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UN News/Daniel Dickinson A park in Brooklyn, New York, has marked out circles in order to enforce social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.         30 July 2020 Although older people are among those at highest risk of COVID-19, the head of the World Health Organization ( WHO ) has reminded younger generations that they are “not invincible” when it comes to the disease. Evidence suggests that the spike in cases in some countries is partly due to younger people “letting down their guard during the northern hemisphere summer”,  WHO  chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus  said  on Thursday. “We have said it before and we’ll say it again: young people are not invincible”, he told journalists. “Young people can be infected; young people can die; and young people can transmit the virus to others.” He stressed that the world’s youth “should be leaders and drivers of change” during the  COVID-19  pandemic. Protect yoursel

WFP/Claire Nevill In Harare, Zimbabwe, a single mother of three relies on food assistance from the World Food Programme (WFP) during the COVID-19 pandemic.         30 July 2020 The World Food Programme (WFP) is urgently seeking more international support to prevent millions of Zimbabweans plunging deeper into hunger. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated an already severe hunger crisis in Zimbabwe, UN humanitarians warned on Thursday. In an appeal for an additional $250 million to support emergency relief for millions of vulnerable people, the World Food Programme ( WFP ) said that by the end of the year, the number of food-insecure people in the southern African nation, is expected to surge by almost 50 per cent, to 8.6 million. Triple shock That represents around 60 per cent of the population, the agency said in a statement, blaming drought, economic recession and the  coronavirus  pandemic as the main drivers of the cr

© UNICEF/Omar Albam On 23 April 2020, a child washes dishes in the Maarat Misrin camp north of Idlib, Syrian Arab Republic.         29 July 2020 Humanitarian operations across war-shattered Syria are reaching 6.8 million people a month, but a worsening economic crisis is deepening poverty and pushing more and more Syrians into humanitarian need, the  Security Council  heard Wednesday. UN humanitarian affairs chief Mark Lowcock  said  that the United Nations and its partners are working to address operational challenges arising from the Council’s  decision  following weeks of division, on 11 July, to reduce to just one, the number of border crossing through which food, medicine and other forms of aid can pass from Turkey into Syria. The UN is also helping to tackle  COVID-19  in Syria, where the number of confirmed cases remains in the hundreds, but the true number is certainly higher, Mr. Lowcock told the Council’s monthly

World Bank/Curt Carnemark Environmental pollution and degradation can be linked to a growing list of health conditions such as skin cancer, lung cancer, asthma, lead poisoning, mercury poisoning, malaria, Ebola and Zika.         29 July 2020 Lead poisoning is affecting children on a “massive and previously unknown scale”, according to a ground-breaking new study launched on Thursday by the United Nations Children’s Fund ( UNICEF ) and international non-profit organization focused on pollution issues, Pure Earth The report, the first of its kind, says that around 1 in 3 children - up to 800 million globally - have blood lead levels at, or above, 5 micrograms per decilitre (µg/dL), the amount at which action is required. Nearly half of these children live in South Asia. Lead has poisoned children on a massive and previously unknown scale. UNICEF and  @PureEarthNow  are calling for urgent action. https://t.co/AisRPt4CsP — UNI

29 July 2020 Author: Troy Stangarone, Korea Economic Institute of America In the span of a little more than a decade the world has experienced two economic crises. The Great Recession was precipitated by the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. Now an economic recession is being induced by government measures to stop the spread of COVID-19. South Korea came out of the Great Recession better than many other developed economies and is positioning itself to do the same after COVID-19. South Korea was able to avoid economic decline during the Great Recession. While economic growth slowed, South Korean GDP grew by 0.7 per cent in 2009. South Korea was able  to avoid a recession  thanks to a banking and corporate sector that had become more fiscally sound in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis a decade earlier, a diversified export portfolio and a fiscal stimulus package equivalent to 6.9 per cent of GDP between 2008–2010. The government also introduced a five-year Green Gr