Chinese Health Official Urges Bold Steps to Lower Cost of Childbirth
In response to China's population decline for the first time in six decades, Yang Wenzhuang, director of the Department of Population Monitoring and Family Development under the National Health Commission (NHC), has called for local governments to take "bold" steps to reduce the cost of having babies and raising children. This is in order to reduce the burden on families and boost fertility. The one-child policy, high education costs, and worries about money and career development among women are all factors that have contributed to the low fertility rate.
Yang suggested that local governments should explore and make innovations to reduce the cost of childbirth, childcare, and education in order to promote the balanced development of the population. He also emphasized the importance of family support for improving the fertility rate. In addition, the Sichuan province has allowed unmarried people to raise a family and enjoy benefits reserved for married couples, and some provinces such as Shaanxi have offered up to 5,000 yuan to sperm donors to boost sperm banks.
Despite these efforts, the United Nations experts predict that China's population will shrink by 109 million by 2050. In order to prevent this, it is essential that the Chinese government continues to take steps to reduce the cost of childbirth and childcare, and provide family support in order to increase the fertility rate.
Ukraine Expects Weapons and Aircraft from Allies Amid Russian Offensive
With the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine looming, Kyiv is expecting to receive weapons and aircraft from its allies in order to combat the Russian offensive. French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not rule out sending fighter jets to Ukraine at some point, but that Kyiv was in need of more immediate military firepower. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has long urged Ukraine's allies to send jet fighters and on Thursday said that several European leaders were ready to supply aircraft. Macron said the current priority was to help Ukraine in the weeks and months ahead, and fighter jets could not be delivered in that timeframe and it would take time to train Ukrainian pilots to fly them.
Macron said the priority should be on items such as artillery, which had proven to be effective and on which Ukrainian forces were already trained. He said it might be necessary to intensify delivery of such items and Ukraine’s allies would examine this possibility in coming days. Ukrainian officials have said a fresh Russian offensive was underway, and Pavlo Krylenko, governor of the eastern Donetsk region, said on Thursday that "the enemy's forces and means are escalating there with daily intensity."
Ukrainian forces have been bolstered with tens of thousands of freshly mobilised recruits, and Russian forces launched a series of overnight strikes that knocked out power supplies in parts of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city. Western countries that have provided Ukraine with arms have so far refused to send fighter jets or long-range weapons capable of striking deep inside Russia for fear of being drawn further into the conflict.
Zelenskiy began a European tour on Wednesday with a meeting in London with Britain's Rishi Sunak and dinner in Paris with France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Olaf Scholz. Sunak promised to train Ukrainian pilots to fly advanced NATO fighter jets, but stopped short of offering to supply the planes. Zelenskiy said that some of what he had been promised in Paris by Macron and Scholz was still secret. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it would be Ukrainians who suffered if Britain or other Western countries supplied fighter jets to Kyiv, and that the line between indirect and direct Western involvement in the war was disappearing.
Ukraine is hoping to receive weapons and aircraft from its allies in order to combat the Russian offensive, and Zelenskiy's European tour has been a step in the right direction. Western countries have so far refused to send fighter jets or long-range weapons, but have promised to train Ukrainian pilots to fly advanced NATO fighter jets. The Kremlin has warned that supplying Kyiv with weapons would lead to an escalation of tension and prolong the conflict, but Ukraine is hoping for the best as the anniversary of Russia's invasion approaches.
Career Highlights of Pulitzer Prize-Winning Reporter Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. reporter who recently reported that U.S. Navy divers, in a CIA operation ordered by President Joe Biden, planted explosives that destroyed three Russian gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea last September. The White House dismissed Hersh's report, which relied on a single source to support its claim about the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, as "utterly false and complete fiction."
Hersh's career began in 1969 when he exposed the massacre of South Vietnamese villagers by U.S. troops in the hamlet of My Lai. His syndicated report was credited with helping end the Vietnam War and his subsequent book "My Lai" won a 1970 Pulitzer Prize. His reporting for the New York Times on President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal led to an award-winning book on former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Hersh wrote critically acclaimed books on the 1983 Soviet downing of a South Korean passenger jet, Israel's nuclear arms program, and abuses of inmates at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison by American soldiers during the U.S. occupation of Iraq. He also ignited a storm of controversy with a 2013 article in the London Review of Books blaming a sarin nerve agent attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians in a rebel-held Damascus suburb on rebels acting under Turkey's direction.
In 2015, Hersh attracted more controversy with a London Review of Books article quoting Pakistani and U.S. sources as saying the U.S. and Pakistani governments lied about details of the 2011 U.S. commando raid that killed al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan. Both governments denied Hersh's allegations that Pakistan had been holding bin Laden prisoner and knew about the raid in advance.
Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. reporter who has made a career of exposing the truth. His 1969 report on the massacre of South Vietnamese villagers by U.S. troops in My Lai was credited with helping end the Vietnam War, and his reporting on President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal led to an award-winning book. Hersh has also written critically acclaimed books on the 1983 Soviet downing of a South Korean passenger jet, Israel's nuclear arms program, and abuses of inmates at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison by American soldiers during the U.S. occupation of Iraq. He has also caused controversy with articles blaming a sarin nerve agent attack in Syria on rebels and alleging that the U.S. and Pakistani governments lied about details of the 2011 U.S. commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Hersh's latest report, which claims that U.S. Navy divers planted explosives that destroyed three Russian gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea last September, has been dismissed by the White House as "utterly false and complete fiction."
Blue Origin Awarded First Interplanetary NASA Contract
Blue Origin, the private space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was awarded its first interplanetary NASA contract on Thursday to launch a mission next year to study the magnetic field around Mars. The mission, called ESCAPADE, will be launched in late 2024 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, and will take 11 months to reach Mars orbit. The mission will be carried out by Blue Origin's recently developed New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, which is named for pioneering NASA astronaut John Glenn.
Blue Origin has flown previous NASA missions with its smaller, suborbital New Shepard rocket, and is one of 13 firms NASA chose last year for its Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare missions (VADR) program. This program is intended to spur private development of private space launch vehicles by assigning lower-cost NASA science missions to new rockets with an unproven record and higher chance of failure.
Although ESCAPADE marks NASA's first flight on New Glenn, that booster has been selected to carry payloads to orbit for three leading satellite operators: Eutelsat, JSAT and Telesat. Additionally, Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite constellation has chosen New Glenn for 12 launches over five years.
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#Ukraine #Russia #Weapons #Aircraft #Allies #Offensive
#China #Fertility #FamilySupport #Childbirth #Childcare #Education #PopulationDevelopment #OneChildPolicy #DemographicDownturn #Sichuan #SpermDonors
#BlueOrigin #NASA #JeffBezos #NewGlenn #ESCAPADE #VADR #Mars #ProjectKuiper #Eutelsat #JSAT #Telesat
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