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Strengthening transparency and accountability, including reiterating our commitment to the full implementation of, and improved compliance with, the International Health Regulations 2005. This includes investigating, reporting and responding to outbreaks of unknown origin. We also call for a timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based WHO-convened Phase 2 COVID-19 Origins study including, as recommended by the experts’ report, in China.
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We are committed to ensuring that Iran will never develop a nuclear weapon. We welcome the substantive discussions between Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) participants, and separately with the United States, to accomplish a return of the United States and Iran to their JCPoA commitments. We support the goal of restoring the nonproliferation benefits of the JCPoA and of ensuring the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme. We urge Iran to stop and reverse all measures that reduce transparency and to ensure full and timely cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. A restored and fully-implemented JCPoA could also pave the way to further address regional and security concerns. We condemn Iran’s support to proxy forces and non-state armed actors, including through financing, training and the proliferation of missile technology and weapons. We call on Iran to stop all ballistic missile activities and proliferation inconsistent with UNSCR 2231 and other relevant resolutions, refrain from destabilising actions and play a constructive role in fostering regional stability and peace.
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Gender equality is at the heart of an open, inclusive, and just society. Persistent gaps in gender equality affect access to basic services as well as decent work, equal pay, social protection, education, technology and many other areas. Unequal division of unpaid care responsibilities in the home and low pay for paid care work also limits women’s empowerment, social and economic participation and leadership. Gender equality intersects with other characteristics and our actions need to take account of these intersections in a meaningful way, including tackling racism in all forms and violence and discrimination against LGBQTI+ populations.
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The unprecedented and interdependent crises of climate change and biodiversity loss pose an existential threat to people, prosperity, security, and nature. Through global action and concerted leadership, 2021 should be a turning point for our planet as we commit to a green transition that cuts emissions, increases adaptation action worldwide, halts and reverses biodiversity loss, and, through policy and technological transformation, creates new high quality jobs and increases prosperity and wellbeing.
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As G7 members, we all reaffirm our commitment to the Paris Agreement and to strengthening and accelerating its implementation through robust national policies and measures and scaled up international cooperation.
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Achieving our collective ambitions of a global green and resilient recovery offers the greatest economic opportunity of our time to boost income, innovation, jobs, productivity and growth while also accelerating action to tackle the existential threat of climate change and environmental degradation.
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We stand united in our commitment to free and fair trade as foundational principles and objectives of the rules-based multilateral system. We agree on the need for the world’s leading democratic nations to unite behind a shared vision to ensure the multilateral trading system is reformed, with a modernised rulebook and a reformed World Trade Organization (WTO) at its centre, to be free and fair for all, more sustainable, resilient and responsive to the needs of global citizens.
We support multilateral and plurilateral agendas to address issues in the global trading system itself and shared global challenges.
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We recognise the importance to the global economy of safely restarting international travel, by land, air and sea, and multilateral efforts to achieve this, including new public health guidance on international travel by the WHO, International Civil Aviation Organisation and International Maritime Organisation. We recognise that this will need a set of common standards for travel including interoperability and mutual recognition of digital applications, testing requirements, recognition of vaccination status including exemptions and comparable criteria for when responsive measures may be required.
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Recognising that ending the pandemic in 2022 will require vaccinating at least 60 per cent of the global population, we will intensify our action to save lives. Our international priority is to accelerate the rollout of safe and effective, accessible and affordable vaccines for the poorest countries, noting the role of extensive immunisation as a global public good.
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United as open societies and economies and guided by our shared values of democracy, freedom, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, we commit to beating COVID-19 everywhere and building back better for all.
Our agenda for global action is built on our commitment to international cooperation, multilateralism and an open, resilient, rules-based world order.
Our immediate focus is beating COVID-19 and we set a collective goal of ending the pandemic in 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic is not under control anywhere until it is under control everywhere. In an interconnected world global health and health security threats respect no borders. We therefore commit both to strengthen global action now to fight COVID-19, and to take further tangible steps to improve our collective defences against future threats and to bolster global health and health security. This includes strengthening the World Health Organization (WHO) and supporting it in its leading and coordinating role in the global health system.
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Secure our future prosperity by championing freer, fairer trade within a reformed trading system, a more resilient global economy, and a fairer global tax system that reverses the race to the bottom. We will collaborate to ensure future frontiers of the global economy and society, from cyber space to outer space, increase the prosperity and wellbeing of all people while upholding our values as open societies. We are convinced of the potential of technological transformation for the common good in accordance with our shared values.
‘I was completely inside’: Lobster diver swallowed by humpback whale off Provincetown
Licensed commercial lobster divers literally pluck lobsters off the sandy bottom, and as Packard, 56, dove down Friday morning, he saw schools of sand lances and stripers swimming by. The ocean food chain was in full evidence, but about 10 feet from the bottom Packard suddenly knew what it truly felt like to be part of that chain.
In something truly biblical, Packard was swallowed whole by a humpback whale.
“All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black,” Packard recalled Friday afternoon following his release from Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis. “I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth.” Source: Cape Cod Times
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report revealed Thursday that an unexpectedly high number of young adults are experiencing heart inflammation after receiving their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
According to the preliminary study, there have been 275 confirmed cases of myocarditis or pericarditis in people ages 16 to 24 who have received two doses of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccine, CNBC reported.
The study was presented to an advisory panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. – Source: Western Journal
The Portland Police Association has relocated from its longtime office in the Kenton neighborhood after the building became the “target of vandalism and arson” for more than a year, Executive Director Daryl Turner announced Tuesday.
In a Facebook post, Turner announced the city’s police union moved into the office on North Lombard Street six years ago. Since then, Turner said residents of the area welcomed officers and staff and “were glad to have the police union and police cars there.” However, tensions flared outside the PPA building multiple times in 2020, as anti-law enforcement sentiments led to protests and, at times, riots. During the events, the building was subjected to graffiti, projectiles and fires.
Following the vandalism and arson, Turner stated neighbors would help paint over “vile and vulgar graffiti” that covered the building and helped picked up trash and garbage. Source: Fox 12 Portland
The police in Portland couldn’t even PROTECT their OWN building from vandals … SAD!