by Editor | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Economy, News, Politics
New Delhi : The US Chamber of Commerce on Friday launched an innovation initiative which will examine economic underpinnings that enable breakthrough innovation and explore how policymakers can harness innovation capital in India and around the globe, the industry chamber said in a statement.
The “Fair Value for Innovation” initiative was launched by the US Chamber’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) at the Raisina Dialogue here, the statement said.
GIPC Senior Vice President Patrick Kilbride said in a statement: “The promise of India’s innovation ecosystem is real, and the US industry has a stake in it.
“We believe India is ideally positioned as a thought-leader and regional economic power to help bring the benefits of innovation in AI (artificial intelligence),” said NITI Aayog Chief Executive Amitabh Kant.
The Raisina Dialogue is an annual conference on geopolitics and geo-economics, organised jointly by the Observer Research Foundation and the External Affairs Ministry.
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Jerusalem : Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, a state-owned Israeli technology company, announced on Wednesday that it has sold the US military “Trophy” protection systems for vehicles in a deal worth $200 million.
In June 2018, the US purchased for the first time Trophy systems for several Abrams tank divisions for $193 million, and upon completion of the deals, all its Abrams tanks are expected to be protected by Rafael’s system, Xinhua news agency reported.
The Trophy system, also known as “ASPRO-A” or “Windbreaker”, identifies, intercepts and destroys incoming missiles and rockets with a shotgun-like blast.
The system consists of sensors, search radar, four “antenna” boards, a shooting computer and an interceptor.
The radar scans 360 degrees around the vehicle, and the moment it detects a threat, it analyzes it and launches metal spheres that break the threat while still in the air.
This is the only operational system of its kind in the world that has been successfully used in the battlefield (by the Israeli Army since 2011), providing survivability and manoeuvering capabilities.
The system is installed on hundreds of ground armoured fighting vehicles of the Israeli Army, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers.
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | World
By Arul Louis,
United Nations : World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has announced that he is stepping down as the head of the premier anti-poverty institution putting the likely choice of its future leadership in the hands of US President Donald Trump, a sceptic of international development.
Trump’s role is expected reinvigorate challenges to Washington’s monopoly on appointing the Bank’s head.
Announcing his decision on Monday, Kim said in a tweet: “It’s been the greatest privilege I could have ever imagined to lead the dedicated staff of this great institution to bring us closer to a world that is finally free of poverty.”
Kim, 59, who is dropping out 19 months into his second term on February 1, would be joining a private company and focus on infrastructure investments in developing countries, the Bank said.
The Bank’s CEO Kristalina Georgieva will become the interim president till a successor to Kim is appointed.
As the largest share-holder, the US by tradition appoints the head of the Bank, while Europeans determine the chief of the International Monetary Fund.
Kim was nominated for the job by former President Barack Obama in 2012.
Before Trump’s election, Kim was hastily re-appointed in September 2016 to a second term that began in July 2017 with an eye on pre-empting a possible Trump nominee getting the job.
Now, however, Trump will get an opportunity to nominate the Bank’s head.
Trump’s role will resurrect and strengthen challenges to the post-World War II model of the leadership of the 189-member bank that has always been determined by the US .
Already the US nominee was challenged for the first time in 2012 by two contenders.
Colombian economist Jose Antonio Ocampo Gaviria eventually withdrew from the race, while Nigeria’s then-Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala lost when the Bank’s directors rubber-stamped Kim’s appointment.
Now there will be robust demands for reconsidering the US leadership of the Bank and stronger non-American contenders for the job.
Kim, a South Korea-born US citizen, was an unusual leader for the Bank: He was a medical doctor by training, a specialist in public health and an academic with a Harvard doctorate in anthropology who had led the Ivy League Dartmouth College.
But his background in health was a plus for the Bank’s mission of fighting poverty and promoting development.
Under his leadership, the Bank adopted in tandem with the UN the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and focusing on the bottom 40 per cent of the population in the developing world.
The Bank’s International Development Association, which funds programmes in the least developed countries, achieved two record replenishments during his tenure, the last one in 2016 for $75 billion.
Last April, the Bank also increased its capital by $13 billion with the unexpected support of the Trump administration.
Kim also pushed the Bank’s cooperation with the private sector for financing development in the developing world, particularly in the areas of climate change and infrastructure.
China, though a part of the World Bank, has thrown a challenge to it by setting up its own development banking institutions.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), founded in 2016 is one of those institutions and several countries including India, Germany, Britain and South Korea have joined it.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to close the southern border amid an ongoing partial government shutdown, resuming his push for the funding of a long-promised US-Mexico border wall.
