China's Perceptions of Russia during the Ukraine Conflict

The ongoing Russian military operation in Ukraine since February 2022 has presented significant challenges to China's foreign and security policies, as well as its economic and technological ties with the West. Initially, China refrained from criticizing Russia's military actions and adopted a "neutral" or "independent" stance in response to Western criticism. However, China was taken aback by the protracted nature of the conflict and Russia's inability to successfully conclude its military operation. This raised concerns within China, considering its own situation of potentially reunifying with Taiwan through military means if necessary. While there are distinctions between the situations in Ukraine and Taiwan, the initial speculation of China conducting military operations against Taiwan has gradually diminished, although military pressure on Taiwan remains. The conflict in Ukraine has also caused internal divisions within China and has had an impact on its relations with the West, which are crucial for China's rise on the global stage. This article aims to examine China's interests and positions regarding the ongoing Ukrainian conflict, the implications for its relations with Russia, and the opportunities and challenges that China faces in the current situation. The article employs an inductive approach, analyzing China's predicaments at four levels: perceptions within the decision-making bodies of the Communist Party, the foreign ministry, think-tanks, and the media community. It argues that in conjunction with China's economic contraction resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian military operation has prompted China to seriously contemplate how to safeguard its national interests, particularly with regard to Taiwan and its strategic objectives of attaining a prominent global position. These considerations carry medium to long-term implications for the evolving regional and global orders. In conclusion, the article briefly discusses the implications of these developments on India, shedding light on the broader regional dynamics influenced by China's response to the Ukrainian conflict. © 2023, MGIMO Universty Press. All rights reserved.

Spectator Awareness and Support of Safety and Security Practices and Technologies During COVID-19

This study examined spectators' awareness of safety and security policies, procedures, and measures at events they attended in the US and their support of safety and security measures, including COVID-19-spe-cific policies, as they returned to live events in the spring and summer of 2021. Understanding spectators' sense of safety and their support of safety and security measures and related technologies while attending events can help venue and event directors plan accordingly to ensure the optimal spectator experience.

UK Students' Concerns About Security and Privacy of Online Higher Education Digital Technologies in the Coronavirus Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has led to major changes in higher education around the world. Higher education institutions (HEIs) moved to completely online learning and a range of new technologies including online videoconferencing and chat tools. Research has shown that users have privacy and security concerns about such tools, but little is known about the attitudes of HEI students to these issues, apart from reluctance to use webcams during online teaching. A survey of 71 UK HEI students explored attitudes and concerns about privacy and security in online teaching in the pandemic. Participants knew little about institutional policies on these issues and few had had any training. Ratings of concern across a range of issues were generally low, however in open-ended questions, a range of concerns such as being recorded without permission, unauthorised people entering and disrupting of online sessions, not knowing where recordings are stored and who has access to them. The main concerns about online teaching situations related to being monitored in examinations. HEIs moved very rapidly to deploy online technologies for teaching in response to the pandemic, but going forward, more transparency and information to students could alleviate many of these concerns and create better informed students. Copyright © 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Crop Production and Security in Ningjin County of the North China Plain.

Stable growth in grain production is a critical challenge to ensure food security in North China Plain (NCP), an area dominated by smallholder farming. Food production and security of NCP largely depend on how smallholders farm their land. This study took Ningjin County of the NCP as an example to describe the characteristics of crop planting structure and the changes in crop production based on household surveys, statistics, various documents, and literature by descriptive statistics, calculation of crop self-sufficiency, and curve fitting, and aimed to reveal crop security and the influencing factors of crop production at the household level. The results were as follows: (1) Wheat and maize sown area accounted for 61.69% and 47.96% of the total sown area of crops during 2000-2020, increasing at a rate of 3.42% and 5.93%, respectively. Their planted areas increased from 27.52% and 15.54% in 2000 to 47.82% and 44.75% in 2020, respectively. (2) The self-sufficiency rate of maize showed a significant upward trend and reached its peak in 2019. the self-sufficiency rate of wheat also showed an increasing trend, from 192.87% to 617.37%, which indicates that wheat and maize can meet food self-sufficiency and the per capita grain yield is in a safe state. (3) The trends on wheat yield and fertilizer initially grew, then decreased, closely resembling an inverted "U", while the maize yield showed a pattern of increasing first and then basically remaining stable, similar to an "S" shape. A turning point for fertilizer use (550 kg/ha) was identified, indicating the limits of fertilizer use to increase yield. The national agricultural production and environmental protection policies, continuous improvement of crop varieties, as well as the farmers' traditional practices have significant impacts on crop production. This study will enhance management practices for improved yield, which can support the integrated management of agricultural production in intensive agricultural areas.

