LUSAKA -- Zambia is targeting to vaccinate nearly half of the country's estimated population of 18 million against COVID-19, Zambian Health Minister Jonas Chanda said on Thursday.

"This is a huge undertaking which has never happened before in the history of Zambia, and we want to get it right," Chanda said.

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HARARE -- Zimbabwe's manufacturing sector expects above 61 percent capacity utilization in 2021 after registering 10.6 percentage point growth to 47 percent in 2020, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) has said.

"I would like to highlight that we are emerging but we are not yet there. We are still below 50 percent of capacity utilization, although capacity utilization improved from 36.4 percent in 2019 to 47 percent in 2020," CZI chief economist Tafadzwa Bandama said.

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ANKARA -- Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Friday that the military helicopter crash that killed 11 soldiers may have been caused by adverse weather conditions.

"According to initial information and witnesses' statements, it is considered that the crash occurred due to suddenly changing adverse weather conditions," Akar said at the 8th Corps Command in Elazig Province.

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NAIROBI -- The quest to eradicate extreme hunger and malnutrition globally is in peril as 931 million tons, or 17 percent, of food available to consumers go to waste, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) has said in a new report.

"Reducing food waste would cut greenhouse gas emissions, slow the destruction of nature through land conversion and pollution, enhance the availability of food, and thus reduce hunger and save money at a time of global recession," said UNEP executive director Inger Andersen.

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SUVA -- The Fijian government pledged Friday continued support for the tourism industry which was the backbone of the island nation's economy in the pre-COVID-19 era.

"So, it is important we do what we can to support each other as we endeavor to reinvent our businesses, our communities, and of course, the industry and the economy at large," Fiji's Minister for Commerce, Trade, Tourism and Transport Faiyaz Koya said at a tourism Talanoa (dialogue) session in Nadi, the nation's third-largest city.

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NEW YORK -- Buoyed by its robust economic growth and continuous efforts to improve business environment, China, a longtime popular destination for foreign investment, is becoming increasingly attractive, a senior executive from Honeywell has said.

"Along that path, it's also becoming a very, very attractive market to invest. It has been attractive for the past 30 years, and it becomes more and more attractive as China decides to open up its economy even more," said Shane Tedjarati, president of Global High Growth Regions of the U.S. industrial conglomerate, in a recent interview with Xinhua. Enditem

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