Vietnam downgrades Typhoon Noru, but warns of flood risks
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2022
Vietnam on Wednesday downgraded Typhoon Noru to a tropical depression, but warned residents to stay on alert because of the risks from flooding and landslides caused by heavy rain, the government said.
The storm made landfall in the early hours of Wednesday with wind speeds reaching 117kph (72mph) in the province of Quang Nam, home to the historic city of Hoi An and resort of Danang, the weather agency told state media.
More than 100,000 households with 400,000 people have been evacuated as of Tuesday. About 11,000 foreign tourists and 7,000 domestic visitors are staying in the city.
The government also said local authorities had instructed nearly 58,000 boats with 300,000 laborers to move to safe shelters.
Around 300 houses in the coastal province of Quang Tri had their roofs blown off late Tuesday as the wind began picking up speed.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, but photographs posted on social media and on state media showed downed trees and mudslides blocking roads.
Noru killed at least 10 people in the neighbouring Philippines after it made landfall on Sunday night, flooding farmland and communities and damaging crops, mainly rice.
Vietnam is also vulnerable to destructive storms and flooding because of its long coastline. Natural disasters – predominantly floods and landslides triggered by storms – killed 139 people and injured 150 others in the country last year, official data showed.
IMF and Moody’s censure UK policy that sparked market turmoil
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2022
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and ratings agency Moody’s ramped up pressure on Britain to reverse a new economic strategy that was roiling financial markets for a fourth day on Wednesday and has sparked growing alarm about the UK housing market.
The rare intervention in a G7 country from the IMF, the global lender of last resort, underscored the severity of the situation facing Britain.
Criticism from IMF of Britain’s new fiscal policy shows what a mess Prime Minister Liz Truss’s government has made of the economy, leader of the opposition Labour Party Keir Starmer said on Wednesday.
“I think the IMF statement is very serious and is a reflection on the decisions that were taken last Friday,” he told the BBC.
The International Monetary Fund openly criticised Britain’s new economic strategy on Tuesday following another slide in bond markets that forced the Bank of England to promise a “significant” response to stabilise the economy.
New finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng’s plan, was designed to support households and businesses with energy bills while doubling the long-run rate of economic growth.
It requires an additional 72 billion pounds ($77.17 billion) in government debt issuance in this fiscal year alone, shocking investors and sending the costs of such borrowing even higher.
The IMF said the proposals, which sent the pound to touch an all-time low of $1.0327 on Monday, would likely increase inequality and it questioned the wisdom of such policies.
The value of the pound and British bonds have collapsed since Friday, when finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng laid out his plans to boost economic growth, forcing the Bank of England to signal a “significant” rate hike ahead.
In mid-morning London trading on Wednesday the pound was down 0.4% at $1.0688, 30-year government bond yields pushed past 5% to hit a 20-year high, and bond strategists warned that markets were becoming close to untradeable due to volatility.
Julian Jessop, an economist who provided informal advice to Truss during her leadership campaign, said the economy was at risk of falling into a “doom loop”.
The IMF said the proposals would add to a crisis of credibility after the government cut taxes and hiked borrowing just as the Bank of England lifts interest rates to tackle surging inflation.
In a blunt release, Moody’s said large unfunded tax cuts were “credit negative” for Britain, risking structurally higher funding costs that could weaken the economy.
Kwarteng, an economic historian who was business minister for two years, has responded to the criticism by insisting that tax cuts for the wealthy alongside support for energy prices are the only way to reignite economic growth.
Britain’s Treasury department said the November announcement would detail government plans to cut debt in the medium term.
“We are focused on growing the economy to raise living standards for everyone,” a spokesperson said.
On Tuesday, Bank of England Chief Economist Huw Pill said the central bank was likely to deliver a “significant” rate increase when it meets next in November, adding that financial market upheaval would have a big impact on the economy and would be factored into its next forecasts.
S’pore’s population ageing rapidly: Nearly 1 in 5 citizens is 65 years and older
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2022
Singapore’s population is ageing rapidly, with the proportion of citizens aged 65 and above increasing to 18.4 per cent in 2022.
