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International Current Affairs September 3rd Week 2022
Category : International Current Affairs
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UN gets funds needed to salvage derelict oil tanker off Yemen 

 
The UN now has all the resources necessary to launch an emergency effort to stop a significant oil spill from the abandoned Safer oil ship in the Red Sea off Yemen.
 
David Gressly, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said on Wednesday that donors have pledged all of the $75 million required for phase one of the UN plan -- an emergency operation to transfer oil from the decaying tanker to a safe vessel, reports Xinhua news agency.
 
He said the donation has surpassed the required $75 million.
 
The UN Development Programme is actively working on the first contracts to initiate the salvage operation.
 
There will be a period of a few weeks of mobilization for that, followed by a four-month operation to stabilize the Safer for the work to transfer oil to a second vessel, and then for completing the work of phase two -- a permanent storage solution, said Gressly.
 
The progress was announced after a high-level event on the Safer tanker, co-chaired by the Netherlands, the US and Germany, on Wednesday.
 
To begin work on the emergency operation as soon as possible, the UN needs donors to convert all of the pledges to cash.
 
As of Sunday, $59 million had been disbursed or was in the process of being disbursed.
 
The UN also needs a further $38 million for phase two.
 
The original budget for the plan was reduced by $31 million largely because of the adoption of a double-hull vessel tethered to a buoy system as the safe long-term solution.
 
The system is the fastest to implement and most flexible of the three long-term replacement options that were considered, according to the UN.
 
The Safer, currently carrying more than 1 million barrels of oil, has been moored off the port of Hodeidah since 1988 as a crude oil storage and offloading platform.
 
It has not been inspected or maintained since 2015.
 
In May 2020, seawater leaked into the engine room.
 
A temporary fix by divers from the Safer corporation succeeded in containing the leak.
 
But the fix was not supposed to hold for long.

Israeli PM endorses 2-state solution with Palestinians

 
United Nations, Sep 23 (IANS) Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid vowed support for the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue in his speech to the UN General Assembly.
 
Key Points
  • The establishment of a Palestinian state, alongside Israel, is the right solution to the years-long bloody conflict, Lapid said on Thursday, marking the first time in years that an Israeli leader publicly expresses support for the two-state solution, reports Xinhua news agency. 
  • "An agreement with the Palestinians, based on two states for two peoples, is the right thing for Israel`s security, for Israel`s economy and for the future of our children," the Prime Minister noted, in his speech, which was broadcast on Israel`s main TV channels.
  • "We have only one condition that a future Palestinian state will be a peaceful one. "
  • He stressed that he would support such a move only if the future Palestinian state "will not become another terror base from which to threaten the well-being and the very existence of Israel" and that the Jewish state will have the ability to protect itself.
  • He called on other countries to follow the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which agreed to normalise ties with Israel in 2020.
  • "Israel seeks peace with our neighbours... We call upon every Muslim country -- from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia -- to recognize that, and to come to talk to us. Our hand is outstretched for peace."
  • Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where the Palestinians wish to build their future state, is a highly contested issue in Israel.
  • Israel still controls these lands, despite a persistent Palestinian struggle and international condemnation.
    • Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged his support to a two-state solution based on a territorial compromise in a speech in 2009.
    • However, he later renounced the idea of a Palestinian state several times during his re-election campaigns.
    • The last round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians took place in 2014 before they reached an impasse over the Israeli expansion of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Swiftly debunked rumours of coups swirl as China prepares to host key meet

 
Furious rumor-mongering ahead of a crucial gathering of China`s ruling party next month, when President Xi Jinping is anticipated to be awarded an unprecedented third term, has been fuelled by purges of senior officials and unsubstantiated reports of military coups in Beijing.
 
According to The Guardian, the imprisonment of a group of senior security officials for corruption, followed by days of odd and soon debunked rumours that Xi was under house arrest, have fueled what one analyst has referred to as a "hothouse" atmosphere rife with secrecy and distrust.
 
Last week, a Chinese court jailed the former vice-minister of public security Sun Lijun, the former justice minister Fu Zhenghua, and former police chiefs of Shanghai, Chongqing and Shanxi on corruption charges.
 
Fu and the police chiefs had been accused of being part of a political clique surrounding Sun, and being disloyal to Xi.
 
Xi is expected to be re-appointed as leader of the party and military commission at the meeting, after he abolished the two-term limit in 2018 and waged a years-long anti-corruption campaign that also targeted many political opponents.
 
On Sunday, the state media announced the list of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) central committee delegates, numbering almost 2,300, had been finalised.
 
Xi`s inclusion on the list further refuted social media rumours that had been swirling since September 24 of a military coup.
 
The unfounded claims, accompanied by unsourced videos of military vehicles and based mostly on mass flight cancellations, were debunked, but not before it began trending on Twitter, The Guardian reported.
 
There was no specific mention of the coup rumours on China`s social media, but a Weibo hashtag related to "airports across the country cancel flights" was viewed by more than 200,000 people over the weekend.
 
Some made fun of the rumours, noting the lack of evidence of a political takeover on the ground in Beijing, The Guardian reported.
 
Drew Thompson, a scholar with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said a coup in China wasn`t entirely implausible, and Xi had reportedly shown concern about the prospect in the past, but the weekend`s rumours looked more like "wishful thinking".
 
They appeared to originate in accounts associated with the Falun Gong movement, which Thompson said was "essentially not credible".
 
"The rumour that Xi Jinping has been arrested has legs because it is such a sensitive political moment in China, and the recent trials (and convictions) of long-serving senior officials creates a hothouse atmosphere," he said on Twitter.
 
Other analysts like Sinocism author, Bill Bishop, said he thought the rumours were "BS" but the "inherent opacity" of the CCP mechanisms easily fuelled their spread.
 
The party congress is a secretive process of power distribution, with the most senior positions not announced until the final day.
 
Government control of the domestic narrative and crushing of dissent has intensified in recent weeks as the meeting approaches.
 
Xi has been absent from the public eye since he returned to China from the SCO Summit in Uzbekistan last weekend. Observers said he is likely to be quarantining, The Guardian reported.
 
"I think the fact this rumour spread so far, and was considered plausible enough to analyse is really a reflection of an underlying shortcoming of Chinese governance," said Thompson.
 
China`s government has not responded to the rumours, but public security authorities were among those posting under the hashtag "the truth about large-scale cancellation of flights across the country", disputing the significance of the cancellations which they said was normal for the pandemic.
 
The party congress begins on October 16, The Guardian reported.
 
The event, in Beijing`s Great Hall of the People, is closed to the public but is the most important date on the CCP`s five-year political cycle.
 
There is speculation that Xi could further consolidate power with the promotion of stronger allies to senior positions, and that the party will resurrect the `people`s leader` title not used since Mao Zedong.