Day: December 11, 2021

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REFIRE présente des solutions d’énergie propre via le Cloud à l’Expo 2020 de Dubaï

– Représentant la ville de Shanghai, REFIRE a exposé ses derniers systèmes de piles à combustible PRISMA à l’exposition Cloud de l’Expo

– REFIRE renforce ses partenariats industriels et vise à atteindre plus de clients dans le monde entier

DUBAÏ, Émirats arabes unis, 11 décembre 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Lors de l’Expo 2020 à Dubaï, qui a officiellement ouvert ses portes le 1er octobre 2021, Shanghai REFIRE Technology Co. Ltd. (REFIRE), l’un des principaux fournisseurs de technologies de piles à combustible à hydrogène, a présenté ses systèmes de piles à hydrogène PRISMA de moyenne et haute puissance ainsi que ses composants de base, les piles à combustible. C’est la première fois que REFIRE présente ses produits aux visiteurs du monde entier par le biais de l’exposition en ligne de l’Exposition universelle.

Fondé en 2015 et basé à Shanghai, en Chine, REFIRE est l’un des plus ardents promoteurs de l’industrie des véhicules à pile à combustible et pionnier dans l’innovation continue, la collaboration industrielle et la culture de la chaîne de valeur.

REFIRE a rejoint l’Expo en tant que représentant des entreprises les plus innovantes sur le plan technologique de Shanghai. Conformément à l’objectif de neutralité carbone de la Chine pour 2060, REFIRE a présenté ses dernières technologies de piles à combustible qui offrent des solutions d’énergie à hydrogène propre pour la mobilité future.

Les systèmes de piles à combustible à hydrogène PRISMA sont le dernier fruit de l’innovation de REFIRE. Les systèmes ont été développés sur la base du scénario d’application typique des véhicules commerciaux, en particulier les véhicules lourds. Afin de garantir que les véhicules puissent fonctionner dans toutes les conditions et faire face à des situations de haute intensité tout en émettant zéro polluant, REFIRE a considérablement amélioré les indicateurs techniques clés de son dernier système de pile à combustible PRISMA XII+, garantissant la durabilité, la fiabilité et la sécurité du système.

Robin Lin, fondateur, président et PDG de REFIRE a déclaré : « REFIRE est honoré d’être l’une des entreprises représentant la Chine et Shanghai à l’Exposition universelle. Bien que nous n’ayons pas pu nous rendre à Dubaï en raison de la pandémie actuelle, nous avons eu le plaisir de présenter nos innovations technologiques et nos produits dans le cadre de multiples scénarios d’application au public mondial en ligne. »

« Pour nous, l’Expo est une excellente plateforme d’échanges internationaux afin que nous puissions renforcer nos collaborations mondiales dans l’industrie de l’hydrogène, accélérer notre expansion commerciale à travers le monde et offrir encore plus de produits fiables et de qualité à des clients mondiaux. Nous nous engageons à fournir de l’énergie verte pour la croissance économique et le développement durable dans le monde. »

Au cours des six dernières années, REFIRE a collaboré activement avec de nombreux partenaires de la chaîne industrielle mondiale afin de construire un écosystème pour les applications de l’énergie hydrogène et de promouvoir le développement à grande échelle de la technologie des piles à combustible. La technologie de l’entreprise est non seulement adoptée dans les régions du delta du fleuve Yangtze et du delta du fleuve Pearl, en Chine centrale et du Nord, mais a également été étendue aux marchés internationaux, tels que l’Allemagne, le Japon, la Malaisie et les États-Unis d’Amérique.

Dans le contexte de la promotion d’une croissance verte durable, REFIRE s’est engagé à accélérer l’adoption massive de la mobilité à pile à combustible zéro émission à travers le monde, et cette année marque une nouvelle année fructueuse pour ses activités internationales. En mai, REFIRE a obtenu des certificats de l’autorité européenne agréée RDW par l’intermédiaire de TÜV Nord, ouvrant ainsi la voie à l’expansion de REFIRE sur le marché européen. En août, REFIRE a collaboré avec eCap Mobility, un partenaire stratégique en Europe du Nord, et a commandé un bus à piles à combustible dans le parc national de la vallée de la Basse-Oder en Allemagne. En outre, REFIRE a signé deux partenariats cette année avec Schaeffler AG et Toyota respectivement pour accélérer l’innovation technologique en matière de piles à combustible.