This is a spike from 11.1 per cent in 2012, said the annual Population In Brief report released on Tuesday. It was 17.6 per cent in 2021.
By 2030, around one in four citizens, or 23.8 per cent, will be aged 65 and above.
The report by the Government’s National Population and Talent Division provides an update on Singapore’s key population trends over the past year.
The median age of the citizen population rose from 42.5 years to 42.8 years between June 2021 and June 2022.
Meanwhile, the number of citizens aged 80 and above has increased by more than 70 per cent from 2012 to 132,000. They now make up 3.7 per cent of the population.
At his National Day Rally speech in August, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that the impending goods and services tax (GST) increase is necessary as Singapore’s population is ageing rapidly.
Singapore must be prepared to take better care of the elderly, including providing more medication subsidies to reduce the burden of healthcare costs on older Singaporeans and their families, he said.
All these mean that Singapore’s healthcare and social spending is increasing sharply, PM Lee added.
Similar ageing trends are seen in other Asian societies such as Japan and South Korea, which also face low fertility rates.
In 2020, the proportion of Singapore’s citizen population aged 65 and above was 17 per cent, similar to the South Korean population’s 16 per cent, but lower than that of the Japanese population at 29 per cent.
The ageing trend has been highlighted by Finance Minister Lawrence Wong in his Budget speech in February. He said that healthcare will account for the bulk of increases in government social spending by 2030 as Singapore’s population ages.
The additional tax collected will also be needed to fund more hospitals, polyclinics and other facilities so that the elderly can access medical services, he said.
The planned GST increase will take place in two stages – from 7 per cent to 8 per cent from Jan 1, 2023, and from 8 per cent to 9 per cent from Jan 1, 2024.
As a small city-state that relies on people as its key resource, the ageing trend and its implications will hit Singapore even more acutely, the population report said.
To address this core demographic challenge, Singapore must continue to support marriage and parenthood, it added.
While the Government has a suite of measures to support Singaporeans in starting and raising families, employers, community partners and individuals can all do their part to create a stronger family-friendly support ecosystem.
This can range from workplaces that promote work-life harmony to community groups that work with the Government to care for families with more complex needs, the report said.
Singapore must also be a home where seniors can age meaningfully with confidence and peace of mind, it added.
The report cited Singapore’s efforts to help its citizens take charge of their health and achieve healthy longevity. These include the Action Plan for Successful Ageing, which was launched in 2015 with more than 70 initiatives, as well as the Healthier SG initiative, which will be launched in 2023.
Immigration also helps to moderate the impact of ageing and low birth rates on Singapore’s population, the report said. In 2021, 21,537 individuals were granted citizenship and 33,435 individuals were granted permanent residency.
Christopher Gee, a senior research fellow and head of governance and economy at the Institute of Policy Studies, said the report provided more evidence of the accelerating long-term trend of population ageing, even after setting aside the decline in marriages and births in the last two years.
Age-related spending, including public expenditure on healthcare, will have to increase, he said.
Associate Professor Thang Leng Leng, an anthropologist from the National University of Singapore and president of the Gerontological Society of Singapore, said there should be more efforts to prevent ageism, and more opportunities for inter-generational interaction to cultivate a society of mutual support and respect.
She added that as there will be a higher proportion of older persons living alone, given the higher rate of singlehood in recent years, there should also be more support for ageing in place, with community-based care and support services within walking distance of a person’s place of residence.
With over 200 average deaths yearly, Philippines far from rabies-free status
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2022
With “high risk” classification, rabies is still one of the most prevalent threats to public health in the Philippines, the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) said.
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stressed that rabies ends a person’s life every minute. Most of the deaths happen in Asia and Africa, where children 15 years old and below comprise more than half of the deaths.
The Department of Health (DOH) said that in the Philippines, an average of 200 to 300 individuals die yearly because of rabies, a viral disease that attacks the central nervous system.
According to the CDC, while rabies is a 100 per cent preventable disease, almost 60,000 people die from it all over the world yearly, The reason that it stressed the need to “reflect on how rabies impacts your community.”
