The European Union, EU, has said China must make big improvements if it is to finalise an investment deal with European companies.
“The European side has made it very clear that it cannot meet China in the middle,” Joerg Wuttke, President of the European Union Chamber of Commerce said on Thursday.
According to Wuttke, fair competitive conditions already apply in Europe – both for domestic and Chinese companies.
In China, however, this is still not the case and therefore it is up to Beijing to “close the gap,” he said.
Wuttke’s comments come ahead of summit talks between the EU and Beijing planned for next week.
The chamber president said he was not very confident that a comprehensive deal satisfying EU companies could be made.
According to Wuttke, the window of opportunity for an agreement with China is also closing and the deal must come this year.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, EU Council President Charles Michel and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen intend to join forces with China’s President Xi Jinping for the talks next Monday via video conference.
One of the topics will be the planned investment deal, which has been under negotiation for six years.
The Holy Bible is the word of God speaking to us. It is not one book but a whole library of books. There are two main parts the Old Testament and the New Testament. For Christians, the Old Testament was the preparation for the coming of the Redeemer. It predicted the coming of the Messiah who would redeem the world from its sins. We also learn a lot from its stories. The books of the Bible are of different genre. They must be read according to their genre; otherwise they would be possibly misunderstood. The Old Testament was put down in writing about 500 years before Christ. Before that it was all recited from memory. The New Testament was written about fifty to a hundred years after the Ascension of Our Lord to heaven. Our oldest Bible now dates to about the year 400 AD until the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. These were probably hidden about a hundred years before Christ.
Before the coming of Martin Luther in the 15th century, there was no problem about the books that were accepted as canonical or inspired books. Luther rejected some of the books in the Old Testament books that did not agree with his doctrines. But with the Dead Sea scrolls this controversy has been corrected. Martin Luther was a young man who was caught in frightening storm where he vowed to become a priest. He was an excellent theologian and wrote convincingly about abuses in the Church in a time when many leaders of their countries in northern Europe wanted to revolt against the Catholic Church. In the ensuing polemics and wars the solution was to consider that in every country the citizens of a country would have the religion of its leader. Many northern European states followed Luther out of the Catholic Church. The followers of Luther and other theologians against the Catholic Church were called Protestants. They did away with the Sacrifice of the Mass and concentrated on the pulpit. So we have the Protestants having no altars but only a podium in their churches. Another problem that they encountered since rejecting the teachings of the Church was they had no one to define for them what the meaning of the passages of the Bible was. Each one therefor interpreted the Bible as he saw it. This has resulted in having thirty thousand Protestant churches.
At Mass the first part is the reading of the Bible. On Sunday Masses the first reading is from the Old Testament and the second reading from the New Testament. On other days there is only one reading from the Gospels. Then there is the offering that represents the people. This is followed by the Consecration and Communion. After the Mass and the rosary the reading of the Bible is important. After these three are confession and fasting. These are the five important duties of the Christian. The problem with the reading the Bible is the possibility of misreading it. It is therefore important to read the Bible with the Church. People who made it a habit to read the Bible daily find it very consoling and enlightening. The reading of the Bible allows God to speak to us. The four Gospels are especially important since they tell us of the teachings and life of Our Lord. They also tell us of the miracles Jesus performed to show the people that He was from the Father who loves all of us. And all He is asking of us is to love Him with all our heart and all our strength and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
2-2020 Call for Contributions European Union Capacity Building Mission in Somalia (EUCAP Somalia)- Deadline for applications: Tuesday, 29 September 2020 at 17:00 (Brussels time)
The Irish Data Protection Commission has sent a preliminary order to Facebook requesting suspension of data transfers of European Union users’ data to the US, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Nick Clegg Facebook V-P, Global Affairs and Communications confirmed that the privacy regulator had suggested Facebook halt its EU-US data transfers using a widely used type of contract.
“A lack of safe, secure and legal international data transfers would damage the economy and prevent the emergence of data-driven businesses from the EU, just as we seek recovery from Covid-19,” Clegg said as quoted by WSJ.
