After his May 29 inauguration, Nigerian president Bola Tinubu announced he would soon end a decades-old fuel subsidy, saying the country can no longer afford the cost. His comments sparked panic buying of gas and raised concerns about inflation in one of Africa’s top oil-producing countries. Gibson Emeka has this report from Abuja.
Camera: Gibson Emeka
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The OECD slightly raised its growth outlook for the world economy on Wednesday as inflation eases and China has dropped COVID restrictions, but it warned the recovery faces a “long road.”
The Paris-based organization forecast an economic expansion of 2.7 percent, up from 2.6 percent in its previous report in March, with upgrades for the United States, China and the eurozone.
But it is still under the 3.3 percent growth recorded in 2022.
“The global economy is turning a corner but faces a long road ahead to attain strong and sustainable growth,” OECD chief economist Clare Lombardelli wrote in the OECD’s Economic Outlook.
“The recovery will be weak by past standards,” Lombardelli wrote.
The growth forecast for 2024 remains unchanged at 2.9 percent, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.
‘Signs of stress’
A drop in energy prices, the untangling of supply chain bottlenecks and China’s sooner-than-expected reopening are contributing to the recovery, the OECD said.
Among its 38 members — an eclectic group ranging from the United States to Germany, Mexico, Japan and New Zealand — inflation is expected to slow to 6.6 percent this year, after soaring to 9.4 percent in 2022.
But core inflation, which strips out volatile energy and food prices, is higher than previously expected, according to the OECD.
The international organization said this may force central banks, which have already raised interest rates in efforts to tame consumer prices, to further hike borrowing costs.
“Central banks need to maintain restrictive monetary policies until there are clear signs that underlying inflationary pressures are abating,” Lombardelli said.
James Pomeroy, an economist at HSBC bank, said: “The period we are going through is slow growth but that’s what policy makers want to see because we are trying to rein in some of the inflationary pressures.”
At a press conference, Lombardelli said central banks faced a “delicate balance”.
“Obviously they shouldn’t tighten too much to the point that it would have a greater impact on growth than it is necessary,” said the OECD’s new chief economist, who took her post last month.
The OECD warned that higher interest rates around the world are “increasingly being felt,” notably in property and financial markets.
“Signs of stress have started to appear in some financial market segments as investors reassess risks, and credit conditions are tightening,” the report said.
The banking sector was rocked in March by the collapse of US regional lender SVB, whose demise was partly blamed on high rates bringing down the value of its bond portfolio.
The crisis reverberated across the Atlantic, with the Swiss government forcing Swiss banking giant UBS to take over troubled rival Credit Suisse.
“Should further financial market stress arise, central banks should deploy financial policy instruments to enhance liquidity and minimise contagion risks,” Lombardelli wrote.
Debt danger
The OECD also warned that almost all countries have budget deficits and higher debt levels than before the pandemic as they propped up their economies to withstand the shocks of COVID restrictions and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“As the recovery takes hold, fiscal support should be scaled back and better targeted,” Lombardelli said.
As energy prices, which soared following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, fall further, government should withdraw schemes aimed at supporting consumers, the OECD said.
The OECD raised its 2023 growth forecasts for the United States, the world’s biggest economy, to 1.6 percent and China, the second biggest, to 5.4 percent — both an increase of 0.1 percentage points.
The eurozone also got a slight 0.1-point bump to 0.9 percent.
Britain was upgraded out of recession territory, with growth now forecast at 0.3 percent instead of a contraction.
The OECD, however, sharply lowered the outlook for Germany, with zero growth now expected for Europe’s economy while Japan’s GDP will grow 1.3 percent, a slight downgrade.
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Moving around metropolitan areas can present challenges for individuals who are obese or have height limitations, as many public spaces are not designed to accommodate their needs. However, a new law adds weight and height to the list of characteristics that are protected from discrimination in New York City. Aron Ranen has the story.
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China, where COVID-19 was first identified in humans more than three years ago, expects its current wave of infection to hit as many as 65 million cases per week by late June, according to official accounts of models presented at a medical conference.
