Friday, 19, April, 2024

World

Volkswagen is driving forward the shift to electric vehicle manufacturing with its ACCELERATE strategy. Today’s official start of production of the ID.5 and ID.5 GTX02 marks the completion of Volkswagen’s successful transformation of its Zwickau plant into a dedicated electric vehicle production facility.

Afghanistan's Taliban-led caretaker government has announced that universities across the nation would reopen on February 2.

When the U.S. left Afghanistan in August 2021, so too did many members of the Afghanistan Air Force. Some Afghan pilots took themselves and their families out of the country to nearby Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, aboard aircraft which had belonged to the Afghanistan Air Force. Included among those aircraft were some which had been provided by the United States.

Answering a question about the negotiations on returning of aircraft from Uzbekistan, the spokesman to the Taliban government Suhail Shaheen said that the current differences would not affect the ties between the two fraternal countries and stressed that the Islamic Emirate had always had and had good relations with Uzbekistan.

The regional anti-terrorist structure of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (RATS SCO) is ready to provide the necessary assistance to the authorities of Kazakhstan upon request, the Executive Committee said in a statement.

The Federal Criminal Court has ordered the confiscation of over $293 million (around CHF270 million) belonging to a shell company linked to Gulnara Karimova. 

Martin Griffiths, who is also Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, described the Council’s passage of resolution 2615 (2021), tabled by the United States, as “evidence of how seriously Member States take the shocking levels of need and suffering in the country.”

Pakistan hosted a conference of Muslim countries pledging financial assistance to stave off "chaos" in Afghanistan. They vowed to unlock frozen aid funds and set up a humanitarian trust, Deutsche Welle said.

On December 10, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev will attend the online meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, the press service of the head of state said.

Three Central Asian states are among the world's top ten countries with the cheapest electricity for the population, the UK-based Cable.co.uk said in a report.

The CIS countries have created an armed forces joint communications system for exchange of information and coordination between the CIS armies, RIA Novosti reported.

The World Health Organization is monitoring a new variant with numerous mutations to the spike protein, scheduling a special meeting Friday to discuss what it may mean for vaccines and treatments, officials said Thursday.

British experts have sounded the alarm over a new Covid variant believed to have emerged in Botswana that is the most mutated version of the virus yet, the Daily Mail said.

Remittances to low- and middle-income countries are projected to have grown a strong 7.3 percent to reach $589 billion in 2021. This return to growth is more robust than earlier estimates and follows the resilience of flows in 2020 when remittances declined by only 1.7 percent despite a severe global recession due to COVID-19, according to estimates from the World Bank’s Migration and Development Brief released today.

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov addressed Uzbekistan and Afghanistan's other neighbors. He said that Russia calls on the neighboring countries of Afghanistan to prevent the military presence of the U.S. and NATO forces on their territory. This was announced on October 27 by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a video message to the participants in the ministerial meeting of the neighboring countries of Afghanistan (Iran, China, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan).

The U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense for Political Affairs, Colin Cole expressed confidence that the U.S. military will be able to strike at terrorists in Afghanistan without the U.S. presence in the country.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) within three days - October 15-17 - delivered to Termez more than 100 tons of humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, the UNHCR press service said.

The Russian leader Vladimir Putin said that terrorist groups in Afghanistan pose a serious threat to the neighboring countries. “The situation in Afghanistan is complicated. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, the transition of power to the Taliban happened, who are now establishing their own order, their own rules,” Putin said at a meeting with the chiefs of the secret services of the CIS countries.

The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, during a meeting in Brussels with the Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, highlighted that the European Union was interested in enhancing ties in the Central Asian region.

With such significant events as the G20 Environment, Climate and Energy Ministerial Meeting, the first ever UN High-level Dialogue on Energy and the two-years-long awaited UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow, United Kingdom next month, 2021 has been dubbed as a year that will ‘make it or break it’ on climate action.