Digital Technology and Gender Equity: Challenges and Opportunities in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings

Gender equity and inclusive economic growth are critical to make societies more resilient and to advance towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The consequences of gender inequality in fragile and conflict-affected settings do not only severely affect women and their families. The society at large also suffers from a significant loss of women's collective potential and talent, which impacts in every communities' fields for decades. In addition, the COVID-19 is bringing additional hardship for the most vulnerable all around the world, but particularly in fragile and conflict-affected settings. To advance towards gender equity and women's empowerment at all levels, strategies related to the use of digital technologies and online tools strategies are indispensable in fragile conflict-affected settings. It is noteworthy that women and girls' access to digital technologies is frequently less available to them and not always provided on equal terms with men due to different reasons (for instance, the impact of stigmas or idiosyncrasies). This fact exacerbates the risks for women and other marginalized groups to suffer negative consequences regarding their social well-being and income generation. Their lower access to technology and lifesaving information involves for them a greater exposure to this pandemic, particularly in the contexts of the COVID-19 outbreaks. Consequently, gender-sensitive approaches in fragile and conflict-affected contexts need to address the goal of gender equity in digital technology terms.

Life-Ecology Integrated Security in Building a Global Community of Health for Human Beings

The sudden onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic brought people the most serious global public health emergency since the end of World War II. Posing a threat to human survival and development, the pandemic has given prominence to global issues concerning life safety and ecological security and triggered studies on their integrated advancement. Only by fully understanding the importance and urgency of the life-ecology integrated security and establishing the new idea, new strategy, new plan, and basic path can we survive deadly emergencies, build a community with a shared future and health for all, and jointly contribute to and share the benefits of a safe, healthy and beautiful world with common prosperity, long-lasting peace and stability of humanity.

People Counting in the Times of Covid-19

Estimating the number of people within a public building with multiple entrances is an interesting problem, especially when limitations on building occupancy hold as during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, we illustrate the design, prototyping and assessment of an open-source distributed Cloud-IoT service that performs such a task and detects crowd formation via EdgeAI, also accounting for privacy and security concerns. The service is deployed and thoroughly assessed over a low-cost Fog infrastructure, showing an average accuracy of 94%. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Making India a safe destination

COVID-19 has resulted in unprecedented changes in the tourism industry and brought tourists' safety and security issues more important. The travel and tourism competitiveness of India as a tourist destination ranked remarkably high in natural and cultural resources, and price competitiveness but relatively low in safety and security. The research aims to evaluate safe tourism in India with an objective view and suggest directions to restore confidence and restart tourism in India after the pandemic. The research studies on safe tourism are assessed, and the importance of safety and security issues in tourism is addressed. It also analyses India as a safe destination and suggests more focus should be on safety to consolidate the tourist destination image of India. A tourist safety framework composed of safety education, safety technology, safety system and safety regulation is suggested with a case study of South Korea. Focus on domestic tourism, a phased approach for safe tourism, 3S Indian campaign, and networks between public and private sectors are suggested for safe tourism in COVID-19. The research would provide a rationale for safe tourism in India and help government and tourism marketers develop policies, set standards or guidelines for tourists and plan coordination with other bodies or industries. © 2022 Jung Ha Kim.

"Patriarchal reset" in the asia pacific during COVID-19: the impacts on women's security and rights

COVID-19 has disrupted social, economic and political life across the Asia Pacific region, with particularly deleterious impacts on women. Rather than equitably affecting all, COVID-19 has brought about a "patriarchal reset", exacerbating women's health and care labour burdens and heightening the physical violence against women and other threats to women's human rights. This paper examines global health governance in the region from a feminist political economy perspective. We ask how has the pandemic and associated lockdowns affected women's safety and access to economic resources and services on the one hand, and 'women, peace and security' (WPS) practitioners' capacity to safeguard women's rights in fragile settings on the other hand? We examine the gendered impacts of COVID-19 based on two surveys of WPS practitioners during 2020. Significant rises in domestic and gender-based violence, reduced access to reproductive health services, and increased income insecurity were all perceived and/or experienced during COVID-19 restrictions. WPS practitioners delivered services to mitigate these effects of COVID-19 despite overall less funding than before COVID-19. With the benefit of primary data, we explore how a more radical approach is needed to understand and transform gender relations in light of gender-based violence and depletion of women's labour. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Pacific Review is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

People Counting in the Times of Covid-19

Estimating the number of people within a public building with multiple entrances is an interesting problem, especially when limitations on building occupancy hold as during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, we illustrate the design, prototyping and assessment of an open-source distributed Cloud-IoT service that performs such a task and detects crowd formation via EdgeAI, also accounting for privacy and security concerns. The service is deployed and thoroughly assessed over a low-cost Fog infrastructure, showing an average accuracy of 94%. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Technology, Users' Privacy and Security