The order comes along the heels of a recent ruling by an EU Court to strike down the EU Commissions’ flagship EU-US data flow arrangement called Privacy Shield.
The court, in July, suggested limiting data transfers to the US stating that the EU has no control over the US’ surveillance systems. It struck down the Privacy Shield stating that the US does not have enough safety and privacy measures in place as required under the General Data Protection Regulation.
The measures “are not circumscribed in a way that satisfies requirements that are essentially equivalent to those required under EU law, by the principle of proportionality, in so far as the surveillance programmes based on those provisions are not limited to what is strictly necessary,” the Court said in an official release.
“ In respect of certain surveillance programmes, those provisions do not indicate any limitations on the power they confer to implement those programmes or the existence of guarantees for potentially targeted non-US persons,” it said.
The decision was criticised by the US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross who said that he was “deeply disappointed” with the ruling.
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — By Barbe Fraze – Hours after a fire or fires sent thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing their tents and makeshift container homes at the Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, a close aide to Pope Francis called for the permanent resettlement of all the residents.
“Since the time of the visit of the Holy Father (in 2016), we have been asking them to empty these concentration camps, but they let us take only the small groups that we have brought to Italy at the Vatican’s expense in collaboration with the Community of Sant’Egidio,” said Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner.
Asked about the fire, the cardinal, who has visited the Moria camp several times and accompanied small groups of asylum-seekers to Rome, told Catholic News Service that “sooner or later it was bound to happen.”
“The refugees who entered Europe” by arriving in Greece, but have been stuck in overcrowded camps there, “are at the limit of supporting such an inhuman situation,” the cardinal said. “It’s like their hope is being killed.”
While government officials said they were investigating the cause of the fire, the Greek news agency ANA said it broke out “at 2 a.m. after clashes began when some of the 35 refugees who tested positive for COVID-19 refused to move into isolation with their families.”
The Moria camp was built to house just over 2,000 asylum-seekers, but according to the U.N. Refugee Agency, when the fire broke out, the camp housed more than 12,000 asylum-seekers, “including more than 4,000 children as well as other vulnerable groups, including 407 unaccompanied children, pregnant women and elderly people.”
While many were given shelter in portable containers, thousands of others lived in tents on a hillside olive grove.
Daniela Pompei, who coordinates the refugee-resettlement program of the Sant’Egidio Community, told CNS Sept. 9 that she had been in contact that morning with many of the asylum-seekers at the camp.
“The situation is dramatic,” she said. “Our refugee friends in Moria are desperate” as most of the 12,000 people who were in the camp are now on the road leading to the sea. Local media were reporting that the Greek police and nearby residents were preventing the asylum seekers from moving into town.
Pompei said it is necessary to find immediate housing at least for the families with children and other vulnerable people and to feed all of them.
“They must set up structures quickly with military tents or use hotels if possible,” she said. “But even more importantly, they must transfer people to the mainland.”
As Pope Francis has said repeatedly, as part of the European Union, Greece — and Italy and Malta as well — cannot be expected to enforce Europe’s borders and its refugee policies alone.
Other nations must “accept the transfer of family groups and unaccompanied minors,” Pompei said. “It is necessary to help Greece and, particularly, to help the asylum seekers who are mainly Syrians, Afghans, Congolese and Cameroonians.”
VATICAN CITY (RNS) — In a world marked by religious persecution and mounting secularism, being a missionary priest has never been easy.
Add closed frontiers and social distancing caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and the already tough job may seem impossible. But according to one missionary, Salesian priest Martin Lasarte, there is opportunity beyond the challenges.
“Being a missionary priest has always been hard, and it will forever be,” Lasarte told reporters during an online meeting Monday (Sept. 7).
“But in the various dark moments in history, the Lord always found a way,” he added.
