United News of Bangladesh

The United Nations forecast Wednesday (January 25, 2023) that global economic growth will fall significantly to 1.9% this year as a result of the food and energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine, the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, persistently high inflation and the climate emergency. Painting a gloomy and uncertain economic outlook, the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs said the current global economic slowdown “cuts across both developed and developing countries, with many facing risks of recession in 2023.” “A broad-based and severe slowdown of the global economy looms large amid high inflation, aggressive monetary tightening, and heightened uncertainties,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a foreword to the 178-page report. The report said this year's 1.9% economic growth forecast — down from an estimated 3% in 2022 — is one of the lowest growth rates in recent decades. But it projects a moderate pick-up to 2.7% in 2024 if inflation gradually abates and economic headwinds start to subside. Read More: Global economic growth will slow down in 2023, but will pick up in 2024: IMF chief In its annual report earlier this month, the World Bank which lends money to poorer countries for development projects, cut its growth forecast nearly in half, from it previous projection of 3% to just 1.7%. The International Monetary Fund, which provides loans to needy countries, projected in October that global growth would slow from 6% in 2021 to 3.2% in 2022 and 2.7% in 2023. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos that 2023 will be a difficult year, but stuck by the projection and said “we don’t expect a global recession.” Shantanu Mukherjee, director of the economic analysis and policy division of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, highlighted the growing income inequality in the world at a news conference launching the report. Between 2019 and 2021, he said, average incomes for the top 10% rose by 1.2% while the incomes of the lowest 40% fell by 0.5%. Read More: Bangladesh-Turkiye Business Forum launched to usher in new era of economic cooperation “The top 10% now earns on average over 42 times what the lowest percentiles” earn, Mukherjee said. According to the U.N. report, this year “growth momentum has weakened in the United States, the European Union and other developed economies, adversely affecting the rest of the world economy.” In the United States, GDP is projected to expand by only 0.4% in 2023 after estimated growth of 1.8% in 2022, the U.N. said. And many European countries are projected to experience “a mild recession" with the war in Ukraine heading into its second year on Feb. 14, high energy costs, and inflation and tighter financial conditions depressing household consumption and investment. The economies in the 27-nation European Union are forecast to grow by just 0.2% in 2023, down from an estimated 3.3% in 2022, the U.N. said. And in the United Kingdom, which left the EU three years ago, GDP is projected to contract by 0.8% in 2023, continuing a recession that began in the second half of 2022, it said. Read More: China’s economic growth falls to second-lowest level in four decades With China’s government abandoning its zero-COVID policy late last year and easing monetary and fiscal policies, the U.N. forecast that its economy, which expanded by only 3% in 2022, will accelerate to 4.8% this year. “But the reopening of the economy is expected to be bumpy,” the U.N. said. ”Growth will likely remain well below the pre-pandemic rate of 6-6.5%.” The U.N. report said Japan’s economy is expected to be among the better-performing among developed countries this year, with GDP forecast to increase by 1.5%, slightly lower than last year’s estimated growth of 1.6%. Across east Asia, the U.N. said economic recovery remains fragile though GDP growth in 2023 is forecast to reach 4.4%, up from 3.2% last year, and stronger than in other regions. Read More: AL govt's ouster a 'must' to tackle political, economic crises In South Asia, the U.N. forecast average GDP growth will slow from 5.6% last year to 4.8% this year as a result of high food and energy prices, “monetary tightening and fiscal vulnerabilities.” But growth in India, which is expected to overtake China this year as the world’s most populous nation, is expected to remain strong at 5.8%, slightly lower than the estimated 6.4% in 2022, “as higher interest rates and a global slowdown weigh on investments and exports,” the U.N. report said. In Western Asia, oil-producing countries are benefiting from high prices and rising output as well as a revival in tourism, the U.N. said. But economies that aren’t oil producers remain weak “given tightening access to international finance and severe fiscal constraints,” and average growth in the region is projected to slow from an estimated 6.4% in 2022 to 3.5% this year. The U.N. said Africa has been hit “by multiple shocks, including weaker demand from key trading partners (especially China and Europe), a sharp increase in energy and food prices, rapidly rising borrowing costs and adverse weather events.” Read More: Burden of Bangladesh’s economic and political stability must be shared One result, it said, is mounting debt-servicing burdens which have forced a growing number of African governments to seek bilateral and multilateral support. The U.N. projected economic growth in Africa to slow from an estimated 4.1% in 2022 to 3.8% this year. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.N. said the outlook “remains challenging,” citing labor market prospects, stubbornly high inflation and other issues. It forecast that regional growth will slow to just 1.4% in 2023 from an estimated expansion of 3.8% in 2022. “The region’s largest economies – Argentina, Brazil and Mexico – are expected to grow at very low rates due to tightening financial conditions, weakening exports, and domestic vulnerabilities,” the U.N. said. Read More: Bangladesh considering ‘pros and cons’ of Indo-Pacific Economic Framework: Momen For the world’s least developed countries, the U.N. said growth is projected at 4.4% this year, about the same as last year but significantly below the UN's target of 7% by 2030.

