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RCEP set to provide new growth impetus

RCEP set to provide new growth impetus
PR Newswire
BEIJING, May 30, 2022

BEIJING , May 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The following article was published today by China Daily.

…

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10 months ago

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RCEP set to provide new growth impetus

PR Newswire

BEIJING, May 30, 2022

BEIJING , May 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The following article was published today by China Daily.

High-level implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement, which took effect on Jan 1, will propel regional economic integration to inject new impetus into world economic growth, officials and experts said on Sunday.

To that end, joint efforts are required from all RCEP members to deepen cooperation and seek common development with a firm resolve to uphold globalization, they said.

They made the remarks at the RCEP Media & Think Tank Forum, whose theme was "working together for common development".

The event was jointly organized by the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Hainan Provincial Committee, China Daily, the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs and the Hainan-based China Institute for Reform and Development.

"Working together for common development" is the right and wise call and corresponds to these uncertain, worrisome times for Asia, said Keo Puth Rasmey, former deputy prime minister of Cambodia, who added that the call for working together is no doubt even more necessary now.

Qu Yingpu, publisher and editor-in-chief of China Daily, said that world peace and development are facing serious challenges arising from both the pandemic and changes unseen in a century.

"We must always abide with the right course of history and remain vigilant on anti-globalization sentiments and behaviors and oppose them, to safeguard economic globalization, deepen interconnectivity and jointly build an open world economy," he said.

The RCEP economies should increase openness and deepen cooperation to enhance regional integration, promote high-quality economic development with the principle of mutual benefit and a win-win approach, and strengthen people-to-people bonds to actively create a good environment for common development, according to Qu.

According to Wang Yiming, vice-chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, the agreement is a successful example of open regionalism, as it unprecedentedly groups economies with different development levels and industrial structures into an integrated economic community.

Aiming to facilitate and liberalize trade and investment, the RCEP eliminates more than 90 percent of tariffs on goods traded in the region over a period of 20 years.

In comparison, the recently launched "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework", which has been joined by 11 RCEP members, has no content on the much-anticipated tariff reduction and market access to the United States, and all rules and standards are dictated by the US, according to Ong Tee Keat, chairman of the Center for New Inclusive Asia in Malaysia.

Chi Fulin, president of the China Institute for Reform and Development, said the RCEP is not only conducive to the full play of the advantages of traditional developed countries, but also enables underdeveloped countries to optimize their resource allocation, which will further unleash RCEP members' economic dynamism and promote steady economic growth in the region.

The implementation of the RCEP is a milestone for Asia-Pacific economies in opposing anti-globalization and jointly building a unified regional market, said Li Jie, vice-president of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs.

It is also an important measure for advancing global trade and for liberalizing and facilitating investment, as well as a major victory for multilateralism and free trade, Li added.

Wang Bin, head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Hainan Provincial Committee, said the province will grasp the opportunities presented by the RCEP's implementation to better engage in China's dual-circulation development－in which the domestic market is the mainstay and the domestic and foreign markets reinforce each other－and to improve resource allocation and enhance opening-up.

By Liu Zhihua

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rcep-set-to-provide-new-growth-impetus-301557377.html

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Many CDC Blunders Exaggerated Severity Of COVID-19: Study

Many CDC Blunders Exaggerated Severity Of COVID-19: Study

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Centers…

Published

35 mins ago

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March 25, 2023

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Many CDC Blunders Exaggerated Severity Of COVID-19: Study

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made at least 25 statistical or numerical errors during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the overwhelming majority exaggerated the severity of the pandemic, according to a new study.

Researchers who have been tracking CDC errors compiled 25 instances where the agency offered demonstrably false information. For each instance, they analyzed whether the error exaggerated or downplayed the severity of COVID-19.

Of the 25 instances, 20 exaggerated the severity, the researchers reported in the study, which was published ahead of peer review on March 23.

“The CDC has expressed significant concern about COVID-19 misinformation. In order for the CDC to be a credible source of information, they must improve the accuracy of the data they provide,” the authors wrote.

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

Most Errors Involved Children

Most of the errors were about COVID-19’s impact on children.

In mid-2021, for instance, the CDC claimed that 4 percent of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were kids. The actual percentage was 0.04 percent. The CDC eventually corrected the misinformation, months after being alerted to the issue.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky falsely told a White House press briefing in October 2021 that there had been 745 COVID-19 deaths in children, but the actual number, based on CDC death certificate analysis, was 558.

Walensky and other CDC officials also falsely said in 2022 that COVID-19 was a top five cause of death for children, citing a study that gathered CDC data instead of looking at the data directly. The officials have not corrected the false claims.

Other errors include the CDC claiming in 2022 that pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations were “increasing again” when they’d actually peaked two weeks earlier; CDC officials in 2023 including deaths among infants younger than 6 months old when reporting COVID-19 deaths among children; and Walensky on Feb. 9, 2023, exaggerating the pediatric death toll before Congress.

