Tropical Storm Henri Makes Landfall

Tropical storm Henri made landfall in the Eastern U.S. state of Rhode Island Sunday.
The storm, recently downgraded from a hurricane, knocked out power in tens of thousands of homes, as much of the region braced for possible flooding from increased rain.
The National Hurricane Center said that New York’s Long Island and southern New England should prepare for dangerous storm surges and flooding rainfall.
Even though Tropical Storm Henri was hundreds of kilometers away on Saturday night, it forced an early end to New York City’s “Homecoming Concert” in Central Park. According to Mayor Bill de Blasio, the event was meant to “really tell people New York City was back, to tell the whole world.”
Barry Manilow was cut off midsong and concertgoers were told to calmly but quickly exit the park. Other scheduled performers included Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Jennifer Hudson, Carlos Santana, LL Cool J and Andrea Bocelli.
Evacuation orders for New York’s Fire Island and some Connecticut coastal communities were issued Saturday.
Several popular summer vacation destinations are in Henri’s path, including Long Island, Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont and Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee both told their states’ residents to stay home through Monday morning.
“We consider this a serious matter,” McKee said at a news conference.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker expressed relief Saturday that his state would not take a direct hit but joined Lamont and McKee in warning that the wind and rain could lead to serious damage and lengthy power outages.
Hurricane, storm and storm surge watches and warnings have been declared for many locations along the East Coast of the U.S. A storm surge of 1 meter to 1.5 meters is possible from New York City to Massachusetts, the hurricane center said.
Henri is expected to produce rainfall amounts of 8 to 15 centimeters over Long Island, New England, southeast New York and northern New Jersey Sunday into Monday, with isolated maximum totals near 25 centimeters.

Source: Voice of America

FDA Warns Against Livestock Medication as COVID Treatment

“You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” is the succinct warning the U.S. Food and Drug Administration posted on its Twitter account Saturday about Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medication for livestock that some people have used as a COVID treatment.
“The FDA has received multiple reports of patients who have required medical support and been hospitalized after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for horses,” the agency said on its website.
The FDA’s warning came a day after Mississippi’s Department of Health said on its website that it “has received an increasing number of calls from individuals with potential ivermectin exposure taken to treat or prevent COVID-19 infection.”
“At least 70% of the recent calls have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers,” the health department said. “85% of the callers had mild symptoms, but one individual was instructed to seek further evaluation due to the amount of ivermectin reportedly ingested.”
“There’s a lot of misinformation around, and you may have heard that it’s okay to take large doses of ivermectin,” the FDA said on its site. “That is wrong.”
The United Kingdom, starting on Tuesday, will offer COVID-19 antibody tests to anyone older than 18, for up to 8,000 people.
According to reports from British media, health officials want to know more about the protection people have against the coronavirus and its variants.
Participants will be encouraged to take the first of two at-home tests as soon as they have tested positive for the virus. The second test would come 28 days later.
The results, the British Health Department said, would help it to better understand how much antibody protection patients develop to each variant, according to the BBC.
On Monday, the U.S. FDA reportedly intends to grant full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
The New York Times reports the agency planned to complete the approval process by Friday but still faced “a substantial amount of paperwork and negotiation with the company.”
The FDA, which the Times reports had previously set an unofficial deadline for approval of around September 6, has declined to comment.
Final approval could bolster the Biden administration’s vaccination program by helping to convince unvaccinated citizens that Pfizer’s vaccine is safe and effective while also easing concerns among local officials over vaccine mandates.
Meanwhile, thousands of protesters took to the streets of France for a sixth straight Saturday against a new COVID-19 health pass that is needed to enter restaurants and other eating establishments, entertainment venues and long-distance travel.
The protesters see the pass as a restriction of their freedom in a country of more than 60 million people, more than 60% of whom have been fully vaccinated.
Russia reported 20,564 new COVID cases Sunday. Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said Sunday Russia has more than 6 million COVID infections.
The global count of COVID cases has reached 211.4 million, according to Johns Hopkins, while there have been 4.4 million deaths. The center says 4.9 billion vaccines have been administered.

