Over half of world's population does not use internet: UN

November 23, 2016

Geneva, Nov 23: More than half the world's population does not use the internet, with prohibitive broadband costs keeping billions offline, a United Nations report said today.

unThe UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said that 3.9 billion people do not have home or mobile internet access and that the problem was most acute among the world's "female, elderly, less educated, lower income and rural (populations)".

One problem is the cost of fixed-broadband access, which has fallen globally over the last decade but remained "clearly unaffordable" in many of the world's poorest countries, the ITU said.

In 2008, the global average price for a basic fixed-broadband connection was USD 80 (75 euros) per month, a figure which fell to USD 25 a month last year, according to the ITU.

But, in poorer countries, a fixed-broadband monthly package with just one gigabyte of data -- which is roughly the amount needed to download an average movie -- still costs more than half of an average annual salary.

With fixed broadband so expensive, mobile internet access can offer a solution to get more people online, the ITU said, noting that mobile-broadband networks technically cover 84 per cent of the world's population.

But, for many it is the cost of the handset, rather than the monthly subscription, which remained the biggest economic barrier to mobile internet access, according to the ITU.

"In 2016, people no longer go online, they are online," the report said. "Yet many people are still not using the internet, and many users do not fully benefit from its potential."

To increase digital access globally, the UN agency said it needed better data about who was being shut out of the information technology world.

"A data revolution is needed to better understand who uses the internet, where and how," the report explained.

Addressing the problems with the data set that has been predominate for years, ITU highlighted that mobile phone subscriptions, long cited as a connectivity indicator, no longer reliably reflected actual mobile phone use.

While there are nearly as many mobile subscriptions in the world as there are people, in some regions, up to 40 per cent of people do not own or use a mobile phone, suggesting the huge number of people with multiple subscriptions had skewed the data.

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News Network
March 25,2020

London, Mar 25: Prince Charles on Wednesday has tested positive for the novel coronavirus and is working from home with mild symptoms, according to UK media.
A Clarence House spokesperson said the Prince of Wales was "displaying mild symptoms but otherwise remains in good health and has been working from home throughout the last few days as usual", the Telegraph UK reported.
"He has been displaying mild symptoms but otherwise remains in good health and has been working from home throughout the last few days as usual," the spokesperson added.
In accordance with the government and medical advice, the 71-year old heir to the British throne and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, are now self-isolating at their home in Scotland.
The Duchess of Cornwall has also been tested but does not have the virus.
The tests were carried out by the NHS in Aberdeenshire where they met the criteria required for testing.
"It is not possible to ascertain from whom the Prince caught the virus owing to the high number of engagements he carried out in his public role during recent weeks," the statement further said.

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News Network
January 19,2020

President Donald Trump gave a new justification for killing Qassim Suleimani, telling a gathering of Republican donors that the top Iranian general was "saying bad things about our country" before the strike, which led to his decision to authorise his killing. "How much are we going to listen to?" Trump said on Friday, according to remarks from a fundraiser obtained by CNN.

With his typical dramatic flourish, Trump recounted the scene as he monitored the strikes from the White House Situation Room when Suleimani was killed. The president spoke in a ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, at a Republican event that raised $10 million for Trump's 2020 campaign.

The January 3 killing of Suleimani prompted Iran to retaliate with missile strikes against US forces in Iraq days later and almost triggered a broad war between the two countries. "They're together sir," Trump said military officials told him. "Sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds. No emotion. Two minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They're in the car, they're in an armoured vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. Thirty seconds. Ten, 9, 8 ...'"

"Then all of a sudden, boom," he said. "They're gone, sir. Cutting off, I said, where is this guy?" Trump continued. "That was the last I heard from him". It was the most detailed account that Trump has given of the drone strike, which has drawn criticism from some US lawmakers because neither the president nor his advisers have provided public information to back up their statements that Suleimani presented an "imminent" threat to US.

Trump's comments came a day after he warned Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to be "very careful with his words". According to Trump, Khamenei's speech on Friday, in which he attacked the "vicious" US and described UK, France and Germany as "America's lackeys", was a mistake.

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News Network
June 16,2020

Seoul, Jun 16: North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border on Tuesday, the South's Unification Ministry said, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.

"North Korea blows up Kaesong Liaison Office at 14:49," the ministry, which handles inter-Korean relations, said in a one-line alert sent to reporters.

The statement came minutes after an explosion was heard and smoke seen rising from the long-shuttered joint industrial zone in Kaesong where the liaison office was located, Yonhap news agency reported citing unspecified sources.

Its destruction came after Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said at the weekend: "Before long, a tragic scene of the useless north-south joint liaison office completely collapsed would be seen."

Since early June, North Korea has issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of the South over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border -- something defectors do on a regular basis.

Last week it announced it was severing all official communication links with South Korea.

The leaflets -- usually attached to hot air balloons or floated in bottles -- criticise North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions.

Analysts say Pyongyang may be seeking to manufacture a crisis to increase pressure on Seoul while nuclear negotiations with Washington are at a standstill.

Earlier Tuesday, North Korea's army said it was "fully ready" to take action against the South, included re-entering areas that had been demilitarised under an inter-Korean agreement.

"North Korea is frustrated that the South has failed to offer an alternative plan to revive the US-North talks, let alone create a right atmosphere for the revival," said Cheong Seong-chang, a director of the Sejong Institute's Center for North Korean Studies.

"It has concluded the South has failed as a mediator in the process."

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