Looking back, it was in 1999 when then President Joseph Estrada signed Executive Order No. 84 to declare March of every year as Rabies Awareness Month, saying that rabies, if not eradicated, will greatly affect the public health and safety of Filipinos.
But all over the world, a health observance, which started in 2007, is likewise commemorated every Sept. 28—World Rabies Day, which the CDC said is a chance to raise awareness regarding the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
Deadly bite
The RITM said that rabies is transmitted to a person through the bite of an infected animal, mostly those warm-blooded, although dogs account for most of the reported rabies cases.
“Once a person is bitten by a rabid animal and the victim was not vaccinated, the rabies virus will travel from the site of the bite to the victim’s brain. As it reaches the human nervous system, it becomes 100 per cent fatal,” it said.
This, the RITM said, is because although extensive research has been done on rabies, “scientists have not yet developed a cure once the virus reaches the human nervous system.”
As the rabies virus goes on a death crawl to the brain, the victim will feel the initial symptoms such as a high temperature of 38ºC, chills, fatigue, irritability, anxiety, and vomiting.
After two to 10 days, more severe symptoms will start to manifest, including aggressive behaviour such as biting, excessive salivation, hallucination, hydrophobia, aerophobia, and muscle spasm.
The World Health Organization said that clinically, rabies has two forms: (1) furious rabies, which is characterized by hyperactivity and hallucinations, and (2) paralytic rabies, which is characterized by paralysis and coma.
Eliminating rabies
The RITM, which also serves as a referral centre for rabies and animal bite management, said that it treats 12,000 to 13,000 new animal bite patients yearly and two to three severe rabies cases every month.
This was the reason that in 2007, the government passed Republic Act No. 9482 or the Anti-Rabies Act, a law that calls for the control and elimination of rabies in the Philippines.
It mandated the creation of the National Rabies Prevention and Control Program, a multi-agency/multi-sector initiative that seeks to eliminate human rabies by 2016 and declare a rabies-free Philippines by 2020.
These were the main components of the program, as stressed by the RITM:
.Mass vaccination of dogs
.Establishment of a central database system for registered and vaccinated dogs
.Impounding field control and disposition of unregistered, stray and unvaccinated dogs
.Information and education campaign on the prevention and control of rabies
.Provision of pre-exposure treatment to high-risk personnel and Post Exposure Treatment to animal bite victims
.Provision of free immunization or Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis of schoolchildren aged five to fourteen in areas where there is a high incidence of rabies as well as the
.Encouragement of the practice of responsible pet ownership
The RITM said that since the program was launched, rabies deaths slowly dropped. From 257 deaths in 2010, it went down to 187 in 2013. Rabies cases also dropped by 27 per cent from 2010 to 2013.
However, only last Sept. 8, the DOH said that the Philippines had three more rabies deaths between Aug. 14 to 20, bringing the total fatalities to 233 this year, 19 per cent higher than the 195 rabies deaths in the same period last year.
It was revealed that most of the new cases came from Calabarzon, Mimaropa and Metro Manila and that this year’s victims, the DOH stressed, were individuals three to 87 years old.
Back in June, there were only 157 rabies deaths, which was five per cent lower compared to the reported cases in the same period last year.
“Rabies has a 100% fatality rate, which is why joint actions among the DOH, Department of Agriculture, local governments, and local veterinarians are important to prevent the spread of the virus.”
The DOH said that 16 per cent of the cases were from Central Luzon, 13 per cent were from Calabarzon, 11 per cent were from Western Visayas, and 10 per cent were from the Davao Region.
Based on a SciDev.Net article, new research suggested that “the Philippines’ inadequate measures to control rabies led to its failure to reduce the incidence of the deadly viral disease transmitted mainly through the bite of dogs and other animals.”
Published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, researchers led by Ferdinand de Guzman looked at cases of rabies from 2006 to 2015 admitted at the San Lazaro Hospital in Manila.
De Guzman told SciDev.Net that “in the Philippines, the focus is on the management of bites rather than on prevention of canine rabies through dog immunization programmes.”
“Achieving the goal of the global strategic plan, namely ‘Zero by 30’ [an international plan to end the death of humans due to “dog-mediated” rabies by 2030], requires strengthening the control programme based on scientific analysis.”