L’un des plus grands pavillons de l’Expo, le Pavillon chinois présente les innovations scientifiques et technologiques du pays et favorise les échanges et la coopération internationaux. L’exposition « Shanghai Day Exhibition on Cloud » présentée au Pavillon a vu près de 60 entreprises de haute technologie de Shanghai et de la région du delta du fleuve Yangtze présenter plus de 300 produits de pointe, ce qui reflète les réalisations et les applications de la région en matière d’innovation technologique et de transformation numérique.

Entrez dans le hall d’exposition REFIRE Expo Cloud et découvrez les solutions d’énergie propre de pointe de REFIRE via le lien https://exposhanghai.digitalexpo.com/pc/exhibitor/detail?eid=10015032021110500016360923453874500745259704025&id=10017012021111100016366184541919536445877542354.

À propos de REFIRE

Basé à Shanghai, en Chine, REFIRE est l’un des principaux fournisseurs mondiaux de technologies de piles à combustible à hydrogène. L’entreprise est spécialisée dans la conception, les tests, le prototypage, l’ingénierie d’application et la production de systèmes de piles à combustible intégrés pour bus, camions, véhicules spécialisés et applications marines. Depuis décembre 2021, les technologies et les produits de piles à combustible de REFIRE alimentent quotidiennement les véhicules à pile à combustible (FCV) dans 17 villes de Chine et 5 pays étrangers.

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South African Doctors See Signs Omicron Is Milder Than Delta

JOHANNESBURG — As the omicron variant sweeps through South Africa, Dr. Unben Pillay is seeing dozens of sick patients a day. Yet he hasn’t had to send anyone to the hospital.

That’s one of the reasons why he, along with other doctors and medical experts, suspect that the omicron version really is causing milder COVID-19 than delta, even if it seems to be spreading faster.

“They are able to manage the disease at home,” Pillay said of his patients. “Most have recovered within the 10- to 14-day isolation period.” said Pillay.

And that includes older patients and those with health problems that can make them more vulnerable to becoming severely ill from a coronavirus infection, he said.

In the two weeks since omicron first was reported in Southern Africa, other doctors have shared similar stories. All caution that it will take many more weeks to collect enough data to be sure, their observations and the early evidence offer some clues.

According to South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases:

Only about 30% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 in recent weeks have been seriously ill, less than half the rate as during the first weeks of previous pandemic waves.

Average hospital stays for COVID-19 have been shorter this time — about 2.8 days compared to eight days.

Just 3% of patients hospitalized recently with COVID-19 have died, versus about 20% in the country’s earlier outbreaks.

“At the moment, virtually everything points toward it being milder disease,” Willem Hanekom, director of the Africa Health Research Institute, said, citing the national institute’s figures and other reports. “It’s early days, and we need to get the final data.

Often hospitalizations and deaths happen later, and we are only two weeks into this wave.”

In the meantime, scientists around the world are watching case counts and hospitalization rates, while testing to see how well current vaccines and treatments hold up. While delta is still the dominant coronavirus strain worldwide, omicron cases are popping up in dozens of countries, with South Africa the epicenter.

Pillay practices in the country’s Gauteng province, where the omicron version has taken hold. With 16 million residents, It’s South Africa’s most populous province and includes the largest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria. Gauteng saw a 400% rise in new cases in the first week of December, and testing shows omicron is responsible for more than 90% of them, according to health officials.

Pillay says his COVID-19 patients during the last delta wave “had trouble breathing and lower oxygen levels. Many needed hospitalization within days,” he said. The patients he’s treating now have milder, flu-like symptoms, such as body aches and a cough, he said.

Pillay is a director of an association representing some 5,000 general practitioners across South Africa, and his colleagues have documented similar observations about omicron. Netcare, the largest private health care provider, is also reporting less severe cases of COVID-19.

But the number of cases is climbing. South Africa confirmed 22,400 new cases on Thursday and 19,000 on Friday, up from about 200 per day a few weeks ago. The new surge has infected 90,000 people in the past month, Minister of Health Joe Phaahla said Friday.

“Omicron has driven the resurgence,” Phaahla said, citing studies that say 70% of the new cases nationwide are from omicron.

The coronavirus reproduction rate in the current wave – indicating the number of people likely to be infected by one person — is 2.5, the highest that South Africa has recorded during the pandemic, he said.