In the wake of the worst massacre in Los Angeles County history, the California governor was meeting gunshot victims in the hospital when he was pulled away and briefed on a mass shooting at the other end of the state. Word that a gunman had killed seven people at mushroom farms in a scenic coastal stretch of Northern California came just hours after Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke of his fatigue and frustration with mass shootings. “I can’t keep doing them,” he told reporters earlier Monday in Monterey Park, where 11 people were killed at a dance studio. “Saying the same thing over and over and over again, it’s insane.” Yet Newsom was in Half Moon Bay on Tuesday to address the third mass shooting in just over a week in a state with some of the nation’s toughest gun laws and lowest gun death rates. His voice brimming with anger and emotional at times, Newsom said he consulted notes he used at past mass shootings: the slaying of 12 at a Thousand Oaks country and western bar in 2018; the killing of three and wounding of 17 at the 2019 Gilroy Garlic Festival; the slaying of nine workers at a San Jose rail yard in 2021. “I started writing in ‘Monterey Park,’” Newsom said. “And now I gotta write in, ‘Half Moon Bay.’ What the hell is going on?” A 66-year-old farmworker was booked on murder and attempted murder charges after shooting eight people, killing seven, in a crime authorities said was a case of workplace violence in the rich agricultural area that lies between the Pacific Ocean and coastal mountains. In Monterey Park, a 72-year-old gunman shot up a dance hall in an Asian American community that had been celebrating Lunar New Year’s Eve on Saturday night, wounding nine people in addition to the 11 killed. The gunman later took his own life. A week earlier, at least two assailants fatally shot a 16-year-old mother clutching her 10-month-old baby, and killed four others in a brazen attack in a central California farming community that remained unsolved. “Our hearts are with the people in California,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday at a meeting with Democratic congressional leaders. “They’ve been a rough, rough couple of days.” Biden noted that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced an assault weapons ban, and he urged lawmakers to pass it. Newsom also called for stronger gun safety laws and took particular aim at the large capacity magazines — like the one the dance studio gunman had — and what he called “weapons of damn war.” “It’s said all the time: ‘Only in America,’” he said. “No. 1 in gun ownership, No. 1 in gun deaths. It’s not even complicated.” The recent slayings moved California up five slots to 26th place on the number of fatal mass shootings per capita in the U.S. since 2006, according to a USA TODAY/AP/Northeastern University mass killing database. The database only counts killings of at least four people. While California has the highest number of fatal mass shootings — 49, including the recent three — it had ranked 31st beforehand when adjusted for being the nation’s most populous state with nearly 40 million residents. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists California as having the 7th lowest gun mortality rate in the country per 100,000 residents, according to the most recent statistics available from 2020. It’s 20th lowest in terms of homicide rate, which is not limited to shootings. With the back-to-back killings, detectives at both ends of the state were trying to answer the question that often goes unanswered in the face of senseless violence: Why? Los Angeles Sheriff Robert Luna called the dance hall gunman, 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, a “mad man” and said investigators were looking into whether he had relationships with the people who were shot at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio. Tran fired 42 rounds at the ballroom popular with older Asian Americans. He then drove to another nearby dance hall where an employee wrested a modified 9 mm submachine gun-style weapon away from him, Luna said. Tran fatally shot himself Sunday as officers surrounded the van he was inside. A handgun was recovered from the van, which matched descriptions of the vehicle he used to get away from the dance studio. Mounds of