The world’s largest cut diamond was sold for more than $4 million at the UK’s famous auction house Sotheby’s on Wednesday.

The extremely rare diamond, named “The Enigma”, was open for bidding from Feb. 3 to 9.

The rare fancy black carbonado diamond weighing 555.55 carats with precisely 55 facets found a buyer who paid £3.16 million ($4.27 million) in cryptocurrency.

“The Enigma” was listed as the world’s largest cut diamond by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2006.

Unlike most diamonds formed deep within Earth, carbonados are found in alluvial, sedimentary deposits, close to or on Earth’s surface, the auction house explained.

“This, and their specific mineral make up suggest possible extra-terrestrial origins, either from meteoric impacts producing natural chemical vapor deposition or from diamond-bearing asteroids colliding with the Earth,” according to the auction note.

The diamond “surpasses the weight of both the Great Star of Africa, 530.2 carats, and the Golden Jubilee, 545.67 carats, making it not only one of the largest fancy black natural-color diamonds in the world, but also the largest faceted diamond to ever appear on the auction market.”

Black diamonds are thought to have been formed from a meteoric impact or diamond-bearing asteroid that collided with Earth approximately 3.8 billion years ago, and believed to be a rare natural occurrence only found in Brazil and the Central Republic of Africa.

The auction house had valued for a selling price of £3-5 million./aa

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday that fairness in global vaccination could end the coronavirus pandemic, warning that people and countries are paying a price of vaccine inequity.

"If we want to ensure vaccinations for everyone to end this pandemic, we must first inject fairness into the system," Guterres said at a fundraiser for "The Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator" (the ACT-Accelerator) campaign.

"We are entering the third year of the pandemic – and the world is still far from meeting crucial targets."

The UN chief said the vaccine supply and roll-out are ramping up exponentially and "we are making up for lost time in many countries. The end of this pandemic can be within our sights – this year... But we need to act now."

Praising the ACT-Accelerator for providing a costed, coordinated and credible path out of the pandemic, Guterres called for nations to make their fair share of financial contributions.

"Above all, we need urgent investment in timely vaccine delivery and increasing testing. This is a matter of fairness – but also it is a matter of justice – and it is a matter of plain old common sense.

"We can end the pandemic this year," he said.

The ACT-Accelerator is asking donor countries to contribute $16.8 billion of the $23.4 billion budget in immediate grant funding for October 2021 to September 2022, according to the World Health Organization./aa

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday warned of a "dangerous escalation" in the imposition of exceptional measures in Tunisia.

“The Tunisian authorities are using what they are calling assigned residences to conceal secret detentions on the pretext of a state of emergency,” the New York-rights group said in a statement.

“The cases of a former Interior Ministry employee, Fathi Beldi, and others illustrate a dangerous escalation in the imposition of exceptional measures under the state of emergency,” it added.

Salsabil Chellali, director of HRW in Tunisia, called the latest measures taken by the Tunisian authorities as “alarming”.

“Failure to reveal a person’s place of detention is an alarming step toward a lawless state and is in no way justified by the state of emergency that has repeatedly been extended since 2015,” said Chellali.

She called on the Tunisian authorities to “immediately put an end to these arbitrary detentions or use the legal, fully transparent route to allow for a judicial challenge.”

It was not possible to reach the Tunisian authorities for a comment.

However, President Kais Saied has in the past repeatedly denied accusations that he intends to establish a dictatorial regime.

On December 31, the deputy leader of Tunisia's Ennahda party, Noureddine Bhiri, was detained by plainclothes police before he was taken to the hospital on Jan. 3 after his health deteriorated as a result of his hunger strike in protest of his arbitrary arrest.

HRW said both Beldi and Bhiri were arrested “near their homes, by plainclothes police, who forced them into their vehicle.”

“They were taken into detention in unidentified locations without any arrest warrant. While Bhiri is currently in a hospital due to his deteriorating health, Beldi has been detained secretly for more than a month,” it added.

On January 3, Tunisian Interior Minister Taoufik Charfeddine told reporters that Beldi and Bhiri were arrested on charges related to “suspicion of terrorism”. Ennahda slammed the accusations as politically motivated.

In July, 2021, Saied dismissed the government suspended parliament, and assumed executive authority amid mounting public anger over economic stagnation and political paralysis.

While Saied insists that his "exceptional measures" were meant to "save" the country, critics have accused him of orchestrating a coup./aa

The World Health Organization on Wednesday renewed its appeal to high-income countries to stump up $16 billion for its program to give lower- and middle-income nations equal access to vaccines, treatments, and personal protective equipment.

The ACT-Accelerator is asking donor countries to contribute $16.8 billion of the $23.4 billion total budget in immediate grant funding for October 2021 to September 2022, said the WHO.

“The rapid spread of omicron makes it even more urgent to ensure tests, treatments and vaccines are distributed equitably globally,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus in a statement.

“If higher-income countries pay their fair share of the ACT-Accelerator costs, the partnership can support low- and middle-income countries to overcome low COVID-19 vaccination levels, weak testing, and medicine shortages.”

He said science had given the world tools to fight COVID-19, and if they are shared globally, the world can reach its goal of ending the pandemic as a global health emergency this year.

WHO said only $814 million of the $16.8 billion has been pledged so far.

The ACT-Accelerator initiative works to overcome vast global inequities by providing low- and middle-income countries with access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, vaccines, and personal protective equipment.

The accelerator agencies urgently need new funding to scale up their work to develop and deliver the COVID-19 countermeasures essential to address the threat of omicron and prevent even more dangerous variants from emerging.

New financing framework

WHO said a diverse group of governments has agreed on a new financing framework developed to support the ACT-Accelerator, making “fair share” requests to more affluent countries.

“Supporting the rollout of tools to fight COVID-19 globally will help to curb virus transmission, break the cycle of variants, relieve overburdened health workers and systems, and save lives,” said the WHO.

“With every month of delay, the global economy stands to lose almost four times the investment the ACT-Accelerator needs.”

According to the WHO, the ACT-Accelerator is the only global, end-to-end solution to the pandemic, supporting access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines from research to rollout.

The initiative is structured around diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines.

The main partners of the ACT-Accelerator are: WHO, CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), FIND, Gavi, the Global Fund, UNICEF, Unitaid, Wellcome, the World Bank, and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation./aa

Turkish humanitarian organization Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) has sent a truck-load of winter aid to northwestern Syria, the charity announced on Tuesday.​​​​​​​

As part of a campaign launched by the Istanbul-based IHH for Syrians in need, 2,500 blankets, 3,000 boots, and coats collected in Antalya province of southern Turkiye were sent to Idlib province in Syria.

The head of the foundation's Antalya branch, Mehmet Yildirim, told Anadolu Agency that it had been organizing aid campaigns for those in need since the early stages of the civil war in Syria.

"Since the beginning of the war in 2011, IHH has been organizing such aid campaigns in the winter," he said.

He went on to say: "As the Antalya branch, we've sent 206 trucks of aid to Syria, so far."

Yildirim said the donations in the latest shipment would be delivered to the IHH coordination center in Idlib.

Syria has been embroiled in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity./aa