“Because this is such a transmissible variant, we’re seeing increases like we never saw before,” said Waasila Jassat, who tracks hospital data for the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

Of the patients hospitalized in the current wave, 86% weren’t vaccinated against the coronavirus, Jassat said. The COVID-patients in South Africa’s hospitals now also are younger than at other periods of the pandemic: about two-thirds are under 40.

Jassat said that even though the early signs are that omicron cases are less severe, the volume of new COVID-19 cases may still overwhelm South Africa’s hospitals and result in a higher number of severe symptoms and deaths.

“That is the danger always with the waves,” she said.

Source: Voice of America

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Suspected ADF attacks kill 16 people in eastern DR Congo

Suspected fighters of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have killed 16 people in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in attacks that took place as a joint operation by Congolese and Ugandan forces against the armed group is currently underway.

Local officials said Friday the attacks took place late on Wednesday in the rural commune of Mangina and nearby Masiriko in the DRC’s North Kivu province.

Resident Pelka Josaphat said four family members had been abducted as people were being killed with machetes. “It was horrible to see mothers, children, and elderly people fleeing the cruelty of the ADF,” Josaphat said.

Local officials said the attackers belonged to the ADF, which the United States has linked to Daesh and is one of the most dangerous armed groups roaming the mineral-rich eastern DRC.

Last month, Ugandan authorities also blamed the ADF for deadly suicide bombings in the capital, Kampala. The Nov 16 attack killed at least four people and wounded dozens more.

Uganda and the DRC have since launched joint military operations against the ADF, with Ugandan forces mounting air and artillery raids against the group’s bases and sending thousands of troops across the border.

Uganda has promised to stay as long as necessary to defeat the ADF, but the intervention has alarmed some Congolese, who recall Uganda’s plundering of their resources during the DRC’s second civil war that raged from 1998 to 2003.

The ADF was founded in Uganda in 1995 and later moved to the DRC where it is among dozens of armed groups seeking control over territory and mineral resources in the east of the country.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

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Nobel Peace Prize Critics Say Award Has Drifted From Supporting Peace

WASHINGTON — In Oslo, Norway, on Friday, dignitaries from around the world gathered to celebrate the awarding of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Filipina journalist Maria Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov. But as speeches were delivered and medals presented, voices outside Oslo City Hall were asking whether the most prestigious prize in the world, as many believe it to be, has lost its shine.

In recent decades, the prize has sometimes gone to individuals who, many believe, have failed to live up to the standard articulated by the founder of the prize, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel. His instruction was that it should go to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Perhaps most notably, that includes Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, who was awarded the prize in 2019 for helping to end his country’s long-running war with Eritrea. The prize committee cited his “efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea.”

Today, Abiy is conducting a brutal war in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, in which both sides have been accused of a wide range of war crimes.

Controversial awards

In 2019, the same year Abiy won the prize, a fellow laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, appeared before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. Suu Kyi, who was the head of Myanmar’s civilian government at the time, was there to insist that the widespread killing and displacement of the ethnic Rohingya people in her country was not a genocide.

Another controversial laureate is former U.S. President Barack Obama, who was nominated for the prize before he had been in office for a month and received the award before he had served even a year. Obama went on to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan during part of his presidency, and he accelerated the use of drone strikes against individuals and groups seen as enemies of the United States.

Controversial awards are nothing new to the Nobel committee. Two members resigned in 1973 when the award was given to then-U.S. national security adviser Henry Kissinger for supposedly helping to arrange a cease-fire in the Vietnam War. Kissinger offered to return the prize two years later, after the fall of Saigon.

In 1994, when Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were given the prize for efforts to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians, one member of the committee denounced Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as a terrorist and resigned.

Opaque selection process

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is made up of five members selected by the Norwegian parliament. For generations, the committee has been made up primarily of retired politicians. They collect nominations at the beginning of each year and typically announce a winner in October.

All documents and records of the selection process are sealed for 50 years, making it difficult to know exactly what the committee members were thinking during recent deliberations.

This has not made the committee immune from criticism, however.

“The prize is losing credibility,” Unni Turrettini, author of the book Betraying the Nobel: The Secrets and Corruption Behind the Nobel Peace Prize, told VOA. “And when it loses credibility, it loses the potential impact that the prize can have on world peace.”

