List of All Articles with Tag 'world'

From flying in a plane that weighs less than Wales' scrum to cycling more than 1,600 miles.

MARRAKECH, Morocco The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that it is seeing "significant support" for a U.S.-backed

By Andrea Shalal BEN GUERIR, Morocco U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday the World Bank had

MARRAKECH, Morocco World Bank President Ajay Banga said on Thursday that the Israel-Gaza conflict is an unnecessary global

By David Lawder MARRAKECH, Morocco U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday said her government, the International Monetary

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday left its global growth outlook unchanged for this year as the "remarkable

Russia’s desperate bid to rejoin the UN’s top human rights body will be tested in the General Assembly vote on Tuesday, more than a year after it was booted out for invading Ukraine. The 193-member assembly will be electing 15 members to the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council, with candidates put forward by the UN’s five regional groups. Russia will be competing against Albania and Bulgaria to win back two seats reserved for the East European regional group and will need majority votes from the assembly. A total of 47 member states are part of the UNHRC based on the geographic distribution. The UN’s five regional groups have sent names to shortlist 15 members to the body. Experts told The Independent that Russia will try to lure African and other ally nations with stolen Ukrainian grain and arms in exchange for votes. World leaders have cautioned against bringing Russian president Vladimir Putin’s membership back on the panel amid the continuing invasion, especially with the latest attack on Ukrainian village of Hroza in Kharkiv. At least 51 people died in the missile attack, wiping out members from almost every family. While Russia says it does not strike civilian targets, A two-day-old baby boy was killed after a Russian missile struck a hospital in the city of Vilniansk, Zaporizhzhia. A child was also among the dozens killed when Russian missiles hit a grocery store and café in the village of Hroza. US’s deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that Russia’s re-election “while it openly continues to commit war crimes and other atrocities would be an ugly stain that would undermine the credibility of the institution and the United Nations”. Diplomats aware of the voting pitch by Russia to woo other nations using grains said that the US and others have distributed letters to many of the 193 members of the General Assembly, asking nations to vote against Russia. Moscow’s competitor Albania vying for the seat has also ramped up its campaign to join the UNHRC by highlighting Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine. Albanian UN ambassador Ferit Hoxha said those who care about human rights and the “credibility of the Human Rights Council and its work” should oppose the nation which kills innocent people, destroys civilian infrastructure, ports and grain silos and “then takes pride in doing so”. International rights group Human Rights Watch has said Russia and China are unfit to serve on the Human Rights Council. “Every day, Russia and China remind us by committing abuses on a massive scale that they should not be members of the UN Human Rights Council,” Louis Charbonneau, UN director of Human Rights Watch said last week. The rights group said Russian forces in Ukraine continue to commit apparent war crimes, including unlawful attacks and crimes against humanity, torture and summary executions. It pointed out how Mr Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights Maria Lvova-Belova are sought by the International Criminal Court for alleged unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. Experts have warned against Russia’s pattern of “flagrant disrespect” towards international law as Moscow expected the world to turn a blind-eye to the latest missile attacks inside Ukraine. “Russia’s pattern of flagrant disrespect towards international law remains shockingly consistent. War crimes committed by Russia over the past months are no less cruel or widespread than the ones committed in Bucha in spring 2022, when Russia was suspended from the Human Rights Council,” said Anna Mykytenko, senior lawyer and the Ukraine country manager for Global Rights Compliance headquartered at the Hague. “Although now most of these crimes do not make it to the front pages of the international media, the aggressor state that keeps on committing war crimes and violating human rights cannot benefit from decreasing attention to the war in Ukraine and an opening to slink back into a UN Human Rights Council seat,” she told The Independent. Wayne Jordash KC, president and co-founder of Global Rights Compliance, said any attempts to allow Russia back to the seat of the Human Rights Council are “not only unacceptable and indecent but signify a dangerous global drift into untrammelled violence against the most vulnerable and innocent”. Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary Putin’s shameless UN charm offensive - with stolen grain from Ukraine Russia tries to rejoin UN Human Rights Council Truss calls on Russia to be suspended from UN human rights council after ‘heinous butchery’ in Bucha Ukraine finds evidence of torture on bodies exhumed from Izyum burial site Russia should be thrown off UN Human Rights Council over its role in Syria, global coalition demands

The International Monetary Fund raised its 2023 output growth estimate for Latin America and the Caribbean to 2.3%

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) sees better odds that central banks will manage to tame inflation without tipping the global economy into recession, but it warned Tuesday that growth remained weak and patchy.

By Andrea Shalal MARRAKECH, Morocco The International Monetary Fund is carefully watching global bond market developments after a

Vladimir Putin has given Russian lawmakers 10 days to find how best to revoke Moscow’s ratification of a critical nuclear treaty which bans Russia from testing atomic weapons shortly after he suggested the possibility of resuming such testing. The chair of the State Duma (lower house of parliament) Vyacheslav Volodin and other parliament heads laid out a deadline for Russian lawmakers to study the de-ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) option until 18 October, a statement from the Duma read. Mr Volodin said revoking the ratification on testing nuclear weapons will be in Russia’s national interest as he discussed the matter with parliamentary leaders on Monday. If revoked, Russia will signal a warning to the US that Moscow can fundamentally change the assumptions of post-Cold War nuclear planning. This comes just four days after Mr Putin said that Russia’s nuclear doctrine – which determines the conditions in which he would press the nuclear button – did not need updating. But he added that Russia could look at revoking ratification of the significant nuclear treaty to bring it into line with the United States, which has signed but not ratified the pact. The US has previously said Russia’s pulling out from the treaty will endanger "the global norm" against nuclear test blasts. In a U-turn from Mr Putin’s remarks on Friday, his envoy to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) said Moscow would revoke its ratification of the pact. Western security analysts have said such a step from Moscow will be a reminder that it still possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal at a time when it is locked in a standoff with the West over Ukraine. If Russia goes ahead with a nuclear test, it could encourage others such as the US or China to retaliate in a similar test and renew a fresh wave of nuclear arms race between the global superpowers. These nations have not carried out nuclear tests after the Soviet Union collapse in 1991. Russia’s actions have sparked concern, said Robert Floyd, head of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty Organization. He added that he is in touch with senior Russian officials to make the case for continued ratification, something he said was in the interest of humanity as a whole. Mr Floyd had requested a meeting with "key leaders" in Moscow as soon as possible, he said. "The CTBTO operates a global monitoring system which can detect a nuclear test explosion anytime, anywhere," he said in a statement. "Banning nuclear testing remains essential to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and to safeguarding current and future generations from the harmful effects of explosive nuclear testing." The de-ratification move can take “Russia and the world backward to a dangerous era of tit-for-tat nuclear threats”, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. Read More Ukraine-Russia war – live: It is in Russia’s interests to inflame war in the Middle East, says Zelensky Russia reports coolant leak in backup line at space station and says crew not in danger Ukraine advances in east and south with more ‘partial success’ even as rain muddies battlefield Ukraine repels Russian attacks on five fronts as Putin resorts to old weaponry and reserves Satellite images show spike in border activity as North Korea ‘supplies weapons to Russia’ for Ukraine war

Bond investors are starting to bet the worst-ever rout in US Treasuries may soon be over. US 10-year