Tue, May 10, 2022 page5

• World News Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  CHINA

  Sea levels hit new highs

  The nation’s sea levels reached their highest on record last year, swelled by rising water temperatures and the melting of glaciers and polar icecaps, the National Marine Environmental Monitoring Center said in an annual bulletin on Saturday. Coastal sea levels were 84mm higher last year than the average from 1993 to 2011, the research unit of the Ministry of Natural Resources said. The report warned that rising sea levels brought by climate change were having a “continuous impact” on the development of coastal regions, and urged authorities to improve monitoring, and bolster early warning and prevention efforts. The long-term effects of such rise include erosion of coastal ecosystems and the loss of tidal flats, while coastal cities face greater risks of floods and salt tides, the center said.

  UNITED NATIONS

  UN agency head resigns

  UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday accepted the resignation of the head of a UN agency that was under investigation for questionable investments. Grete Faremo had been undersecretary-general and executive director of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) since August 2014. The office says its mission is to provide “infrastructure, procurement and project management services for a more sustainable world.” Faremo’s resignation was accepted on the day the New York Times reported that the agency made “a baffling series of financial decisions” that purportedly led to US$25 million in losses. The Times report followed an April 16 article in Devex titled: “What went wrong with UNOPS’ ambitious impact-investing initiative?” That article said the investigation focused on a series of loans from the agency to a Singapore-based firm that received tens of millions of dollars to develop plans to build more than 1 million affordable homes in six countries. “Today, the entire project is stalled, UNOPS is owed tens of millions of dollars, and no houses have been built,” it said.

  EGYPT

  Islamic State claims attack

  An Islamic State affiliate in Egypt on Sunday claimed responsibility for an attack that targeted a water pumping station east of the Suez Canal, killing at least 11 soldiers. At least five other soldiers were wounded in Saturday’s attack, the military said. It was one of the deadliest attacks on Egyptian security forces in recent years. Thousands of people attended separate funerals for the dead on Sunday. President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi presided over a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to discuss the consequences of the attack, his office said without offering further details. The extremist group announced its claim of the attack in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency.

  UNITED STATES

  Quake strikes east coast

  A relatively rare east coast earthquake centered just northeast of South Carolina’s capital jolted large numbers of residents awake early yesterday, rocking the southern state at a preliminary 3.3 magnitude, authorities said. There were no immediate reports of damages or injuries. The pre-dawn temblor lasted only seconds, but hundreds of people took to social media to describe being shaken from sleep when the quake hit shortly after 1:30am. A seismic analyst monitoring the quake for the US Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado called it the latest in a series of shakes in recent months, but stronger than usual. Geophysicist Amy Vaughan said the magnitude 3.3 is an early assessment and could change.
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