While that may be an exhausting number to a post-pandemic world wearied by a still rising toll of 767 million confirmed cases and more than 6.9 million deaths, the predicted onslaught in China comes with less severe symptoms, Wang Guiqiang, director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Peking University First Hospital, told the official newspaper Beijing Daily.
And, experts say, the outbreak is likely to be confined to China. Raj Rajnarayanan, assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology and a top COVID-variant tracker, told Fortune that when it comes to XBB variants, “the rest of the world has seen them all.” But up until recently, “China hasn’t.”
Respiratory disease specialist Zhong Nanshan, who spoke on May 22 at a conference in the southern city of Guangzhou, said the current wave of infections that started in late April was “anticipated.” His modeling suggested that by the end of June, the weekly number of infections will peak at 65 million, according to the official Global Times.
After Beijing relaxed the draconian lockdowns enforced under its “zero-COVID” policy, an omicron variant different from the current one ripped through China in December 2022 and January 2023.
About 80% of China’s 1.4 billion people were infected during that wave, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in January, CNN reported. Patients packed hospitals and families waited for days to cremate those who died.
The latest COVID wave is something most people do not take seriously, said Mr. Lin, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. The resident of Quanzhou in Fujian province said, “They go about their activities normally and don’t do any protection. No one wears masks.”
Mr. Lin told VOA Mandarin he was infected in mid-December 2022, soon after Beijing lifted the lockdowns that had sent the world’s second-largest economy into a tailspin.
He realized he was infected — again — in May. Mr. Lin said he knew others who were likely reinfected and didn’t even bother to take a COVID test because their symptoms were so mild.
Mr. Zhang, who was infected for the first time in December, told VOA Mandarin he was infected a second time on a business trip to Shanghai and Beijing in May. The Hunan province resident, who asked to use a pseudonym to avoid attracting official attention, thought he had caught a cold because of the air conditioning he encountered on his trip.
But he took a test while still in Beijing and with a positive result, ended up at a hospital where he said a doctor told him, “People all over the country are like this. No need for medical attention at all. Just go home.”
After suffering four days with insomnia, loss of appetite and recurring fever, Mr. Zhang went to another Beijing hospital. Admitted, he was given Paxlovid, an anti-coronavirus drug developed by Pfizer.
“I took the medicine at noon and felt relieved at night,” he told VOA Mandarin.
During his hospital stay, Mr. Zhang said, “All the infectious disease wards were full, and there was a long queue to get an appointment. The hospital used wards of other departments for patients from the Infectious Diseases Department.”
Jin Dong-yan, a biochemistry professor with the Li Ka-shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, told VOA Mandarin there is not much difference between the current situation in China and in the U.S., but the Chinese media devote more coverage to the outbreak.
Jin said, “In fact, looking at the data, the U.S. has experienced about four peaks after the outbreak last year, but each peak is getting smaller and smaller.”
The United States, by comparison, was reporting more than 5 million cases a week at its most recent peak in January.
The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 over as a global health emergency on May 5.
Like the U.S., China stopped providing weekly case updates in May, making it difficult to know the true extent of the current outbreak.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded more than 1.1 million deaths in the U.S. involving COVID-19 from January 4, 2020, to May 27, 2023.
In China, from January 3, 2020, to May 31, 2023, there have been almost 100 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, with more than 120,000 deaths reported by Beijing to WHO.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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There are renewed concerns North Korea’s army of hackers is targeting financial institutions to prop up the regime in Pyongyang and possibly fund its weapons programs.
A report published Tuesday by the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future finds North Korean aligned actors have been spoofing well-known financial firms in Japan, Vietnam and the United States, sending out emails and documents that, if opened, could grant the hackers access to critical systems.
“The targeting of investment banking and venture capital firms may expose sensitive or confidential information of these entities or their customers,” according to the report by Recorded Future’s Insikt Group.
“[It] may result in legal or regulatory action, jeopardize pending business negotiations or agreements, or expose information damaging to the company’s strategic investment portfolio,” it said.
The report said the most recent cluster of activity took place between September 2022 and March 2023, making use of three new internet addresses and two old addresses, and more than 20 domain names.
