Category: Business

HARARE, ZIMBABWE — Ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, the U.N. has released a report saying that upholding human rights is essential for ending the AIDS pandemic.

The report says human rights violations, including discrimination against girls and women, and criminalization of LGBTQ+ people, obstruct efforts to end AIDS.

UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima released a report online called “Take the Rights Path to End AIDS.”

The report says the world can meet the goal of ending AIDS by 2030 if leaders protect the human rights of everyone living with and at risk of HIV.

She said advances in medicine are helping reduce new cases of HIV.

“But big gaps still remain in the protection of rights. When there is impunity for gender-based violence; when people can be arrested for who they are, or who they love; when a visit to health services is dangerous for people because of their gender — the result is that people are blocked from care, this drives the AIDS pandemic,” she said. “Only rights can fix these wrongs. There is an urgent need to enact laws that protect the human rights of everyone.”

Zimbabwe was one of the countries hit hardest by HIV/AIDS until it introduced an AIDS levy in 1999, a 3% tax on income and business profits which is managed by the National AIDS Council.

Dr. Bernard Madzima, the executive officer of the Zimbabwe National AIDS Council, said the country is aiming to end HIV as a public health threat by the end of the decade. He said the country enforces a policy of no discrimination against HIV patients.

“In Zimbabwe there is no one who has been stigmatized whether they are HIV positive or whether they are HIV negative, they will get access. Our approach in HIV intervention is based on it being a public health approach,” he said. “So our interventions are to make sure that HIV is no longer a public health threat by 2030.”

Madzima said the government is also attempting to reach marginalized groups like sex workers, prison inmates and informal miners with care. In the past, Zimbabwean authorities targeted sex workers and organizations such as Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe.

The UNAIDS report noted that police only stopped arresting sex workers for “loitering” in 2015, after Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights successfully argued in court that the police conduct was illegal. The report said the move has resulted in sex workers being able to seek health services.

The report commended Zimbabwe for stopping the criminalization of HIV transmission in 2022, adding that criminalization and stigmatization of marginalized communities obstruct access to life-saving HIV services.
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SYDNEY — Google and Facebook-owner Meta Platforms urged the Australian government on Tuesday to delay a bill that will ban most forms of social media for children under 16, saying more time was needed to assess its potential impact.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left government wants to pass the bill, which represents some of the toughest controls on children’s social media use imposed by any country, into law by the end of the parliamentary year on Thursday.

The bill was introduced in parliament last week and opened for submissions of opinions for only one day.

Google and Meta said in their submissions that the government should wait for the results of an age-verification trial before going ahead.

The age-verification system may include biometrics or government identification to enforce a social media age cut-off.

“In the absence of such results, neither industry nor Australians will understand the nature or scale of age assurance required by the bill, nor the impact of such measures on Australians,” Meta said.

“In its present form, the bill is inconsistent and ineffective.”

The law would force social media platforms, and not parents or children, to take reasonable steps to ensure age-verification protections are in place. Companies could be fined up to $32 million for systemic breaches.

The opposition Liberal party is expected to support the bill though some independent lawmakers have accused the government of rushing through the entire process in around a week.

A Senate committee responsible for communications legislation is scheduled to deliver a report on Tuesday.

Bytedance’s TikTok said the bill lacked clarity and that it had “significant concerns” with the government’s plan to pass the bill without detailed consultation with experts, social media platforms, mental health organizations and young people.

“Where novel policy is put forward, it’s important that legislation is drafted in a thorough and considered way, to ensure it is able to achieve its stated intention. This has not been the case with respect to this Bill,” TikTok said.

Elon Musk’s X raised concerns that the bill will negatively impact the human rights of children and young people, including their rights to freedom of expression and access to information.

The U.S. billionaire, who views himself as a champion of free speech, last week attacked the Australian government saying the bill seemed like a backdoor way to control access to the internet.
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ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — The U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge that Google illegally dominated online advertising technology in seeking a second antitrust win against the company. 

The closing arguments in Alexandria cap a 15-day trial held in September in which prosecutors sought to show Google monopolized markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers. 

“Google rigged the rules of the road,” said DOJ lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum, who asked the judge to hold Google accountable for anti-competitive conduct and added that Google is “once, twice, three times a monopolist.” 

Another DOJ lawyer, Julia Tarver Wood, compared the case to the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities and said U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema had to decide whether to adopt the DOJ or Google version of the state of the ad market. 

Google lawyer Karen Dunn said the DOJ had not met its legal burden and was asking Brinkema to overrule key precedents. “The law simply does not support what the plaintiffs are arguing in this case,” Dunn said. 

She argued the DOJ was ignoring Google’s legitimate business decisions and the robust quality of the online advertising market. The company argues the government had cherry-picked a narrow slice of the online market and did not account for aggressive competition. 

Shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, were up 1.4% in afternoon trading. 

Publishers testified at the trial that they could not switch away from Google, even when it rolled out features they disliked, since there was no other way to access the huge advertising demand within Google’s ad network. 

In 2017, News Corp estimated losing at least $9 million in ad revenue that year if it had switched away, one witness said. 

If Brinkema finds that Google broke the law, she would consider prosecutors’ request to make Google at least sell off Google Ad Manager, a platform that includes the company’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange. 

Google offered to sell the ad exchange this year to end a European Union antitrust investigation, but European publishers rejected the proposal as insufficient, Reuters first reported in September. 

Analysts view the ad tech case as a smaller financial risk than the case in which a judge ruled Google maintains an illegal monopoly in online search, and in which prosecutors have argued the company must be forced to sell its Chrome browser.
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JACKSON, Mississippi — Medical marijuana businesses in the southern U.S. state of Mississippi don’t have the right to advertise on billboards or other places because marijuana itself remains illegal under federal law, an appeals court says. 

The owner of a medical marijuana dispensary argued that the First Amendment protects the right to advertise because Mississippi law permits the sale of cannabis products to people with debilitating medical conditions. The state enacted its law in 2022. 

A three-judge panel of 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday rejected the arguments about advertising. They cited the federal Controlled Substances Act, which since 1970 has prohibited the manufacture, distribution, dispensing and possession of marijuana. 

The federal law applies in all states, and Mississippi “faces no constitutional obstacle to restricting commercial speech relating to unlawful transactions,” the judges wrote. 

The Mississippi attorney general’s office praised the court decision for upholding “Mississippi’s reasonable restrictions on advertising for medical marijuana dispensaries by print, broadcast and other mass communications,” said the office spokesperson, MaryAsa Lee. 

Clarence Cocroft II operates Tru Source Medical Cannabis in the northern Mississippi city of Olive Branch. He sued the state in 2023 to challenge its ban on medical marijuana advertising on billboards or in print, broadcast or social media or via mass email or text messaging. 

“Upholding this ban makes it incredibly difficult for me to find potential customers and to educate people about Mississippi’s medical marijuana program,” Cocroft said in a statement Monday. “I remain committed to continuing this fight so my business can be treated the same as any other legal business in Mississippi.” 

The state allows medical marijuana businesses to have websites or social media accounts that provide information about their retail dispensing locations and a list of products available. It allows them to be listed in phone books or business directories and to display cannabis in company logos. The businesses can also sponsor not-for-profit charity or advocacy events. 

Cocroft is represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm. The firm said Monday that it was considering its next steps in the lawsuit, including possibly asking the entire appeals court to reconsider the case or an appeal to the Supreme Court. 

“Mississippi cannot on the one hand create an entire marketplace for the sale of medical marijuana, and on the other hand rely on an unenforced federal law to prohibit buyers and sellers from talking about it,” said Ari Bargil, an Institute for Justice attorney.
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sydney — Australia’s Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island will be connected by subsea cable to the northern garrison city of Darwin, a project backed by Alphabet’s Google that Australia says will boost its digital resilience.

Christmas Island is 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) west of the Australian mainland, with a small population of 1,250, but strategically located in the Indian Ocean, 350 kilometers (215 miles) from Jakarta.

The cable announcement comes as the Australian and U.S. militaries upgrade airfields in Australia’s north, where a rotating force of U.S. Marines will be joined by Japanese troops next year.

Google’s vice president of global network infrastructure, Brian Quigley, said in a statement the Bosun cable will link Darwin to Christmas Island, while another subsea cable will connect Melbourne on Australia’s east coast to the west coast city of Perth, then on to Christmas Island and Singapore.

Australia is seeking to reduce its exposure to digital disruption by building more subsea cable pathways to Asia to its west, and through the South Pacific to the United States.

“These new cable systems will not only expand and strengthen the resilience of Australia’s own digital connectivity through new and diversified routes but will also complement the Government’s active work with industry and government partners to support secure, resilient and reliable connectivity across the Pacific,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement.

The other partners in the cable project include Australian data center company NextDC, Macquarie-backed telecommunications group Vocus, and SUBCO.

SUBCO previously built an Indian Ocean cable from Perth to Oman, with spurs to the U.S. military base of Diego Garcia, and Cocos Islands, where Australia is upgrading a runway for defense surveillance aircraft.

Although 900 kilometers (560 miles) apart, Christmas Island is seen as an Indian Ocean neighbor of Cocos Islands, which the Australian Defense Force has said is key to its maritime surveillance operations in a region where China is increasing submarine activity.

The new cables will also link to a Pacific Islands network being built by Google and jointly funded by the United States, connecting the U.S. and Australia through hubs in Fiji and French Polynesia.