flowers, including dozens of yellow and white mums, were left in front of the studio’s closed gates Tuesday. On a brick column next to the gates someone taped a piece of blue paper with the typed “Ban Semi-automatic Rifles” and below it a translation in Chinese. So far, there have been six mass killings this year in the U.S., and the Monterey Park shootings were the deadliest attack since May 24, when 21 people were killed in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The Half Moon Bay slayings came less than 48 hours later when 66-year-old Chunli Zhao shot five people at a mushroom farm where he worked, killing four, authorities said. He then drove to a farm where he once worked nearby, and fatally shot three other people. The victims were Asian and Hispanic, and some were migrant workers. One of the workers killed was Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50, his brother, Servando Martinez Jimenez, told The Associated Press. He was from the Mexican state of Oaxaca and lived in the U.S. 28 years. “He was a good person,” Martinez Jimenez said in Spanish. “He was polite and friendly with everyone. He never had any problems with anyone. I don’t understand why all this happened.” The farm shootings were the largest mass killing in San Mateo County. “We’ve never had one in this county of this many deaths at one scene or one time,” District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. Zhao was arrested after officers found him in his car in the parking lot of a sheriff’s substation. Eamonn Allen, a spokesperson for the San Mateo County sheriff, declined to answer whether Zhao had a criminal history, but said “there were no specific indicators that would have led us to believe he was capable of something like this.” The San Francisco Chronicle, however, reported that Zhao was accused 10 years ago of threatening to split a coworker’s head open with a knife and separately tried to suffocate the man with a pillow, based on court documents. Authorities have shared little about Tran, who briefly owned a trucking company in Monterey Park from 2002 to 2004, according to California business records. He was once arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm in 1990 and had a limited criminal history, Luna said. The sheriff could not immediately say if a gun arrest at a time when firearms laws were different would have barred him from owning weapons. Tran once frequented the ballroom and another dance hall he later targeted and griped about the way he thought people treated him there, a man who identified himself as a longtime friend told The Associated Press. Tran was perpetually distrustful and paranoid and would regularly complain that people at the clubs didn’t like him, according to the former friend who requested anonymity to speak about Tran because he wanted to avoid the media spotlight. Investigators were also looking into reports Tran made twice this month to police in the town where he lived that family members tried to poison him, defrauded him and stole from him a decade or two ago in the LA area, Hemet police spokesperson Alan Reyes told The Associated Press. Tran never returned with documentation he promised to provide. Sheriff’s deputies from Los Angeles County on Monday searched Tran’s home in a gated senior community in Hemet, a little over an hour’s drive from the site of the massacre. Officers found a .308-caliber rifle, an unknown number of bullets and evidence he was making homemade firearm suppressors that muffle the sound of the weapons. Newsom said he purposely avoided news conferences in Los Angeles to meet with residents of the community, people wounded by gunfire and the hero, Brandon Tsay, who disarmed Tran. While he was in Monterey Park, a teary-eyed mother rolled up in her car and asked him to reassure her three daughters that everything was going to be OK. Her 8-year-old had heard the gunfire and knew it wasn’t firecrackers. She hadn’t slept at night and was afraid to go to school, the mother said. Newsom told the girl, “It’s gonna get better.” But in front of a group of dozens of politicians, law enforcement officers and reporters assembled in Half Moon Bay, he said he was relieved she didn’t make him lock pinky fingers and promise like his own 8-year-old daughter would. “Because I wasn’t so sure.”  

