DAMAGE from extreme weather in Canada last year pushed the bill facing insurers to an unprecedented CAN$8.5 billion ($5.9 billion), the Insurance Bureau of Canada said Monday.
Events that cause significant destruction “are escalating at a shocking rate and Canada is simply not prepared,” said Celyeste Power, president of the IBC, an industry association representing Canadian insurers.
The IBC said the insured damage estimate for 2024 was 12 times higher than the annual average of CAN$701 million recorded from 2001 to 2010.
“The summer of 2024 stands out as the most destructive season in Canadian history for insured losses due to wildfires, floods and hailstorms,” the group said in a statement.
In July and August alone, “four catastrophic weather events” caused more than CAN$7 billion in losses, it said.
Those included a wildfire in Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies and flash flooding in Toronto. — AFP

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar

FIREFIGHTERS were battling massive wildfires Monday that have ravaged Los Angeles and killed at least 24 people, with officials warning of incoming dangerous winds that could whip up the blazes further. The fires ripped through the United States’ second-larg est city for the seventh day, reducing whole communities to scorched rubble and leaving thousands without homes. Massive firefighting efforts have staunched the spread of the Palisades Fire, which was looming towards upscale Brentwood and the densely populated San Fernando Valley. But conditions are set to dramatically worsen, with “extreme fire behaviour and life threatening conditions” over the coming days. Winds up to 70 miles (110 kilometres) per hour mean a “particularly dangerous situation” will be declared from early Tuesday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Rose Schoenfeld. Those gusts could fan flames and whip up embers from existing burn zones into new areas, firefighters warned. Los Angeles County Fire Department chief Anthony Marrone said his department had received resources including dozens of new water trucks and firefighters from far afield and was primed to face the renewed threat. Asked whether hydrants could run dry again, as they did during the initial outbreak of fires last week, Mayor Karen Bass replied: “I believe the city is prepared.” There was frustration for evacuees who were told they would not be returning home until at least Thursday when winds subside. Some have queued for hours in the hope of getting back to homes they fled to pick up medication or a change of clothes. Search for bodies But Sheriff Robert Luna said escorts into those areas were being suspended Sunday because of the winds and dangerous conditions among the wreckage, as well as the need to retrieve victims’ bodies. Teams with cadaver dogs were carrying out grid search es with the grim expectation that the confirmed death toll would rise. Several more arrests of looters were made, including one burglar who had dressed as a firefighter to steal from homes. — AFP

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar

THE last physical tourist information centre in Paris has closed, with officials saying Monday they will boost digital services to meet visitor demand for online information. 

“Changes in visitor habits and the specific features of a city like Paris have led us to revise our network of local tourism information,” the Paris Tourist Office operator said in a statement.

 The last centre, set up near the Eiffel Tower for last year’s Summer Olympics, was shut on Sunday. 

The temporary structure had replaced an older tourism office at city hall “but was never very popular”, Le Parisien newspaper reported. 

The Paris Tourist Office said it would set up 50 information points at newsstands, post offices and hotels across the city by 2026.

 There will also be a call centre for “personalized tips”, staffed every day, that can be reached by phone, mail or instant messenger, it said.

 “To welcome visitors properly, respect them and give personalised advice remains an absolute priority to maintain the reputation and attractiveness of this destination,” the office said.

 This meant “more flexibility”, “an immediate response to needs” and “a human presence where it really counts”. — AFP

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar

POPE Francis warned on Thursday of the dangers of misinformation and its spread via social media and artificial intelligence (AI), cautioning it could be “misused to manipulate minds”.
In his traditional New Year’s address to diplomats at the Vatican, Francis lamented the increasing ephasized number of society, “aggravated by the continuous creation and spread of fake news, which not only distorts facts but also perceptions”.
“This phenomenon generates false images of reality, a climate of suspicion that foments hate, undermines people’s sense of security and compromises civil coexistence and the stability of entire nations,” the 88-year-old pontiff said.
Francis regularly rails against fake news. But his comments on Thursday come two days after tech giant Meta — which owns Facebook —announced it was ending its third-party fact-checking programme in the United States and adopting a crowd-sourced model to police misinformation similar to that of the Elon Musk-owned X. — AFP

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar

CHINESE telecoms firm Huawei has partnered with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to promote the conservation of a marine protected area on Kenya’s south coast.
The three-year project, which was unveiled Monday, seeks to protect the ecological health of Kisite-Mpunguti Marine Park and Reserve, a biodiversity hotspot located on the edge of Kenya’s south coastal county of Kwale.
Other implementing partners in the Tech4 Nature project include Kenya Wildlife Service and Wildlife Research and Training Institute, a state agency, according to a statement by Huawei issued in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, Tuesday.
The project is aligned with Huawei’s TECH4ALL initiative and the IUCN Green List as its primary goal is to improve the monitoring and management efficiency of the marine protected area,which is home to pristine coral reefs as well as iconic but endangered species, like green turtles and bottlenose dolphins.
Huawei Kenya Media Director Khadija Mohammed Ahmed underscored the need to leverage technology and innovations to boost the health and resilience of marine ecosystems, threatened by climate change and human activities. — Xinhua