“We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall and also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with,” Trump tweeted on Friday morning, reports Xinhua.
“We build a Wall or close the Southern Border,” the president said, accusing Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador of “taking advantage” of his country for years.”
“No end in sight to the President’s government shutdown,” Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois tweeted Thursday. “He’s taken our government hostage over his outrageous demand for a $5 billion border wall that would be both wasteful and ineffective.”
Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi, tweeted on Thursday, “Democrats have offered Republicans three options to re-open government that all include funding for strong, sensible, and effective border security — but not the President’s immoral, ineffective and expensive wall.”
The US Senate convened briefly Thursday afternoon before adjourning until next week, with no signs of a deal to end the budget impasse that has shut down a quarter of the federal government.
The upper chamber will convene on Monday, December 31, for a pro forma session only, and then return to the Capitol Hill to renew budget deliberations on Wednesday, January 2, a day before Democrats are set to take control of the House.
“We will vote swiftly to reopen government and show that Democrats will govern responsibly in stark contrast to this chaotic White House,” Pelosi, the incoming House Speaker, has said in a statement.
In an earlier tweet, Trump accused the Democrats of opposing his border wall just for political gain. “This is only about the Dems not letting Donald Trump and the Republicans have a win,” he said.
Trump’s approval rating dropped slightly to 44 per cent in December amid the shutdown, a two-point fall from last month, according to a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey, The Hill reported on Friday.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday, 47 per cent of Americans hold the president responsible for the shutdown, while 33 per cent blame Democrats in Congress. Seven percent of Americans blame congressional Republicans.
The shutdown, currently in its seventh day, has affected nine federal agencies, forcing about 420,000 federal employees, who are deemed essential, to work without pay, while 380,000 others are expected to take unpaid leave.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which had enough funding to remain open for a week after the shutdown, is prepared to begin furloughing employees midnight Friday, US media reported.
Coast Guard officials said earlier this week that they need emergency legislation by the end of Friday in order to process paychecks on time for their regular release on January 1.
The Office of Personnel Management issued draft letters Thursday for federal employees to hold off creditors during the shutdown. The office’s guidance suggests that workers call their landlord, mortgage company or creditor to speak about their situation before sending a letter.
The Smithsonian, which has been operating on prior-year funds, said Thursday that all of its museums, research centers and the National Zoo will close starting January 2 unless the stalemate is resolved.
Trump has cancelled his New Year’s plans in order to stay in Washington DC until a deal over border wall funding is reached, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told “Fox & Friends” on Friday.
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : A federal judge in Washington ordered North Korea to pay $501 million to the parents of Otto Warmbier, holding the country accountable for the “barbaric mistreatment” and death of the University of Virginia student in 2017.
Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on Monday that North Korea should pay damages to Fred and Cindy Warmbier, the parents of the student who died shortly after being released from a North Korean prison.
Warmbier was visiting North Korea with a tour group when he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in March 2016 on suspicion of stealing a propaganda poster. He died in June 2017, shortly after he returned to the US in a coma and showing apparent signs of torture while in custody.
Warmbier’s parents had filed a wrongful death suit against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in April and appeared in court last week for the first hearing.
They sued the North Korean government for more than $1 billion, saying they were seeking “closure” and wanted to “obtain justice for the severe injuries” they say their son and family suffered.
Howell found North Korea liable for “the torture, hostage taking and extrajudicial killing of Otto Warmbier” as well as the injuries to his parents.
“An American family, the Warmbiers, experienced North Korea’s brutality first-hand when North Korea seized their son to use as a pawn in that totalitarian state’s global shenanigans and face-off with the US,” the judge said.
Howell demanded from North Korea $450 million in punitive damages as well as $51 million for the personal anguish and economic loss both Warmbier and his parents experienced, the Washington Post reported.
The ruling, however, was mainly symbolic as North Korea was unlikely to pay the damages.
Before Warmbier went on what was intended to be a short visit to North Korea with a tour group, Howell said: “he was a healthy, athletic student of economics and business in his junior year at the University of Virginia, with ‘big dreams’ and both the smarts and people skills to make him his high school class salutatorian, homecoming king and prom king.
“… He was blind, deaf, and brain dead when North Korea turned him over to US government officials for his final trip home.”
In a statement, Warmbier’s parents thanked Howell and called the decision a “significant step on our journey”.
“We are thankful that the US has a fair and open judicial system so that the world can see that the Kim regime is legally and morally responsible for Otto’s death. We put ourselves and our family through the ordeal of a lawsuit and public trial because we promised Otto that we will never rest until we have justice for him,” the couple said.
—IANS