What should be done?
SciDev.Net stated that research carried out in countries such as Brazil has shown declining trends in human rabies cases due to rabies control programs, especially mass animal vaccination.
“To improve the rabies situation in the Philippines, the researchers recommended vigilant evaluation of rabies vaccine coverage for pet dogs and the reinforcement of control strategies in regions where rabies cases are rampant.”
The RITM said dogs transmit 99 per cent of cases of recorded rabies deaths. It is estimated that 59,000 human deaths occur annually worldwide because of rabies.
It stressed that the present yearly average of deaths because of rabies in the country is 231, putting us behind in the goal of achieving a rabies-free Philippines.
The World Organization for Animal Health said that mass animal vaccination and 70 per cent vaccine coverage of the at-risk dog population are the most effective methods to control rabies.
If local dog population data is unavailable, such as in the case of the Philippines, they are estimated using the 1:10 dog-to-human ratio.
Hurricane Ian makes its way to Florida’s west coast after passing Cuba
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2022
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told residents of southwestern Florida to “evacuate now” on Tuesday night as Hurricane Ian drew near, threatening to bring a deadly storm surge and more than a foot (30 cm) of rain to some areas.
“There will be catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge on the Gulf Coast region and of course, the highest risk will be in that southwest Florida region from Naples up to Sarasota. There’s also potential for flash flooding and river flooding with 10 to 20 inches across central and northeast Florida. If you are in an evacuation zone, particularly in those southwest Florida counties, you know, your time to evacuate is coming to an end. You need to evacuate now. You’re going to start feeling major impacts of this storm relatively soon,” DeSantis told reporters at a news conference in Tallahassee.
US President Joe Biden spoke with DeSantis earlier on Tuesday evening and discussed how the federal government could help the state in preparing for Hurricane Ian, the White House said
Biden said he told mayors of three Florida cities to contact him personally if they need anything on Tuesday, to assure them federal support is pre-positioned to deploy food, shelter and help after the storm passes.
”I told each one of them in my conversations separately, whatever they need. I mean this, sincerely, whatever they need, contact me directly and they know how to do that,” Biden said at a White House event to discuss lowering health care costs.
Biden also told the mayors it was important to encourage residents to heed evacuation orders.
The U.S. federal emergency agency warned Florida residents not to be complacent about Hurricane Ian.
It has been over 100 years since Tampa, where Ian is forecast to make landfall, has taken a direct hit from a hurricane.
The US government has in place 128,000 gallons of fuel, 300 Army Corp of Engineer personnel, 3.7 million meals and over 3 million gallons of water, 29 Red Cross shelters, 200 ambulances and four medical teams.
Ian is expected to bring winds of up to 130 mph (209 kph) and as much as 2 feet (0.6 meters) of rain to the Tampa area on Florida’s Gulf Coast starting early on Wednesday through Thursday evening, the National Weather Service said.
A hurricane warning has been extended to portions of far southwestern Florida as the storm’s path veered slightly from previous predictions.
The storm surge along Florida’s Gulf Coast could cause devastating to catastrophic damage with some locations potentially uninhabitable for weeks or months, the service warned, urging residents to move to safe shelter before the storm’s arrival.
After being pummeled by Hurricane Charley 18 years ago, residents of Port Charlotte, Florida on Tuesday are bracing for Hurricane Ian and their one piece of advice: ‘Don’t panic’.
Bruce Henry has lived in the Port Charlotte area since 1985. While waiting in line for gas, he told Reuters that too many people ‘freak out when there’s a hurricane. They rush to get gas, water and food. His advice is ‘use common sense and ‘don’t panic’.
But preparation is important. Carlos Marrero said Hurricane Charley was one of the biggest hurricanes to hit their area, but he said: ‘Nobody was ready and we all paid the price so hopefully it doesn’t happen again.”
Another local Port Charlotte resident, Abraham Papam, boarded up his daughter’s animal hospital business with his son-in-law. He said they lost their business after Hurricane Charley hit, so he was feeling nervous about another hurricane approaching their area.
