https://arab.news/nxpkv
NEW DELHI: Saudi Arabia has become the first country to back a call for $1 trillion in annual investment into the global startup ecosystem from G20 countries during the Startup20 engagement group’s summit in India.
Startup20 is one of 11 official networking groups of the G20 largest economies. It was initiated under India’s G20 presidency this year and aims to help implement policies that support startups, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem builders for their sustainable growth in member countries. The engagement group is composed of representatives from all G20 countries. Saudi Arabia — the only Middle Eastern member of the group — is represented by Prince Fahad bin Mansour Al-Saud, the chair of the board of directors of the Saudi Entrepreneurship Vision.
At the beginning of the two-day summit in Gurugram, Startup20 Chairperson Dr. Chintan Vaishnav presented its communique, which urged G20 leaders to raise the joint annual investment in the global startup ecosystem from their nations to $1 trillion by 2030.
Prince Fahad was the first to answer the call for action.
“I can already foresee the impact and outcome that can be achieved from this fund. We can imagine it being an empowering platform that will not only invest, but also build an operating body tailored to the needs of the G20 startups that will assure having quality and well-governed startups that can grow sustainably,” he said in his summit speech.
“We are more than happy to open all the doors of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for Startup20 to present this opportunity to the top investors in Saudi and showcase the top Saudi startup opportunities. We are ready to work on it starting today and hopefully become the first to commit.”
The announcement was hailed by the Startup20 chair, who underscored Saudi Arabia’s steadfast dedication to fostering global innovation and entrepreneurship.
“By pledging support for the $1 trillion funding milestone, Saudi Arabia sets a precedent for other nations to follow, demonstrating their commitment to driving a disruptive innovation ecosystem and propelling the economic growth,” Vaishnav said.
For Saudi Arabia, investment in new businesses is important as under Vision 2030, the Kingdom is seeking to create millions of new jobs and is encouraging small and medium enterprises to diversify its economy away from dependence on oil.
“That’s why Saudi Arabia is investing millions of dollars in tourism, in economy, sports, entertainment and any industry,” Faheem Al-Hamid, senior adviser to the Saudi G20 delegation, told Arab News.
The Saudi government has been undertaking significant initiatives to stimulate private sector growth and encourage investment in accordance with the objectives of Vision 2030.
Last year marked a turning point in those efforts, largely resulting from significant reforms in key economic sectors to unlock new markets and open avenues for investment.
“We have decided to enhance the startup scene … Among the G20 countries, Saudi Arabia’s funding has skyrocketed in 2022,” Al-Hamid said.
“Saudi Arabia’s startup ecosystem has grown in an unprecedented way from just a few SMEs prior to the launch of the Vision 2030 to the groundbreaking (proliferation) of startups in the last six years.”
LONDON: An increasing number of countries are repatriating gold reserves as protection against the sort of sanctions imposed by the West on Russia, according to an Invesco survey of central bank and sovereign wealth funds published on Monday.
The financial market rout last year caused widespread losses for sovereign money managers who are “fundamentally” rethinking their strategies on the belief that higher inflation and geopolitical tensions are here to stay.
Over 85 percent of the 85 sovereign wealth funds and 57 central banks that took part in the annual Invesco Global Sovereign Asset Management Study believe that inflation will now be higher in the coming decade than in the last.
Gold and emerging market bonds are seen as good bets in that environment, but last year’s freezing of almost half of Russia’s $640 billion of gold and forex reserves by the West in response to the invasion of Ukraine also appears to have triggered a shift.
The survey showed a “substantial share” of central banks were concerned by the precedent that had been set. Almost 60 percent of respondents said it had made gold more attractive, while 68 percent were keeping reserves at home compared to 50 percent in 2020.
One central bank, quoted anonymously, said: “We did have it (gold) held in London… but now we’ve transferred it back to own country to hold as a safe haven asset and to keep it safe.”
Rod Ringrow, Invesco’s head of official institutions, who oversaw the report, said that is a broadly-held view.
“’If it’s my gold then I want it in my country’ (has) been the mantra we have seen in the last year or so,” he said.
DIVERSIFY
Geopolitical concerns, combined with opportunities in emerging markets, are also encouraging some central banks to diversify away from the dollar.
