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Number of smokers worldwide shrinking: WHO

AFP

The number of smokers worldwide has dropped steadily in recent years, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, urging countries to step up control measures further to kick deadly tobacco addiction.

In 2020, some 1.30 billion people were using tobacco globally, down from 1.32 billion two years earlier, the WHO said in a fresh report.

And that number, it said, is expected to dwindle to 1.27 billion by 2025, indicating a decrease of some 50 million tobacco users over a seven-year-period, even as the global population has swelled.

The report showed that while nearly a third of the global population over the age of 15 used tobacco products back in 2000, only around a fifth is expected to be doing so by 2025.

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“It is very encouraging to see fewer people using  tobacco each year,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

But “we still have a long way to go, and tobacco companies will continue to use every trick in the book to defend the gigantic profits they make from peddling their deadly wares.”

– Over 8 million deaths —

Tobacco use is estimated to kill more than eight million people each year, most of them directly due to their own tobacco use, while 1.2 million of them are non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke, according to WHO numbers.

Tuesday’s report cautioned that the annual numbers of deaths would continue climbing for some time even as tobacco use declines “because tobacco kills its users and people exposed to its emissions slowly.”

The report hailed that 60 countries were now on track to reduce tobacco use by 30 percent between 2010 and 2025. 

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When WHO published its last report on global tobacco trends two years ago, only 32 countries were on track to do so.

“We are seeing great progress in many countries” but “this success is fragile,” said Ruediger Krech, head of the WHO’s health promotion department.

The report called on countries to scale up their use of recognised measures to reduce tobacco use, including enforcing advertising bans, plastering health warnings on cigarette packages, raising tobacco taxes and providing assistance to those who want to quit.

The WHO calculated that investing just $1.68 per capita each year in cessation interventions like providing advice via text message could help 152 million tobacco users successfully quit by 2030.  

While the numbers are coming down, the report, which did not include electronic cigarette use, highlighted that 36.7 percent of all men and 7.8 percent of the world’s women were still using tobacco products last year.

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Even more concerning, it said that 38 million teens between the ages of 13 and 15 were also doing so.

That accounts for 10 percent of all adolescents in that age group, with boys far more likely to smoke than girls.

Europe is the region of the world where most women use tobacco products — a full 18 percent, the report showed.

The Western Pacific region is where most men smoke, with over 45 percent of men expected to still be using tobacco there by 2025.

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International

Trump to sign over 200 executive orders, declaring National Emergency at U.S.-Mexico Border

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A senior administration official familiar with the executive actions Trump will sign, and who was authorized to inform the media according to Fox News, said that the president will sign multiple “omnibus” executive orders, each containing dozens of significant actions.

The source indicated that Trump will declare a national border emergency, order the U.S. military to work with the Department of Homeland Security to fully secure the southern border, and make it a national priority to eliminate all criminal cartels operating on U.S. soil. This version of the emergency declaration had previously been reported by CNN News and was also confirmed to The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

According to Fox News, Trump will close the border to all undocumented foreign nationals through a proclamation. He will also create task forces for national security protection, working with officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other agencies to “completely eradicate the presence of criminal cartels.”

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International

Trump appoints Stallone, Voight, and Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood

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“They will help me as special envoys to make Hollywood, which has lost many overseas businesses in the last four years, COME BACK BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER,” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The Republican lamented all the “problems” he claims Hollywood faces and created this role with the aim of improving the situation from a business perspective.

“These three talented men will be my eyes and ears. I will do whatever they suggest,” he said.

Stallone had previously described Trump as the second George Washington, the first U.S. president (1789–1797) and one of the nation’s founding fathers, during a dinner after his victory in the November presidential elections, where he served as the master of ceremonies.

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The Republican leader will be sworn in as president on January 20 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden.

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International

Latin American and Caribbean diplomats voice concern over U.S. mass deportation plan

Diplomatic chiefs from ten Latin American and Caribbean countries expressed their “serious concern” over the announcement of a mass deportation of migrants, a measure they consider incompatible with human rights, according to a joint statement released this Friday.

The statement, which does not attribute the measure to any specific country, refers to the announcement made by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to carry out the largest foreign deportation operation in the history of the nation once he takes office next Monday. “The announcements of mass deportations are a serious cause for concern, especially due to their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of human rights and their failure to effectively address the structural causes of migration,” the statement said, released by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).

The signing countries—Brazil, Belize, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela (almost all migrant-sending nations)—also committed to “defend the human rights of all migrants.”

This includes “rejecting the criminalization of migrants at all stages of the migration cycle” and “protecting them as a priority from transnational organized crime that profits from migration,” the document adds.

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