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar

NIHON Hidankyo, the Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ group that won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, urged the government on Wednesday to participate as an observer at a convention of signatories to a UN nuclear weapons ban treaty, but said Prime Minis-
ter Shigeru Ishiba remained noncommittal during a meeting in Tokyo.
The group’s co-chair Terumi Tanaka said the roughly 30-minute sit-down with the prime minister, held to congratulate the group on the prize, “did not yield results” on the issue. Another attendee, Toshiyuki Mimaki, described Ishiba’s reticence as “regrettable”.
Japan’s top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said the government will examine how to take a “realistic and practical” approach in response to the group’s call for Japan, the only country to have experienced nuclear attacks, to attend the gathering of signatories to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in March in New York.
Komeito party chief Tetsuo Saito, who was also at the meeting, quoted Ishiba as only saying at the meeting he is aware that “there is a view” that Japan should participate.
“It was an occasion rather for the prime minister to explain his views on defense and security, and we did not have time to respond. We want (the government) to set up another meeting,” Tanaka told reporters.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final days of World War II. — Kyodo

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar

POWERFUL tremors shook Nepal’s capital Kathmandu just before dawn on Tuesday, an AFP reporter said, as a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck a remote Himalayan region in Tibet in China.
The US Geological Survey said the epicentre of the quake was in China, but buildings shook in Kathmandu, more than 200 kilometres
away, with officials saying they were checking for damage.
Areas around Lobuche in Nepal in the high mountains near Mount Everest were also rattled by the tremors and a series of aftershocks.
“It shook quite strongly here, everyone is awake, but we don’t know about any damages yet,” said government official Jagat Prasad Bhusal in Nepal’s Namche region, which lies nearer to Everest.
Nepal lies on a major geological faultline where the Indian tectonic plate pushes up into the Eurasian plate, forming the Himalayas, and earthquakes are a regular occurrence.
In 2015, nearly 9,000 people died and more than 22,000 were injured when a 7.8-magnitude quake struck Nepal, destroying more than half a million homes. — AFP

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar

Tomiko Itooka, a 116-year-old Japanese woman recognized as the world's oldest person, has died of old age in western Japan, according to local authorities.

Itooka died on December 29 in a nursing home for the elderly in the city of Ashiya where she resided, the city government in Hyogo Prefecture said Saturday.

Born on May 23, 1908, Itooka became the oldest living person in Japan in December 2023 following the death of FusaTat-sumi, a 116-year-old in Kashiwara, Osaka Prefecture, a Hyogo neighbor.

Itooka was subsequently recognized as the world's oldest living person by Guinness World Records in September 2024, following the death of the previous holder, 117-year-old Maria Branyas in Spain. 

Xinhua

Source: Myawady Daily Newspaper

BEIJING recorded 290 days of good air quality last year, the highest since monitoring began, the municipal ecology and environment bureau said Thursday.
The number of days with good air quality in the national capital accounted for 79.2 per cent in 2024, marking an increase of 19 days compared to the previous year and a significant rise of 114 days compared to 2013.
The number of days with heavy air pollution dropped dramatically, from 58 in 2013 to just two in 2024, a decrease of 96.6 per cent.
Beijing’s average concentration of PM2.5 reached 30.5 microgrammes per cubic metre in 2024, meeting the national standards for four consecutive years. PM2.5 readings, a key indicator of air pollution, are a gauge monitoring airborne particles of 2.5 microns or below in diameter.
Compared to 2013, the annual average concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide in Beijing last year decreased by 65.9 percent, 50 per cent, 57.1 per cent and 88.7 per cent, respectively. — Xinhua

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar

INDIA launched a rocket Monday carrying two small spacecraft to test docking in space, a critical step for the country’s dreams of a space station and a manned Moon mission. 

The mission is “vital for India’s future space ambitions”, Jitendra Singh, the country’s science and technology minister, said in a statement ahead of the launch, which was broadcast live by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced plans last year to send a man to the Moon by 2040. 

The PSLV-C60 rocket, which blasted off Monday evening at the Sriharikota launch site with shooting flames as it soared into the night sky, included two 220-kilogramme (485-pound) satellites. 

ISRO has dubbed the mission Spa DeX, or Space Docking Experiment. 

“PSLV-C60 successfully launches Spa DeX and 24 payloads,” it said in a statement. — AFP

Source: Global New Light of Myanmar