A growing 7 percent believe rising US debt is also a negative for the greenback, although most still see no alternative to it as the world’s reserve currency. Those that see China’s yuan as a potential contender fell to 18 percent, from 29 percent last year.
Nearly 80 percent of the 142 institutions surveyed see geopolitical tensions as the biggest risk over the next decade, while 83 percent cited inflation as a concern over the next 12 months.
Infrastructure is now seen as the most attractive asset class, particularly those projects involving renewable energy generation.
Concerns over China mean India remains one of the most attractive countries for investment for a second year running, while the “near-shoring” trend, where companies build factories closer to where they sell their products, is boosting the likes of Mexico, Indonesia and Brazil.
As well as China, Britain and Italy are seen as less attractive, while rising interest rates coupled with work-from-home and online shopping habits which became embedded during the COVID-19 outbreak meant property is now the least attractive private asset.
Ringrow said the wealth funds that performed better last year were those that recognized the risks posed by inflated asset prices and were willing to make substantial portfolio changes. It would be the same going forward.
“The funds and the central banks are now trying to get to grips with higher inflation,” he said. “It’s a big sea change.”
Russian-installed authorities in the Crimean peninsula on Sunday reported shooting down a cruise missile near the city of Kerch and briefly suspending traffic on the Kerch bridge that links the annexed territory to Russia.
The Moscow-appointed governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said the interception of the missile by Russian air defenses didn’t result in any damage or casualties. He didn’t offer any details, including the type of the missile and its origin.
In the nearby Russian region of Rostov, authorities on Sunday also reported shooting down a missile. Gov. Vasily Golubev said the missile was Ukrainian, and its debris damaged the roofs of several buildings. No casualties have been reported.
Such attacks far beyond the front line on Russian regions on the border with Ukraine or the annexed Crimean peninsula have become common during the war in Ukraine that has just surpassed its 500-day mark.
Officials in Russian regions and Moscow-appointed authorities in Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014, have regularly reported explosions, drone strikes, and even cross-border raids by Ukrainian saboteurs. Kyiv has never openly taken responsibility for these attacks.
E OGGI SI REPLICA, KERCH BRIDGE ON FIRE DAJE KIEV BUTTALO GIU pic.twitter.com/7dm1UHeTA9
Last October, a massive explosion severely damaged the Kerch bridge — a key transport and supply route for Russian troops in Crimea — leaving it out of commission for weeks. In what appeared to be the first direct admission of Kyiv’s involvement, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar in a Telegram post on Saturday listed the attack among the country’s main achievements in the war so far.
“(It’s been) 273 days since (we) carried out the first strike on the Crimean bridge in order to disrupt the logistics for the Russians,” Maliar wrote.
Among other successes, she also mentioned the sinking of the Moskva cruiser — something the Russian authorities refused to attribute to a Ukrainian attack.
Maliar’s post on Sunday caught the attention of Russian state media and officials. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova once again called President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government a “terrorist regime” in an online statement condemning the attack.
In other developments:
— One of the defense commanders of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol who returned to Ukraine on Saturday announced going back to the battlefield. The sprawling steelworks was the last bastion of resistance as Russian forces took control of the port city early on in the war. Azovstal’s more than 2,000 defenders left the steelworks in mid-May 2022 and were taken into Russian captivity.
The five leaders, some of whom were part of the Azov national guard regiment that Russia denounces as neo-Nazi, were freed in a September prisoner swap and taken to Turkiye, where they were to remain until the end of the war under the Turkish president’s protection. On Saturday, however, Zelensky brought them back to Ukraine. There was no immediate official explanation of how this squared with the conditions of the exchange.
Speaking to reporters in Ukraine upon returning, Denys Prokopenko — one of the five commanders — said he will return to the battlefield. “I am deeply convinced that the army is a team effort. And from today we will continue the fight together with you. We will definitely have our say in battle,” Prokopenko was quoted by Ukrainian media as saying.
— The death toll from the Russian missile strike on Lyman, a city in the partially occupied Donetsk region that was struck on Saturday, rose to nine on Sunday. Lyman is a few kilometers (miles) from the front line, where Russian troops have recently intensified fighting in the forests of Kreminna.
SEOUL: North Korea denounced on Monday what it called a move by the United States to introduce a nuclear missile submarine to waters near the Korean peninsula, saying it creates a situation that brings a nuclear conflict closer to reality.