Some of the domains imitated those used by the targeted financial institutions.
Recorded Future’s named the group behind the attacks Threat Activity Group 71 (TAG-71), which is also known as APT38, Bluenoroff, Stardust Chollima and the Lazarus Group.
This past April, the U.S. sanctioned three individuals associated with the Lazarus Group, accusing them of helping North Korea launder stolen virtual currencies and turn it into cash.
U.S. Treasury officials levied additional sanctions just last month against North Korea’s Technical Reconnaissance Bureau, which develops tools and operations to be carried out by the Lazarus Group.
The Lazarus Group is believed to be responsible for the largest theft of virtual currency to date, stealing approximately $620 million connected to a popular online game in Match 2022.
Earlier this month, U.S. and South Korean agencies issued a warning about another set of North Korean cyber actors impersonating think tanks, academic institutions and journalists in an ongoing attempt to collect intelligence.
The World Bank on Tuesday raised its 2023 global growth forecast as the U.S. and other major economies have proven more resilient than predicted but said higher interest rates would cause a larger-than-expected drag next year.
Real global GDP is set to climb 2.1% this year, the World Bank said in its latest Global Economic Prospects report. That’s up from a 1.7% forecast issued in January but well below the 2022 growth rate of 3.1%.
The development lender cut its 2024 global growth forecast to 2.4% from 2.7% in January, citing the continuing effects of tighter monetary policy, particularly in reducing business and residential investment.
“Growth over the rest of 2023 is set to slow substantially as it is weighed down by the lagged and ongoing effects of monetary tightening, and more restrictive credit conditions,” it said.
“These factors are envisaged to continue to affect activity heading into next year, leaving global growth below previous projections.”
The bank predicted global growth rebounding to 3.0% in 2025.
In January, the World Bank had warned that global GDP was slowing to the brink of recession, but since then, strength in the labor market and consumption in the U.S. had exceeded expectations as has China’s recovery from COVID-19 lockdowns.
U.S. growth for 2023 is now forecast at 1.1%, more than double the 0.5% forecast in January, while China’s growth is expected to climb to 5.6%, compared to a 4.3% forecast in January after COVID-reduced growth of 3% in 2022.
The bank, however, halved its previous 2024 U.S. growth forecast for the U.S. to 0.8%, and cut China’s forecast by 0.4 percentage point to 4.6%.
The euro zone got a forecast increase to 0.4% growth for 2023 from a flat outlook in January, but the forecast for next year was also cut slightly.
Recent banking sector stress is also contributing to tighter financial conditions that will continue into 2024, the lender said.
It cited one potential downside scenario where banking stress results in a severe credit crunch and broader financial market stress in advanced economies. This would likely cut 2024 growth by nearly half to just 1.3% – the slowest pace in 30 years outside of the 2009 and 2020 recessions.
“In another scenario where financial stress propagates globally to a far greater degree, the world economy would fall into recession in 2024,” the bank added.
The bank said inflation is expected to gradually edge down as growth decelerates and labor demand in many economies softens and commodity prices remain stable. But it added that core inflation is expected to remain above central bank targets in many countries throughout 2024.
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Japan announced Tuesday that it joined the United States and Australia in signing a $95 million undersea cable project that will connect East Micronesia island nations to improve networks in the Indo-Pacific region where China is increasingly expanding its influence.
The approximately 2,250-kilometer (1,400-mile) undersea cable will connect the state of Kosrae in the Federated State of Micronesia, Tarawa in Kiribati and Nauru to the existing cable landing point located in Pohnpei in Micronesia, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
Japan, the United States and Australia have stepped up cooperation with the Pacific Islands, apparently to counter efforts by Beijing to expand its security and economic influence in the region.
In a joint statement, the parties said next steps involve a final survey and design and manufacturing of the cable, whose width is about that of a garden hose. The completion is expected around 2025.
The announcement comes just over two weeks after leaders of the Quad, a security alliance of Japan, the United States, Australia and India, emphasized the importance of undersea cables as a critical component of communications infrastructure and the foundation for internet connectivity.