The UN health agency has released an urgent call to action to countries to prevent, detect and respond to incidents of substandard and falsified medical products. Over the past four months, countries have reported several incidents of over-the-counter cough syrups for children with confirmed or suspected contamination with high levels of diethylene glycol (DEG) and ethylene glycol (EG). The cases are from at least seven countries, associated with more than 300 fatalities in three of these countries. Most are young children under the age of five. These contaminants are toxic chemicals used as industrial solvents and antifreeze agents that can be fatal even in small amounts, and should never be found in medicines. Based on country reports, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued three global medical alerts addressing these incidents. Medical Product Alert N°6/2022 on October 5, 2022, focused on the outbreak in the Gambia, Medical Product Alert N°7/2022 on November 6, 2022, focused on Indonesia, and Medical Product Alert No1/2023 on January 11, 2023, focused on Uzbekistan. The WHO's medical product alerts were rapidly disseminated to the national health authorities of all of its 194 member states. These medical product alerts requested included the detection and removal of contaminated medicines from circulation in the markets, increased surveillance and diligence within the supply chains of countries and regions likely to be affected, immediate notification to the WHO if these substandard products are discovered in-country; and otherwise inform the public of the dangers and toxic effects of the substandard medicines at issue. Since these are not isolated incidents, the WHO called on various key stakeholders engaged in the medical supply chain to take immediate and coordinated action. The UN health agency urged regulators and governments to detect and remove from circulation in their respective markets substandard medical products that have been identified in the WHO medical alerts referred to above as potential causes of death and disease. Read more: Policies must to stop misuse, overuse of antibiotics: Health Minister The WHO also called on them to ensure that all medical products in their respective markets are approved for sale by competent authorities and obtainable from authorised/licenced suppliers; assign appropriate resources to improve and increase risk-based inspections of manufacturing sites within their jurisdiction following international norms and standards. The UN health agency urged medicine manufacturers to only buy pharmaceutical grade excipients from qualified and bona fide suppliers; conduct comprehensive testing upon receipt of supplies and before use in the manufacture of finished products.

A gunman killed 10 people and wounded 10 others at a Los Angeles-area ballroom dance club following a Lunar New Year celebration, setting off a manhunt for the suspect in the latest mass shooting tragedy in an American community. Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said Sunday that the wounded were taken to hospitals and their conditions range from stable to critical. He said the 10 people died at the scene in the city of Monterey Park. Meyer said people were “pouring out of the location screaming” when officers arrived at around 10:30 p.m. Saturday. He said officers then went into the ballroom and found victims as firefighters treated the wounded. Meyer gave no description of the male suspect or the weapon he used, or why police gave no information on the shooting for hours while the shooter remained on the run. He also said police were investigating another incident in the nearby city of Alhambra to see whether it was connected. Meyer said it’s too early in the investigation to know if the gunman knew anyone at the ballroom or if it was a hate crime or not. He gave no other details. The Lunar New Year celebration had attracted thousands. Monterey Park is a city of about 60,000 people with a large Asian population about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from downtown Los Angeles. Two days of festivities were planned but officials cancelled Sunday’s events following the shooting. The tragedy marked the fifth mass shooting in the U.S. this month and the deadliest since 21 people were killed in a school in Uvalde, Texas, according to The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S. The latest violence comes two months after five people were killed at a Colorado Springs nightclub. Seung Won Choi, who owns the Clam House seafood barbecue restaurant across the street from where the shooting happened, told The Los Angeles Times that three people rushed into his business and told him to lock the door. The people said to Choi that there was a shooter with a gun who had multiple rounds of ammunition on him. Wong Wei, who lives nearby, told The Los Angeles Times that his friend was in a bathroom at the dance club that night when the shooting started. When she came out, he said, she saw a gunman and three bodies. The friend then fled to Wei’s home at around 11 p.m., he said, adding that his friends told him that the shooter appeared to fire indiscriminately with a long gun. “They don’t know why, so they run,” he told the newspaper. The celebration in Monterey Park is one of the largest Lunar New Year events in Southern California.

