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Islamic world pitches ways to aid desperately poor Afghans
Islamic countries scrambled on Sunday to find ways to help Afghanistan avert an imminent economic collapse they say would have a “horrendous” global impact.
The hastily called meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Islamabad ended with a promise to set up a fund to provide humanitarian aid through the Islamic Development Bank, which would provide a cover for countries to donate without dealing directly with the country's Taliban rulers.
In a press conference at the end of the summit, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi also described what he called good news from the United States, whose special representative on Afghanistan, Tom West, attended the summit.
He said West met with the Taliban delegation led by the interim foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi on the sidelines. Qureshi said West also said he was mandated to “engage ” with the Taliban, that U.S. humanitarian aid to Afghanistan would not carry preconditions and there could be as much as $1.2 billion available through the World Bank in money that could be released to Afghanistan.
There was no immediate response from the U.S. to Qureshi's statements.
There has been a growing call for the U.S. and other countries to release upward of $10 billion in frozen Afghan assets. However, previously the U.S. has said at least some of that money is tied up in litigation involving the survivors and the families of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks carried out by al Qaida while being harbored in Afghanistan by the Taliban during their previous rule.
Sunday's summit brought together dozens of foreign ministers as well as the special representatives on Afghanistan of major powers, including China, the U.S. and Russia. It also included the U.N. undersecretary general on humanitarian affairs, and the president of the Islamic Development Bank Muhammad Sulaiman Al Jasser, who offered several concrete financing proposals. He said the IDB can manage trusts that could be used to move money into Afghanistan, jumpstart businesses and help salvage the deeply troubled economy.
At the outset of the summit, several participating nations called for a quick opening of the country's banking system and collectively, with the United Nations and international banking institutions, to provide assistance to Afghanistan. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan directed his remarks to the U.S., urging Washington to drop preconditions for releasing desperately needed funds and restarting Afghanistan's banking systems.
Khan seemed to offer Taliban a pass on their limits on education for girls, urging the world to understand “cultural sensitivities” and saying human rights and women's rights meant different things in different countries. Still other speakers, including the OIC chairman Hussain Ibrahim Taha, emphasized the need for the protection of human rights, particularly those of women and girls.
“This gathering is about the Afghan people,” said Qureshi, who warned that without immediate aid, Afghanistan was certain to collapse. The consequences would be “horrendous," he said, not just in Afghan lives lost to starvation and disease — but also what would most certainly create a mass exodus of Afghans. He predicted chaos would spread, allowing terrorism and the drug trade to flourish.
Martin Griffiths, the U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, warned that Afghanistan cannot survive on donations alone. He urged donor countries to show flexibility, allowing their money to pay salaries of public sector workers and support “basic services such as health, education, electricity, livelihoods, to allow the people of Afghanistan some chance to get through this winter and some encouragement to remain home with their families."
Beyond that, Griffiths said, “we need constructive engagement with the de facto authorities to clarify what we expect from each other.”
Afghanistan’s teetering economy, he added, requires decisive and compassionate action, or "I fear that this fall will pull down the entire population."
Griffiths said families simply do not have the cash for everyday purchases like food and fuel, as prices soar. The cost of fuel is up by around 40%, and most families spend 80% of their money just to buy food.
He rattled off a number of stark statistics.
“Universal poverty may reach 97% of the population of Afghanistan. That could be the next grim milestone,” he warned. “Within a year, 30% of Afghanistan’s GDP (gross domestic product) could be lost altogether, while male unemployment may double to 29%."
Next year the U.N. would be asking for $4.5 billion in aid for Afghanistan — it's single largest humanitarian aid request, he said.
In what appeared to be a message to the Taliban delegation, Qureshi and subsequent speakers, including Taha, emphasized the protection of human rights, particularly those of women and girls.
In an interview with The Associated Press last week, Muttaqi said that Afghanistan’s new rulers were committed to the education of girls and women in the workforce.
Yet four months into Taliban rule, girls are not allowed to attend high school in most provinces, and though women have returned to their jobs in much of the health care sector, many female civil servants have been barred from coming to work.
At the summit's conclusion Qureshi said the OIC agreed to appoint a special representative on Afghanistan. The 20 foreign ministers and 10 deputy foreign ministers in attendance also agreed to establish a greater partnership with the United Nations to get help to desperate Afghans.
