World news digest: February 1, 2022

Some news around the world, in short:

• The World Health Organization is concerned by the tons of COVID-19 medical waste produced in healthcare facilities and exposes the “urgent need to improve waste management systems.”
• The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany dismissed complaints that the states didn’t have sufficient laws to protect the environment. It argued there was no carbon budget at regional levels to measure an infringement and considered the federal administration was supposed to determine objectives Länder then have to comply with.
• A High Court of Japan considers the last general elections for the House of Representatives to be held in an unconstitutional state. The weight of each voter was not fairly distributed between districts.
• Japan Health Minister said it reached an agreement with Pfizer to buy Paxlovid doses for 2 million people by the end of this year. Japan aims to approve the oral antiviral medicine for treating COVID-19 by mid-February.
• More than 5,000 startups were created in New Delhi between April 2019 and December 2021, according to India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry. It is now more than in Bangalore which used to be considered as the startup capital of India. There are over 61,400 companies officially recognized as startups in the country, and 44 became unicorns in 2021.
• A review commissioned by Rio Tinto reports systemic sexism and bullying across the company. Almost half of the 10,300 respondents reported experiencing bullying and more than one woman in four has experienced sexual harassment at work. Twenty-one women reported actual or attempted rape or sexual assault.
• Amnesty International accused Israel of apartheid with a system that “considers and treats Palestinians as an inferior non-Jewish racial group,” a year after the Human Rights Watch made similar accusations. “These are the exact components from which modern antisemitism is made,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.