Turrettini said that populating the prize committee with politicians has led to the impression that its choices are sometimes meant to further the interests of the Norwegian government and its relations with other nations.

“For our country, and as a Norwegian myself, it is in everyone’s interest that we keep the committee independent from Norwegian politics, and that we restore the trust that has been eroded,” she said.

Dispute over Nobel’s intentions

Some believe that the committee has, too often, strayed from Nobel’s original intent.

Norwegian attorney and peace activist Fredrik Heffermehl has been pressuring the committee for well over a decade, insisting that many of its selections have departed so far from Nobel’s instructions, as laid out in his will, that they are effectively illegal.

Heffermehl told VOA that this year’s awarding of the prize to Ressa and Muratov, two journalists who have courageously fought to overcome government repression of the media in their respective home countries, is yet another such departure. While they may be doing admirable work, neither is directly involved in efforts to further what Heffermehl believes to have been Nobel’s ultimate goal: widespread disarmament.

“I’m more disappointed than I’ve been for a very long time,” Heffermehl said. “Very few prizes, particularly the last 20 years, have met Alfred Nobel’s intention.”

Officials associated with the prize committee have vigorously disputed Heffermehl’s interpretation of the instructions for awarding the prize. Olav Njølstad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, has taken to the pages of the country’s largest newspaper, Aftenposten, to accuse Heffermehl of misreading the historical record.

“The Nobel Committee has never accepted this interpretation of the will,” Njølstad wrote. “It does not see that Alfred Nobel has anywhere stated that work for disarmament should be given greater weight than the other forms of peace work to which the will refers.”

An ‘aspirational’ prize

Ron Krebs, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, told VOA that it is important to understand that, particularly in the past 50 years, the Nobel Peace Prize has often had an “aspirational” quality to it. That is, it is sometimes awarded to people who are taking early steps toward goals that the Nobel committee sees as furthering the cause of peace in the world.

That could be said of the prizes awarded to individuals working to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and even the selection of Barack Obama, whose campaign rhetoric had focused on reducing conflict.

“These are the Nobel prize committee saying, ‘We wish to encourage them along this path. We wish to bolster their chances, and we will put our moral weight behind them,'” Krebs said.

Krebs said that can lead people to mistakenly believe that the prize is an endorsement of everything the recipient does or, effectively, will do.

“We need to remember that people who are granted the Nobel Peace Prize are granted it for particular accomplishments, or even particular aspirations,” he said. “But that does not mean that they share all those values that the Nobel prize committee espouses.”

Source: Voice of America

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Libya Delays Candidate List as Likely Election Postponement Looms

TRIPOLI, LIBYA — Libya’s election commission said Saturday it would not publish a list of presidential candidates until after it settles some legal issues, leaving almost no time to hold the vote as planned on December 24.

While most Libyan and foreign figures involved in the process have continued to publicly call for the election to go ahead on schedule, politicians, analysts and diplomats all say in private that this would be very hard to achieve.

Significant delays could increase the risk of derailing the wider peace process in Libya, though a disputed election conducted without clear agreement on rules or eligible candidates also poses immediate dangers to stability.

“Given the sensitivities of this stage and the political and security circumstances surrounding it, the commission is keen to exhaust all means of litigation to ensure its decisions comply with issued judgements,” the commission said in a statement.

Less than two weeks before the vote, there would be almost no time remaining for the final list of candidates from the 98 who registered to campaign across Libya, giving a huge advantage to those who are already well known.

Disputes over fundamental rules governing the election have continued throughout the process, including over the voting timetable, the eligibility of major candidates and the eventual powers of the next president and parliament.

Without any commonly accepted legal framework, it was not clear how far rules would be based on the U.N.-backed roadmap that originally demanded the election or on a law issued by the parliament speaker in September but rejected by other factions.

The process of ruling on the eligibility of candidates has laid bare major vulnerabilities in the process. The commission initially ruled out 25 candidates and set a period of about two weeks for judicial appeals.

Rival factions have accused each other of intimidating or bribing judicial and administrative officials to sway the final list of candidates.

With armed groups controlling the ground across Libya, any election conducted without strong international monitoring would be open to accusations of fraud.

The electoral commission said it was in communication with the Supreme Judicial Council and with a parliamentary committee and would adopt procedures based on those conversations before moving forward with the electoral process.

