Concerns about climate change shrank across the world last year, a survey shows, with fewer than half those questioned believing it posed a “very serious threat” to their countries in the next 20 years.

Only 20 per cent of people in China, the world’s biggest polluter, said they believed climate change was a very serious threat, down 3 percentage points from the previous poll in 2019, the Gallup World Risk Poll showed on Wednesday. Globally, the figure fell by 1.5 percentage points to 48.7 per cent in 2021, it said.

The Covid-19 pandemic and concerns about more immediate issues such as health and livelihoods may partly explain the drop, the survey, based on over 125,000 interviews in 121 countries, showed.

Climate change awareness in 2021 rose slightly in the United States, the second biggest global polluter, to 51.5 per cent, it added.

Regions with the highest ecological threats are on average the least concerned about climate change, with only 27.4 per cent of the Middle East and North Africa and 39.1 per cent of South Asian respondents concerned about the risks.

The findings come ahead of the COP27 global climate talks when countries meet in Egypt in November.

But despite the shrinking concern, the ecological bill of climate change is growing globally.

A study by the Institute for Economics and Peace of 228 countries and territories found that 750 million people globally are now affected by undernourishment and climate change as well as rising inflation, and Russia’s war in Ukraine will exacerbate food insecurity in the future.

More than 1.4 billion people in 83 countries face extreme “water stress”, where over 20 per cent of the population do not have access to clean drinking water, the study showed.

Several European countries are expected to experience critical clean water shortages by 2040, including Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal, the report found, which will also hit most of the sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa.

Annually, air pollution has cost the world US$8.1 trillion (S$11.5 trillion), or 6.1 per cent of global gross domestic product, causing between 6 million and 9 million deaths, the study showed, adding that the average global cost of natural disasters reached US$200 billion annually, four times higher than in the 1980s. 온라인카지노

“Negotiators at COP27 need to consider the ways in which climate change is exacerbating the impacts of ecological threats ... and how the international community can mitigate them,” said Mr Steve Killelea, founder of the institute that is based in Sydney.

"For the longer dosing interval... neutralising antibody levels against the Delta variant were poorly induced after a single dose and not maintained during the interval before the second dose," the authors of the study, which is being led by the University of Oxford, said.

"Following two vaccine doses, neutralising antibody levels were twice as high after the longer dosing interval compared with the shorter dosing interval." Neutralising antibodies are thought to play an important role in immunity against the coronavirus, but not the whole picture, with T cells also playing a part.

The study found overall T-cell levels were 1.6 times lower with a long gap compared with the short dosing schedule of three to four weeks, but that a higher proportion were "helper" T cells with the long gap, which support long-term immune memory.

The authors emphasised that either dosing schedule produced a strong antibody and T-cell response in the study of 503 healthcare workers.

The findings, issued as a pre-print, support the view that while a second dose is needed to provide full protection against the Delta variant, delaying that dose might provide more durable immunity, even if that comes at the cost of protection in the short-term.

Last December, Britain extended the interval between vaccine doses to 12 weeks, although Pfizer warned there was no evidence to support a move away from a three-week gap.

Britain now recommends an eight-week gap between vaccine doses to give more people high protection against the Delta variant more quickly, while still maximising immune responses in the longer term. 카지노검증사이트

"I think eight weeks is about the sweet spot," Ms Susanna Dunachie, joint chief investigator on the study, told reporters.

On May 12, a message appeared in a new WhatsApp channel, called "Death to the Arabs". The message urged Israelis to join a mass street brawl against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Within hours, dozens of other new WhatsApp groups popped up with variations of the same name and message. The groups soon organised a 6pm start time for a clash in Bat Yam, a town on Israel's coast.

"Together we organise and together we act," read a message in one of the WhatsApp groups. "Tell your friends to join the group, because here we know how to defend Jewish honour."

That evening, live scenes aired of black-clad Israelis smashing car windows and roaming the streets of Bat Yam. The mob pulled one man they presumed to be Arab from his car and beat him unconscious. He was hospitalised in serious condition.

The episode was one of dozens across Israel that the authorities have linked to a surge of activity by Jewish extremists on WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging service owned by Facebook.

The WhatsApp groups, with names like "The Jewish Guard", have added hundreds of new members a day over the past week, according to The Times' analysis. The groups, which are in Hebrew, have also been featured on e-mail lists and online message boards used by far-right extremists in Israel. 바카라사이트


While social media and messaging apps have been used in the past to spread hate speech and inspire violence, these WhatsApp groups go further, researchers said. That is because the groups are explicitly planning and executing violent acts against Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up roughly 20 per cent of the population and live largely integrated lives with Jewish neighbours.

The security camera video was shocking in its brutality. A 65-year-old Filipino immigrant was walking down a street near Times Square when a man, in broad daylight, suddenly kicked her in the stomach
She crumpled to the sidewalk. He kicked her once in the head. Then again. And again. He yelled an obscenity at her, according to a police official, and then said: "You don't belong here."

As the violent scene unfolded in Manhattan, three men watched from the lobby of a nearby luxury apartment building. When the woman struggled to stand up, one of the men, a security guard, closed the front door to the building.
Even as reports of anti-Asian hate crimes escalated in recent weeks, the video released by police officials on Monday (March 29) evening touched a fresh nerve. The sheer brazenness of the attack - combined with the seeming indifference of the bystanders - caused another wave of fear for many Asian Americans already worn down by a steady drumbeat of assaults.

"This feels like an emergency happening in real time over weeks," said Mr Chris Kwok, a board member of the Asian American Bar Association of New York. "People are in a state of panic. Everybody is on edge."

As the video went viral online, the attack provoked a torrent of condemnation from public officials and seemed to underscore the difficulty the government faces in curbing unprovoked assaults against Asian Americans. 바카라사이트