More than 2.5 million Floridians were under evacuation orders or warnings with the sprawling storm on track to make landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on Wednesday evening somewhere along the Gulf Coast.
A Category 3 storm carries maximum sustained winds of up to 129 miles per hour (208 km per hour). The latest 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) hurricane advisory put Ian’s top winds near 120 mph.
Ian was most likely to come ashore south of Tampa near Sarasota, the National Hurricane Center said. That region is home to miles of sandy beaches and scores of resort hotels – is a favourite with retirees and vacationers alike.
Churning through the Caribbean on a path toward Florida, Hurricane Ian slammed into Cuba on Tuesday, forcing mass evacuations, cutting power to hundreds of thousands of people and swamping fishing villages.
Hurricane Ian made landfall in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province early on Tuesday, prompting officials to cut power to the entire province and evacuate 40,000 people from low-lying coastal areas, according to local media reports.
At 6:30 a.m., regional broadcaster TelePinar reported an eerie calm in the city of around 145,000 people as the eye hovered over the area but warned of fierce winds to follow.
Cuban state-run media reported the strongest winds to date from Ian at 130 mph (208 kmh) at San Juan y Martinez, a small town on Cuba’s southwest coast.
Pinar del Rio province is a lightly populated region but a top producer of farm crops and tobacco.
Violent wind gusts shattered windows and ripped metal roofs off homes and buildings throughout the region, where many houses are decades old and infrastructure is antiquated. Roads into the areas directly hit by the hurricane remained impassable, blocked by downed trees and powerlines.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Ana Julia Gomez, a 56-year-old woman who lives alone in Pinar del Rio, as she surveyed the wreckage inside her storm-ravaged home. “I lost everything, nothing is left.”
State-run media said farmers had secured 33,000 tonnes of tobacco in storage from prior harvests, but many farms buildings, made with thatched palm roofs, had been flattened by the storm.
“Sometimes hurricanes pass through here, but not of this magnitude,” said Abel Hernandez, a 49-year-old tobacco farmer. “It destroyed our houses, our tobacco-drying huts, our farms, the fruit trees, everything.”
Neighboring Artemisa province, nearer Havana, reported that 40% of its banana plantations had been damaged by the storm.
Rain and winds buffeted Havana early on Tuesday, but the city, under a tropical storm watch and preparing for a potential storm surge, looked likely to be spared the brunt of Ian’s strongest winds.
The hurricane hits Cuba at a time of dire economic crisis. Hours-long blackouts had become everyday events across much of Cuba – even before the storm – and shortages of food, medicine and fuel are likely to complicate efforts to recover from Ian.
Nord Stream gas pipelines leak likely caused by deliberate acts
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2022
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that it would be “in no one’s interest” if attacks or acts of sabotage caused gas leaks detected in the Nord Stream gas pipelines amid an energy standoff between Europe and Russia over gas supplies.
Both Moscow and Western European capitals have expressed concern over the multiple leaks spewing gas into the sea, which occurred as Russia has slashed gas deliveries to Europe after the West imposed sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
While speaking at a press conference in Washington alongside India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Blinken said there are initial reports indicating the leaks may be a result of an attack or some kind of sabotage but haven’t been confirmed yet.
The White House said the United States was ready to provide support to European partners conducting an investigation.
Blinken added that his understanding was the leaks would not have a significant impact on Europe’s energy resilience and reiterated that Washington was working to address energy security for Europe in the short- and long-term.
Gas leaking from the damaged Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea will continue for several days, the head of Denmark’s Energy Agency said on Tuesday.
The leaks in the two Russian pipelines were very large and it could take a week for gas to stop draining out of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the head of the agency, Kristoffer Bottzauw said.
“A lot of gas is leaking out. It is perhaps several million cubic meters every hour. The pipes are being emptied but it will take several days before they are completely empty,” Bottzauw said, adding that ships could lose buoyancy if they entered the area.
Europe is investigating the leaks that spewed gas into the Baltic Sea as Sweden launched a preliminary probe into possible sabotage to infrastructure at the centre of an energy standoff.
But it remained far from clear who might be behind any foul play, if proven, on the Nord Stream pipelines that Russia and European partners spent billions of dollars building.