Nowadays, the entire world is struggling to adapt and survive the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic, the new mutations in the Coronavirus disease is causing damage and disruption across the world. Taking preventive measures to control the spreading of the virus, including lockdowns, curfews, social distancing, masks, vaccination are not enough to stop the virus. Many countries have sought to support their contact tracers with the use of digital contact tracing apps to manage and control the spread of the virus. Using the new technologies to adapt the prevention measures furthermore enhancing the existing ones, will definitely be more efficient. There are many contact tracing apps that have already been launched and used since 2020. There has been a lot of speculations about the confidentiality and security aspects of these apps and their possible violation of data protection principles. In this paper we propose a system of contact tracing, we explain how this system treats sensible information to preserve the user's identity and protect their personal information. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

No Salvation from Trackers: Privacy Analysis of Religious Websites and Mobile Apps

Many religious communities are going online to save costs and reach a large audience to spread their religious beliefs. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, such online transitions have accelerated, primarily to maintain the existence and continuity of religious communities. However, online religious services (e.g., websites and mobile apps) open the door to privacy and security issues that result from tracking and leakage of personal/sensitive information. While web privacy in popular sites (e.g., commercial and social media sites) is widely studied, privacy and security issues of religious online services have not been systematically studied. In this paper, we perform privacy and security measurements in religious websites and Android apps: 62,373 unique websites and 1454 Android apps, pertaining to major religions (e.g., Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism). We identified the use of commercial trackers on religious websites—e.g., 32% of religious websites and 78% of religious Android apps host Google trackers. Session replay services (FullStory, Yandex, Inspectlet, Lucky Orange) on 198 religious sites sent sensitive information to third parties. Religious sites (14) and apps (7) sent sensitive information in clear text. Besides privacy issues, we also identify sites with potential security issues: 19 religious sites were vulnerable to various security issues;and 69 religious websites and 29 Android apps were flagged by VirusTotal as malicious. We hope our findings will raise awareness of privacy and security issues in online religious services. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Pandemics That Generate a New Grotian Moment in International Law

Pandemics, as international health crises, impact the world like the two great wars that the international community faced last century. This has been confirmed by Covid-19 once again for the last two and half years. Individuals, states, societies, and sectors across the world have been seriously impacted in many ways. International law has also inevitably had its share of this. The UN Security Council, the special body of the UN, has technically recognised pandemics threats to international peace and security (IPaS) since 2000. Accordingly, UN peacekeeping missions in the field have been employed to eliminate the effects of pandemics in conflict and post-conflict zones where pandemics occur or cannot be prevented. Additionally, the UN Secretary-General exceptionally established a health mission, namely UNMEER for the first time in the Organisation's history in the fight against the Ebola pandemic, which requires a speciality beyond the capacity of classical UN missions in 2014. Presumably, this trend commenced by the Secretary-General will continue through the Council's authorisation against future pandemics. Recognition of pandemics as IPaS threats and missions' response to pandemics on the ground are significant developments which can be accepted as a turning point for the collective security system (CSS) of the UN and, thus, for international law. This paper argues that the transformation of international law due to pandemics is a new Grotian Moment, which is uniquely used to name transformative changes in international law in the scholarly literature.

United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy: A framework to accelerate transformative change for persons with disabilities in the peace and security pillar

The United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy establishes the first-ever framework for the United Nations system to advance disability inclusion across all pillars of the Organization's work, including the peace and security pillar, and to measure the progress made across the system. Evidence reported since the launch of the Strategy in 2019 demonstrates that the Strategy has provided a clear impetus among United Nations entities and peace operations working in the sector to address the rights of persons with disabilities, who are among the most marginalized in any crisis-affected community. However, the evidence also reveals that while humanitarian entities have made progress since the launch of the Strategy, disability inclusion remains an emerging area of work for peace operations in the field. The article argues that the Strategy's accountability framework has provided a much-needed blueprint and ability to monitor progress across the system, yet far more needs to be done to ensure that the United Nations system is equipped to respond to complex situations and reach the furthest behind first.