North Korea also claimed US reconnaissance planes recently violated its air space near the east coast, quoting an unnamed spokesperson of its Ministry of National Defense in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
“There is no guarantee that a shocking incident where a US air force strategic reconnaissance plane is shot down over the East Sea will not happen,” the spokesperson said.
The statement cited past incidents of the North shooting down or intercepting US aircraft at the border with South Korea and off the coast. North Korea has often complained about US surveillance flights near the peninsula.
The moves by the United States to introduce strategic nuclear assets to the Korean peninsula is a blatant nuclear blackmail against North Korea and regional countries and presents a grave threat to peace, KCNA said.
“It is up to future US actions whether an extreme situation arises in the Korean peninsula region that nobody wants, and the United States will be held fully responsible if any unexpected situation occurs,” it said.
A US nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine arrived at the port of Busan in South Korea last month.
In April, the leaders of South Korea and the United States agreed a US Navy nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine will visit South Korea for the first time since the 1980s but no timetable has been given for such a visit.
It was part of a plan to boost the deployment of American strategic assets aimed at a more effective response to North Korea’s threats and weapons tests in defense of its ally South Korea, as agreed by the two leaders.
The move to sail nuclear submarines has created a “very dangerous situation that makes it impossible for us not to realistically accept the worst-case scenario of a nuclear confrontation,” the North Korean statement said.
In June, a US B-52 strategic bomber took part in air military drills with South Korea in a show of force following North Korea’s failed launch of a spy satellite at the end of May.
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Sunday announced he has chosen 21 new cardinals, including prelates from Jerusalem and Hong Kong — places where Catholics are a small minority — as he continues to leave his mark on the body of churchmen who will select his successor.
The pope announced his picks during his customary weekly appearance to the public in St. Peter’s Square, saying the ceremony to formally install the churchmen as cardinals will be held on Sept. 30.
Among those tapped are several prelates holding or about to assume major Vatican posts, including the archbishop from La Plata, Argentina, Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, 59, whom the pope just named to lead the Holy See’s powerful office for ensuring doctrinal orthodoxy a nd overseeing processing of allegations of sexual abuse against clergy worldwide.
The new cardinals also include Hong Kong Bishop Stephen Sau-yan Chow, 64, and the Vatican’s top official in the Middle East, Monsignor Pierbattista Pizzaballa, 58, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
Those two churchmen guide flocks in geopolitical areas of keen concern to the Vatican.
On Sunday, in remarks preceding his reading out of the list of new cardinals, Pope Francis expressed hope that Israeli and Palestinian authorities would take up “direct dialogue” to end the “spiral of violence” — a reference to recent deadly clashes.
Francis repeatedly has cited the hardships of the Christian minority in the Middle East in recent decades.
In an interview in April with The Associated Press, Pizzaballa, an Italian prelate who is the top Catholic churchman in the Holy Land, said that the region’s 2,000-year-old Christian community has come under increasing attack, with the most right-wing government in Israel’s history emboldening extremists who have harassed clergy and vandalized religious property at a quickening pace.
For decades, the Vatican and China have experienced tensions alternating with improvement of relations over the Communist-led nation’s insistence that it has the right to appoint bishops and the jailing of priests who professed loyalty to the pope.
Earlier this year, the Hong Kong bishop, who, like Francis, is a Jesuit, made the first visit to mainland China in nearly 30 years by a prelate in that post.
In announcing their names, Francis said the appointment of cardinals from across the globe “expresses the universality of the Church that continues to announce the merciful love of God to all men of the Earth.”
Cardinals serve as advisers to the pontiff on matters of teaching and administration, including the Vatican’s scandal-plagued finances. But their most crucial duty is gathering in a secret conclave to elect the next pontiff.
Francis has now named nine batches of new cardinals in his 10-year papacy. Even before this latest group, he had already appointed the large majority of those eligible to elect the next pontiff — those aged under 80. With the latest appointments, the number of cardinals who meet that condition stands at 137.
That means, increasingly, the men who will vote for whoever succeeds Francis, in the event of his resignation or death, are churchmen supportive of his values, priorities and perspectives and who share his vision for the future of the Catholic Church.
