The EU on Tuesday accepted Croatia as the 20th eurozone member, allowing it to adopt the single currency from January 2023. 

In a statement, the European Council said it adopted the final three legal acts that are required to enable Croatia to introduce the euro.

One of the acts set the conversion rate for entry at one euro to 7.53450 Croatian kuna.

Zbyněk Stanjura, the finance minister of Czechia, which holds the current six-month rotating presidency of the EU, congratulated his Croatian counterpart. "Adopting the euro is not a race, but a responsible political decision," he said. "Croatia has successfully completed all the required economic criteria and they will pay in euros as of 1 January 2023."

Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Neighboring Slovenia, also an ex-Yugoslav republic and now part of EU, adopted the euro in 2007./aa

The International Red Cross on Tuesday warned that millions of people are at risk of severe hunger in the coming months as extreme poverty, inequality, and food insecurity rose, particularly in parts of Africa and the Middle East. 

"The conflict in Ukraine has contributed to a sharp increase in fuel, fertilizer, and food prices, squeezing household budgets and forcing families to make impossible choices every day," said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Despite repeated calls from humanitarian actors, there is still no large-scale solution to alleviate the pressure the war in Ukraine is creating on populations highly dependent on grain exports from Russia and Ukraine.

"We face an urgent and rapidly deteriorating global food security situation, especially in parts of Africa and the Middle East," said Robert Mardini, the ICRC director-general.

"Armed conflict, political instability, climate shocks and the secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have weakened capacities to withstand and recover from shocks."

Mardini said the effects of the armed conflict in Ukraine have made an already critical situation even worse.

"The situation is urgent, and the window of time left to act is narrowing. Without concerted and collaborative efforts, (these) risks (are) becoming an irreversible humanitarian crisis with an unimaginable human cost," the Red Cross chief said.  

Severe food insecurity

Patrick Youssef, ICRC's regional director for Africa, told journalists at a UN press conference that more than 340 million people on the continent, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, are in severe situations of food insecurity.

"In our own experiences at the ICRC, our teams on the ground are clearly saying that conflict and armed violence remains one of the main drivers of food insecurity," said Youssef.

The consequences are felt more in countries already facing humanitarian crises and torn apart by decades of warfare or instability – including Syria, Yemen, Mali, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

The Red Cross said that the world could expect to see more images of underfed children in the coming weeks, as children are disproportionately affected by food crises.

"Cereal prices in Africa have surged because of the slump in exports from Ukraine, sharpening the impact of conflict and climate change," said the ICRC.

Russia and Ukraine constitute 25% of the world's production of wheat and grains, while around 85% of Africa's wheat supplies are imported./aa

Military delegations from Türkiye, Russia, Ukraine and UN officials will come together in Istanbul on Wednesday to discuss shipment of Ukrainian grain stuck due blockade of Black Sea ports, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Tuesday. 

Akar said a delegation from the Turkish Defense Ministry earlier visited Moscow and Kyiv to discuss the issue, which has led to a global food crisis.

He added that the meetings had yielded positive results so far.

Russia, which began what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine on Feb. 24, denies responsibility for the food crisis and blames Western sanctions for shortage and a subsequent rise in global food prices./aa

The YPG/PKK terrorist group continued to recruit child soldiers last year in northern Syria, according to a UN report released Monday. 

The group, which rebranded itself as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by the US and Western nations recruited 221 child soldiers, said the annual Children and Armed Conflict report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The report covers the period from January to December 2021 and lists parties that engage in the recruitment and use of children, the killing and maiming of children and sexual violence against children, among other things.

The report also said another branch of the YPG/PKK, the so-called "Internal Security Forces" recruited 24 children as soldiers in northern and eastern Syria. In addition, the "Afrin Liberation Forces," linked to the same terror group, recruited two children in 2021.

According to the report, the "Internal Security Forces" jailed 43 children, while the YPG/PKK imprisoned six children in regions they occupied.

"At the end of 2021, over 800 children, including foreigners, reportedly remained in detention for alleged association with Da’esh in the north-eastern Syrian Arab Republic," said the report, referring to YPG/PKK-run prisons.

The report also recorded that the YPG/PKK killed 55 children in 2021, while the "Internal Security Forces" and "Afrin Liberation Forces" killed 18 children last year.