They participants also emphasized the critical need to open Afghanistan’s banking facilities, which have been largely closed since the Taliban takeover on Aug. 15. The Taliban has limited withdrawals from the country’s banks to $200 a month.
“We collectively feel that we have to unlock the financial and banking channels because the economy cannot function and people cannot be held without banking services,” Qureshi said.
UK health boss: COVID-19 rules could tighten by Christmas
Britain’s health secretary has refused to rule out imposing tougher COVID-19 restrictions before Christmas amid the rapid rise of infections and continuing uncertainty about the omicron variant.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said Sunday that the government was assessing the fast-moving situation and urged the public to be cautious as scientists examine the data. Much is still unknown about the highly transmissible new variant, even as hospitals brace for a surge in infections, he told the BBC.
“There are no guarantees in this pandemic, I don’t think,’’ Javid replied when asked about the potential for new restrictions. “At this point we just have to keep everything under review.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week reinstated rules requiring face masks in shops and ordered people to show proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test before entering nightclubs and other crowded venues. He has championed a program that relies on vaccines, an operation that delivered 830,000 booster shots on Saturday alone.
Vaccination sites are being asked to operate 12 hours a day, seven days a week with shopping centers, cathedrals and soccer stadiums into mass vaccination centers. Some sites are working 24 hours a day to make it easier for people who work shifts.
But the government's scientific advisers believe it won't be enough and have recommended more far-reaching restrictions to prevent U.K. hospitals from being overwhelmed, according to leaked minutes from a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies seen by the BBC.
“We can’t wait for hospitalizations to go through the roof before we do something about it, because by then it’s too late,″ Professor David Spiegelhalter told Sky News.
The British Medical Association is warning that almost 50,000 doctors, nurses and other National Health Service staff in England could be off sick with Covid-19 by Christmas Day unless additional measures are introduced. Johnson's Conservative government needs further measures beyond just trying to vaccine-boost its way out of the situation, said Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the association's council.
“The reality is that MPs (lawmakers) have broken up for Christmas leaving the NHS brutally exposed to suffer the consequences of surging case rates and without the restrictions needed to bring these under control,'' Nagpaul said. “Doctors are not only incredibly worried about the potential impact this could have on hospitalizations, but also about what it would mean for patient care across the NHS if we have vast swathes of staff off sick.''
The government on Sunday reported 82,886 more lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases in a day. With over 147,000 deaths, Britain already has Europe's highest COVID-19 death toll after Russia.
Nations across Europe are moving quickly to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the omicron variant. The Dutch government began a tough nationwide lockdown starting Sunday to rein in sharply rising infections and alarmed ministers in France, Germany, Austria and Cyprus have tightened travel restrictions.
Ireland imposed an 8 p.m. curfew on pubs and bars and limited attendance at indoor and outdoor events. Paris canceled its New Year’s Eve fireworks.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan underscored concerns about the climbing COVID-19 cases and their potential to overwhelm the health care system by declaring a major incident Saturday, a move that allows local councils in Britain’s capital to coordinate more closely with emergency services.
That came the same day as protesters marched in London to decry the new restrictions.
The World Health Organization reported Saturday that omicron has been detected in 89 countries. It says COVID-19 cases involving the variant are doubling every 1.5 to 3 days in places with community transmission.
More than 200 dead after typhoon slams Philippines
The death toll following the strongest typhoon to batter the Philippines this year has risen to more than 200, with 52 other people still missing and several central towns and provinces grappling with downed communications and power outages and pleading for food and water, officials said Monday.
At its strongest, the typhoon packed sustained winds of 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 270 kph (168 mph) before it blew out Friday into the South China Sea.
At least 208 people were killed, 52 remained missing and 239 were injured, according to the national police. The toll was expected to increase because several towns and villages remained out of reach due to downed communications and power outages although massive clean-up and repair efforts were underway.
Many died due to falling trees and collapsing walls, flash flood and landslides. A 57-year-old man was found dead hanging from a tree branch and a woman was blown away by the wind and died in Negros Occidental province, police said.
Governor Arlene Bag-ao of Dinagat Islands, among the southeastern provinces first hit by the typhoon, said Rai’s ferocity on her island province of more than 130,000 was worse than that of Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful and deadliest typhoons on record and which devastated the central Philippines in November 2013 but did not inflict any casualties in Dinagat.