Seismologists in Denmark and Sweden registered powerful blasts in the vicinity of the leaks on Monday, Sweden’s National Seismology Centre told public broadcaster SVT.
German geological research centre GFZ also said a seismograph on the Danish island of Bornholm had twice recorded spikes on Monday.
The Nord Stream pipelines have been flashpoints in an escalating energy war between capitals in Europe and Moscow that has damaged major Western economies, sent gas prices soaring and sparked a hunt for alternative supplies.
Denmark’s armed forces and the Swedish Coast Guard on Tuesday released videos showing bubbles boiling up to the surface of the sea. The largest gas leak had caused a surface disturbance of well over 1 km (0.6 mile) in diameter, the armed forces said.
Sweden’s Maritime Authority issued a warning about two leaks in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline the day after a leak on the nearby Nord Stream 2 pipeline was discovered that prompted Denmark to restrict shipping and impose a small no-fly zone.
Sweden’s prime minister said on Tuesday that two blasts had been detected in relation to the leaks of the Nord Stream pipelines with information suggesting likely sabotage, though this did not represent an act of war against Sweden.
Magdalena Andersson told a news conference the Swedish government was in close contact with partners such as NATO and neighbours such as Denmark and Germany concerning the developments.
“We have Swedish intelligence, but we have also received information in our contacts with Denmark, and based on this concluded that this is probably a deliberate act. It is probably a matter of sabotage,” Andersson said.
“It is not a matter of an attack on Swedish or Danish territory. But that said, the government is taking what happened very seriously, not the least in light of the current security situation in our close proximity,” she added.
Europe was investigating major leaks in two Russian pipelines that spewed gas into the Baltic Sea near Sweden and Denmark on Tuesday as Sweden launched a preliminary probe into possible sabotage.
Poland’s foreign minister Zbigniew Rau said Tuesday that the ‘Russian hybrid war’ could be the reason behind the Nord Stream pipeline leaks.
Speaking at an event for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C., Rau said an investigation should be launched into the matter, without excluding the possibility of sabotage.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the leaks of the Nord Stream pipelines were caused by sabotage, and warned of the “strongest possible response” should active European energy infrastructure be attacked.
Russia, which slashed gas deliveries to Europe after the West imposed sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, also said sabotage was a possibility and that the leaks undermined the continent’s energy security.
Chinese President Xi Jinping reappeared on state TV on Tuesday after an absence of several days from public view that sparked rumours about leadership changes.
Xi, who doubles as general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, was seen visiting an exhibition titled “Forging Ahead in the New Era” at the Beijing Exhibition Hall to showcase achievements of the party and the country over the past decade.
He was accompanied by Premier Li Keqiang and other high ranking CPC executives.
Xi’s public reappearance on Tuesday is the first time since he returned from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, last weekend.
Under Chinese pandemic regulations, he would need to stay in quarantine for a week after returning.
His absence from public view gave rise to rumours of political infighting and an attempted coup. Some have said he was detained at his residence just ahead of the CPC National Congress scheduled for October 16, while others speculated he would be nominated CPC general secretary and country president for a third term, or another five years.
On Sunday, Assoc Prof Dr Aksornsri Phanishsarn, a Thammasat University lecturer on China’s economy and strategies, said reports of Xi’s arrest had no basis in fact.
“It’s fake news,” Aksornsri said, adding that he had cross-checked with “his contacts” in China, who confirmed that the reports, which first emerged out of India, were patently false.
Moscow may mull incorporating 4 Ukrainian regions into Russia on Oct 4: RIA
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2022
THE NATION
The Russian Senate could consider incorporating four Ukrainian regions into Russia on October 4, RIA news agency on Tuesday quoted Valentina Matviyenko, the head of the upper house, as saying.
Voting had taken place across five days in the four Russian-controlled areas – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – that make up about 15 per cent of Ukrainian territory.
RIA said the initial counts showed 96.9 per cent of voters in the Kherson region, based on 14 per cent of votes counted, and 98 per cent in Zaporizhzhia, based on 18 per cent of the count, wanted to join the Russian nation.