“These errors suggest the CDC consistently exaggerates the impact of COVID-19 on children,” the authors of the study said.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/24/2023 - 20:20

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Uncategorized

Southwest Airlines Has a New Way To Fix Boarding Process Problem

The company has a novel way to end a practice that passengers hate.

Published

37 mins ago

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March 25, 2023

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The company has a novel way to end a practice that passengers hate.

Southwest Airlines boards its planes in a way very different from that of any of its major rivals.

As fans and detractors of the brand know, the airline does not offer seat assignments. Instead, passengers board by group and number. When you check into your flight, Southwest assigns you to the A, B, or C boarding groups and gives you a number 1-60. The A group boards first in numerical order.

DON'T MISS: Delta Move Is Bad News For Southwest, United Airlines Passengers

In theory, people board in the assigned order and can claim any seat that's available. In practice, the airline's boarding process leaves a lot of gray area that some people exploit. Others simply don't know exactly what the rules are.

If, for example, you are traveling with a friend who has a much later boarding number, is it okay to save a middle seat for that person?

Generally, that's okay because middle seats are less desirable, but technically it's not allowed. In general practice, if you move into the second half of the plane, no passenger will fight for a specific middle seat, but toward the front some may claim a middle seat.

There's less grey area, however, when it comes to trying to keep people from sitting in unoccupied seats. That's a huge problem for the airline, one that Southwest has tried to address in a humorous way.

A Southwest Airlines plane is in the air. 

Image source: Shutterstock

Southwest Airlines Has a Boarding Problem

When Southwest boards its flights it generally communicates to passengers about how full it expects the plane to be. In very rare cases, the airline will tell passengers when the crowd is small and they can expect that nobody will have to sit in a middle seat.

In most cases, however, at least since air travel has recovered after the covid pandemic, the airline usually announces that the flight is full or nearly full as passengers board. That's a de facto (and sometimes explicit) call not to attempt to discourage people from taking open seats in your row.

Unfortunately, many passengers know that sometimes when the airline says a flight is full, that's not entirely true. There might be a few no shows or a few seats that end up being open for one reason or another.

That leads to passengers -- at least a few of them on nearly every flight -- going to great lengths to try to end up next to an empty seat. Southwest has tried lots of different ways to discourage this behavior and has now resorted to humor in an effort to stop the seat hogs.

Southwest Uses Humor to Address a Pain Point

The airline recently released a video that addressed what it called "discouraged but crafty strategies to get a row to yourself" on Southwest. The video shows a man demonstrating all the different ways people try to dissuade other passengers from taking the open seats in their row.

These include, but are not limited to:

  • Laying out across the whole row.   
  • Holding your arm up to sort of block the seats.
  • Being too encouraging about someone taking the seat.
  • Actually saying no when someone asks if they can have an open seat. 

The airline also detailed a scenario it called "the fake breakup," where the person in the seat holds a loud phone conversation where he pretends he's being broken up with.

That one seems a bit of a reach, especially when Southwest left the most common seat-saving tactic out of its video -- simply putting some of your stuff in the open seat to make it appear unavailable.

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Government

NIH awards researchers $7.5 million to create data support center for opioid use disorder and pain management research

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – March 24, 2023 – Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have been awarded a five-year, $7.5 million grant…

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March 24, 2023

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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – March 24, 2023 – Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have been awarded a five-year, $7.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Helping End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) initiative.

Credit: Wake Forest University School of Medicine

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – March 24, 2023 – Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have been awarded a five-year, $7.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Helping End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) initiative.

The NIH HEAL initiative, which launched in 2018, was created to find scientific solutions to stem the national opioid and pain public health crises. The funding is part of the HEAL Data 2 Action (HD2A) program, designed to use real-time data to guide actions and change processes toward reducing overdoses and improving opioid use disorder treatment and pain management.

With the support of the grant, researchers will create a data infrastructure support center to assist HD2A innovation projects at other institutions across the country. These innovation projects are designed to address gaps in four areas—prevention, harm reduction, treatment of opioid use disorder and recovery support.

“Our center’s goal is to remove barriers so that solutions can be more streamlined and rapidly distributed,” said Meredith C.B. Adams, M.D., associate professor of anesthesiology, biomedical informatics, physiology and pharmacology, and public health sciences at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

By monitoring opioid overdoses in real time, researchers will be able to identify trends and gaps in resources in local communities where services are most needed.

“We will collect and analyze data that will inform prevention and treatment services,” Adams said. “We’re shifting chronic pain and opioid care in communities to quickly offer solutions.”

The center will also develop data related resources, education and training related to substance use, pain management and the reduction of opioid overdoses.

According to the CDC, there was a 29% increase in drug overdose deaths in the U.S.  in 2020, and nearly 75% of those deaths involved an opioid.

“Given the scope of the opioid crises, which was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s imperative that we improve and create new prevention strategies,” Adams said. “The funding will create the infrastructure for rapid intervention.”

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