Vocus said in a statement the two networks will form the world’s largest submarine cable system spanning 42,500 kilometers (26,408 miles) of fiber optic cable running between the U.S. and Asia via Australia.
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BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — Anger and frustration from developing nations vulnerable to climate impacts are likely to linger following the conclusion of the climate change summit in Azerbaijan, COP29, as nations adopted a $300 billion global finance target to help poorer nations cope with climate change, a deal that many recipient nations slammed as severely insufficient.

Global North countries, often historic emitters responsible for global warming, agreed on Sunday to pledge $300 billion a year until 2035 for their developing counterparts to stave off the direst effects of climate change — less than a quarter of the acknowledged $1.3 trillion needed annually to reduce emissions and build resilience in vulnerable countries.

The $300 billion figure, also, is an increase by $200 billion each year, compared to the agreement in place since 2009, which is expiring.

Spirited disappointment and rage from Global South countries was expressed at the closing plenary, with some national representatives calling adoption of the new funding package “insulting.”

“We are extremely disappointed,” said Indian negotiator Chandni Raina, who called the figure “abysmal.”

Her Cuban counterpart, Pedro Luis Pedroso, described the deal as “environmental colonialism,” pointing out that, when factoring in today’s inflation, the pledged funding is lower than the $100 billion agreed to in 2009. Bolivia’s negotiator called the deal “insulting” to developing nations.

Some Western representatives were more upbeat.

“COP29 will be remembered as a new era of climate finance,” top EU climate negotiator Wopke Hoekstra said, calling the target amount “ambitious” and “achievable.”

Some experts told VOA that the structure and composition of the $300 billion deal was more important than the actual monetary figure. The final deal allows for both public and private sources of funds to be tapped to bolster climate preparation efforts in the developing world.

Negotiators for developing countries expressed concern that private sources of funding could come in the form of more loans, which could lead to challenging debt accumulation by poorer nations, rather than funding in the preferred form of grants.

Global South countries argued for a new target for green finance and have consistently called for such climate finance to come in the form of public grants. The tense and fraught negotiations of the past week dragged on for two extra days and included at least one episode of negotiators from small island nations and some of the poorest nations in the world walking out of a meeting room with wealthy nations in protest. They asserted that their voices and perspectives were not heard.

”This COP has been a disaster for the developing world,” said Mohammed Adow, director of Kenya-based climate and energy research group Power Shift Africa. ”It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries, who claim to take climate change seriously.”

The adopted finance package also stated that a further roadmap is set to be discussed at the next conference – likely COP30, set for Belem, Brazil in late 2025 — on how to reach the trillion-dollar figure.

Independent South African climate consultant Gillian Hamilton called the $300 billion core funding target “insufficient,” particularly for building resilience against climate impacts — also known as climate adaptation.

“Developed nations should have shown more leadership and transparency,” Hamilton told VOA. “The biggest emitters need to rapidly decrease their emissions so that adaptation costs for developing countries don’t increase exponentially.”

Campaigners staged multiple environmental protests each day here during the past week-plus of meetings.

Though negotiators for developing nations repeatedly asked for climate finance in the form of grants instead of loans, in the final deal, developed countries stopped short of guaranteeing that could be done.

Adaptation finance

The deal adopted Sunday acknowledges that funding sources for adaptation finance should be public and transparent.

With 2024 going down as the hottest year in history, the world has experienced a slew of climate disasters, ranging from devastating floods in Nepal and Spain, to Hurricane Helene in the Americas, droughts in the Mediterranean and typhoons in the western Pacific region.

Despite the disasters and renewed calls to finance climate-resilient infrastructure across the Global South to guard against rising sea levels and wildfires, funding has been falling short for years, according to a November report from the U.N. Environment Program.

The so-called adaptation projects include developing more advanced disaster warning systems, reforestation, and building catchment mechanisms to ensure water security in regions most affected by climate change.

At COP29, Germany pledged $62 billion, to the adaptation fund; France highlighted its 2023 pledge of $2.9 billion, in adaptation; the U.S. said it pays $3 billion into it each year. A total of 14 Global North countries including Spain, Sweden, South Korea and Switzerland promised to provide $300 million this year, according to a separate negotiation text in the conference.

Despite pledges in recent years, countries didn’t completely deliver on promises. This year, for example, more than $122 million of pledged financial support to poor nations for adapting to climate risk is still up in the air, even though this assistance has been a stated priority at recent COP meetings.

What to expect in Belem?

Countries will be tasked at the Brazil meeting next November with ironing out the details of a global carbon trade system governed by a centralized U.N. regulatory body. They also will try to find a path for wealthy, developed countries to reach the target of $1.3 trillion to support efforts in the Global South to address the consequences of climate disasters. A major component will be reviewing national climate plans, which are due to be submitted in February. Britain, Brazil and the UAE are among the nations that this past week aimed to get ahead of the February deadline and shared some of the goals in their national climate preparation plans.