Meanwhile, majorities in Donetsk and Luhansk, at just under 98 per cent, with 14 and 13 per cent of the votes counted, respectively, also agreed with the move.
The West had earlier denounced the so-called referendums as a sham to incorporate the four regions as part of Russia, so that President Vladimir Putin could claim that any attack on these regions equals an attack on Russia, in which he would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to protect “territory” and “sovereignty”.
Smart visa scheme to now cover 18 targeted industries
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2022
THE NATION
The cabinet has approved a move to expand the smart visa scheme to cover 18 targeted industries from the original 13, Prime Minister’s Office spokesman Anucha Burapachaisri said on Tuesday.
The move was proposed by the Interior Ministry in a bid to attract more foreign specialists, investors, executives and start-up companies to invest in Thailand, facilitate technology transfer and help accelerate development in targeted industries, Anucha said.
The smart visa scheme was launched in February 2018 to attract talent and technologies in 13 targeted S-curve industries under the government’s policy to drive the economy through innovation and technology.
The updated scheme allows specialists, investors, executives and start-up operators in 18 industries to apply for smart visas to stay in Thailand for up to four years. Those who are granted this visa require no permit to work in Thailand, but must report to authorities once a year (expanded from every 90 days). They will also be granted an unlimited re-entry permit, while their spouse and legal children can also stay or work in Thailand for the same period as the visa holder.
Here are the 18 targeted industries under the smart visa scheme, with the last five newly added:
– Automotive
– Electronics
– Quality tourism
– Agricultural, food and biotechnology
– Automation and robotics
– Transport and logistics
– Petrochemical and chemical
– Digital
– Medical
– Human resource development in the fields of science and technology
– Environmental management and alternative energy
– Targeted technology development
– Alternative dispute resolution
– National defence
– Industries that directly support a circular economy, for example, refuse-derived fuel manufacturing, water resources management, etc.
– Aviation and aerospace
– Management of technology, innovation and start-up ecosystem
– International business centres.
The other criteria are that the maximum four years of stay is limited to specialists, executives and investors, while start-up enterprise operators will be granted up to two years of stay. The visa fee for foreigners is 10,000 baht per year, and if the period is less than a year, the fee will be rounded up to one year.
APEC council draws up plans to rejuvenate region’s economic engine – MSMEs
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2022
Nongluck Ajanapanya
The APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) has released its first draft proposal to revitalise and support all-important micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
The proposal will be presented to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders at their November summit in the hopes of providing some guidelines on business operations to promote MSMEs, said ABAC chairman Kriengkrai Thiennukul during a media interview.
Although the overall economy is gradually recovering, MSMEs are still extremely vulnerable and have been negatively impacted by Covid-19, he pointed out.
“MSMEs are the Apec region’s economic engine. They employ more than 50 per cent of all workers and make up over 97 per cent of entrepreneurs. Given that MSMEs are responsible for between 40 and 60 per cent of GDP, future GDP growth is possible if these small business owners are inspired to realise their full potential,” Kriengkrai noted.
The proposal was compiled from three previous ABAC meetings.
APEC business leaders and leading analysts all agreed that promoting and supporting MSMEs is critical to driving the region’s economic recovery and sustainability.
It will meet the needs of APEC policymakers looking for ways to expand new possibilities, he said.
The recommendations made to the APEC meeting to promote MSMEs will centre on four major areas.
The first proposal is to create an enabling environment for these enterprises to use digital technologies by leveraging public-private partnerships to accelerate the development of digital skills.
Policymakers should subsequently encourage and improve sustainable practices. The next step is to create a concrete digital market infrastructure ecosystem for supply chain finance.
Lastly, it must assist underrepresented MSME groups such as women, indigenous peoples and youth in overcoming production barriers and constraints, as well as in balancing economic risk diversification.
Kriengkrai emphasised the importance of promoting MSMEs.
He believes the APEC economy will be able to sustain its growth if MSMEs receive adequate funding or access to global markets, as well as increased business knowledge and skills, support for competitiveness growth, digital entry into international markets, coordination with large corporations, and inclusive promotion.