Chris Hipkins was confirmed Sunday (January 22, 2023) as New Zealand's next prime minister and he chose Carmel Sepuloni as his deputy, marking the first time a person with Pacific Island heritage has risen to that rank. Hipkins got the unanimous support of lawmakers from his Labour Party after he was the only candidate to enter the contest to replace Jacinda Ardern, who shocked the nation Thursday when she announced she was resigning after more than five years as leader. Hipkins will be officially sworn into his new role on Wednesday (January 25, 2023). He will have less than nine months before contesting a tough general election, with opinion polls indicating his party is trailing its conservative opposition. Read more: New Zealand's Ardern, an icon to many, to step down The lack of other candidates for leader indicated that party lawmakers had rallied behind Hipkins to avoid a drawn-out contest and any sign of disunity following Ardern’s departure. In setting out his priorities, Hipkins said he knew many families were struggling due to the “pandemic of inflation” and that the economy would be central to his government's thinking. When asked if he would take on the same transformational approach to government that Ardern had promised after first winning the top job, Hipkins indicated he wanted to get back to basics. Read more: New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern to leave office next month, sets October election “We will deliver a very solid government that is focused on the bread-and-butter issues that matter to New Zealanders, and that are relevant to the times that we are in now," Hipkins said. "2017 was five-and-a-half years ago, and quite a lot has happened since then.” Like Hipkins, Sepuloni first became a lawmaker 15 years ago and has most recently taken on the social development and employment portfolios as one of the government's top ministers. She said it was “very hard to fathom that a working-class girl” from a small New Zealand town could end up as deputy prime minister. Read More: New Zealand's Ardern has many possibilities for a second act “I want to acknowledge the significance of this for our Pacific community,” Sepuloni said. “I am proudly Samoan, Tongan, and New Zealand European, and represent generations of New Zealanders with mixed heritage." Sepuloni said she’d already been receiving lots of humbling messages about another glass ceiling being smashed. Opposition leader Christopher Luxon told reporters he’d congratulated Hipkins by text. But Luxon said Hipkins and Sepuloni had been part of a government that had “failed spectacularly” to get things done and that after the leadership change, it would be more of the same. Read More: Ardern, rival turn her hot-mic vulgarity into charity’s win

Elon Musk took the witness stand Friday to defend a 2018 tweet claiming he had lined up the financing to take Tesla private in a deal that never came close to happening. The tweet resulted in a $40 million settlement with securities regulators. It also led to a class-action lawsuit alleging he misled investors, pulling him into court for about a half hour Friday to deliver sworn testimony in front of a nine-person jury and a full room of media and other spectators. The trial was then adjourned for the weekend and Musk was told to return Monday to answer more questions. In his initial appearance on the stand, Musk defended his prolific tweeting as “the most democratic way” to distribute information even while acknowledging constraints of Twitter's 280-character limit can make it difficult to make everything as clear as possible. “I think you can absolutely be truthful (on Twitter),” Musk asserted on the stand. “But can you be comprehensive? Of course not,” Musk's latest headache stems from the inherent brevity on Twitter, a service that he has been running since completing his $44 billion purchase of it in October. The trial hinges on the question of whether a pair of tweets that Musk posted on Aug. 7, 2018, damaged Tesla shareholders during a 10-day period leading up to a Musk admission that the buyout he had envisioned wasn’t going to happen. In the first of those those two 2018 tweets, Musk stated “funding secured” for a what would have been a $72 billion buyout of Tesla at a time when the electric automaker was still grapping with production problems and was worth far less than it is now. Musk followed up a few hours later with another tweet suggesting a deal was imminent. After it became apparent that the money wasn't in place to take Tesla private, Musk stepped down as Tesla’s chairman while remaining CEO as part of the Securities and Exchange Commission settlement, without acknowledging any wrongdoing. The impulsive billionaire came into court wearing a dark suit and tie on the third day of the civil trial in San Francisco that his lawyer unsuccessfully tried to move to Texas, where Tesla is now headquartered, on the premise that media coverage of his tumultuous takeover of Twitter had tainted the jury pool. Read more: Elon Musk depicted as liar, visionary in Tesla tweet trial The jury that was assembled earlier this week focused intently on Musk while he answered questions posed by Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer representing Tesla shareholders. At one