Lasarte, who has been working as a missionary in Angola since the 1990s, is a member of the Department for Missions at the Salesian General House in Rome. He trains and prepares Catholic missionaries to travel all over the world.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw a “large reduction” in the realm of missionary work, aggravating an ongoing decline in the number of vocations and priests seeking to become missionaries. But while Catholicism may be waning in many Western countries, new communities are emerging in other parts of the world, especially in the Eastern Hemisphere, Lasarte said.
The Rev. Martin Lasarte. Photo via Salesians.org
“When it seems that the light is about to fade in some places, faith emerges once again somewhere else,” he said.
Korea, India and Vietnam have witnessed a significant surge in the number of Catholic faithful, the missionary said. But even in Asia, missionary work faces mounting challenges; he noted China’s authoritarian hold on the life of the faithful within its borders.
“In the past few years the situation in China has gotten much worse,” Lasarte said, adding that Beijing “looks at Catholicism and human rights with a certain preoccupation.”
Lasarte’s comments on religious persecution in China come at a time when Pope Francis and the Vatican are attempting to broker a deal with the up-and-coming superpower in an attempt to reconcile decade-long tensions.
The upcoming deal has come under fire from those who fear that the Catholic Church will, in the name of diplomacy, be unwilling to hold China accountable for its actions.
In his experience as a missionary in Angola, Lasarte pointed out “the new colonization of China in Africa,” which has been occurring economically and politically in the country amid what he called “the silence of the world, the silence of Europe especially.”
It’s in Europe that Lasarte finds “the most preoccupying areas.” Once the home of missionary zeal and hot-blooded Catholics, the Old Continent has become residence to a tepid and secularized faith, with dwindling vocations and empty pews, said the missionary.
With more than 2 million cases of the coronavirus and almost 200,000 COVID-19 related deaths, Europe has been dealt a heavy blow by the pandemic — and so has its faith. Churches, confessionals and many sacraments were banned during the months of lockdown in many European countries.
Speaking to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich said the pandemic set the Catholic Church back a decade in terms of faithful numbers and religious culture. The archbishop of Luxembourg said that Catholics in his own country “will be reduced in number” once they find that “life is very comfortable” without having to go to church.
According to Lasarte, the COVID-19 pandemic “has purified the church,” separating those who were “culture Catholics” attending Mass out of inertia from those who cannot live without it. The answer, according to the missionary, is not in demographics.
“We don’t have to seek large numbers,” he said, “but the authenticity of the gospel.”
Like many priests coming to terms with the declining state of religion in the west, Lasarte finds comfort in the “few, but good” approach.
This is the not the first time the Catholic priest attempted to switch the narrative amid a global crisis. In 2017, he wrote a letter to The New York Times that, while commending the publication for shedding light on the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, asked that reporters also take an interest in the positive work done by priests and laypeople.
He was also invited by Pope Francis to attend the 2019 summit of bishops on the Amazon region at the Vatican, focused on promoting the sustainable development of its inhabitants and their habitat, where he experienced the profound divisions underscoring the Catholic Church firsthand.
At the time, Lasarte accused bishops of clericalism and losing sight of the real needs of the faithful. Today, Salesian missionaries are hard at work trying to cure and prevent the spread of COVID-19 among Indigenous peoples.
Despite challenges from within and without, the missionary continues to have faith that even in reduced numbers “Catholics can be a significant minority.”
Citing “recent studies”, WHO revealed that sepsis kills 11 million people each year, many of them children, and disables millions of others.
“The world must urgently step up efforts to improve data about sepsis so all countries can detect and treat this terrible condition in time,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Against the backdrop that most studies had been conducted in the hospitals and intensive care units of high-income countries – with little evidence from the rest of the world – WHO underscored the “urgent need” for better data.
Furthermore, different definitions of sepsis, diagnostic criteria and hospital discharge coding, compound the difficultly in developing a clear understanding of the true global burden of this life-threatening infection.
“This means strengthening health information systems and ensuring access to rapid diagnostic tools, and quality care including safe and affordable medicines and vaccine”, the top WHO official spelled out.
