The World Bank said its executive board approved on Tuesday US$12 billion in new funding for developing countries to finance the purchase and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments for their citizens. The financing plan is part of US$160 billion in total resources that the multilateral development lender has pledged to provide to developing countries through June 2021 to help fight the coronavirus pandemic.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts that the Argentine economy will fall by 11.8% this year, and rebound by 4.9% in 2021, the credit agency announced. This was stated in the Economic Outlook Report (WEO) called A long and difficult road uphill, where as a result of the pandemic it estimated a fall in world GDP of 4.4% and a recovery of 5.2% by 2021.
The annually occurring ozone hole over the Antarctic is one of the largest and deepest in recent years. Analyses show that the hole has reached its maximum size. The 2020 ozone hole grew rapidly from mid-August and peaked at around 24 million square kilometers in early October. It now covers 23 million km2, above average for the last decade, and spreading over most of the Antarctic continent.
Argentina is experiencing an economic and health crisis due to the coronavirus. This is why there are many critics of the management of the Government of Alberto Fernández. One of the most vocal is the former president and current vice-president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Two months after China said it found residues of Covid-19 in a batch of chicken wings imported from Brazil, Beijing authorities repeated the announcement, but this time in relation to Brazilian beef. Apparently, traces of Covid-19 were detected in beef packaging during an inspection carried out at the Port of Dalian, one of the largest in the country.
In the wake of heat waves, global warming, forest fires, storms, droughts, and a rising number of hurricanes, the UN weather agency is warning that the number of people who need international humanitarian help could rise 50% by 2030 compared to the 108 million who needed it worldwide in 2018.
The European Union demanded a substantive movement on Tuesday from Britain on fisheries, dispute settlement, and guarantees of fair competition in their talks on a post-Brexit trade deal, with Germany saying they were at a critical stage.
Their arms raised towards the sky, worshippers of Mexico's saint of death pray before a giant cloaked skeleton asking for protection from the coronavirus and its devastating economic fallout. The Grim Reaper-like figure, whose devotees include drug cartel members as well as ordinary Mexicans, has been rejected by the Roman Catholic Church as blasphemous.
Mario Molina, the winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995 and the only Mexican scientist to be honored with a Nobel, died last week in his native Mexico City. He was 77 years old.