NewsBytes

India, Angola pledge to deepen bilateral cooperation; sign MOUs

India and Angola on Sunday exchanged multiple Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) to strengthen bilateral ties on subjects like fisheries, aquaculture and marine resources during the first day of President Droupadi Murmu's official engagements in the African country. The President is on a four-day state visit to the country between November 8-11. This is the first visit by an Indian president to Angola. Murmu was officially welcomed at the Presidential Palace here by Angolan President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, starting with a 21-gun salute and a ceremonial guard of honour.

Super Typhoon Fung-wong slams into Philippines

Super Typhoon Fung-wong slammed ashore on Sunday in the northeastern coast of the Philippines, where the massive storm had already left at least two people dead and forced more than a million people to evacuate from flood- and landslide-prone areas, officials said. The typhoon blew into Dinalungan town in Aurora province Sunday night after setting off fierce rain and wind in northeastern Philippine provinces all day from offshore, with sustained winds of up to 185 kph (115 mph) and gusts of up to 230 kph (143 mph). The biggest typhoon to threaten the Philippines in years, Fung-wong could cover two-thirds of the archipelago with its 1,800-km-wide rain and wind band, forecasters said. It approached from the Pacific while the Philippines was still dealing with the devastation wrought by Typhoon Kalmaegi, which left at least 224 people dead in central provinces on Tuesday before pummelling Vietnam, where at least five were killed.

Uniting for the planet: COP30 begins in Belem

Every year, the UN climate conference conjures hundreds of headlines on global efforts to spare the world from climate catastrophe. This year's begins on Monday in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belem. The annual conference is known as a COP, which stands for Conference of the Parties that signed the 1992 U.N. climate treaty. The treaty, called the U.N. Framework on Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC), committed countries to working together to fight climate change – a problem they acknowledged all countries faced and was best tackled together. The treaty also established the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, meaning the rich countries responsible for most of the planet-warming emissions bear a greater responsibility in solving the problem.

Over 1.6 million children engaged in child labour in Pak’s Sindh   

Over 1.6 million children are engaged in child labour in Pakistan's Sindh province, a senior official said on Sunday, citing a recent survey. Child labour remains a major menace in the country despite efforts by the government to update and institute laws to protect children aged between 5 and 17, said Sindh Director General of Labour Syed Muhammad Murtaza Ali Shah. A survey conducted by his department in July-August with the technical assistance of UNICEF and the Bureau of Statistics revealed that over 1.6 million (10.3 per cent of children aged 5–17) were engaged in child labour in the province. “The other provinces are also now carrying out fresh surveys on child labour but in Sindh we found that as many as 800,000 children (50.4 per cent of those aged 10–17) are working in hazardous and exploitative conditions, which include excessive hours, extreme weather, and unsafe tools in agriculture and industrial sectors,” Shah said. The survey also showed that only 40.6 per cent of working children attend school, compared to 70.5 per cent of non-working children.