World Day of Remembrance for road traffic victims

Preventive measures can save lives

According to the World Health Organisation, around 12,000 people die daily due to injuries and violence across the world. Among the 4.4 million injury-related deaths, unintentional injuries take the lives of 3.16 million people every year and violence-related injuries kill 1.25 million people every year. The injuries are a result of road traffic crashes, falls, drowning, burns, poisoning and acts of violence against oneself or others.

The Rising Nepal कार्तिक २०७९

2022 World Cup: The numbers which make the Qatar event so different

So what will make it so different? More football each day At 29 days from start to finish (20 November to 18 December), this will be the shortest World Cup since Argentina 1978. That means organisers have to squeeze in four games most days during the group stages - at 10:00, 13:00, 16:00 and 19:00 GMT. Most World Cups in recent memory have had three a day. There is also no turnaround time between the groups and the knockout stages, with the last 16 starting the day after the group stages end. A condensed World Cup There are only about 40 miles between the two furthest away stadiums - Al Bayt Stadium north of Doha to Al Janoub Stadium just south of the capital. The drive takes just 50 minutes without traffic. A tournament with a disposable stadium Seven of the eight World Cup stadiums have been built from scratch for this tournament. Seven of the eight will have seats removed after the tournament... and Stadium 974, which is made of shipping containers, will be entirely disassembled. Only one of the eight grounds will be the home stadium of a football team afterwards (Al Rayyan at the Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium). In total about 200,000 seats will be removed from grounds (and, according to organisers, be gifted to developing countries) after the final. A lack of places to stay As a country that does not get near the top 100 in the world for population or size, it is perhaps no surprise that Qatar cannot offer the accommodation usually seen at a World Cup. In March, the country had just 30,000 hotel rooms - with official figures suggesting 1.5 million people are coming. They hope to have a total of 130,000 rooms available in the country in time for fans coming - including 9,000 beds in fans villages, big tents and metal cabins, 60,000 rooms in apartments and villas, 50,000 in hotels and 4,000 rooms in two cruise ships which will remain docked for the tournament. The lack of rooms means some fans will have to stay in neighbouring countries such as Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and fly in for their games. Oman is offering free visas and 24 special flights a day from Muscat to Doha. A lot of new infrastructure Qatar has had to build a lot of infrastructure to host this tournament. As well as the stadiums, more than 100 hotels have popped up and there have been new roads and a metro built. A new city is going to be built around the final stadium in Lusail. The budget for just stadiums and training facilities alone is £5.3bn. Plenty of tickets sold Despite all the issues with accommodation, 2.89 million tickets were sold at the last update in October - meaning this could be one of the best attended World Cups ever. How much is a beer? The price of a beer is about £10 to £15 in Qatar - although there are huge restrictions on where you can buy alcohol. Usually, licensed hotel bars and restaurants are the only options in Qatar, although during the World Cup, fan zones and the grounds around the stadium will also sell beer. The fan zones will reportedly charge £11.60 for 500ml of lager. Drinking alcohol in public places (outside of these areas) can result in a prison sentence of up to six months and a fine of more than £700. The tournament's carbon footprint Some 3.6 million tonnes of CO2 will be omitted during the tournament. It was 2.1 million in Russia. Criticism over deaths of migrant workers More than 6,500 migrant workers are thought to have died in Qatar from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka alone from when the country was awarded the World Cup in 2010 to 2020, according to a Guardian investigation last year. The Qatar government said the total was misleading, because not all the deaths recorded were of people working on World Cup-related projects. Amnesty International says there are no exact figures because the Qatari authorities have failed to investigate the deaths of thousands of migrant workers over the past decade. (with inputs from BBC)

Ratopati English कार्तिक २०७९

IN PICS: Chinese leader Li at Bhaktapur Durbar Square

KATHMANDU, Sept 14: Li Zhanshu, the current Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, visited the Bhaktapur Durbar Square on Wednesday. Bhaktapur Durbar Square has been enlisted in the World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Following his visit, Li is scheduled to call on President Bidya Devi Bhandari today at 3 PM. Due to his meeting, traffic congestion is likely in the Kathmandu Valley, especially at Ravi Bhawan area, Split Hotel area, Kalimati, Tripureshwor, Thapathali, Maitighar Mandala, New Baneshwor, Tinkune, Koteshwar, Jadibuti, Lokanthali, Raderade, Sallaghari and Kalopati Vyasi among other places. Li will be flying home on Thursday. Here are some pictures taken by Ratopati photojournalist at Durbar Square Area:

Ratopati English श्रावण २०७९

World faces largest cost-of-living crisis in a generation: UN report

UNITED NATIONS, June 9: The world is facing a cost-of-living crisis unseen in at least a generation, partly due to the Ukraine conflict, said a UN report on Wednesday. "The largest cost-of-living crisis of the 21st century has come when people and countries have a limited capacity to cope," said the second report of the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance over the Ukraine conflict. The Ukraine conflict has trapped the people of the world between a rock and a hard place. The rock is the severe price shocks in food, energy and fertilizer markets, given the centrality of both Russia and Ukraine in these markets. The hard place is the extremely fragile context in which this crisis arrived: a world facing the cascading crises of COVID-19 and climate change, it said. "A shock of this magnitude would have been a significant challenge no matter the timing. Now, it is of historic, century-defining proportions," the report said. The Food and Agriculture Organization's food price index is at near-record levels and 20.8 percent higher than at this time last year. Energy market volatility has increased with the recognition that a prolonged conflict will lead to higher energy prices in the medium to long term. Crude oil has now reached over 120 U.S. dollars per barrel and energy prices overall are expected to rise by 50 percent in 2022 relative to in 2021. Fertilizer prices are more than double the 2000-2020 average. Maritime transport costs are more than triple the pre-pandemic average due to the lingering effects of COVID-19 and the destruction of the transport infrastructure of Ukraine, as well as higher volume of traffic- and congestion-related delays and other factors such as rising fuel costs, said the report. Rising interest rates and growing investor uncertainty have eroded both the value of developing countries' currencies, as well as their capacity to borrow in foreign markets, it said. "Of greatest concern are the vicious cycles beginning to emerge along the transmission channels of the crisis," said the report. Higher energy prices, especially diesel and natural gas, increase the costs of fertilizers and transport. Both factors increase the costs of food production. This leads to reduced farm yields and to even higher food prices next season. These, in turn, add to inflation metrics, contributing to what were already increasing interest rate pressures and tightening financial conditions. Tighter financial conditions erode the buying power of the currencies of developing countries, further increasing the import costs of food and energy, reducing fiscal space and increasing the costs of servicing debt, it said. The vicious cycles created by a cost-of-living crisis can also spark social and political instability, warned the report. To break the vicious cycles that feed into and accelerate this cost-of-living crisis, two broad approaches are required: mitigating the impacts of the shock and increasing the capacity of people and countries to cope, it said. To mitigate the impacts of the crisis, markets must be made more stable and debt and commodity prices must be stabilized. This is critical to immediately restore the availability of food for all people and all countries with equitable and adequate supplies at accessible prices. An effective solution to the food crisis cannot be found without reintegrating food production in Ukraine, as well as food and fertilizers produced in Russia, into global markets. Other initiatives include continuing to release strategic food and energy stockpiles into markets, controlling hoarding and other speculative behavior, avoiding unnecessary trade restrictions and committing to increased efficiency in the use of energy and fertilizers in developed countries, said the report. To increase the capacity of people and countries to cope, social protection systems and safety nets must be widened and fiscal space must be increased, it said. Social protection measures and fiscal space are, in fact, linked. Countries need support from the financial institutions to increase their fiscal space to, in turn, increase social protection spending, including cash transfers to the most vulnerable. The international community needs to help countries protect their poor and vulnerable, it said. There is no answer to the cost-of-living crisis without an answer to the crisis of finance in developing countries, said the report. Existing international financing mechanisms to support strong national fiscal responses need to be fully funded and operationalized quickly. Multilateral development banks must be capitalized and apply more flexible lending ratios. The global debt architecture is not ready to face the current crisis, which arrives during a moment of record-high debt levels and rising interest rates. Current tighter monetary conditions increase the risk of a systemic debt crisis, said the report. The Group of 20's Debt Service Suspension Initiative should be renewed, and maturities should be pushed back by two to five years. The Common Framework for Debt Treatment needs to be improved. A systematic approach to multilateral debt restructuring and relief, which includes vulnerable middle-income countries, must also be pursued to ensure long-term solutions to current challenges, it said. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for immediate action. "The message of today's report is clear and insistent: we must act now to save lives and livelihoods over the next months and years. It will take global action to fix this global crisis. We need to start today." UN Conference on Trade and Development Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan, a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Crisis Response Group, who launched the report together with Guterres, also stressed the urgency of the matter. "We are in a race against time. This is why we are calling for action, action, and action. Dealing with the consequences of inaction -- let me assure you -- will be much more costly for all than acting now," she said.