point, Musk asked Porritt if he would speak closer to the microphone so he could hear him better. At other times, Musk craned his neck as he gazed around the courtroom. Musk, 51, said he cares “a great deal” about investors and also railed against short sellers who make investments that reward them when a company's stock price falls. He called short selling an “evil” practice that should be outlawed, denigrating those who profit from it as “a bunch of sharks." When shown communications from Tesla investors urging him to curtail or completely stop his Twitter habit before the 2018 buyout tweet, Musk said he couldn't remember all those interactions from years ago, especially since he gets a “Niagara Falls" of emails. Even before Musk took the stand, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen had declared that the jurors can consider those two tweets to be false, leaving them to decide whether Musk deliberately deceived investors and whether his statements saddled them with losses. Musk has previously contended he entered into the SEC settlement under duress and maintained he believed he had locked up financial backing for a Tesla buyout during meetings with representatives from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. An expert on corporate buyouts hired by shareholder lawyers to study the events surrounding Musk's proposal to take Tesla private spent the bulk of his three hours on the stand Friday deriding the plan as an ill-conceived concept. “This proposal was an extreme outlier,” said Guhan Subramanian, a Harvard University business and law professor for more than 20 years. “It was incoherent. It was illusory.” In a lengthy cross examination that delayed Musk's appearance, a lawyer for Tesla's board of directors tried to undermine Subramanian's testimony by pointing out that it relied on graduate student assistance to review some of the material related to the August 2018 tweets. The lawyer, William Price, also noted Subramanian's $1,900-per-hour fee for compiling his report for the case. The trial over his Tesla tweets come at a time when Musk has been focusing on Twitter while also serving as the automaker's CEO and also remaining deeply involved in SpaceX, the rocket ship company he founded. Read more: Elon Musk takes over Twitter: what to expect? Musk’s leadership of Twitter — where he has gutted the staff and alienated users and advertisers — has proven unpopular among Tesla’s current stockholders, who are worried he has been devoting less time steering the automaker at a time of intensifying competition. Those concerns contributed to a 65% decline in Tesla’s stock last year that wiped out more than $700 billion in shareholder wealth — far more than the $14 billion swing in fortune that occurred between the company’s high and low stock prices during the Aug. 7-17, 2018 period covered in the class-action lawsuit. Tesla’s stock has split twice since then, making the $420 buyout price cited in his 2018 tweet worth $28 on adjusted basis now. The company's shares were trading around $133.42 Friday, down from the company’s November 2021 split-adjusted peak of $414.50. After Musk dropped the idea of a Tesla buyout, the company overcame its production problems, resulting in a rapid upturn in car sales that caused its stock to soar and minted Musk as the world’s richest person until he bought Twitter. Musk dropped from the top spot on the wealth list after the stock market’s backlash to his handling of Twitter. When asked Friday about the challenges that Tesla faced in 2018, he recalled spending many nights sleeping at the automaker's California factory as he tried to keep the company afloat. “The sheer level of pain to make Tesla successful during that 2017, 2018 period was excruciating," he recalled.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was fined by police on Friday (January 20, 2023) for taking off his seat belt to film a social media video in a moving car. Sunak, 42, has apologized for making an “error of judgment” while recording a message for Instagram from the back of an official government car during a visit to northwest England on Thursday. The Lancashire Police force said it had looked into video “circulating on social media showing an individual failing to wear a seat belt while a passenger in a moving car in Lancashire.” The force said, without naming Sunak, that it had “issued a 42-year-old man from London with a conditional offer of fixed penalty.” Also read: UK’s Sunak vows to halve inflation, tackle illegal migration Failing to wear a seat belt is punishable by a penalty of up to 500 pounds ($620), though fixed penalty notices for such offenses are usually 100 pounds ($124) if paid promptly. The conditional offer means that the person fined accepts guilt but doesn’t have to go to court. Police didn’t say how much Sunak was fined. Sunak’s office said in a statement that “the prime minister fully accepts this was a mistake and has apologized. He will of course comply with the fixed penalty.” Read More: Sunak won’t go to UN climate conference: UK It’s the second time Sunak has been fined during his political career. Last year, when he was Treasury chief, he was fined 50 pounds for breaching pandemic lockdown rules by briefly attending a party inside government offices. He was one of dozens of officials fined over the “partygate” scandal, including then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Sunak took office as U.K. leader in October, promising “integrity, professionalism and accountability” after a tumultuous few years that saw Johnson ousted by multiple scandals and his successor Liz Truss toppled after her policies rocked the U.K. economy.