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New York — U.N. Security Council members on Thursday condemned Russia for escalating the war in Ukraine, criticizing its mobilization of more troops and President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons.

“Every council member should send a clear message that these reckless nuclear threats must stop immediately,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a special session of the council’s foreign ministers held on the sidelines of the General Assembly’s annual gathering.

“This is a war of annexation. A war of conquest,” Britain’s new Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said, “to which President Putin now wants to send even more of Russia’s young men and women, making peace even less likely.”

Putin announced Wednesday that he is calling up 300,000 more troops for his “special military operation” in Ukraine.

“Yesterday, Putin announced mobilization. But what he really announced before the whole world was his defeat,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. “You can draft 300,000 or 500,000 people, but he will never win this war. Today, every Ukrainian is a weapon, ready to defend Ukraine and the principles enshrined in the U.N. Charter.”

The Russian president has also announced plans to hold referenda in four occupied parts of Ukraine in an apparent attempt to annex them.

“It is an attempt to change internationally recognized borders by use of force — and no sham referendums can change that basic fact,” Ireland’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Minister Simon Coveney said. “It cannot be allowed to stand.”

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council that the latest developments are “dangerous and disturbing.”

“The idea of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, has become a subject of debate,” he said. “This in itself is totally unacceptable.”

Allies’ discomfort

Even Russia’s allies expressed their growing unease with the war’s direction.

“The trajectory of the Ukraine conflict is a matter of profound concern for the entire international community,” Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said. “The future outlook appears even more disturbing. The nuclear issue is a particular anxiety.”

China’s foreign minister urged the parties to resume talks without preconditions.

“Include reasonable concerns into negotiations and put feasible options on the table so that talks can produce results and bring about peace,” Wang Yi said. He also urged the parties to “exercise restraint and avoid escalating tensions.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did not listen to the criticism of his counterparts, leaving his deputy and a junior ambassador to fill his seat during most of the three-hour meeting. He showed up only to deliver his remarks.

Lavrov did not address the military mobilization or Putin’s latest nuclear threats. Of the referenda, he said they are the consequence of “Russo-phobic” statements by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who he said told people who feel they are Russian to go to Russia.

“I think the decisions that have been adopted by a whole range of regions of Ukraine about conducting referendums are the result of his advice,” Lavrov said of the planned votes in the south and east of Ukraine.

“We have no doubt that Ukraine has become a completely totalitarian, Nazi-like state where the norms of international humanitarian law are trampled on,” he added.

Accountability

Thursday’s meeting was originally called to discuss the atrocities that have come to light in Ukrainian cities after Russian troop withdrawals.

Mass graves have been found in several cities, including Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and most recently Izium.

In April, Russian troops were driven out of Bucha, leading to the discovery of mass graves with hundreds of bodies.

Lavrov told council members that Bucha was a “propaganda operation,” and there is “no doubt in anyone’s mind” that it was staged.

The International Criminal Court has been mandated to investigate possible mass crimes in Ukraine. Chief prosecutor Karim Khan has conducted three field visits.

“When I went to Bucha and went behind St. Andrews Church, the bodies I saw were not fake,” he told the council.

In May, the ICC deployed teams of investigators to the country. He said the picture is troubling.

“One has seen a variety of destruction, of suffering and harm that fortifies my determination and my previous finding that there are reasonable grounds to believe the crimes within the jurisdiction of the court have been committed,” he said.

“Morally and politically, Russia has already lost the war,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told the council. “And increasingly, it is losing on the battlefield, as well. Ukraine will prevail.”

Speaking at another event about accountability, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general said his office is investigating more than 35,000 war-related crimes, including attacks on civilian infrastructure, indiscriminate shelling, murders, torture, sexual violence and forced mobilization.

“These numbers will increase as we de-occupy towns and cities in the east and south of the country and new crimes are revealed,” Andriy Kostin said.

In his video speech to the General Assembly on Wednesday, Zelenskyy called for a special tribunal to be established to punish Russia and demanded financial compensation for the destruction its invasion has caused.

Peace calls

In March, the International Court of Justice ruled that Russia had wrongfully claimed a genocide in Ukraine to justify its invasion and ordered it to suspend its military operation. Russia has rejected the court’s jurisdiction.

The U.N. General Assembly also overwhelmingly demanded on March 2 that Russia immediately and unconditionally stop its military operations and withdraw its troops from the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine.

At the Security Council, Mexico’s foreign minister offered a proposal from his president to form a committee of nations to support U.N. mediation efforts to end the war. Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon said it would include several leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pope Francis.