Ratopati English बैशाख २०७९

Ukraine War: Veterans prepare for battle in occupied Luhansk

APRIL 7: This may be a conflict in the 21st century but, at times, with its maze of trenches, it feels more like something from the First World War. Russia's military offensive in eastern Ukraine is already intensifying. You can see it in the long queues of traffic driving west towards relative safety; you can feel it in the deserted streets as you drive through the towns and cities of the Donbas; and you can hear it with the increasing sound of Russian artillery. Russia is redeploying more of its forces from northern to eastern Ukraine. The objective is to step up the battle in the Luhansk and Donetsk - parts of which were already controlled by Russian backed separatists. Russia will take advantage of its shorter supply lines - something which proved a problem in its failed offensive on the capital Kiev. Russia and its proxies now control around 90% of Luhansk and more than half of Donetsk - the old industrial heartlands of Ukraine. There is smoke rising across a landscape already scarred by mining and factories. Ukrainian forces have been fighting a war here for the past eight years. Their units include some of the country's most battle hardened troops. Western officials say Ukrainian forces stationed in the Donbas are the best trained and equipped units. As the Russian offensive pushes from the north, east and south there is a real danger they may soon be encircled and cut off. Ukraine has already lost ground to Russia. But they are digging in for the fight. As we travelled east towards the frontline we saw new defensive positions and trenches being dug. Anatoly, a 52-year-old soldier, peered through a periscope from his trench to view the Russian positions. He told me "I see the Russians, they look like me". But he was ready to hold the line. He said "if they try to take our position, I will kill them. If I don't kill them, they will kill me. It's the rules of war." Most of the men we talked to believed that their well-prepared trenches and defences will give them the upper hand against the invaders. Andrej, a 27-year-old soldier, was kept company in his gloomy dug out by his pet dog Lucifer. He told me "we have good weapons and good fortifications and if Russia attacks us here they will lose". The troops say they've been supplied with western weapons such as javelin anti-tank missiles. They were grateful, but were hoping for more. Andrej said that President Putin is a "psycho" but he added that his dead Russian soldiers would be good fertiliser for the soil. The troops looked weary from the fighting, but all said morale was high. Roman, a deputy commander, had spent four years studying psychology at Lviv University. As well as fighting he was able to offer his men mental health support. But he said "usually people don't need my help. They have a good motivation for fighting for their family, friends and home, unlike the Russians", who he dismissively described as "zombies". The Ukrainian troops are all well aware that Russia is redeploying more forces to the east. They know that worse is to come. But Roman believes that Ukraine's forces are more tactically astute. He said that Russia's military doctrine had not progressed since World War Two, relying on artillery. That Russian artillery though is already forcing tens of thousands of people to leave their homes.

Ratopati English फाल्गुन २०७८

World Cup 2022: How has Qatar treated stadium workers?