“If it was like being in a washing machine before, this time there was like a huge monster that smashed itself everywhere, grabbed anything like trees and tin roofs and then hurled them everywhere,” Bag-ao told The Associated Press by telephone. “The wind was swirling north to south to east and west repeatedly for six hours. Some tin roof sheets were blown away then were tossed back.”
At least 14 villagers died and more than 100 others were injured by flying tin roofs, debris and glass shards and were treated in makeshift surgery rooms in damaged hospitals in Dinagat, Bag-ao said. Many more would have died if thousands of residents had not been evacuated from high-risk villages.
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Like several other typhoon-hit provinces, Dinagat remained without electricity and communications and many residents in the province, where the roofs of most houses and buildings were ripped off, needed construction materials, food and water. Bag-ao and other provincial officials traveled to nearby regions that had cellphone signals to seek aid and coordinate recovery efforts with the national government.
More than 700,000 people were lashed by the typhoon in central island provinces, including more than 400,000 who had to be moved to emergency shelters. Thousands of residents were rescued from flooded villages, including in Loboc town in hard-hit Bohol province, where residents were trapped on roofs and trees to escape from rising floodwaters.
Coast guard ships ferried 29 American, British, Canadian, Swiss, Russian, Chinese and other tourists who were stranded on Siargao Island, a popular surfing destination that was devastated by the typhoon, officials said.
Emergency crews were scrambling to restore electricity in 227 cities and towns, officials said. Power has been restored in only 21 areas so far. Cellphone connections in more than 130 cities and towns were cut by the typhoon but at least 106 had been reconnected by Monday, officials said. Two local airports remained closed except for emergency flights, but most others have reopened, the civil aviation agency said.
Bag-ao and other officials were concerned that their provinces may run out of fuel, which was in high demand due to the use of temporary power generators, including those used for refrigerated warehouses with large amounts of coronavirus vaccine stocks. Officials delivered vaccine shipments to many provinces for an intensified immunization campaign, which was postponed last week due to the typhoon.
At the Vatican, Pope Francis expressed his closeness Sunday to the people of the Philippines, referencing the typhoon “that destroyed many homes.”
About 20 storms and typhoons annually batter the Philippines, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. The Southeast Asian archipelago also lies along the seismically active Pacific “Ring of Fire” region, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.
UK's Johnson walks tightrope between politics, COVID surge
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is walking a political tightrope as he faces increasing attacks from both friends and enemies amid a surge in COVID-19 infections.
For the second winter in a row, Johnson is betting vaccines will be his savior, urging everyone to get booster shots to slow the spread of the new omicron variant, hoping to avoid further politically unpalatable restrictions on business and social activity.
The threat to Johnson and his Conservative Party was on stark display last week as the prime minister reeled from one political crisis to another.
On Tuesday, Johnson faced the biggest parliamentary rebellion of his tenure as 97 Conservatives voted against new COVID-19 restrictions. Two days later he suffered a stinging by-election defeat in a normally safe Conservative area amid anger over reports that government employees held Christmas parties last year while the country was in lockdown. Then Saturday, one of his staunchest allies resigned from his Cabinet, citing discomfort with the new coronavirus rules.
While Johnson’s policy on trying to restrict COVID-19 infections is sound, he will face increasing pressure from all wings of his party to change course, said Giles Wilkes, a senior fellow at the non-partisan Institute for Government. The challenge is to ignore the political noise and base his policies on science, said Wilkes, a former adviser to the prime minister’s predecessor, Theresa May.
“The past month’s political spasms may mark a historical turning point in the story of this administration,” Wilkes said, highlighting pivotal decisions of former Prime Ministers John Major and Gordon Brown that ultimately undermined their standing with voters. “Those are not happy comparisons for the prime minister to contemplate.”
On Sunday, British newspapers were filled with reports on potential contenders for the prime minister’s office, including Treasury Secretary Rishi Sunak, Foreign Minister Liz Truss and former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
The pressure on Johnson is being stoked by the highly transmissible omicron variant, which has pushed Britain's COVID-19 infections to record highs in recent days. That has once again fueled concerns that U.K. hospitals will be overwhelmed this winter.
In response, Johnson ordered the National Health Service to ramp up its vaccine program a week ago, promising that everyone 18 and over would be offered a booster shot this month. But he also introduced legislation requiring people to where face masks in shops and to show they have been double-vaccinated or had negative COVID-19 test to enter crowded venues like nightclubs.
The results of Britain's vaccination program have been impressive, with the number of booster shots administered jumping to more than 900,000 on Saturday from 550,000 a week earlier. Some vaccination centers are staying open 24 hours a day to offer shift workers easier access.