“The objective would be very clear: generating new mechanisms for dialogue and creating additional spaces for mediation that foster trust, reduce tensions and open the path to lasting peace,” he said.

After the council meeting, Ukraine’s foreign minister said he would discuss the proposal with Ebrard at a meeting later in the day. ( From : VOA)

BEIJING: The high-paced growth era seems to have come to an end in China amid the constant crunch of Bejing’s economy, as almost 60 percent of European businesses stated that they were cutting revenue projections for 2022, which does not bode well for Bejing’s attractiveness to overseas firms, according to a survey.

China’s economy is cooling partly due to new constraints and partly change in development strategy.

The coronavirus pandemic, the war between Ukraine and Russia and trade disputes with developed nations, including the United States, have imposed severe limitations to Bejing’s growth journey, according to the Financial Post.

According to a survey by Oxford Economics, which was cited by the Financial Post, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) will grow an average 4.5 percent over this decade.

The COVID-19-led lockdown in China’s economic hub Shanghai has reportedly paralyzed the world’s second-largest economy and hit global supply chains and it will force the Chinese economy to take longer time than other Asian economies such as South Korea and Taiwan to catch up with living standards in the developed world, the Financial Post reported citing the survey.

The two-month lockdown in China’s financial hubs triggered a sharp drop in China’s economic growth over the April-June quarter, as per reports. Despite an expected recovery in the second half of the year, economists believe the official target of around 5.5 percent will not be achievable in 2022.

Furthermore, the demography of China has undergone structural change and it is also creating a demand-supply gap in a labor market.

Due to increasing decoupling with the US and allies, the annual growth is likely to further slowdown to around 3 percent on an average between 2030-40, according to the Oxford Economics forecast, as cited by Financial Times.

Moreover, China’s real estate slump could have a big negative impact on growth for several years. It is to be noted that it is now apparent that Chinese President Xi Jinping, does not prioritize economic growth above social and political factors.

China’s productivity growth has slowed but will remain high relative to other emerging economies.

It would make efforts to enhance productivity by focusing on R&D and human capital formation.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang had said that China had reached its most difficult stage of economic stabilization and called on leaders of key provinces to coordinate efforts on economic recovery.

“The economy continued to recover in July, but small fluctuations are still present. We are now at the most tense stage of economic stabilization, so we need to build a solid foundation for economic recovery without wasting time,” Keqiang said at a meeting with leaders of the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Henan, Shandong and Sichuan, as quoted by Xinhua news agency. (ANI)

Around the world, girls are falling behind boys in mathematics, with sexism and gender stereotypes among the root causes, according to a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report published on Wednesday.

The report finds that boys have up to 1.3 times the odds of obtaining mathematics skills than girls. Negative gender norms and stereotypes often held by teachers, parents, and peers regarding girls’ innate inability to understand mathematics are contributing to the disparity.

This also undermines girls’ self-confidence, setting them up for failure, says the report, “Solving the equation: Helping girls and boys learn mathematics,” which features new data analyses covering more than 100 countries and territories.

“Girls have an equal ability to learn mathematics as boys. What they lack is an equal opportunity to acquire these critical skills,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell in a press release concerning the report. “We need to dispel the gender stereotypes and norms that hold girls back, and do more to help every child learn the foundational skills they need to succeed in school and in life.”

An analysis of data from 34 low- and middle-income countries featured in the report shows that while girls lag behind boys, three quarters of schoolchildren in Grade 4 are not obtaining foundational numeracy skills. Data from 79 middle- and high-income countries show more than a third of 15-year-old schoolchildren have yet to achieve minimum proficiency in mathematics.

Household wealth is also a determining factor. The report notes that schoolchildren from the richest households have 1.8 times the odds of acquiring numeracy skills by the time they reach fourth grade than children from the poorest households. Children who attend early childhood education and care programs have up to 2.8 times the odds of achieving minimum proficiency in mathematics by the age of 15 than those who do not.

The report also notes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has likely further exacerbated children’s mathematics abilities. Moreover, these analyses focus on girls and boys who are currently in school. In countries where girls are more likely to be out of school than boys, the overall disparities in mathematics proficiency are most likely even wider.

UNICEF calls on governments to commit to reaching all children with quality education. It calls for new effort and investment to re-enroll and retain all children in school, to increase access to remedial and catchup learning, to support teachers and give them the tools they need, and to make sure that schools provide a safe and supportive environment so all children are ready to learn.

“With the learning of an entire generation of children at risk, this is not the time for empty promises. To transform education for every child, we need action and we need it now,” said Russell.
– Xinhua