APRIL 1: It is most controversial World Cup ever, with questions about the way Qatar won the right to hold it, how it's treating workers building the stadiums, and whether it is even a suitable location. Treatment of foreign workers Qatar is building seven stadiums for the finals, a new airport, new metro and new roads. The final will be played in a stadium, which is also staging nine other matches, that is the centrepiece of a new city. But the state has attracted criticism for its treatment of the 30,000 migrant labourers working on the projects. In 2016, human rights group Amnesty International accused Qatar of using forced labour. It said many workers were living in squalid accommodation, paying huge recruitment fees and had had wages withheld and passports confiscated. Since 2017, the government has introduced measures to protect migrant labourers from working in excessive heat, limit their working hours and improve conditions in workers' camps. However, campaign group Human Rights Watch said in a 2021 report that foreign workers were still suffering from "punitive and illegal wage deductions", as well as "months of unpaid wages for long hours of gruelling work". Amnesty International also says that despite the abolition of the "kafala" - or sponsorship - system, which barred migrant workers from leaving their jobs without their employer's consent, pressure was still being put on employees. A government spokesperson told the BBC: "Significant progress to ensure the reforms are effectively enforced has been made." It said the number of rule-breaking companies "will continue to decline as enforcement measures take hold". How many workers have died? In February 2021, the Guardian said 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had died in Qatar since it won its World Cup bid. The deaths, which were reported by authorities in the five Asian countries, were not categorised by occupation or place or work. But the labour rights group FairSquare said it was likely that many of those who died had been working on World Cup infrastructure projects. Qatar's government says the figures are an overestimate, because they include thousands of foreigners who died after living and working there for many years. It says many would have been working in jobs unrelated to the building industry. Qatar says that between 2014 and 2020, there were 37 deaths among labourers building World Cup stadiums. It says 34 of those were "non-work related". The International Labour Organization (ILO) says Qatar has not counted sudden and unexpected deaths amongst labourers. It says these include fatal heart attacks and respiratory failure caused by heatstroke recorded as being from"natural causes" rather than "work-related". The ILO has compiled its own death figures from government-run hospitals and ambulance services in Qatar, covering casualties from all projects connected with the World Cup. It says 50 workers died and more than 500 others were seriously injured in Qatar in 2021 alone, and another 37,600 suffered mild to moderate injuries. The main causes of these deaths and injuries were falling from heights, road traffic accidents and falling objects. How did Qatar come to host the World Cup? Qatar 2022 has been controversial from the very moment it was announced by football's world governing body, Fifa, in 2010. As a very small (if very rich) state with little footballing history, and no record of ever qualifying for the World Cup, it was a shock to many when Qatar beat competition from the US, Australia, South Korea and Japan. The decision prompted allegations that Fifa officials had been bribed to award the World Cup to Qatar, although an independent investigation commissioned by Fifa later found no hard evidence of this. Qatar denies allegations that it bought delegates' votes, but a corruption investigation by the French authorities is still ongoing, and in 2020 the US accused three Fifa officials of receiving payments. Why is the Qatar World Cup happening in winter? The World Cup tournament is usually held in June and July, but in Qatar average temperatures at that time of year are about 41C (106F) and can reach 50C (122F) - too hot to be outside safely, let alone play at least 90 minutes of football. During the bidding process, Qatar promised advanced air-conditioning technology that would cool stadiums, training pitches and fan zones to 23C. However, in 2015 a decision was made by Fifa to hold the tournament in winter. The World Cup kicks off on 21 November, and the final is on 18 December. This means it falls right in the middle of - and disrupts - the club football season for many countries. The English Premier League, for instance, will not see any matches played between 13 November and 26 December. To make up for the lost time, the 2022/2023 season will start a week earlier than normal and end a week later. With inputs from BBC

Ratopati English फाल्गुन २०७८

At 101, she’s still hauling lobsters with no plans to stop

When Virginia Oliver started trapping lobster off Maine’s rocky coast, World War II was more than a decade in the future, the electronic traffic signal was a recent invention and few women were harvesting lobsters.

