Wang said that as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China is open to dialogue and exchanges with NATO, and is willing to jointly promote the sound and steady development of bilateral relations.
The two sides should enhance communication and mutual understanding on the basis of frankness and mutual respect, and prevent misunderstanding and false information, he said.
Stoltenberg said that China plays an important role in global issues with its growing economy and influence.
Noting that NATO does not regard China as a rival, he said the organization attaches importance to maintaining and strengthening engagements with China and has a positive attitude towards developing relations with China.
Stoltenberg said NATO will stay committed to its original geographical location when it was established, and expected to explore cooperation with China in arms control, climate change and other fields so as to better cope with global challenges.
NATO and its member countries follow the one-China policy and remain unchanged in their position on the Taiwan question, he said, adding that he expected China to play an important role in ending the conflict in Europe.
Wang expressed hope that NATO will handle the current international situation objectively and calmly, instead of simply drawing a dividing line based on “political correctness.”
On the issue of peace and security, he said China is a major country with the best record. China has no genes for external expansion, and has never invaded other countries, engaged in proxy war, sought spheres of influence, exported ideology, interfered in other countries’ internal affairs, or participated in military blocs.
China has decided to follow a path of peaceful development, which is enshrined in law, Wang said, adding that he hoped NATO will establish a rational and correct understanding of China.
China is willing to carry out necessary cooperation with NATO on global issues and contribute to peace and stability, he said.
Wang also clarified China’s consistent position on the Ukraine issue and its constructive role in promoting peace talks. He said it is necessary to explore the establishment of a balanced, effective and sustainable European security framework to ensure long-term stability in Europe.
Under this program, a total of 11 students from Japan joined their colleagues in Rwanda since August, 15 this year for an exchange program that was initiated through the support of NPO Think About Education in Rwanda.
The latter is a non-government organization founded in Japan, by a Rwandese lady who was committed to improve child education and health in Rwanda after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
Throughout this month-long program which came to an end during a ceremony held recently on 16th September, the students visited different district and referral hospitals, health centers and community health workers to learn about health systems in Rwanda and other institutions to know more about Rwanda.
Dr. Olive Bazirete, the Dean of Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at UR, said that the main reason behind this program is to develop a global partnership in healthcare systems.
“We are grateful to this partnership and we are looking forward to continued collaboration and development of more projects. This should not only be considered in the context of having this student exchange program, but also we can have the faculty of Josai coming to Rwanda and UR going to Japan,” she said.
“We have learnt a lot of things. What impressed us most is the medical system which is different from Japan including the small number of hospitalization days and the use of drones to transport blood from the transfusion centers,” said Ms. Megumi Uchida, one of students from JIU.
“I also got to know a lot from some initiatives that I would like to see introduced in Japan such as enabling hospitals to provide counseling and provide protection to victims of domestic violence,” she added.
The summer exchange provided the opportunity to interact not only with students but also with people of all ages and to deepen their ideas about lifestyles, societies and education.
It has been an opportunity for JIU and UR students to deepen their understanding of the health sector, culture and to reflect and share as future leaders.
JIU nursing students also visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial to learn about Rwanda history.
Innocent Twizerimana, a UR student said that such summer exchange is very important, however much expensive it is.
“For it to be a full exchange, people should come to Rwanda and vice versa,” he noted.
Twizerimana said that UR students also learnt a lot about the Japanese health system.
“The Japanese government encourages people to get fully vaccinated to develop resistance against pandemics. We found that it could help our country to improve the current vaccination system. Another thing we learned is the way Josai University puts a lot of effort in research to develop resilience against shocks in the health sector,” he revealed.
The president and founder of NPO Think About Education in Rwanda, Mrs. Towari Marie Louise, urged the participants of the summer exchange platform to build on the connection they have created.
“Don’t leave the connection here, please bring them back and you Rwandese, please keep them. If you don’t keep the connection, it’s going to disappear but if you continue connecting, I believe something good will happen,” she said.
“As you have visited many places, remember that you met someone, remember to connect and keep the telephone number in your mind. It’s not by accident, it’s for a purpose we meet. See the millions and millions of people living in the world but we are here together. This is a miracle. Let’s build on it and provide another good future for a new generation coming after us,” added Towari.