But the new restrictions triggered howls from the libertarian wing of Johnson’s party, who say they were unnecessary and the precursor to further limits on personal freedoms. In the face of that opposition, Johnson had to rely on votes from the opposition Labour Party to approve the use of COVID-19 health passports.
Now the government’s scientific advisers are recommending that Johnson go further. Limits on social interactions and a return to social distancing are needed to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, according to leaked minutes from a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.
Tobias Ellwood, one of the Conservative rebels, criticized the government’s “off the bus, on the bus” approach to tackling the pandemic, saying the country needs consistency.
“We need almost like a wartime leader, we need a strong No. 10, and the machinery of No. 10 around Boris Johnson. That’s what needs to be improved,’’ he told Times Radio. “The boosterism, the energy, is not enough in these current circumstances.”
Meanwhile, Labour leaders say the “partygate” scandal has undermined public confidence in the Conservative government. It will be difficult for Johnson to impose any new coronavirus restrictions because government offices violated their own rules last year.
Government ministers met Sunday with the leaders of governments in Scotland and Wales to discuss “shared challenges, including the economic disruption caused by COVID.” The meeting was chaired by Cabinet Office Minister Steve Barclay, not the prime minister.
“He is hiding from his own backbenchers instead of leading,” Wes Streeting, Labour’s spokesman on health issues, told Sky News. “And that kind of weakness instead of leadership should really concern the public, because I think people out there know that measures are necessary.’’
Omicron may sideline two leading drugs against COVID-19
As strained U.S. hospitals brace for a new surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the fast-spreading omicron variant, doctors are warning of yet another challenge: the two standard drugs they’ve used to fight infections are unlikely to work against the new strain.
For more than a year antibody drugs from Regeneron and Eli Lilly have been the go-to treatments for early COVID-19, thanks to their ability to head off severe disease and keep patients out of the hospital.
But both drugmakers recently warned that laboratory testing suggests their therapies will be much less potent against omicron, which contains dozens of mutations that make it harder for antibodies to attack the virus. And while the companies say they can quickly develop new omicron-targeting antibodies, those aren’t expected to launch for at least several months.
A third antibody from British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline appears to be the best positioned to fight omicron. But Glaxo’s drug is not widely available in the U.S., accounting for a small portion of the millions of doses purchased and distributed by the federal government. U.S. health officials are now rationing scarce drug supplies to states.
Read:Fauci says omicron variant is 'just raging around the world'
“I think there’s going to be a shortage,” said Dr. Jonathan Li, director of the Harvard/Brigham Virology Specialty Laboratory. “We’re down to one FDA-authorized monoclonal antibody” with omicron because of the reduced effectiveness of Regeneron and Lilly’s drugs.
The delta variant still accounts for more than 95% of estimated U.S. cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But agency leaders say omicron is spreading faster than any past variant and will become the dominant strain nationwide within weeks.
Delivered by injection or infusion, antibodies are laboratory-made versions of human proteins that help the immune system fight off viruses and other infections.
Glaxo’s drug, developed with Vir Biotechnology, was specifically formulated to bind to a part of the virus that is less likely to mutate, according to the companies. Early studies of laboratory-simulated omicron by the drugmakers and outside researchers show promising results.
Supply of the drug is “extremely limited, and additional doses of the product will not be available until the week of January 3rd,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in an statement posted online.
After pausing distribution last month to conserve supply, HHS is now shipping 55,000 doses of the drug, called sotrovimab, to state health departments, with the doses arriving as early as Tuesday. An additional 300,000 are expected in January.
The agency said it is distributing the drug to states based on their levels of infections and hospitalizations.
HHS recommends states conserve the drug for the highest risk patients who are most likely to have omicron infections, either based on laboratory testing that can identify the variant or elevated levels of omicron spread in local communities, identified as 20% and higher.
High-risk patients include seniors and those with serious health problems, such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes and immune-system disorders.
Prior to the pause in shipments, Glaxo’s drug accounted for about 10% of the 1.8 million antibody doses distributed to state health officials between mid-September and late November, according to federal figures.
London-based Glaxo says it is on track to produce 2 million doses by May, under contracts with the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan and several other countries. The company is working to add more manufacturing capacity next year.
The loss of two leading antibody therapies puts even more focus on a pair of highly anticipated antiviral pills that U.S. regulators are expected to soon authorize.
