The Saudi Ports Authority (Mawani) has launched a new cargo shipping service linking Jeddah Islamic Port with Salalah in Oman and the Port of Djibouti, as the Kingdom accelerates efforts to strengthen maritime connectivity and position itself as a regional logistics hub.

According to Saudi state television, the service has a carrying capacity of up to 1,730 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) and is aimed at supporting the kingdom’s import and export activity while expanding links with regional and international ports.

The move forms part of Saudi Arabia’s broader logistics strategy under Vision 2030, which seeks to diversify economy and strengthen the kingdom’s role in global trade routes connecting Asia, Africa and Europe. Mawani recently launched the “Red Sea Express” cargo shipping service through King Fahd Industrial Port in Yanbu, linking Saudi Arabia with Ain Sokhna in Egypt and Aqaba in Jordan to improve regional trade and supply-chain efficiency.

The Kingdom has invested heavily in ports, shipping infrastructure and logistics corridors in recent years as GCC countries compete to become major transport and trade hubs.

GN

India, the world’s third-largest carbon dioxide emitter, is burning more coal as energy supply disruptions due to the Iran war and a nationwide heatwave have boosted demand for the dirty fuel.

More than 70% of India’s power is generated from coal-fired plants, and energy experts told CNBC that the share is expected to rise this year.

In February, India announced that more than 52% of its total installed power generation capacity came from non-fossil fuel sources, with the majority coming from solar, hydropower and wind. Yet, coal-fired power plants, which account for nearly 43% of total generation capacity, remain the dominant source of energy.

Coal-fired power generation in India in April increased to 164.9 average gigawatts, compared with 160.7 average gigawatts last year, according to data shared by S&P Global Energy. According to the data, coal-fired power generation rose sequentially by 5.6 average gigawatts, or 3.5%, in April.

About 4% of India’s installed power generation capacity is gas-fired and runs on liquified natural gas, of which about 60% is imported through the Strait of Hormuz.

Higher coal burn

The higher liquid natural gas prices have also made gas-based power generation economically unviable, said Girish Madan, director of corporate ratings at Fitch Ratings in Singapore. “So, coal-based power needs to share a higher burden in these peak summer months,” he added.

Electricity demand in India is rising as temperatures surge amid heatwaves. On April 27, data compiled by New Delhi-based air quality and temperature monitoring platform AQI showed that all 50 of the world’s hottest cities were in India.

“Heatwave conditions, with readings above 40-45 degrees C (Celsius), across several places in India have lifted power demand,” Andre Lambine, lead APAC short-term power and renewables research at S&P Global Energy, told CNBC in an email.

He added that while gas-fired generation rebounded in the last weeks of April, it remains “1.5 average gigawatts below 2025 levels, underscoring the continued displacement of gas by coal in the power mix.”

If the El Niño climate effect develops, there could be a “potential growth of 10% year over year for coal-fired power generation in India,” he said.

India is expected to experience relatively higher temperatures this month, which could result in “heat wave conditions across parts of Northwest, Central and West India, along with the East Coast,” the government said in a release on May 2.

While demand for coal is primarily driven by the power sector, other industries are also leaning on the fossil fuel, said Firat Ergene, lead Insights analyst for coal, petcoke, and cement at Kpler.

Additional demand is coming from industries such as cement producers, he told CNBC.

Supplies of petroleum coke, which is burned as fuel, have been disrupted by the Middle East conflict, pushing prices higher. This has prompted cement companies to substitute petcoke with coal, Ergene explained.

Last month, India vowed to reduce the emissions intensity of its economy by 47% by 2035, in line with its goal to become a net-zero country by 2070. India is the world’s third-highest emitter of carbon dioxide, after China and the U.S.

While India’s carbon dioxide emissions are still rising, the growth rate last year was the slowest in more than two decades, according to an analysis by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a policy think tank.

CNBC

Five years ago, the world was hearing the first reports of a mysterious flu-like illness emerging from Wuhan, China, now known as Covid-19.

The pandemic that followed brought more than 14 million deaths, and sent shock waves through the world economy. About 400 million people worldwide have had long Covid. World leaders, recognising that another pandemic was not a question of “if” but “when”, promised to work together to strengthen global health systems.

But negotiations on a new pandemic agreement stalled in 2024, even as further global public health threats and emergencies were identified. If a new pandemic threat emerges in 2025, experts are yet to be convinced that we will deal with it any better than the last.

What are the threats?

While experts agree that another pandemic is inevitable, exactly what, where and when is impossible to predict.

