the sides since March 2022 — also in Istanbul — took place earlier this month.
Delegates from Moscow and Kyiv did not agree on a ceasefire in Istanbul this month, but agreed to trade 1,000 prisoners of war and deliver, in writing, their conditions for a possible ceasefire.
Russian sources have said that NATO member Türkiye, which has maintained good ties with both sides since the start of the war, could be a venue for future talks.
EU proposes Black Sea maritime security hub
- The move comes as European officials warn about a continued threat from Russia
- The hub will use contributions from Black Sea and EU countries
BRUSSELS: The European Union on Wednesday proposed creating a hub to boost security in the Black Sea by gathering information from multiple countries to monitor the strategically important region more closely.
The move comes as European officials warn about a continued threat from Russia and as concerns deepen across the EU about risks to undersea infrastructure.
The hub would be set up in the short-term and “with a sense of priority due to the Russian war of aggression,” an EU document said.
The hub will use contributions from Black Sea and EU countries and “enhance maritime situational awareness and information sharing on the Black Sea, real-time monitoring from space to seabed, and early warning,” the document said.
The proposal from the European Commission and the bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas notes that the hub would include monitoring of submarine cables, offshore installations and gas and wind energy operations.
It would use underwater sensors, remotely piloted vessels and surveillance drones, it added.
Kallas told reporters that the hub could also help monitor the maritime element of a future peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
French court sentences former surgeon to 20 years for raping 299 children
- Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, abused his victims while they were unconscious or sedated hospital patients
A 74-year-old pedophile and former surgeon who raped hundreds of victims over a period spanning more than two decades was given a maximum 20-year prison sentence on Friday by a French court.
Joël Le Scouarnec was found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting 299 children.
Judges followed the public prosecutor’s recommendations regarding the length of the sentence and the criminal court of Morbihan ordered that Le Scouarnec should serve at least two-thirds of the sentence before he can be eligible for release.
Le Scouarnec is already serving a 15-year prison sentence, for a conviction in 2020 for the rape and sexual assault of four children, including two nieces.
The new trial in Brittany, western France, began in February and laid bare a pattern of abuse between 1989 and 2014. Most of the victims were unconscious or sedated hospital patients at the time of the assaults. The average age was 11. Among the victims were 158 boys and 141 girls.
Accusations of inaction
During the trial, advocacy groups have accused health authorities of inaction after they were notified as soon as 2005 of Le Scouarnec’s conviction for possessing child pornography pictures.
At the time, no measures were taken to suspend his medical license or limit his contact with children and Le Scouarnec continued his abuse in hospitals until his arrest in 2017.
“Should Joël Le Scouarnec have been the only one in the defendant’s box?” prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger asked during his closing arguments.
“More could have been done,” Kellenberger said. “Things could have been done differently, even within the notorious layers of French bureaucracy, where responsibilities are so often passed from one authority to another until, eventually, that responsibility is lost, and hits innocent lives.”
Le Scouarnec has confessed to all the sexual abuse alleged by the 299 civil parties, as well as to other assaults that are now beyond the statute of limitations. In a shocking admission during the trial, he also acknowledged sexually abusing his granddaughter — a statement made in front of her visibly distraught parents.
Le Scouarnec had been convicted in 2005 for possessing and importing child sexual abuse material and sentenced to four months of suspended prison time. Despite that conviction, he was appointed as a hospital practitioner the following year. Child protection groups that have joined the proceedings as civil parties hope that the case will help strengthen the legal framework to prevent such abuse.
Dismantling taboos
Le Scouarnec’s trial came as activists continue to push to dismantle taboos that have long surrounded sexual abuse in France. The most prominent case was that of Gisèle Pélicot, who was drugged and raped by her now ex-husband and dozens of other men who were convicted and sentenced in December to three to 20 years in prison.
In a separate case focusing on alleged abuse at a Catholic school, an inquiry commission of the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, is investigating allegations of physical and sexual abuse over five decades.
Victims of Le Scouarnec have, however, complained of a perceived lack of attention.
“This trial, which could have served as an open-air laboratory to expose the serious failings of our institutions, seems to leave no mark on the government, the medical community, or society at large,” a group of victims said in a statement.
Horrific notebooks
Not all victims were initially aware they had been abused. Some were contacted by investigators after their names appeared in journals kept by Le Scouarnec, in which he meticulously documented his crimes. Others only realized they had been hospitalized at the time after checking medical records. Two of his victims took their own lives some years before the trial.
Using the cover of medical procedures, the former abdominal and digestive surgeon took advantage of moments when children were alone in their hospital rooms. His method was to disguise sexual abuse as clinical care, targeting young patients who were unlikely to remember the encounters.
The notebooks, which detail the abuse in graphic language, have become central to the prosecution’s case.
Despite the scope of the allegations, Le Scouarnec has remained calm and composed throughout the trial.
“I didn’t see them as people,” he told the court. “They were the destination of my fantasies. As the trial went on, I began to see them as individuals, with emotions, anger, suffering and distress.”
He said his first act of abuse occurred in 1985, when he raped his 5-year-old niece.
Detached and emotionless
While he offered apologies to some victims, his demeanor struck many as detached and emotionless.
“I don’t show emotion, that’s just how I am,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t feel it, but I don’t express it.”
The case first came to light in April 2017, when a 6-year-old neighbor told her mother that the man next door had exposed himself and touched her through the fence separating their properties.
A search of his home uncovered more than 300,000 photos, 650 pedophilic, zoophilic and scatological video files, as well as notebooks where he described himself as a pedophile and detailed his actions.
“Joël Le Scouarnec says he no longer feels any sexual attraction to children, but there’s no way to verify that,” Kellenberger, the prosecutor, told the court. “Experts concluded that we cannot rely on his word alone and that his potential for future danger remains significant.”
A third trial is expected in the coming years, following the emergence of new allegations during this trial, including further abuse involving his granddaughter.