Pandemics That Generate a New Grotian Moment in International Law

Pandemics, as international health crises, impact the world like the two great wars that the international community faced last century. This has been confirmed by Covid-19 once again for the last two and half years. Individuals, states, societies, and sectors across the world have been seriously impacted in many ways. International law has also inevitably had its share of this. The UN Security Council, the special body of the UN, has technically recognised pandemics threats to international peace and security (IPaS) since 2000. Accordingly, UN peacekeeping missions in the field have been employed to eliminate the effects of pandemics in conflict and post-conflict zones where pandemics occur or cannot be prevented. Additionally, the UN Secretary-General exceptionally established a health mission, namely UNMEER for the first time in the Organisation's history in the fight against the Ebola pandemic, which requires a speciality beyond the capacity of classical UN missions in 2014. Presumably, this trend commenced by the Secretary-General will continue through the Council's authorisation against future pandemics. Recognition of pandemics as IPaS threats and missions' response to pandemics on the ground are significant developments which can be accepted as a turning point for the collective security system (CSS) of the UN and, thus, for international law. This paper argues that the transformation of international law due to pandemics is a new Grotian Moment, which is uniquely used to name transformative changes in international law in the scholarly literature.

Re-Adaptation of COVID-19 Impact for Sustainable Improvement of Indonesian Villages' Social Resilience in the Digital Era

The policy article aims to formulate a re-adaptation to the impact of COVID-19 that strengthens the social resilience of villages in a sustainable manner based on empirical findings. This article uses a sequential mixed model research design approach analysis with focus group discussion, and it is strengthened by data collected from 105 respondents chosen through random sampling techniques, online in-depth interviews, and group interviews in the villages where the article was conducted. The result showed that the village government was able to build a dialogue with villagers to find common understanding and build collective action to overcome the impact of COVID-19. Another finding is that the village government can realize real action in synergizing social protection policies from the government with the development of social security in rural communities. It was concluded that the experience of overcoming the impact of COVID-19 should be used as an innovation in the development mechanism of village governments in Indonesia. The innovation described in this article is known as re-adaptation. Disaster adaptation is designed and included in the village government's development planning mechanism document. The article has limitations because it does not examine existing regulations that could be used to expand innovative practices. © 2022 WITPress. All rights reserved.

Hayyakum (حيَّاكم) - COVID-19 Vaccine Digital Certificate: A Blockchain Approach

As a consequence of the global pandemic, many restrictions and rules were enforced. One predicament was the travel restrictions and requirements put into place with regard to vaccinations. Countries worldwide now require people to be vaccinated upon entry. The process of validating vaccine doses requires lots of paperwork and is inefficient. Blockchain is an uprising technology that is secure and fast at carrying out transactions. We propose implementing vaccine dose verifications between countries through vaccine certificates using Blockchain as an effective solution. The need for a common shared database, avoiding a trusted third party to administrate the network, having several countries involved, ensuring privacy and security, and accountability logs make Blockchain needed in this scenario. Digital vaccine certificates are very sensitive information that must be kept private and secure but accessible to several entities. Blockchain ensures the aforementioned requirements are met while preserving the integrity of the VDCs. This paper describes blockchain technology and its application in digital vaccine certificates. © 2022 IEEE.

Changing Global Governance Context for Food Security and Nutrition

Through collective action, global governance helps identify, understand, and address problems that spill over national boundaries. Those problems include maintaining peace and security;developing and implementing rules with regard to trade in commodities and services, capital flows, and migration;containing transboundary pests and diseases;slowing global warming;and providing aid for needy countries and peoples. Specific international organizations (five discussed in Chapter 6) address these issues). The difference between global and national governance is that there is no global government. Global governance, through various international bodies and institutions, complements regional, national, and local governance in an important way and is the sum total of the informal and formal ideas, values, rules, norms, procedures, practices, policies, and institutions that govern all actors—states, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, nongovernmental organizations, transnational corporations, and the general public. The number of actors on the global governance scene has proliferated, as has the sheer number of international initiatives that have been started to mobilize incremental international funding in support of food security and nutrition since the 2007 food crisis. Many of the initiatives are reviewed in this chapter, showing that the amount of incremental funding in support of food security and nutrition, beyond traditional sources raised, was insignificant compared to the number of international consultations held. The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program was a notable exception, as well as the Agricultural Market Information System. This situation appears to have changed for the better since the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter examines the relationship between global, regional, national, and local governance. © Uma Lele, Manmohan Agarwal, Brian C. Baldwin, and Sambuddha Goswami 2021.

Blockchain-Based Patient-to-Patient Health Data Sharing

The Covid-19 pandemic catalyzed many exciting forms of health data sharing. Aside from the institution-to-institution health data sharing among cooperating institutions for research and discovery of insights in healthcare, individual-to-many and individual-to-individual health data sharing also came to the fore. However, the security risks involved here are substantial since health data disclosures can lead to privacy and security breaches or complications. In this research, we present a scheme to enable individuals to share details of medical experiences with other individuals or interested groups. Our system provides the sharing entities with anonymity and thus, facilitates rapid dissemination of empirical insights during public health emergencies like Covid-19. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.