The drugs from Pfizer and Merck would be the first treatments Americans can take at home to head off severe disease. Pfizer’s drug in particular has shown a powerful effect, curbing hospitalizations and deaths by nearly 90% in high-risk patients.
“If it’s rolled out effectively this has a real big potential,” to make up for antibody treatments, said Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University. “That’s an immediate place where these antivirals could minimize the impact of omicron.”
Read: WHO: Omicron detected in 89 countries, cases doubling fast
Still, initial supplies of both drugs are expected to be limited.
The shrinking toolbox of treatments is a painful reminder that the virus still has the upper hand in the U.S., even with more than 200 million Americans fully vaccinated.
Scientists around the world are racing to understand omicron, including whether it causes more or less severe disease and how easily it evades protection from prior infection, vaccination, and antibody drugs.
“We’re certainly going to see hospitalizations rise,” said Dr. James Cutrell of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “If we have a lack of antibodies that’s certainly going to contribute to that many more patients needing to be in the hospital.”
Fauci says omicron variant is 'just raging around the world'
The COVID-19 omicron variant is "just raging around the world," the White House's top medical adviser said Sunday, and President Joe Biden is planning to give "a stark warning of what the winter will look" for unvaccinated Americans.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the county's leading infectious disease expert, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that "the real problem" for the U.S. hospital system is that "we have so many people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who have not yet been vaccinated."
The prospect of a winter chilled by a wave of coronavirus infections is a severe reversal from the optimism projected by Biden some 10 months ago, when he suggested at a CNN town hall that the country would essentially be back to normal by this Christmas. Biden has been careful not to overpromise, yet confidence in the country has been battered by an unrelenting wave of COVID-19 mutations and variations that have left many Americans emotionally exhausted, dispirited and worried about infections.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, tried to defend the president's earlier promise in a separate interview Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."
"The idea about hoping and having an aspiration to be independent of the virus after a period of time is understandable and reasonable," Fauci said. "But the one thing that we know from, now, almost two years experience with this virus is that it is really very unpredictable."
Yet the president seems stuck to be potentially stuck in a negative feedback loop as there is a risk that infections could worsen the supply chain challenges facing the United States and fuel inflation. Gov. Jared Polis, D-Colo., told NBC that Biden should stop talking about vaccination as two shots and a booster and, instead, call it "three doses" that are needed to maximize protection.
Polis pivoted to inflation that is running at a nearly four-decade high, saying Biden needed to show the country how he is addressing that particular challenge as part of his coming remarks on the omicron variant.
READ: Booster at least 80% effective against severe Omicron
"We can do very concrete things that actually reduce the costs for Americans," said Polis, noting that Colorado is cutting vehicle registration fees and making it free to register a new business.
The administration is expecting a series of breakthrough infections with the surge of holiday travelers. Fauci said most people who have been vaccinated and gotten a booster should be OK if they take precautions such as continually wearing masks in crowded settings such as airports.
Biden plans to speak Tuesday on the status of the fight against COVID-19 and discuss government help for communities in need of assistance, White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted. The president also will warn about the risks for those Americans who "choose to remain unvaccinated."
Fauci told NBC the president would again urge people to get the booster shot, highlight increased availability of testing, discuss "surge teams" for besieged hospitals and explain how important it is to provide vaccines for the rest of the world.
"The one thing that's very clear, and there's no doubt about this, is its extraordinary capability of spreading, its transmissibility capability. It is just, you know, raging through the world, really," Fauci said. "And if you look even here in the United States, you have some regions that start off with a few percent of the isolates that are positive, now going up to 30%, 40%, and some places 50%."
Psaki's announcement Saturday on Twitter came after Vice President Kamala Harris said in a Los Angeles Times interview that the Biden administration "didn't see Delta coming. I think most scientists did not — upon whose advice and direction we have relied — didn't see Delta coming." She added: "We didn't see Omicron coming. And that's the nature of what this, this awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and variants."
The vice president's words raised doubts as to the administration's strategy for addressing the pandemic. Biden had effectively declared independence from the virus at a White House celebration on July Fourth to mark progress with vaccinations inside the United States, yet the global nature of the pandemic meant that the disease could evolve as others around the world waited for immunization.
Fauci told NBC he saw the variants coming and he thought Harris' statement "was taken a bit out of context," adding he believed she was referring to "the extraordinary number of mutations ... particularly with omicron. No one had expected it that much but we were well prepared and expected that we were going to see variants."