It also reported attacks on 45 schools and hospitals in Syria, saying 26 of them were carried out by the Bashar al-Assad regime and pro-government forces while 12 of them were attributed to the YPG/PKK terror group.

The group also seized 12 schools and hospitals for military use. It also denied humanitarian access for children.

The report said the highest numbers of grave violations were verified in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

"The number of cases of abduction increased by over 20 per cent and cases of sexual violence against children continued to increase, by over 20 per cent," said the report.

"The number of attacks on schools and hospitals increased by 5 per cent in a context of school closures, the military use of schools and disregard for children’s right to education and health, and the situation was compounded by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic," it added.

The report said non-state armed groups were responsible for 55% of violations and state forces for 25%.

"And the remainder of the violations resulted from crossfire, the use of improvised explosive devices, explosive remnants of war and landmines, or were committed by unidentified perpetrators," it said.

"Over 25 per cent of child casualties resulted from improvised explosive devices, explosive remnants of war and landmines, for a total of 2,257 child casualties," it added./aa

The world has never witnessed such a major energy crisis in terms of its depth and its complexity, Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said on Tuesday.

Birol, speaking at a global energy forum in Sydney, said that the world is in the middle of the first global energy crisis.

"It is interwoven by many factors, including the geopolitics. Oil, natural gas, coal, electricity prices, they're all going up of the roof. Why? Very simple. Russia, the country that invaded Ukraine, is the largest exporter of oil and natural gas." he said.

According to Birol, since Russia has started war on Ukraine in February, the whole energy system has been in disarray.

"And as a result, we are seeing that the entire energy system is going through a crisis," he added.

Birol also said this winter in Europe will be "very, very difficult," adding that this is a major concern, and this may have serious implications for the global economy./agencies

Around 300 people were evacuated Monday from five towns in the Spanish region of Extremadura as firefighters struggled to extinguish a “complicated” wildfire.

Local authorities have already called on the Spanish military for help to extinguish the fast-moving wildfire in the lush mountainous county of Las Hurdes.

Images from the locations show flames just meters away from houses.

Around 170 firefighters are trying to contain the blaze, which the mayor of the town of Nuñomoral said was caused by a lightning strike combined with hot and dry conditions.

Temperatures are already hot and dry in Spain, but the mercury is set to rise even further from Tuesday until Friday.

Much of the country, including Extremadura, is already under “extreme” risk for wildfires.

On Monday, neighboring Portugal entered a state of alarm due to the fire risk, which is the highest it has been in 42 years, according to climatologist Carlos da Camara.

During the first Iberian Peninsula heatwave in June, which was one of the earliest on record, wildfires also emerged in several areas.

One in Castile and Leon ended up as the region’s biggest wildfire on record, which scorched 25,216 hectares (62,310 acres) of fields and forests.

This year, large swathes of Spain and Portugal are struggling with droughts.

A recent study published in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that climate change has made the Iberian Peninsula comprising Spain and Portugal the driest in the last 1,200 years.
Scientists say that is because the Azores High, a semi-permanent center of high atmospheric pressure found in the Atlantic that acts as a “gatekeeper” for rainfall in Europe, has expanded as the planet has warmed.

These large Azores Highs, which have become significantly more common in the industrial era, push rainfall north toward the UK, according to the study, and are linked to drier conditions in the Iberian Peninsula./agencies

Videos coming out of China show hundreds of people holding demonstrations against a bank in Central Henan province on Sunday. 

Holding protests outside the People's Bank of China in the capital Zhengzhou, the demonstrators alleged their deposits have been frozen by several rural banks.

There has been no word from authorities about millions of dollars deposited by the customers.

The demonstrations were held when the health code of around 1,317 customers of various banks turned red.

“Some depositors of small rural banks, registered in Henan Province and reportedly caught in illegal fundraising, found their health codes turned red for unknown reasons when they tried to arrive in Henan to withdraw their money, prompting suspicions of abuse of the health code system in the province,” state-run daily Global Times said in a report.

Taiwanese media reports said demonstrators were beaten by Chinese cops and plain-clothed security forces.

One of the English-language placards carried by protesters read: "Against the corruption and violence of the Henan government."​​​​​​​/aa