Azerbaijan to chair CICA in 2024-2026
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The Republic of Azerbaijan was elected as the CICA Chairperson for 2024-2026 by the CICA Council of Foreign Ministers on March 19, 2024, due to Mart 14 recommendations made at meeting of the Committee of Senior Officials of the Council for Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), Trend reports, referring to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Based on the decision, Azerbaijan plans to host a meeting of the CICA Council of Foreign Ministers in 2024 and a meeting of the CICA Council of Heads of State and Government in 2026 while serving as chairman.
To recall, Kazakhstan proposed CICA for the first time on October 5, 1992, during the 47th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The effort sought to establish an effective and universal institution to safeguard Asia's security.
Azerbaijan actively participates in collaboration within the CICA framework. Our government coordinates the confidence-building initiative "Development of safe and efficient transport corridors." The Almaty Act, enacted in 2002, and the Declaration of Principles Governing Relations between CICA Member States, issued in 1999, are the major texts governing CICA activities. The Astana Statement on the Transformation of CICA was agreed upon during the CICA Summit in 2022, marking the start of the process of transforming CICA into a full-fledged regional international organization. Currently, the group has 28 members. In addition, ten countries and international organizations such as the UN, OSCE, International Organization for Migration, League of Arab States, and TURKPA have observer status in CICA. The administrative body of CICA is the Secretariat, located in Astana and coordinating the activities of the Council. CICA activity management and priority setting are carried out by the presiding country," the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs notes.
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Two gunmen open fire at Bondi Chanukah event, 12 confirmed dead in mass shooting
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A mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that left at least 12 people dead has been declared a terrorist incident, news.com.au reports.
Naveed Akram is confirmed to be one of the two shooters who opened fire on a Jewish Chanukah event shortly before 7pm on Sunday.
Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said bomb disposal were on-site of a vehicle on Campbell Pde which officers believed contained several improvised explosive devices. Police are also probing whether there was a third offender.
Addressing the media, Mr Lanyon confirmed the incident had been designated a terrorist incident.
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Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $40m to women who said talc to blame for cancer
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A California jury on Friday awarded $40m to two women who said Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder was to blame for their ovarian cancer, The Guardian reports.
The jury in Los Angeles superior court awarded $18m to Monica Kent and $22m to Deborah Schultz and her husband after finding that Johnson & Johnson knew for years its talc-based products were dangerous but failed to warn consumers.
Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide vice-president of litigation, said in a statement the company plans to "immediately appeal this verdict and expect to prevail as we typically do with aberrant adverse verdicts".
A spokesperson for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kent was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014, according to court records. Schultz was diagnosed in 2018. Both women are California residents who say they used J&J’s baby powder after bathing for 40 years. Their treatments for ovarian cancer have involved major surgeries and dozens of rounds of chemotherapy, they testified at the trial.
In closing arguments that Reuters viewed on Courtroom View Network, Andy Birchfield, an attorney for the women, told the jury that Johnson & Johnson knew as far back as the 1960s that its product could cause cancer.
Absolutely they knew, they knew and they were doing everything they could to hide it, to bury the truth about the dangers," Birchfield said.
Allison Brown, an attorney for Johnson & Johnson, said the only people to tell Kent and Schultz that their cancers were caused by talc were their lawyers, as the alleged connection isn’t backed by any major US health authority and there is no study that shows talc can migrate from the outside of the body to the reproductive organs.
They don’t have the evidence in this case, and they hope you don’t mind," Brown told the jury.
J&J is facing lawsuits from more than 67,000 plaintiffs who say they were diagnosed with cancer after using its baby powder and other talc products, according to court filings.
The company has said its products are safe, do not contain asbestos and do not cause cancer. J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product.
J&J has sought to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy, a proposal that has been rejected three times by federal courts, most recently in April. The bankruptcies had put most cases on hold. Brown and Kent’s cases are the first to go to trial since the latest Chapter 11 attempt was dismissed.
Before the bankruptcy attempts, J&J had a mixed record in talc trials, with verdicts as high as $4.69bn awarded to women who said baby powder caused their ovarian cancer. The company has won some trials outright and had other verdicts reduced on appeal.
The majority of lawsuits involve ovarian cancer claims. Cases alleging talc caused a rare and deadly cancer called mesothelioma make up a smaller portion of the claims J&J is facing. The company has previously settled some of those claims but has not struck a nationwide settlement, so many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in recent months.
In the past year, J&J has been hit with several substantial verdicts in mesothelioma cases, including one for more than $900m in Los Angeles in October.
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China launches Lijian-1 rocket, sending 9 satellites into orbit
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China on Wednesday launched a Lijian-1, also known as Kinetica-1 Y11, carrier rocket with 9 satellites, including one from the United Arab Emirates, onboard, Xinhua reports.
The rocket blasted off at 12:03 p.m. from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone near the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. It successfully sent the satellites into their planned orbits.
The UAE-led satellite, named 813, is designed for observing soil, the climate and the environment.
The launch deployed China's first remote-sensing satellite in the power industry, coded Jixing High-Resolution 07D01.
With a spatial resolution better than 0.5 meters, this satellite enables precise monitoring of the structural conditions of power grid equipment, such as transmission lines and pylons.
The satellite can perform continuous east-west strip observations, covering over 200 kilometers of transmission corridor in a single pass, according to the State Grid Electric Power Engineering Research Institute, one of its designers.
Compared to current satellite systems, this new satellite is expected to enhance surveying precision for transmission projects and line inspections by more than fivefold.
The satellite supports diverse applications, from managing ultra-high voltage (UHV) projects and assessing environmental impacts in transmission networks, to inspecting critical power corridors, issuing disaster warnings and evaluating post-disaster damage.
Also among the launch payload were two remote-sensing satellites dedicated to water resource monitoring, urban management, and digital transformation of a district in Hefei, capital city of east China's Anhui Province.
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An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 occurred in northern Japan
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An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 occurred in northern Japan, iz.ru cites the meteorological department.
At the moment, a tsunami threat has been declared.
A few minutes after the earthquake, another strong tremor occurred in the north of the country, which was also felt in Tokyo.
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Sri Lanka's extreme weather death toll rises to 607
Images | Xinhua
The death toll from adverse weather caused by Cyclone Ditwah has risen to 607 in Sri Lanka, Xinhua reports.
Another 214 people remain missing, while more than 2 million people from 586,464 families have been affected nationwide, said the DMC, adding that 4,164 houses have been destroyed and 67,505 others have suffered partial damages.
Meanwhile, the Department of Meteorology says rainfall in some parts of the country will increase on Dec. 9-11 due to the northeast monsoon conditions.
The National Building and Research Organization also issued a level-3 landslide early warning to multiple areas in Kandy, Kegalle, Kurunegala, Matale and Nuwara Eliya districts
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