“Secure and resilient digital connectivity has never been more important,” Matthew Murray, a senior official in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said in a statement. “The United States is delighted to be part of this project bringing our region closer together.”
NEC Corp., which won the contract after a competitive tender, said the cable will ensure high-speed, high-quality and more secure communications for residents, businesses and governments in the region, while contributing to improved digital connectivity and economic development.
The cable will connect more than 100,000 people across the three Pacific countries, according to Kazuya Endo, director general of the international cooperation bureau at the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
New advances in the fight against a range of cancers have been revealed at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which wraps up in Chicago on Tuesday.
Here are some of the announcements that have most excited experts.
Lung cancer
One of the trial results that caused a stir in Chicago has raised hopes for a new weapon against lung cancer, the deadliest of all cancers.
The treatment osimertinib was shown to halve the risk of death from a certain type of lung cancer when taken daily after surgery to remove the tumor.
Developed by the pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca, the daily pill targets patients with non-small cell cancer — by far the most common type — as well as a mutation of their epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR.
Iris Pauporte, head of research at France’s League Against Cancer, told AFP the advance was a “big ray of hope” for this type of cancer, for which progress has been slow.
Muriel Dahan, head of research at Unicancer, said that if the results are confirmed, it “should change” common practice in treating this kind of lung cancer.
Systematic testing for the EGFR mutation would also become necessary for lung cancer patients, she added.
Brain cancer
Another treatment, called vorasidenib, was found to significantly prolong the progression-free survival of patients with brain tumor glioma, according to clinical trial results.
The daily pill, developed by French pharma firm Servier, aims to block an enzyme responsible for the progression of some brain cancers, which have been particularly difficult to treat.
Patrick Therasse, Servier’s vice-president of oncology research, told AFP that there “have been few therapeutic advances for brain tumors over the last 20 years.”
“Thanks to our targeted treatment, patients avoided cancer progression for 27.7 months, compared to 11.1 months” for those taking a placebo, he added.
Fabrice Andre, head of research at France’s Gustave Roussy cancer center, said “precision medicine opens a door for a disease for which there was nothing until now.”
“It means that science can unblock situations that were catastrophic,” he told AFP.
Unicancer’s Dahan said it was important to “remain cautious” but added that “this could become the new therapeutic standard — depending on further trials.”
Breast cancer
Preliminary trial results also released in Chicago indicated the drug ribociclib reduced the risk of breast cancer recurring by 25 percent for a large group of early-stage survivors.
The drug, developed by Swiss pharmaceutical maker Novartis, is already widely approved around the world. It was tested in combination with hormonal therapy.
ASCO expert Rita Nanda said it was a “very important and practice-changing clinical trial.”
Cervical cancer
There was also good news for patients with early-stage cervical cancer with a low risk of progression.
There was no greater risk of the cancer returning for patients who get a simple hysterectomy, in which the uterus and cervix are removed, than a radical hysterectomy, in which the uppermost part of the vagina is also removed, according to phase three trials.
League Against Cancer’s Pauporte said this was “good news,” adding that “it shows that it’s not just progress involving drugs that was important.”
Ovarian cancer
A trial also presented at ASCO showed that taking the antibody treatment mirvetuximab soravtansine significantly improved the survival rate of patients with ovarian cancer, a particularly deadly form of cancer.
ASCO expert Merry Jennifer Markham said the treatment “demonstrates progress and offers hope for these patients.”
Rectal cancer
Study results released in Chicago indicated that patients with locally advanced rectal cancer could receive chemotherapy without getting radiation therapy before undergoing surgery.
This would spare patients from the brutal side effects of radiation.
Vaccines
Vaccines that treat existing cancer have long been a goal of the medical community.
Preliminary studies announced at the ASCO meeting involved vaccines targeting lung cancer, head and neck cancers, brain tumor glioblastoma and the cancer-causing HPV virus.
Christophe Le Tourneau, an oncologist at France’s Curie Institute which presented a study about a vaccine for a certain form of HPV, said there has been “significant technological progress” in the area recently.
“Therapeutic vaccines, we talk about them more and more, and there are more and more trials in progress,” he said.