Islamic world unites to aid desperately poor Afghanistan
The economic collapse of Afghanistan, already teetering dangerously on the edge, would have a "horrendous" impact on the region and the world, successive speakers warned Sunday at the start of a one-day summit of foreign ministers from dozens of Islamic countries.
The hastily called meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Islamabad brought together dozens of foreign ministers with the special representatives on Afghanistan of major powers, including China, the U.S. and Russia.
The gathering also included the U.N. undersecretary general on humanitarian affairs s well as the president of the Islamic Development Bank Muhammad Sulaiman Al Jasser, who offered several concrete financing proposals. He said the IDB can manage trusts that could be used to move money into Afghanistan, jumpstart businesses and help salvage the deeply troubled economy.
The dire warnings called for the U.S. and other nations to ease sanctions, including the release upward of $10 billion in frozen funds following the Taliban takeover of Kabul on Aug. 15.
Speakers also called for a quick opening of the country's banking system and collectively, with the United Nations and international banking institutions, assistance to Afghanistan. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan directed his remarks to the U.S., urging Washington to drop preconditions to releasing desperately needed funds and restarting Afghanistan's banking systems.
Khan seemed to offer Taliban a pass on the limits on education for girls, urging the world to understand "cultural sensitivities" and saying human rights and women's rights meant different things in different countries. Still other speakers, including the OIC chairman Hussain Ibrahim Taha, emphasized the need for the protection of human rights, particularly those of women and girls.
The new Taliban rulers' acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi was in attendance in the grand hall of the Pakistani Parliament, where dozens of foreign ministers from many of the 57-nation OIC had gathered.
"This gathering is about the Afghan people," said Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who warned that without immediate aid, Afghanistan was certain to collapse. He said it would have "horrendous consequences," not just in Afghan lives lost to starvation and disease, but would most certainly result in a mass exodus of Afghans. Chaos would spread, he predicted, and allow terrorism and the drug trade to flourish.
Martin Griffiths, the U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, warned that Afghanistan will not survive on donations alone. He urged donor countries to show flexibility, allowing their money to pay salaries of public sector workers and support "basic services such as health, education, electricity, livelihoods, to allow the people of Afghanistan some chance to get through this winter and some encouragement to remain home with their families."
Beyond that, Griffiths said, "we need constructive engagement with the de facto authorities to clarify what we expect from each other."
Afghanistan's teetering economy, he added, requires decisive and compassionate action, or "I fear that this fall will pull down the entire population."
Griffiths said families simply do not have the cash for everyday purchases like food and fuel as prices soar. The cost of fuel is up by around 40%, and most families spend 80% of their money just to buy food.
He rattled off a number of stark statistics.
"Universal poverty may reach 97% of the population of Afghanistan. That could be the next grim milestone," he warned. "Within a year, 30% of Afghanistan's GDP (gross domestic product) could be lost altogether, while male unemployment may double to 29%."
Next year the U.N. would be asking for $4.5 billion in aid for Afghanistan - it's single largest humanitarian aid request, he said.
In what appeared to be a message to the Taliban delegation, Qureshi and subsequent speakers, including Taha, emphasized the protection of human rights, particularly those of women and girls.
In an interview with The Associated Press last week, Muttaqi said that Afghanistan's new rulers were committed to the education of girls and women in the workforce.
Yet four months into Taliban rule, girls are not allowed to attend high school in most provinces and though women have returned to their jobs in much of the health care sector, many female civil servants have been barred from coming to work.
Meanwhile, Qureshi said he wanted to see the summit end with concrete solutions to help Afghanistan and its people. He called for the summit to pledge and channel aid to Afghanistan; increase investment bilaterally or through the OIC in education, health, technical and vocational skills; and to establish a group of experts from the OIC, the United Nations, the Islamic Development Bank and others to help Afghanistan "access legitimate banking services and ease the serious liquidity challenges of the Afghan people."
He also called for participants to focus on food security, invest in capacity building inside Afghanistan to fight terrorism and the burgeoning drug trafficking.
"Finally, engage with Afghan authorities to help meet the expectations of the international community, in particular regarding political and social inclusivity, respect for human rights, especially the rights of women and girls and combating terrorism," he said.
Indian man beaten to death inside historic Sikh temple
A man was beaten to death in the northern Indian city of Amritsar after he allegedly attempted to commit a sacrilegious act inside the historic Golden Temple, one of Sikhs' most revered shrines.
