- G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting Completed
- UK Economy Contracted 6.1% In the First Quarter
- Moderna’s Vaccine Is Effective Against The Delta Variant
G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting Completed
A conference of foreign and development ministers from the Group of 20 countries ended Tuesday with a decision to step up efforts to combat global hunger, which has been worsened by the epidemic, particularly in Africa, as well as the effects of climate change.
The G20 foreign ministers met on Tuesday in Matera, in the south of Italy, to sign a joint declaration to “reduce the gap between the North and the South of the world,” to defeat world hunger by 2030 and achieve climate neutrality by 2050.
The Matera Declaration on food security adopted by the G20 representatives aims to increase the investments of the wealthiest countries to obtain “stable results in the medium-long term” in the fight against hunger across the world, said Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Luigi Di Maio, adding that the document is “a milestone.”
In addition, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, who hosted the meeting, argued that assistance projects in Africa would also affect migration from the continent to Europe.
“The G-20 must sustain Africa in emerging from a difficult period,” he said at a closing news conference.
Luigi Di Maio emphasized that G20 countries agree on climate change and noted that combating climate change is one of their main strategies.
“Beyond the differences and distances among some countries present at the G-20 table, we are all in agreement on climate change, sustainability, on the great issues that today can only be resolved with global cooperation,” Di Maio said.
Besides, minister Di Maio also informed that as Italy, they would appoint a special representative on the fight against climate change in a short time, as the UK and the USA did.
UK Economy Contracted 6.1% In the First Quarter
According to the gross domestic product data for the first quarter of the year announced by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the UK economy contracted by 6.1% in the first quarter compared to the same quarter of the previous year. In addition, the country’s economy contracted by 1.6% compared with last quarter.
In the first three months of the year, service production decreased by 2.1% compared to the previous quarter, while production decreased by 0.5%. Construction production, on the other hand, increased by 2.3% in the same period.
Wages and salaries increased by 0.4%, while household consumption decreased by 4.6%.
The latest ONS data showed households slashed their spending and instead piled cash into savings in the first quarter, with the household saving ratio increasing to 19.9%, compared with 16.1% in the previous three months.
It is the second-highest figure on record, beaten only by the 25.9% seen in the second quarter of 2020.
Jonathan Athow, the deputy national statistician at the ONS, said: “Today’s updated GDP figures show the same picture as our earlier estimate, with schools, hospitality, and retail all hit by the reimposition of the lockdown in January and February, with some recovery in March.
“With many services unavailable, households again saved at record levels with only last spring seeing more saved.”
Moderna’s Vaccine Is Effective Against The Delta Variant
It has been announced that the coronavirus vaccine developed by the US pharmaceutical company Moderna is effective against the Delta variant.
It has been reported that the vaccine, which is used in 44 countries, especially the United States and 27 European Union countries, produced antibodies against the Delta variant in laboratory tests.
While the research on the vaccine, which is stated to have the ability to neutralize other variants as well as the Delta variant, was conducted on eight people with two doses of Moderna vaccine, it was noted that the vaccine was effective after blood samples were taken from the participants, but this was the first phase of the trials.
“We remain committed to studying emerging variants, generating data, and sharing it as it becomes available,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a press release. “These new data are encouraging and reinforce our belief that the Moderna Covid-19 Vaccine should remain protective against newly detected variants.”
The study reported that the vaccine was most effective against the British variant, and it was reported that it created the necessary antibody response against other variants.