What is sepsis?
Sepsis occurs in response to an infection. When it is not recognized early and managed promptly, it can lead to septic shock, multiple organ failure and death, according to the UN health agency.
And patients who are critically ill with severe COVID-19 and other infectious diseases are at higher risk of developing and dying from it. WHO pointed out that only half of sepsis survivors will completely recover, the rest will either die within one year or be burdened by long-term disabilities.
Hardest hit
The deadly infection disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, including newborns, pregnant women and people living without means, where WHO says approximately 85 per cent of sepsis cases and sepsis-related deaths occur.
Moreover, children account for almost half of the 49 million cases each year, most of which could have been prevented through early diagnosis and appropriate clinical management.
Obstetric infections, including complications following abortion or infections following caesarean section, are the third most common cause of maternal mortality, the UN report revealed.
Global estimates show that for every 1,000 women giving birth, 11 women experience infection-related, severe organ dysfunction or death. Healthcare sepsis
Sepsis frequently results from infections acquired in healthcare settings.
The report finds that almost half of sepsis patients in intensive care units acquired the infection in the hospital while noting that an estimated 27 per cent of those with sepsis in hospitals and 42 per cent in intensive care units, will die.
The world must urgently step up efforts to improve data about sepsis — WHO chief
WHO identified antimicrobial resistance as a major challenge in treating sepsis as it complicates the ability to combat infections, especially in healthcare facilities.
Changing the odds
The UN health agency elaborated on interventions to prevent as many as 84 per cent of newborn sepsis-related deaths, which include improved sanitation, water quality and infection prevention methods – such as hand hygiene – but stressed that these be coupled with early diagnosis, appropriate clinical management and access to safe and affordable medicines and vaccines.
At the same time, WHO called on the global community to improve high-quality data collection; scale-up global advocacy, and funding research; develop rapid, affordable diagnostic tools; and educate health workers and communities to infection risks and the need to promptly seek care.
HIV fight – The study by UNAIDS, the UN agency working to stamp out HIV and AIDS, outlines how the world can leverage and build resilient health systems that address both pandemics.
A new report by UNAIDS examines how the experience of tackling HIV can help inform and guide effective, efficient, people-centred and sustainable #COVID19 responses.
It reveals how key lessons learned in combating HIV can support accelerated action against COVID-19 without jeopardizing ongoing response to HIV and other health emergencies, thus providing a “unique opportunity” to reimagine systems for health, according to UNAIDS chief Winnie Byanyima.
“All eyes are on health, health systems and health care, with countries wanting to be better equipped to deal not only with COVID-19 but also to create healthier, more resilient societies,” she said.
“We can seize this opportunity by learning from HIV and from COVID-19 to make important changes to develop rights-based, equitable, people-centred systems for health.”
Leveraging innovative delivery
It highlights examples of how infrastructure for HIV response is being leveraged during the pandemic, including through innovative and community-led service delivery.
For example, some 280,000 new health-care workers trained by the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, are currently serving as first responders to COVID-19 in several low- and middle-income countries.
Additionally, 17 HIV treatment reference centres in Morocco, are being used in the first line of response for treating disease caused by the virus.
Increase investments
The report was released at the start of the two-day Virtual Fast-Track Cities 2020 conference on urban HIV and COVID-19 responses, which concludes on Thursday.
As countries continue to grapple with the new coronavirus, UNAIDS stressed that they must take steps to limit any interruption to HIV-related services. At the same time, supply chains providing essential commodities and technologies for HIV and other global health priorities must also be able to function.
“COVID-19 has caused significant loss of life in many communities, but notably in those where inequities make people more vulnerable to ill health. Leveraging of the HIV infrastructure and workforce has helped to mitigate what might have been a far worse situation”, said José M. Zuniga, President/Chief Executive Officer of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, co-organizers of the conference.
“However, with current HIV spending substantially off-track, the world urgently needs to increase investments in the responses to both HIV and COVID-19 and not siphon off one to respond to the other.”