Source: Voice of America

The Reality of Aid Report 2020/2021: Aid in the Context of Conflict, Fragility, and the Climate Emergency

1. INTRODUCTION
A triple crisis of poverty, inequality, and a climate emergency, compounded by a global pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed disturbing limits in global solidarity, particularly on the part of the international donor community. In a matter of months, the pandemic has exposed long-standing structural inequalities both within and between countries Despite some progress, COVID has increased vulnerabilities for millions of people, pushing many into poverty, in the context of the evermore-present impacts from climate change.
Faced with these compounding global challenges, there is an unparalleled and urgent need to maximize development finance, while focusing on the rapidly worsening conditions for poor and vulnerable people. Yet the evidence in this Report, and several parallel civil society commentaries, point to largely stagnant aid flows, an aid system with systemic ineffectiveness highly resistant to change, and a growing pre-eminence of donor economic and political interests in aid priorities. The recently published UN 2021 Financing for Sustainable Development Report warns that the pandemic could lead to a lost decade for development, noting that there is a sharply diverging and unequal world emerging from the lack of access to resources by poor countries and people to combat the crisis. Their report cites growing global systemic risks arising from inter-linkages between economic, social (e.g. health, inequality), and environmental (e.g. climate) conditions. World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Director, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus fears that the world is on the cusp of a “catastrophic moral failure.” Multilateral collaboration is limited, at best, in the wake of “vaccine apartheid” and the “me-first” northern allocations of vaccines. Heightened nationalism in several donor countries, as well as rising levels of systemic racism, are very worrying trends against the vision and commitments to a Decade of Action for Agenda 2030.
The immediate pandemic-induced crisis is deep and profound. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted the deepest global recession since World War II for 2020, estimating a contraction of 3.5% in global GDP. Prospects for global recovery are highly uneven and dependent in part upon equitable access to effective vaccines. Inequalities between countries are deepening. According to estimates, the real GDP for Sub-Saharan Africa fell by 2.6% in 2020, its first continental recession in 25 years. In April 2021, the DAC reported that aid from DAC donors to this region fell by 1% in 2020. By the end of 2021 this region’s GDP is expected to drop to levels not seen since 2008. It is estimated that it may take over a decade for a full recovery. The modest progress in reducing global poverty since 2015 has proven to be highly vulnerable to the impacts of the pandemic shocks. It is estimated that there was an additional 34 million people living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2020. This is on top of a prepandemic total of 433 million people already deprived of the basics to support life. Together these numbers represent almost 44% of the people of the sub-continent by 2021. The expected deepening of poverty is not limited to Sub-Saharan Africa – it will be experienced across all regions of the world.
Two-thirds of the 225 million additional people predicted to be pushed into poverty (the $3.20 poverty line) are living in South Asia. More than 200 million additional people are likely to be reduced to poverty (the $5.50 poverty line) in East Asia. Considering the likelihood of greater inequality and uncertain growth prospects throughout the Global South, the World Bank analysts predict that these trends will continue in 2021 and perhaps 2022. In their words, “the only certainty in this crisis is that it is truly unprecedented in modern history.” The theme of this Report focuses on the interconnections between expanding conditions of “fragility” affecting millions of people living in poverty, the immediate and long term impacts of climate change, now compounded by a global pandemic.
Many of those most severely affected by the pandemic in the Global South were already living in fragile contexts and the “furthest behind”. This fragility has had several interrelated characteristics: 1) high levels of poverty and inequality; 2) the breakdown of key institutions; 3) systemic discrimination of ethnic and racial minorities; 4) high levels of violence against women and girls; and 5) political volatility accompanied by repression and narrow authoritarian regimes. These conditions are often further worsened by violence and conflict, as governments are either unwilling or unable to protect the rights of their citizens. Growing impacts from climate change are increasingly being felt in these same country contexts. Combined these factors paint a dire picture for millions of affected people across the globe.
The number of protracted humanitarian crises (lasting more than five years) has more than doubled in the last 15 years, from 13 to 31.
Over one billion people are living in countries affected by these long-term emergencies. The aid trends chapter in this Report examines aid trends for 30 of the most highly fragile and conflict affected countries where 38% of the population live in extreme poverty [Tomlinson, Global Aid Trends]. As the pandemic unfolds, time is also running out in tackling the climate emergency.
The climate and environmental crises are continuing to disrupt basic conditions of life on earth. Despite the commitments of the 2015 Paris Agreement, carbon emissions are projected to continue to increase. With the accumulated effect of each year of inaction, scientists are predicting that the 1.5°C Paris Agreement limit will be breached in less than a decade, and a catastrophic 3°C heating by the end of the century. Emissions dropped by 7% during the “great pause” of 2020, but to keep global warming to 1.5°C, these emissions need to fall by 14% each year up to 2040. The medium and long-term consequences of inaction are critical for the entire world, but particularly for poor and vulnerable people.