Three of the churchmen chosen to receive the cardinal red work in Africa, a continent where the Church has experience growth in recent decades. They are Monsignor Stephen Brislin, 66, archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa; Monsignor Protase Rugambwa, 63, co-adjutor archbishop of Tabora, Tanzania; and Monsignor Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla, 59, archbishop of Juba, South Sudan, which the pope visited earlier this year.
The office that Francis appointed Fernández to is traditionally headed by a cardinal. But the speed with which the La Plata archbishop was tapped publicly as a cardinal — eight days after the appointment — was notable and highlights the attention the pontiff gives to that office.
A US-based group that tracks how the Catholic hierarchy deals with allegations of sexual abuse by clergy says Francis made a “troubling” choice in picking the Argentine archbishop, who, in 2019, refused to believe victims who accused a priest in that archdiocese of sexually abusing boys.
Two others holding important offices at the Vatican were also among the pope’s picks on Sunday. They are the Chicago-born Monsignor Robert Francis Prevost, 67, who heads the Dicastery for Bishops; and Monsignor Claudio Gugerotti, 67, an Italian in charge of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches.
Also on the list are:
Monsignor Americo Manuel Alves Aguiar, an auxiliary bishop from Lisbon, Portugal, which the pope will visit next month for a Catholic youth jamboree, was also on the list. At 49, he is exceptionally young for a cardinal.
Monsignor Sebastian Francis, 71, bishop of Penang, Malaysia, who heads the bishops conference of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei; Monsignor Francois-Xavier Bustillo, 54, a Franciscan and native Spaniard who is bishop of Ajaccio, on the French island of Corsica; Monsignor Luis Jose Rueda Aparicio, 71, archbishop of Bogota, Colombia; and Monsignor Grzegorz Rys, 59, archbishop of Lodz, Poland.
Monsignor Emil Paul Tscherrig, 76, a Swiss prelate who is the first non-Italian to serve as papal ambassador to Italy and San Marino; and Monsignor Christopher Louis Yves Pierre, 77, a Frenchman whose diplomatic postings included Washington, D.C.
Monsignor Angel Sixto Rossi, 64, a Jesuit who is archbishop of his native Cordoba, Argentina; Monsignor Jose Cobo Cano, 57, who was just appointed last month by Francis to be archbishop of Madrid; and the Rev. Angel Fernández Artime, 62, a Spaniard who is rector major of the Salesians, a congregation of priests present in 133 countries.
Three of the 21 new cardinals are 80 or older and thus not eligible to vote in a conclave. They are Italian prelate, Agostino Marchetto, 82, who served as the top Vatican diplomat in Belarus, Madagascar, Mauritius and Tanzania; Monsignor Diego Rafael Padron Sanchez, 84, archbishop emeritus of Cumana, Venezuela; and a Franciscan priest, Luis Pascual Dri, 96, famed for hearing confessions in the pope’s native Buenos Aires and who has been praised by Francis for his stress on mercy.
METAIRIE, Louisiana: A former Catholic priest in Louisiana has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to drugging and molesting 17 men he met in a popular tourist area in New Orleans, a prosecutor said.
WVUE-TV reported that Stephen Sauer, 61, targeted people in the city’s French Quarter who appeared drunk, lost or in need of help, according to Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul D. Connick Jr.
The crimes occurred from 2019 to 2021, and many of the victims were visiting from out of state, Connick said.
The investigation began in 2021 after Sauer sent a computer to an electronics repair company in New York. A technician found hundreds of images suggesting sexual assaults had occurred. New York law enforcement officials determined the images were taken in Metairie and notified the Jefferson Parish sheriff.
The prosecutor said Sauer put narcotics in men’s drinks at bars or gave them sleep-inducing drugs after they passed out from drinking. He then drove the victims to his home in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, where he photographed or videotaped the unconscious men and molested some of them.
The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office found during its investigation that Sauer shared the images with others through a website or by email.
Sauer was sentenced Friday after he pleaded guilty to 13 counts of sexual battery, nine counts of third-degree rape, 17 counts of video voyeurism and 16 misdemeanor charges of possessing drugs without prescriptions and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Judge Shayna Beevers Morvant gave Sauer the 25-year sentence, ordered him to register as a sex offender and banned him from contacting 12 of the victims.
Detectives identified many victims because Sauer took photographs of their driver’s licenses or other forms of identification, Connick said.