Harjeet Singh, global engagement director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, said it is likely that ‘most’ nations will not meet the February deadline to submit their updated plans to address climate change.

The future participation of Argentina is unclear, after hardline President Javier Milei — who has called climate change a hoax — reportedly told his government delegates here to pack their bags and leave the negotiations on the third day of the summit.

Singh was asked by VOA whether wealthy nations would deliver on their promises to lead the effort toward $300 billion in climate finance support, and he responded that the key lies in their ‘willingness, as the money has always been there.’
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As delegates from 175 countries gathered in Busan, South Korea, on Monday for the fifth round of talks aimed at securing an international treaty to curb plastic pollution, lingering divisions cast doubts on whether a final agreement is in sight.

South Korea is hosting the fifth and ostensibly final U.N. Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) meeting this week, after the previous round of talks in Ottawa in April ended without a path forward on capping plastic production.

Instead, the meeting issued a direction for technical groups to focus on chemicals of concern and other measures after petrochemical-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and China strongly opposed efforts to target plastic production.

The United States raised eyebrows in August when it said it would back plastic production caps in the treaty, putting it in alignment with the EU, Kenya, Peru and other countries in the High Ambition Coalition.

The election of Donald Trump as president, however, has raised questions about that position, as during his first presidency he shunned multilateral agreements and any commitments to slow or stop U.S. oil and petrochemical production.

The U.S. delegation did not answer questions on whether it would reverse its new position to support plastic production caps. But it “supports ensuring that the global instrument addresses plastic products, chemicals used in plastic products, and the supply of primary plastic polymers,” according to a spokesperson for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said she was confident the talks will end with an agreement, pointing to the communique from the Group of 20 nations at a summit last week calling for a legally binding treaty by the end of this year.

“This is a very powerful message,” Andersen told Reuters in Baku, on the sidelines of the UN climate negotiations, before traveling to Busan for the talks. “We know that it is often down to the wire, but if there is a will, I think we will get there.”

For a Pacific island country like Fiji, a global plastics treaty is crucial to protect its fragile ecosystem and public health, said Sivendra Michael, Fiji’s climate minister and chief climate and plastics negotiator.

He told Reuters on the sidelines of the 29th U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP29) this month that despite not producing any plastic, Fiji is bearing the brunt of its downstream pollution.

“Where do these plastics end up? It ends up in our oceans, in our landfill, in our backyards. And the impact of the plastics breaking down into little substances has detrimental effects, not only on the environment, but on us as individuals, on our health,” he said, noting studies that showed most of the fish consumed in the country was polluted with microplastics.

While supporting an international treaty, the petrochemical industry has been vocal in urging governments to avoid setting mandatory plastic production caps, and focus on solutions on reducing plastic waste, like recycling.

“We would see a treaty successful if it would really put … emphasis on ending plastic pollution. Nothing else should be the focus.” said Martin Jung, president for performance materials at chemical producer BASF.

Previous talks have also discussed searching for forms of funding to help developing countries implement the treaty.

At COP29, France, Kenya and Barbados floated setting up a series of global levies on certain sectors that could help ramp up the amount of money that could be made available to developing countries seeking support to aid their clean energy transition and cope with the increasingly severe impacts of climate change.

The proposal included a fee of $60-$70/ton on primary polymer production, which is on average around 5-7% of the polymer price, seen potentially raising an estimated $25 billion-$35 billion per year.

Industry groups have rejected the idea, saying it will raise consumer prices.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Planet Earth is parting company with an asteroid that’s been tagging along as a “mini moon” for the past two months. 

The harmless space rock will peel away on Monday, overcome by the stronger tug of the sun’s gravity. But it will zip closer for a quick visit in January. 

NASA will use a radar antenna to observe the 10-meter (33-foot) asteroid then. That should deepen scientists’ understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, quite possibly a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid. 

While not technically a moon — NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth’s gravity and fully in orbit — it’s “an interesting object” worthy of study. 

The astrophysicist brothers who identified the asteroid’s “mini moon behavior,” Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far. 

Currently more than 3.5 million kilometers (2 million miles) away, the object is too small and faint to see without a powerful telescope. It will pass as close as 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) of Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance before it zooms farther into the solar system while orbiting the sun, not to return until 2055. That’s almost five times farther than the moon. 

First spotted in August, the asteroid began its semi jog around Earth in late September, after coming under the grips of Earth’s gravity and following a horseshoe-shaped path. By the time it returns next year, it will be moving too fast — more than double its speed from September — to hang around, said Raul de la Fuente Marcos. 

NASA will track the asteroid for more than a week in January using the Goldstone solar system radar antenna in California’s Mojave Desert, part of the Deep Space Network. 

Current data suggest that during its 2055 visit, the sun-circling asteroid will once again make a temporary and partial lap around Earth.
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