{{About JIU}}
JIU was founded in 1992 by the Josai University Corporation in the city of Togane, Chiba Prefecture, about 90 minutes from downtown Tokyo. Josai University Corporation was established in 1965 by Mikio Mizuta who was Minister of Finance for a total of twelve years starting in 1960. The university offers a four-year undergraduate program as well as a graduate program. There are undergraduate schools or faculties: Faculty of Management and Information Sciences; Faculty of International Humanities; Faculty of Media Studies; Faculty of Social Work Studies; Faculty of Tourism;Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences; Faculty of Nursing.
There are four graduate schools; Graduate School of Humanities; Graduate School of Management and Information Sciences; Graduate School of Social Studies; and Graduate School of Business Design. Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences; Graduate School of International Administration.At present, the university has over 6,000 students, including the undergraduate student body and the graduate program. Many of the students come from various foreign countries.
{{About UR}}
The University of Rwanda is Rwanda’s largest higher education institution. The University of Rwanda was formed in 2013 through the merger of previously independent public institutions of higher education, the largest of which was the National University of Rwanda.
Initial work to establish the institution was undertaken by Professor Paul Davenport, a member of Paul Kagame’s Presidential Advisory Council, who now acts as chair of the university’s board of governors. The University of Rwanda was established in September 2013 by a law that repealed the laws establishing the National University of Rwanda and the country’s other public higher education institutes, creating the UR in their place.
At the time of its creation, education officials reported that they “hoped that the university will improve the quality of education and effectively respond to current national and global needs”
With the first projects expected in 2023, IFFEd will support education and skills development investments in lower-middle-income countries. With an initial funding of 2 billion U.S. dollars, the facility is expected to expand to 10 billion dollars by 2030.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, two-thirds of countries have cut their education budgets, but education is the building block of peaceful, prosperous, stable societies, said Guterres at a joint press conference with Brown. “Reducing investment virtually guarantees more serious crises further down the line. We need to get more, not less, money into education systems.”
Wealthy countries can increase funding from domestic sources, but many developing countries are being hit by the cost-of-living crisis, and urgently need support for education, Guterres said, adding that this is exactly the role of the IFFEd.
This facility is aimed at getting financing to lower-middle-income countries — home to half of the world’s children and youth — and to the majority of the world’s displaced and refugee children, he noted.
IFFEd is not a new fund, but a mechanism to increase the resources available to multilateral banks to provide low-cost education finance. It will complement and work alongside existing tools that provide grants and other assistance, said Guterres, urging all international donors and philanthropic organizations to back IFFEd.
Brown said IFFEd is to deal with a crisis when 260 million school-age children do not go to school, 400 million children at the age of 11 are not able to read or write and leave education for good, and 840 million children and young people, by the time they leave education in their teens, have no qualifications for the workplace of the future.
“Over time, we expect the fund to grow from the two billion (dollars) that it will be initially, to five billion and then to 10 billion. This means that today we’re announcing the biggest-ever single investment in global education that the world has seen, and we believe it can transform the prospects of millions of children,” he said.
The satellite, Zhongxing-1E, was launched on Tuesday at 9:18 p.m. (Beijing Time) by a modified version of the Long March-7 carrier rocket and entered the planned orbit successfully. It will provide high-quality voice, data, radio and television transmission services.
This was the 437th mission for the Long March series carrier rockets.
The majority of visas had been issued to Russian citizens before the Russia-Ukraine conflict and “under different geopolitical conditions and considerations,” said the release, adding that the influx of Russian citizens to the EU and the Schengen area through their countries’ borders, however, poses “a serious threat” to their “public security and to the overall shared Schengen area.”
The agreed “national temporary measures” are not “an outright entry ban” to Russian nationals, the statement said, adding that the restrictions should enter into force in each country by Sept. 19.
The four prime ministers said that they welcome the suspension of the EU visa facilitation agreement with Russia, and called for further measures to “drastically limit the number of visas issued (primarily tourist visas)” and to decrease the flow of Russian citizens into the EU and the Schengen area.
During their informal meeting in Prague on Aug. 30-31, EU foreign ministers agreed to suspend the visa facilitation agreement that allows simplified procedures for the issuance of visas to Russian citizens. The decision, however, has yet to be legalized.
Russia responded on Sunday that it will take serious retaliatory measures if the EU formally introduces visa restrictions on Russian citizens.