Some factions have warned that a delay to the vote could prompt them to pull out of the wider political process.

Source: Voice of America

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UK says West will counter ‘aggressors’ as G7 ministers, allies meet

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on Saturday vowed the West and its allies will “take a stand against aggressors who seek to undermine liberty” as she hosts a G7 ministerial summit.

The two-day gathering in Liverpool, northwest England, of foreign and development ministers from the group of wealthy countries — the last in-person meeting of Britain’s year-long G7 presidency — comes amid rising global tensions.

Russia’s build-up of troops on Ukraine’s border will top the agenda, alongside discussions on confronting China, limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions and addressing the crisis in military-ruled Myanmar, according to officials.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken jetted in on Friday, holding talks on the sidelines of the summit with Truss and Germany’s new foreign minister Annalena Baerbock.

Blinken will fly out to southeast Asia next week on a visit designed to highlight the region’s importance in Washington’s strategy of standing up to China.

Ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will join the summit for the first time ever on Sunday, in a session earmarked for wide-ranging talks including on Covid vaccines, finance and gender equality.

Korea, Australia, South Africa and India will also participate as Britain’s chosen G7 “guests”, with many attendees taking part virtually due to the pandemic and emergence of the Omicron variant.

“This weekend the world’s most influential democracies will take a stand against aggressors who seek to undermine liberty and send a clear message that we are a united front,” Truss said ahead of the summit.

“I want G7 countries to deepen ties in areas like trade, investment, technology and security so we can defend and advance freedom and democracy across the world.

“I will be pushing that point over the next few days.”

Truss, who replaced predecessor Dominic Raab as Britain’s top diplomat in September, delivered her first major foreign policy address Wednesday as crises loom around the world.

She warned Moscow it would be “a strategic mistake” to invade Ukraine, following growing concerns over a big Russian troop build-up on the border.

That echoed comments delivered by US President Joe Biden to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a virtual summit the previous day.

Meanwhile, responding to Beijing’s increasing international assertiveness and alleged widespread domestic rights abuses has dominated Britain’s G7 presidency.

Biden pushed at a June leaders’ summit for a stronger collective stance towards both China and Russia, and this week saw Washington, London and Canberra announce diplomatic boycotts of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Truss has said the West needs to work towards ending the “strategic dependence” of a growing number of low- and middle-income countries on its adversaries, in various areas from energy to technology.

At the summit she will push attendees to provide them with more finance for infrastructure and technology projects, according to the foreign office.

G7 countries and their allies must offer “an alternative to unsustainable debt from non-market economies” like China, it said.

Truss will unveil a UK-led initiative — the Africa Resilience Investment Accelerator — to boost collaboration investing in Africa’s “most fragile markets” and help develop “a pipeline of investable opportunities”.

“It will help the G7 to meet its commitment to invest over $80 billion into the private sector in Africa over the next five years to support sustainable economic recovery and growth,” the foreign office added.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

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Benin Opposition Leader Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison

DAKAR — A court in Benin convicted one of President Patrice Talon’s main opponents Saturday for complicity in acts of terrorism.

Reckya Madougou was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a trial her lawyers denounced as a political hit job. The verdict was announced at about 6 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) following a trial that included no witnesses, her lawyers said in a statement.

“Her crime was to have represented a democratic alternative to the regime of Patrice Talon,” said lawyer Antoine Vey.

The conviction of Madougou, a former justice minister, comes days after another of Talon’s leading opponents, Joel Aivo, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for plotting against the state and laundering money.

Madougou was arrested in March and accused of financing an operation to assassinate political figures to prevent the presidential election the following month from going ahead. Her candidacy had earlier been rejected by the electoral commission.

Talon won a second term with 86% of the vote in a poll boycotted by much of the opposition and marred by violent protests.

Shortly before she was convicted, Madougou addressed the court, according to a post on her Facebook page. “I offer myself up for democracy and if my sacrifice allows you, Mr. President (of the court) and your colleagues to recover your independence from the executive, then I will not have suffered in vain,” it quoted her as saying.

Human rights group and opponents of Talon, a multi-millionaire cotton magnate, say he has upended Benin’s democratic traditions since coming to power in 2016. Several opponents have been arrested and electoral reforms signed by Talon in 2018 disqualified all opposition parties from running for parliament the following year.

Talon has denied targeting political opponents or violating human rights.

Source: Voice of America