The Swiss government announced Wednesday that the last remaining public health measures to tackle COVID-19 will be lifted from Friday, including the compulsory wearing of masks on public transport.

“The assessment of the situation is positive. Infections are falling in all age categories. The situation in intensive care is stable; an overload of hospital capacities seems unlikely,” Switzerland’s Interior Minister Alain Berset told journalists in Bern.

“Those who would still like to wear a mask must be able to do so. You must have tolerance and respect.”

The government had removed many restrictions on Feb. 16, but the number of vaccinated people has hardly budged, and cases have not dramatically plummeted.

On Wednesday, 16,462 new cases of the coronavirus were reported in Switzerland, down by 37% over the past week.

Some 165 people were admitted to hospitals and COVID-19 patients occupied 17.4% of intensive care beds, with eight patients reported to have died.

Vaccination rates in the country have hardly budged since July, with only 70.13% of the population of some 8.7 million having received one jab and 69.12% fully vaccinated.

“We can’t say that the crisis is over, but we can certainly say that the acute phase of the crisis is over,” said Berset.

He said health authorities had bought enough vaccines to cover the Swiss population in 2022 and 2023 if needed.

Since the start of the pandemic, 3.48 million people – or 41% of the population – have been found to be COVID-19 positive, while around 13,000 people have died./aa

US annual economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2021 was revised down to 6.9% in the Commerce Department’s third and final reading released on Wednesday.

The first reading was 6.9% while the second announced last month placed the figure at 7%.

Market forecast for the third reading was 7.1%.

“The downward revision primarily reflected downward revisions to personal consumption expenditures and exports that were partly offset by an upward revision to private inventory investment,” read a statement.

The US’ real gross domestic product (GDP) increased 2.3% in the third quarter.

The GDP, based on the current dollar standing, increased by $800.5 billion at an annual rate in October-December 2021 to $24 trillion, the statement said.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index increased 6.4% in the last quarter of 2021.

Excluding food and energy prices, the PCE price index increased 5%, compared with an increase of 4.6%, it added./aa

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted light from a star so far away that it has taken 12.9 billion years to travel to Earth.

It is a finding never seen by the human eye until now.

“We almost didn’t believe it at first,” said astronomer Brian Welch of Johns Hopkins University, who is the lead author of the paper describing the discovery in the March 30 edition of the journal Nature. “It was so much farther than the previous most-distant, highest redshift star,” added Welch, referring to the 2018 image referred to as “redshift 1.5” which captured light from that star that existed when the universe was about 4 billion years old.

According to scientists, the word redshift is used “because as the universe expands, light from distant objects is stretched or shifted to longer, redder wavelengths as it travels toward us.”

The new benchmark captured by Hubble is astonishing to researchers.

They are seeing the light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the Big Bang when the universe was created.

“Normally at these distances, entire galaxies look like small smudges, with the light from millions of stars blending together,” said Welch. “The galaxy hosting this star has been magnified and distorted by gravitational lensing into a long crescent that we named the Sunrise Arc.”

Welch has named the star Earendel, which means morning star in Old English.

“Earendel existed so long ago that it may not have had all the same raw materials as the stars around us today,” he said.

According to NASA, the smallest objects previously seen at such a great distance were clusters of stars embedded inside early galaxies. Welch believes the discovery holds promise for opening up an uncharted era of very early star formation.

“Studying Earendel will be a window into an era of the universe that we are unfamiliar with, but that led to everything we do know,” he said. “It’s like we’ve been reading a really interesting book, but we started with the second chapter, and now we will have a chance to see how it all got started.”/aa

US President Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday that the US intends to provide Ukraine with $500 million in direct budgetary aid, according to the White House.

Biden and Zelenskyy spoke during a telephone call about the ongoing work by the US and its allies to deliver military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and to impose severe costs on Russia for its war on Ukraine.

"The leaders discussed how the United States is working around the clock to fulfill the main security assistance requests by Ukraine, the critical effects those weapons have had on the conflict, and continued efforts by the United States with allies and partners to identify additional capabilities to help the Ukrainian military defend its country," the White House said in a statement.

Biden also reviewed additional sanctions and humanitarian assistance announced last week and Zelenskyy updated the US president on the status of Ukraine’s negotiations with Russia, it said.

Russia's war on Ukraine, which began Feb. 24, has drawn international outrage, with the EU, US, and UK, among others, implementing tough financial sanctions on Moscow.

At least 1,189 civilians have been killed and 1,901 have been injured in Ukraine, with the true figure likely to be much higher, according to the UN.

More than 4 million Ukrainians have also fled to other countries, with millions more internally displaced, according to the UN refugee agency./aa

The World Health Organization on Wednesday released a strategy to strengthen and scale up genomic surveillance worldwide to monitor organisms that cause diseases.

Genomic surveillance involves “constantly monitoring pathogens and analyzing their genetic similarities and differences … to monitor the evolution of infectious diseases agents, alert on the spread of pathogens, and develop countermeasures like vaccines,” according to a WHO statement.

It said only a few countries have in the past routinely done genomic surveillance, a technology considered complicated and expensive, but COVID-19 changed that.

“The complexities of genomics and the challenges of sustaining capacities in different settings, including workforce needs, means that most countries cannot develop these capabilities on their own,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“The global strategy helps keep our eyes on the horizon and provides a unifying framework for action. WHO looks forward to working with countries and partners in this important and highly dynamic field.”

According to data collected by WHO, 54% of countries worldwide had the capacity for genomic surveillance as of March last year.

By January 2022, due to significant investments made during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number had increased to 68%.

