VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

photo : yahoo

Candidates to lead the World Trade Organization –WTO urged members to reach a decision quickly on Wednesday (15/7) and address what one described as a "deep crisis" as it began the vetting process. As quoted by Reuters (15/7), nominations from eight countries have been submitted, including three women, three African candidates and a former Saudi air force pilot, to replace Brazil's Roberto Azevedo, who will step down a year early at the end of August. His successor faces an unprecedented set of challenges, such as intensifying global trade tensions, rising protectionism as well as a corona-virus-induced dive in global trade. This needs to be done as quickly as possible. This was stated by a senior trade official in Mexico, Jesus Seade describing the trade watchdog as being in "deep crisis"//Reuters

photo : reuters

On Wednesday (15/7), European Union (EU) member states struggled to resolve differences over a massive recovery plan for their coronavirus-hit economies, but agreed a deal was crucial at an end-of-week summit for the bloc's credibility.  As quoted by Reuters (16/7),  with economies in free fall due to the pandemic, European leaders will hold their first face-to-face talks since lockdowns took hold from March and there were weeks of feuding over how the 27-nation bloc should respond. The Friday-Saturday summit in Brussels is the EU's next long-term budget and an economic stimulus plan that, together, would be worth around 1.85 billion Euros or US$2.1 billion dollars.  To reach an accord, many gaps will need to be bridged, especially between wealthy, thrifty northern countries and the high-debt south that has taken the brunt of the Covid crisis//Reuters

photo : thenational

Prime Minister of Tunisia, Elyes Fakhfakh resigned after the biggest party in his coalition began pushing for a vote of no confidence in the government. As quoted by Reuters (16/7), President of Tunisia, Kais Saied asked him to step down as momentum grew in parliament to oust the prime minister over an alleged conflict of interest, political sources told Reuters. Although Tunisia has managed to move peacefully to democracy after throwing off autocratic rule in the uprising of 2011 that sparked the Arab Spring revolts, successive governments have failed to tackle social hardship and unemployment//Reuters

photo : stuff.co.nz

New figures reveal more than 300 people with corona-virus have the app on their phone and have granted officials permission to sift through their data. However, Victoria's Chief Medical Officer, Prof. Brett Sutton said the information logged by the app provided no information that was not already collected through traditional contact tracing.

"The app has not added a close contact that we haven't found through our very extensive long-form interview that takes an hour or more where we go through every single setting and encounter that people have had.” He said. 

Prof. Sutton argued that because people were not going out and interacting with others, particularly in Melbourne, which was under lockdown.

"We are in policy settings in Victoria where people are just at home with their immediate family so the close contacts that they have will be those family members and will be workplace close contacts. They are not going to large gatherings, they are not standing next to strangers for 15 minutes or more, so the COVIDSafe App is not going to flag those interactions because I don't think those interactions are largely happening.” he added. 

Australian Federal Labor has raised questions about the effectiveness of the app, because the technology has not provided any assistance to the traditional contact tracing approach. (NK/abcaus)