During the talks in Kiev, the parties talked about U.S. financial, economic and military aid for Ukraine, in particular, the security assistance of 675 million U.S. dollars announced by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier in the day.
Zelensky thanked the U.S. government for the recent decision to provide Ukraine with 6 billion dollars in grant aid, which includes 3 billion dollars in security assistance and 3 billion dollars in financial support earmarked through the World Bank.
Speaking about military assistance from the United States, Zelensky said that American weapons, especially the HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems, have strengthened Ukraine’s positions in the conflict with Russia.
Zelensky and Blinken also discussed the prospects of increasing defense support for Ukraine and the launch of the Lend-Lease program.
Blinken arrived in Kiev earlier in the day for his second visit since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February this year.
Addressing a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the top UN official endorsed the recommendations made by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who inspected the occupied Zaporizhzhia plant last week and presented a report to the Security Council.
In the first instance, Guterres told the council that all military operations around the plant should cease.
“As a second step, an agreement on a demilitarized perimeter should be secured,” he said. “Specifically, this would include a commitment by the Russian military to withdraw military personnel and equipment from that perimeter, and a commitment by Ukrainian forces not to enter.”
“We are playing with fire and something very disastrous could happen. That is why in our report, we are proposing the establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone confined to the periphery and the plant,” Grossi told the council via video link.
The IAEA, UN’s nuclear watchdog, urged an immediate end to shelling around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, according to the report.
“This requires agreement by all relevant parties to the establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the plant, it said.
The IAEA mission, headed by Grossi, worked at the plant from Sept. 1-5, and Grossi told reporters on Friday that two of the agency’s experts would remain permanently at the nuclear power plant.
The Fairview fire started Monday afternoon near the city of Hemet in Riverside County amid a brutal heat wave that has scorched Southern California for days. It was only 5 percent contained to date and the evacuation order and warning remain in place, according to the Riverside County Fire Department.
The department said at least 7 structures had been destroyed and several more damaged. officials estimated that thousands of structures in the area remain threatened by the fire.
The two victims of the fire appeared to be attempting to flee before being overcome by the blaze, officials said in a media briefing Tuesday morning.
Due to the blaze, all schools in Hemet Unified School District will be closed on Tuesday.
School district officials said in a statement that the decision “was not made lightly.” After considering local authorities’ advisement and evacuation orders, transportation impacts, the current level of fire containment, and the possibility of power outages with anticipated high temperatures, they felt that closing schools on Tuesday is necessary to ensure the safety of students, staff, and families.
Martin Griffiths, under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told a news conference in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, that the severe drought ravaging the country is likely to push parts of the country into famine by the end of 2022.
“Famine is at the door, and today we are receiving a final warning. I have been shocked to my core these past few days by the level of pain and suffering we see so many Somalis enduring,” Griffiths said at the end of his five-day visit to Somalia.
The Somalia Food Security and Nutrition Analysis report released Monday shows concrete indications that famine will occur in two areas in the Bay region (Baidoa and Burhakaba districts) in south-central Somalia between October and December.
According to the report, with five consecutive seasons of poor rainfall, exhausted coping capacities of affected communities, depletion of livelihood assets, and other exacerbating factors, humanitarian assistance will be required to address high levels of needs beyond December 2022.
“I repeat: This is a final warning to all of us. The situation and trends resemble those seen in the 2010-2011, in that crisis. Except now they are worse,” Griffiths said.
He said the unprecedented failure of four consecutive rainy seasons, decades of conflict, mass displacement, and severe economic issues are pushing many people to the brink of famine.
“And these conditions are likely to last through to at least March 2023,” he said, pointing out that Baidoa is the epicenter of the humanitarian crisis in Somalia.
“It is not the only place with needs, but it is one of them. In camps for the displaced people, we saw extreme hunger. In the hospital in Baidoa, we had the unenviable privilege of seeing children so malnourished that they could barely speak,” the UN relief chief said.
The UN said the Bay region was also the epicenter of the humanitarian crisis in 2017 when severe drought led to agropastoral and displaced populations facing a risk of famine, which was only averted due to timely, robust, and sustained humanitarian assistance.
Griffiths said 1.5 million children across Somalia will face acute malnutrition by October if the current course remains. “The drought, the worst in four decades, is forecast to continue. This is, in those often-used words, and no more true than here, a humanitarian catastrophe. We know that the needs will grow,” he said.