These impacts will be much deeper and more generalized than even the pandemic, which may be seen as a dress rehearsal for the potential for human rights violations unleashed by worsening global warming in the later years of this century. Vigorous social and political movements pushing for strong coordinated government action are more important than ever in meeting these intertwined crises. In recent months, international social movements and coalitions of youth, Indigenous Peoples, References in square brackets are to chapters in this Report. environmentalists, human rights activists and scientists are calling for a major paradigm shift.
These shifts are needed to build back a more just and equitable post-pandemic world. The political stakes are high and challenging.
Shifting economies and livelihoods towards a zero-carbon world is daunting, especially with the continued resistance by powerful corporate and private interests and their commitment to a carbon dependent global capitalism.
The responses by several governments to the pandemic in the Global North have demonstrated that major shifts are possible.
Notions of “affordability,” and what might be considered “normal,” are as much a political constraint as a financial one.
The costs for climate inaction are already being paid in the lives of many of poor and vulnerable people across the Global South. They are manifest in extreme weather conditions destroying their homes and productive infrastructure, in reduced availability of scarce water resources, crop vulnerability for millions involved in small-scale agriculture, and in the inundation of their communities from storm surges as sea levels rise.
According to the World Bank, impacts from climate change are life-changing for those living in fragile and conflict affected settings. Its analysis identifies the prospect of an additional 132 million people living in extreme poverty by 2030 due to irreversible climate change. By 2050 up to 140 million people could be forced to move within their own countries due to climate-induced disruptions to their livelihoods.
In 2019 over 70% of the internally displaced persons population was the result of extreme weather events and natural disasters, more than three times the displacements caused by conflict and violence in that year.
In this Reality of Aid Report 2020/2021 the civil society contributors examine the place of aid in responding to these global crises. How donors respond will shape development opportunities for the remaining years in the decade. How will donors address the widening and persistent state fragility and conflict in the lives of people living in poverty? What role will a deepening climate and environmental emergency play in these responses? How will current patterns of cooperation in the face of the global health pandemic affect development cooperation going forward in the next five years, and perhaps for the rest of the decade?
The 2020/2021 Report provides new evidence from CSOs, both in the South and the North.
They are writing on the role of aid in the convergence of fragile contexts, escalating impacts of the climate crisis and a global pandemic. Chapters critically examine the reform of aid in these fragile country contexts.
How are donors approaching the Triple Nexus, which calls for greater coordination amongst humanitarian support, development, and peace actions? In seeking a more holistic approach, the Triple Nexus has gained increased attention since the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit and the 2019 agreement by all donors at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and c Real ODA is ODA reported to the DAC less in-donor refugee and student costs, debt cancellation and interest received for ODA loans.
Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) on a DAC Recommendation on the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus. Experience and issues in its implementation are elaborated through country case studies and thematic perspectives on peace and security, social protection and violence against women and girls.
As the climate emergency increasingly shapes humanitarian and development futures, several chapters look more closely at the priorities in international climate finance and their potential impacts on development prospects for vulnerable populations and communities.
Altogether this body of evidence accentuates the urgent call by the Reality of Aid Network for systemic aid reform. Can the pandemic be a moment of opportunity? Might the dramatic spread of COVID-19 change the future of aid?
Could it bring the needed transformations in development and humanitarian aid delivery that have eluded those seeking reform for the past ten years? The Report puts forward a number of recommendations for moving along these directions.

Source: Reality of Aid Project

COVID-19: 496 New Cases, 575 New Recoveries, 14 New Deaths

The Ministry of Health reported 496 new cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in Cambodia this morning; bringing the tally to 89,231.
According to the Ministry of Health’s press release, among the new infections, 176 were imported and the rest were community cases linked to the Feb. 20 incident.
The ministry also recorded 575 newly recovered patients and 14 new deaths; the total cured and death cases in the Kingdom thus stood at 85,081 and 1,792, respectively.
In another news release this morning, the ministry announced the detection of a total of 999 cases of Delta variant in Cambodia so far, most of them are in Phnom Penh capital, followed by the provinces of Oddar Meanchey, Banteay Meanchey, and Siem Reap.
Only two provinces – Kep and Kratie – have not yet been affected by the fast-spreading Delta variant, it underlined.
The first COVID-19 case was reported in Cambodia in late January 2020 in Preah Sihanouk province. The confirmed cases have surged quickly this year due to the Feb. 20 community outbreak.

Source: Agence Kampuchea Press