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins is set to become New Zealand’s next prime minister after he was the only candidate to enter the contest Saturday (January 21, 2023) to replace Jacinda Ardern. Hipkins, 44, must still garner an endorsement Sunday from his Labour Party colleagues, but that is just a formality now. An official transfer of power will come in the days to follow. “It’s a big day for a boy from the Hutt,” Hipkins said, referring to the Hutt Valley near Wellington where he grew up. “I’m really humbled and really proud to be taking this on. It is the biggest responsibility and the biggest privilege of my life.” Ardern shocked the nation of 5 million people on Thursday when she announced she was resigning after five-and-a-half years in the top role. Also read: New Zealand's Ardern has many possibilities for a second act The lack of other candidates indicated party lawmakers had rallied behind Hipkins to avoid a drawn-out contest and any sign of disunity following Ardern’s departure. Hipkins will have only a little more than eight months in the role before contesting a general election. Opinion polls have indicated that Labour is trailing its main opponent, the conservative National Party. Hipkins rose to public prominence during the coronavirus pandemic, when he took on a kind of crisis management role. But he and other liberals have long been in the shadow of Ardern, who became a global icon of the left and exemplified a new style of leadership. Just 37 when she became leader, Ardern was praised around the world for her handling of the nation’s worst-ever mass shooting and the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also read: New Zealand's Ardern, an icon to many, to step down But she faced mounting political pressures at home and a level of vitriol from some that previous New Zealand leaders hadn’t faced. Online, she was subject to physical threats and misogynistic rants. “Our society could now usefully reflect on whether it wants to continue to tolerate the excessive polarization which is making politics an increasingly unattractive calling,” wrote former Prime Minister Helen Clark. Fighting back tears, Ardern told reporters on Thursday that she was leaving the position no later than Feb. 7. “I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It is that simple,” she said. Read More: New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern to leave office next month, sets October election Besides holding the education portfolio, Hipkins is also minister for police and the public service, and leader of the House. He is known as a political troubleshooter who has taken on a variety of roles to try to iron out problems created by other lawmakers. But he’s also committed some gaffes of his own, like when he told people during a virus lockdown that they could go outside and “spread their legs,” a comment that drew plenty of mirth on the internet. Hipkins drew a small crowd of clapping onlookers when he talked to reporters outside Parliament. He said he’d come back energized after a summer break, considered himself a hard worker and a straight shooter, and didn’t intend to lose his trademark sense of humor in his new role. He said he wouldn’t be announcing changes to policy or ministerial roles before Sunday’s vote, other than to say Grant Robertson would remain finance minister. Hipkins said he believed he could win the election and paid tribute to Ardern. Read More: Ardern, rival turn her hot-mic vulgarity into charity’s win “Jacinda Ardern has been an incredible prime minister for New Zealand,” Hipkins said. “She was the leader that we needed at the time that we needed it.” A lawmaker for 15 years, Hipkins is considered more centrist than Ardern and colleagues hope that he will appeal to a broad range of voters. Among his biggest challenges during an election year will be convincing voters that his party is managing the economy well. New Zealand’s unemployment rate is relatively low at 3.3%, but inflation is high at 7.2%. New Zealand’s Reserve Bank has hiked the benchmark interest rate to 4.25% as it tries to get inflation under control, and some economists are predicting the country will go into recession this year. Read More: Study in New Zealand: Application process, cost for international students

Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff as the economic boom that the industry rode during the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the parent company of Google, informed staff Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company's news blog. It's one of the company's biggest-ever round of layoffs and adds to tens of thousands of other job losses recently announced by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other tech companies as they tighten their belts amid a darkening outlook for the industry. Just this month, there have been at least 48,000 job cuts announced by major companies in the sector. “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.” He said the layoffs reflect a “rigorous review" carried out by Google of its operations. The jobs being eliminated “cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions,” Pichai said. He said he was “deeply sorry” for the layoffs. Regulatory filings illustrate how Google’s workforce swelled during the pandemic, ballooning to nearly 187,000 people by late last year from 119,000 at the end of 2019. Pichai said that Google, founded nearly a quarter of a century ago, was “bound to go through difficult economic cycles.” “These are important moments to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities,” he wrote. There will be job cuts in the U.S. and in other unspecified countries, according to Pichai’s letter. The tech industry has been forced to freeze hiring and cut jobs “as the clock has struck midnight on hyper growth and digital advertising headwinds are on the horizon,” Wedbush Securities analysts Dan Ives, Taz Koujalgi and John Katsingris wrote Friday. Just this week, Microsoft announced 10,000 job cuts, or nearly 5% of its workforce. Amazon said this month its cutting 18,000 jobs, although that's a fraction of its 1.5 million strong workforce, while business software maker Salesforce is laying off about 8,000 employees, or 10% of the total. Last fall Facebook parent Meta announced it would shed 11,000 positions, or 13% of its workers. Elon Musk slashed jobs at Twitter after after he acquired the social media company last fall. Read more: Job cuts in tech sector spread, Microsoft lays off 10,000 Those job cuts are hitting smaller players as well. U.K.-based cybersecurity firm Sophos laid off 450 employees, or 10% of its global workforce. Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase cut 20% of its workforce, about 950 jobs, in its second round of layoffs in less than a year. "The stage is being set: tech names across the board are cutting costs to preserve margins and get leaner" in the current economic climate, the Wedbush analysts said. Employment in the U.S. has been resilient despite signs of a slowing economy, and there were another 223,000 jobs added in December. Yet the tech sector grew exceptionally fast over the last several years due to increased demand as employees began to work remotely. CEOs of a number of companies have taken blame for growing too fast, yet those same companies, even after the latest round of job cuts, remain much larger than they were before the economic boom from the pandemic began.  

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose empathetic handling of the nation’s worst mass-shooting and health-driven response to the coronavirus pandemic led her to become an international icon but who faced mounting criticism at home, said Thursday she was leaving office. Fighting back tears, Ardern told reporters in Napier that Feb. 7 will be her last day as prime minister. “I am entering now my sixth year in office, and for each of those years, I have given my absolute all,” she said. She also announced that New Zealand’s next general elections would be held on Oct. 14, and that she would remain a lawmaker until then. It’s unclear who will take over as prime minister until the election. Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson announced he wouldn’t be contesting for the leadership of the Labour Party, throwing the competition open. Read more: New Zealand to decide on lowering voting age from 18 to 16 Ardern described her job as among the most privileged but challenging and said doing it required having a reserve to face the unexpected. She said she no longer had that reserve to serve another term. She said her time in office has been fulfilling but challenging. “But I am not leaving because it was hard. Had that been the case I probably would have departed two months into the job. I am leaving because with such a privileged role, comes responsibility, the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead, and also, when you are not. I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It is that simple,” she said. Ardern had been facing tough election prospects. Her liberal Labour Party won reelection two years ago in a landslide of historic proportions, but recent polls have put her party behind its conservative rivals. She was lauded globally for her country’s initial handling of the coronavirus pandemic after New Zealand managed for months to stop the virus at its borders. But that zero-tolerance strategy was abandoned once it was challenged by new variants and vaccines became available. Read more: New Zealand to remove pandemic mandates as omicron wanes She faced tougher criticism at home that the strategy was too strict. Ardern in December announced a Royal Commission of Inquiry would look into whether the government made the right decisions in battling COVID-19 and how it can better prepare for future pandemics. Its report is due next year. In March 2019, Ardern faced one of the darkest days in New Zealand’s history when a white supremacist gunman stormed two mosques in Christchurch and slaughtered 51 people. She was widely praised for the way she embraced the survivors and New Zealand’s Muslim community in the aftermath.