The incident occurred during the daily evening prayer on Saturday, media reported, after the man jumped over a railing inside the inner sanctum and attempted to grab a sword that was kept near the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book.
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TV footage showed people inside the temple rushing to stop him.
Police told New Delhi Television that the man was killed after the incident and that they were checking CCTV footage to glean more information.
“The man, about 20 to 25 years of age, had a yellow cloth tied on his head and jumped the fence ... the people inside held him and escorted him out to the corridor where there was a violent altercation and he died,” Parminder Singh Bandal, deputy commissioner of Amritsar police, told the channel.
The chief minister of Punjab state, where Amritsar is located, strongly condemned the incident, calling it the most “unfortunate and heinous act to attempt sacrilege,” his office tweeted late on Saturday.
WHO: Omicron detected in 89 countries, cases doubling fast
The omicron variant of the coronavirus has been detected in 89 countries, and COVID-19 cases involving the variant are doubling every 1.5 to 3 days in places with community transmission and not just infections acquired abroad, the World Health Organization said Saturday.
Omicron's “substantial growth advantage” over the delta variant means it is likely to soon overtake delta as the dominant form of the virus in countries where the new variant is spreading locally, the U.N. health agency said.
READ: Netherlands 'going into lockdown again' to curb omicron
WHO noted that omicron is spreading rapidly even in countries with high vaccination rates or where a significant proportion of the population has recovered from COVID-19.
It remains unclear if the rapid growth of omicron cases is because the variant evades existing immunity, is inherently more transmissible than previous variants, or a combination of both, WHO said.
READ: WHO: Omicron detected in 89 countries, cases doubling fast
Other major questions about omicron remain unanswered, including how effective each of the existing COVID-19 vaccines are against it. Conclusive data also does not exist yet on how ill omicron makes COVID-19 patients, the health agency said.
WHO first labeled omicron a variant of concern on Nov. 26.
Typhoon death toll in Philippines rises to nearly 100
The governor of an island province in the central Philippines said at least 49 people died in the devastation wrought by Typhoon Rai in just half of the towns that managed to contact him, bringing the death toll in the strongest typhoon to batter the country this year to nearly 100.
Gov. Arthur Yap of Bohol province said 10 other people were missing and 13 injured, and suggested the death toll may still considerably increase with many mayors unable to reach him due to downed communications.
In a statement posted on Facebook early Sunday, Yap ordered provincial mayors to spend money to rapidly secure food packs and drinking water, which was an urgent problem given that water stations have not been able to operate during power outage.
After joining a military aerial survey of typhoon-ravaged towns, Yap said “it is very clear that the damage sustained by Bohol is great and all-encompassing.”
He said the inspection did not cover four towns, where the typhoon blew in as it rampaged on Thursday and Friday through central island provinces. The government said about 780,000 people were affected, including more than 300,000 residents who had to evacuate their homes.
At least 39 other typhoon deaths were reported by the disaster-response agency and the national police. Officials on Dinagat Islands, one of the southeastern provinces first pounded by the typhoon, separately reported 10 deaths just from a few towns, bringing the overall fatalities so far to 98.
President Rodrigo Duterte flew to the region Saturday and promised 2 billion pesos ($40 million) in new aid.
At its strongest, the typhoon packed sustained winds of 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 270 kph (168 mph), one of the most powerful in recent years to hit the disaster-prone archipelago, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.
Floodwaters rose rapidly in Bohol’s riverside town of Loboc, where residents were trapped on their roofs and trees. They were rescued by the coast guard the following day. On Dinagat Islands, an official said the roofs of nearly all the houses, including emergency shelters, were either damaged or blown away.
READ: Typhoon leaves 19 dead, many homes roofless in Philippines
At least 227 cities and towns lost electricity, which has since been restored in only 21 areas, officials said, adding three regional airports were damaged, including two that remain closed.
The deaths and widespread damage left by the typhoon ahead of Christmas in the largely Roman Catholic nation brought back memories of the catastrophe inflicted by another typhoon, Haiyan, one of the most powerful on record. It hit many of the central provinces that were pummeled last week, leaving more than 6,300 people dead in November 2013.
READ: Powerful typhoon hits Philippines, nearly 100,000 evacuated
About 20 storms and typhoons batter the Philippines each year. The archipelago is located in the seismically active Pacific “Ring of Fire” region, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.