“Even greater gains were made in the public sharing of sequence data: in January 2022, 43% more countries published their sequence data compared to a year before,” read the statement.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that health systems need genomic surveillance so that risks are rapidly detected and addressed. This technology has been critical in this response, from the identification of a novel coronavirus, to the development of the first diagnostic tests and vaccines, to the tracking and identification of new virus variants.”/aa

After major gains on Tuesday following Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Istanbul, most European stock markets closed midweek with decreases.

The STOXX Europe 600, which includes around 90% of the market capitalization of the European market in 17 countries, dropped 1.9 points, or 0.41%, to close at 460.19.

Germany’s DAX 30 was down 1.45%, or 214.28 points, to 14,606, while France’s CAC 40 slipped 0.74%, or by 50.57 points, to 6,741.

Italy’s FTSE MIB was down slightly by 7.73 points, or 0.03%, to end the day at 25,300, while Spain’s IBEX 35 lost 64 points, or 0.74%, to 8,550.

The UK’s FTSE 100 index ended at 7,578, up 41.5 points, or 0.55%.

Turkiye’s benchmark stock index ended the day at 2,230.15 points, up 1.07% from the previous close.

Most major Asian stock markets also closed Wednesday with gains./aa

Germany's annual inflation rate hit a 41-year high in March, according to provisional data from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).

In a statement, Destatis said the figure is expected to come in at 7.3% this month, mainly due to the surge in prices of natural gas and mineral oil products after Russia launched a war on Ukraine.

Delivery bottlenecks due to interruptions in supply chains caused by the COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to the reading.

The statement underlined that Germany saw a similar high inflation rate in the autumn of 1981, again due to a boom in mineral oil prices as a result of the first Gulf war.

On a monthly basis, consumer prices went up by 2.5% in March, Destatis report showed./aa

Swift population growth and climate change continue to aggravate the water crisis in Africa.

Currently, 350 million people of the continent's 1.3 billion population do not have access to clean water, and it is feared that this figure will only increase if sufficient investment is not made.

The population of 560 million which is living in urban areas in Africa in 2015 is estimated to increase to 1.1 billion by 2050.

It is forecasted that the increasing population will worsen the water problem if the infrastructure facilities in the cities are not developed.

In African cities where there are frequent floods in addition to drought, the main solution that has been proposed for this problem is to improve the infrastructure.

African countries, which need to spend billions of dollars on building canals and dams, cannot recycle used water due to a lack of infrastructure, unlike the rest of the world.

In African countries, which suffer from drought and thirst despite their abundance of resources, there is a risk that hundreds of thousands of people will leave their homes because of thirst, as is the case in East Africa if sufficient investments are not materialized.

Egypt, Botswana and Gabon lead the countries with water security in the continent.

While countries such as Egypt, Botswana, Gabon, Mauritius, Tunisia and South Africa rank at the top of the water security index, Egypt was the only country to reach a score of 70 out of 100.

In the index, where different topics such as water infrastructure, efficient use of water, and wastewater management are evaluated in addition to access to water, it has been noted that 29% of the continent's population, approximately 353 million people, do not have access to basic drinking water services.

Eritrea, Sudan, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, Chad and Niger were the lowest-ranked countries in the index.

Groundwater can meet the 5-year need

Another proposed solution to meet the need for water is groundwater, which is widely used in rural areas through wells.

In their latest research, WaterAid and the British Geological Survey (BGS) stated that groundwater can meet the clean water needs of many African countries for at least five years.

"Our findings debunk the myth that Africa is running out of water. It is a tragedy, however, that millions of people on the continent still do not have clean drinking water," said Tim Wainwright, President of WaterAid.

Increased risk of disease

Lack of access to clean water poses the biggest threat to health. About 115 people die every hour on the continent from diseases caused by hygiene, inadequate sanitation and polluted water.

Leaving the wastewater from mines and industrial areas to nature without treatment leads to the pollution of clean water and the spread of diseases.

It is stated that only 16% of wastewater in Africa goes through the treatment process.

Worst drought since the 1980s.

The most severe drought wave in eastern Africa since the 1980s has condemned nearly 13 million people to severe starvation.

The UN announced that the driest period of the last 40 years was recently experienced in the region, livestock has started to die, and families have left their homes due to thirst and food problems.

The lack of water triggered the spread of epidemics along with migration./aa

Russia's war in Ukraine is exacerbating a global food crisis already worsened by COVID-19, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Tuesday.

Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting, Sherman said Russian warships are blocking access to Ukraine's ports, essentially cutting off exports of grain, and are reportedly preventing approximately 94 ships carrying food for the world market from reaching the Mediterranean.

"Already, food prices are skyrocketing in low and in middle income countries as Russia chokes off Ukrainian exports," she said, adding prices of wheat have risen between 20% and 50% across the Middle East and Africa so far this year.

Sherman noted that nearly half of all Ukrainians are unable to access food, adding people are feeling the war’s effects on food security “far beyond Ukraine’s borders.”

Sherman said the US is "particularly concerned" about countries like Lebanon, Pakistan, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Morocco, which she said rely heavily on Ukrainian imports to feed their populations.

On Russian claims that the sanctions imposed by the US and its allies after the war began had raised food costs, Sherman said sanctions are not preventing grain from leaving Ukraine's ports but Russian President Vladimir "Putin's war is."

"Russia’s own food and agricultural exports are not under sanctions by the US or by our allies and partners," she added. "The responsibility for waging war on Ukraine and for the war's effects on global food security falls solely on President Putin."

Russia's war on Ukraine, which started on Feb. 24, has been met with international outrage, with the European Union, US and the UK, among others, implementing stringent economic penalties on Moscow.

Hundreds of global companies have also suspended operations in Russia.

At least 1,179 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and 1,860 injured, according to estimates by the UN, which noted that the true figure is likely far higher.

More than 3.9 million Ukrainians have also fled to several European countries, with millions more displaced inside the country, according to the UN refugee agency./aa