New health threats emerge frequently. World health leaders declared an outbreak of mpox in Africa an international public health emergency in 2024. As the year ended, teams of specialists were probing a potential outbreak of an unknown illness in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, now thought to be cases of severe malaria and other diseases exacerbated by acute malnutrition.

Maria van Kerkhove, interim director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention at the World Health Organization (WHO), is concerned about the bird flu situation – the virus is not spreading human to human but there have been an increasing number of human infections in the past year.

While there is a well-established international monitoring system specifically focused on influenza, surveillance in sectors such as trade and agriculture, where humans and animals mix, is not comprehensive enough, she says. And she stresses that the ability to properly assess the risk “depends on the detection, the sequencing, the transparency of countries to share those samples”.

The Covid-19 pandemic left health systems worldwide “really shaky” and has been followed by a long list of other health crises, she says. “Seasonal influenza started circulating, we had an mpox emergency, we’ve had Marburg, we’ve had cholera, we’ve had earthquakes, we’ve had floods, measles, diphtheria, dengue, Oropouche. Health systems are really buckling under the weight and our health workforce globally has really taken a beating. Many have left. Many are suffering from PTSD. Many died.”

What keeps her up at night, she says, is “complacency”, worrying that the response to a new threat will be hampered by “the notion that ‘it’ll just go away’, or ‘it’ll burn itself out’”.

Are we doing anything better?

The world has never been in a better position when it comes to the expertise, technology and data systems to rapidly detect a threat, Van Kerkhove says. The expansion of genomic sequencing abilities to most countries worldwide, and better access to medical oxygen and infection prevention and control, remain “really big gains” after the Covid-19 pandemic, she adds.

It means her answer to whether the world is ready for the next pandemic “is both yes and no”.

“On the other hand, I think the difficulties and the trauma that we’ve all gone through with Covid and with other outbreaks, in the context of war and climate change and economic crises and politics, we are absolutely not ready to handle another pandemic,” she says. “The world doesn’t want to hear me on television saying that the next crisis is upon us.”

The world of public health is “fighting for political attention, for fiscal space, for investment” – rather than nations working to stay in “a steady state of readiness”, she says.

The long-term solution, she says, is “about getting that level of investment right. It’s about getting that sense of urgency correct. It’s about making sure that the system isn’t fragile.”

Is money available for pandemic preparation?

Rwanda’s minister of health, Dr Sabin Nsanzimana, found himself dealing with two major disease outbreaks in 2024: Africa’s mpox public health emergency, and 66 cases of Marburg virus in his own country.

He also co-chairs the governing board of the Pandemic Fund, set up in November 2022 as a financing mechanism to help poorer countries prepare for emerging pandemic threats.

If the next pandemic arrives in 2025, he warns: “Sadly, no, the world is not ready. Since the Covid public health emergency ended last year, too many political leaders have turned their attention and resources toward other challenges. We are entering once again what we call the cycle of neglect. People are forgetting just how costly the pandemic was to human lives and to economies and are failing to heed its lessons.”

He says the Pandemic Fund “urgently needs more resources to fulfil its mission” – it has received requests from low- and middle-income countries totalling $7bn (£5.6bn) to fund pandemic preparation and response investments, against $850m available.

What has happened in international talks?

In 2022 the WHO began negotiations for a new pandemic accord that would provide a firm basis for future international cooperation. But talks failed to yield a result by an initial deadline of the annual World Health Assembly in May 2024. Negotiators are now aiming for a deadline of this year’s May meeting.

So far the talks have actually worsened trust levels between countries, says Dr Clare Wenham of the department of health policy at LSE.

There is no agreement on what Wenham calls “the big elephant in the room” of “pathogen access and benefit sharing” – essentially, what guarantees poorer countries are given that they will have access to treatments and vaccines against a future pandemic disease, in exchange for providing samples and data that allow those therapies to be created. Research suggests more equal vaccine access during the Covid-19 pandemic could have saved more than a million lives.

“[Governments] are just so far apart, and no one is really willing to budge,” says Wenham, with only 10 days of actual negotiating time scheduled before the World Health Assembly deadline. Practical questions remain about the feasibility of what is being proposed, she adds, “even if you get over the fundamentals of how unwilling governments are to compromise”.

Her assessment is blunt: “We’ve had the biggest pandemic of our lifetimes, and we’re worse prepared than we were when we went in.”

She is among commentators who fear that any accord pushed through in May will lack real teeth, agreeing only a top-level framework, with trickier detailed decisions delayed.

But those involved in the process have rebutted that idea. Anne-Claire Amprou, co-chair of the WHO’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, said as December talks drew to a close: “We need a pandemic agreement which is meaningful, and it will be.”

The Guardian