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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is looking at how artificial intelligence can be used to help identify goods made with child or forced labor and prevent those goods from entering the country. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. VOA footage by Adam Greenbaum.
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Global leaders in the battle against global warming convened in Bonn, Germany, on Monday for the start of the final phase of a two-year long assessment of the progress being made to limit rising temperatures.
The annual Bonn Climate Change Conference is part of the “global stocktake” — a process by which countries around the world assess how much progress has been made toward compliance with the 2015 Paris Agreement, a worldwide effort to prevent global temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era average.
“The global stocktake is an ambition exercise. It’s an accountability exercise. It’s an acceleration exercise,” U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said in a statement. “It’s an exercise that is intended to make sure every Party is holding up their end of the bargain, knows where they need to go next and how rapidly they need to move to fulfill the goals of the Paris Agreement.”
However, Stiell warned that the findings will only be meaningful if they are paired with action.
“The global stocktake will end up being just another report unless governments and those that they represent can look at it and ultimately understand what it means for them and what they can and must do next. It’s the same for businesses, communities and other key stakeholders,” he said.
The stocktake will conclude in November, when the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28) is held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Stocktake process
The global stocktake is a two-year process that happens once every five years, as dictated by the Paris Agreement. It has three parts: an information collection and preparation phase, a technical assessment and a consideration of the process’s outputs.
The stocktake began in 2021, with countries, NGOs, experts and other stakeholders gathering information about efforts currently underway to slow global warming. This includes efforts by individual countries to meet the emission-reduction goals they have agreed to at previous COP gatherings — known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) — as well as challenges and barriers to meeting those goals, and data about new mitigation techniques.
At last year’s Bonn Climate Conference, technical experts began to assess the findings, a process meant to be finalized over this year’s 10-day gathering.
The consideration of the findings will begin immediately following the conference and will be translated into recommendations for further action meant to be finalized in Dubai later this year.
No mystery
While the final details of the global stocktake will not be published until later this year, there is little mystery about what the process is likely to uncover. An interim report published in March found that progress has been “significant yet inadequate” in terms of reaching the goals set out in the Paris Agreement.
“While the remarkable speed with which the Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016 demonstrates a broad commitment, and Parties are making progress in implementation, we as a global community are not on track to meet its long-term goals,” the report found.
Still, experts said that there are reasons for optimism.
“The big value out of the global stocktake is that it’s also meant to be telling us not only where we are and where we need to be, but how to get there. What we’re hearing through the process so far is that there are solutions across all sectors and all [greenhouse] gases,” Maggie Ferrato, a manager for global climate cooperation at the Environmental Defense Fund, told VOA.
“And really the challenge is to kind of distill really clear signals from the wealth of information that’s out there on the highest impact opportunities that should be incorporated into Nationally Determined Contributions in the next round.”
More upbeat assessment
The Bonn Conference comes just a few weeks after a pair of reports from U.N.-affiliated research organizations painted grim pictures of the planet’s climate future.
In March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the planet is getting close to being unable to avoid a temperature increase of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius and predicted that more negative consequences of global climate change will soon become apparent. It said that the changes will frequently harm poor and vulnerable populations across the globe, many of which have contributed little to global warming.
Last month, the World Meteorological Organization issued a report that found a two-thirds chance the world will experience at least one year of temperatures averaging more than 1.5 degrees over the pre-industrial average within the next five years.
Michael Mehling, deputy director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told VOA that organizers of the Bonn Conference and of the COP process in general seem to realize unremitting gloom about the climate future may be doing more harm than good.
“I think there’s certainly a realization that just always saying, ‘We’re far behind. Everything looks terrible,’ is losing some impact,” he said.
Mehling said that he anticipates a report that recognizes that progress has been made and that achieving a less ambitious goal of keeping warming below 2 degrees — a level that scientists warn could be catastrophic — is achievable.
“I would probably anticipate some sort of a split message that suggests that we have to continue holding the line and staying [focused] on 2 degrees, but we can achieve that,” he said. “But it doesn’t look good for 1.5, unless we dramatically change what we’re doing. That’s what I expect to be the headline message.”
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