Republica भाद्र २०७८

Slow to start, China mobilizes to vaccinate at headlong pace

TAIPEI, TAIWAN, June 3: In the span of just five days last month, China gave out 100 million shots of its COVID-19 vaccines. After a slow start, China is now doing what virtually no other country in the world can: harnessing the power and all-encompassing reach of its one-party system and a maturing domestic vaccine industry to administer shots at a staggering pace. The rollout is far from perfect, including uneven distribution, but Chinese public health leaders now say they’re hoping to inoculate 80% of the population of 1.4 billion by the end of the year. As of Tuesday, China had given out more than 680 million doses — with nearly half of those in May alone. China's total is roughly a third of the 1.9 billion shots distributed globally, according to Our World in Data, an online research site. The call to get vaccinated comes from every corner of society. Companies offer shots to their employees, schools urge their students and staffers, and local government workers check on their residents. That pressure underscores both the system’s strength, which makes it possible to even consider vaccinating more than a billion people this year, but also the risks to civil liberties — a concern the world over but one that is particularly acute in China, where there are few protections. “The Communist Party has people all the way down to every village, every neighborhood,” said Ray Yip, former country director for the Gates Foundation in China and a public health expert. “That’s the draconian part of the system, but it also gives very powerful mobilization.” China is now averaging about 19 million shots per day, according to Our World in Data's rolling seven-day average. That would mean a dose for everyone in Italy about every three days. The United States, with about one-quarter of China's population, reached around 3.4 million shots per day in April when its drive was at full tilt. It's still unclear how many people in China are fully vaccinated — which can mean anywhere from one to three doses of the vaccines in use — as the government does not publicly release that data. Zhong Nanshan, the head of a group of experts attached to the National Health Commission and a prominent government doctor, said on Sunday that 40% of the population has received at least one dose, and the aim was to get that percentage fully vaccinated by the end of the month. In Beijing, the capital, 87% of the population has received at least one dose. Getting a shot is as easy as walking into one of hundreds of vaccination points found all across the city. Vaccination buses are parked in high foot-traffic areas, including in the city center and at malls. But Beijing’s abundance is not shared with the rest of the country, and local media reports and complaints on social media show the difficulty of getting an appointment elsewhere. “I started lining up that day at 9 in the morning, until 6 p.m., only then did I get the shot. It was exhausting,” Zhou Hongxia, a resident of Lanzhou, in northwestern Gansu province, explained recently. “When I left, there were still people waiting.” Zhou's husband hasn't been so lucky and has yet to get a shot. When they call the local hotlines, they are told simply to wait.Central government officials on Monday said they're working to ensure supply is more evenly distributed. Before the campaign ramped up in recent weeks, many people were not in a rush to get vaccinated as China has kept the virus, which first flared in the country, at bay in the past year with strict border controls and mandatory quarantines. It has faced small clusters of infections from time to time, and is currently managing one in the southern city of Guangzhou. Although there are distribution issues, it is unlikely that Chinese manufacturers will have problems with scale, according to analysts and those who have worked in the industry. Sinovac and Sinopharm, which make the majority of the vaccines being distributed in China, have both aggressively ramped up production, building brand new factories and repurposing existing ones for COVID-19. Sinovac’s vaccine and one of the two Sinpharm makes have received an emergency authorization for use from the World Health Organization, but the companies, particularly Sinopharm, have faced criticism for their lack of transparency in sharing their data. "What place in the world can compare with China on construction? How long did it take our temporary hospitals to be built?” asked Li Mengyuan, who leads pharmaceutical research at Western Securities, a financial firm. China built field hospitals at the beginning of the pandemic in just days. Sinovac has said it has doubled its production capacity to 2 billion doses a year, while Sinopharm has said it can make up to 3 billion doses a year. But Sinopharm has not disclosed recent numbers of how many doses it actually has made, and a spokesman for the company did not respond to a request for comment. Sinovac has produced 540 million doses this year as of late May, the company said on Friday. Government support has been crucial for vaccine developers every step of the way — as it has in other countries — but, as with everything, the scope and scale in China is different. Yang Xiaoming, chairman of Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group, recounted to state media recently how the company initially needed to borrow lab space from a government research center while it was working on a vaccine. "We sent our samples over, there was no need to discuss money, we just did it,” he said. Chinese vaccine companies also largely do not rely on imported products in the manufacturing process. That's an enormous benefit at a time when many countries are scrambling for the same materials and means China can likely avoid what happened to the Serum Institute of India, whose production was hobbled because of dependence on imports from the U.S. for certain ingredients. But as the availability of the vaccine increases so, too, can the pressure to take it.In Beijing, one researcher at a university said the school’s Communist Party cell calls him once a month to ask him if he has gotten vaccinated yet, and offers to help him make an appointment. He has so far declined to get a shot because he would prefer the Pfizer vaccine, saying he trusts its data. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns he could face repercussions at his job at a government university for publicly questioning the Chinese vaccines. China has not yet approved Pfizer for use, and the researcher is not sure how long he can hold out — although the government has, for now, cautioned against making vaccines mandatory outright. “They don’t have to say it is mandatory,” Yip, the public health expert, said. “They’re not going to announce that it’s required to have the vaccine, but they can put pressure on you.”

Ratopati English बैशाख २०७८

In commemoration of traffic victims

Kathmandu: Every year around 1.5 million people die while many sustain serious injuries due to road accidents, according to Road Safety Awareness Committee of Nepal Engineers’ Association. So to remember those who are affected by road accidents, every third Sunday of November is celebrated as World Remembrance Day for Traffic Victims. This year, the day was celebrated on November 19.

Republica कार्तिक २०७४

World Day of Remembrance for road traffic victims

सम्बन्धित सामग्री

When Virginia Oliver started trapping lobster off Maine’s rocky coast, World War II was more than a decade in the future, the electronic traffic signal was a recent invention and few women were harvesting lobsters.