Gamers want the best gaming experience possible, which means high-resolution visuals and liquid-smooth gameplay. But, as games keep getting more visually immersive and graphically demanding, they need more graphics horsepower to come to life. If this sounds like Greek to you, don’t fret. AMD’s Ryzen processors and Radeon Graphics power a variety of systems for different gaming needs and budgets, and with this guide, you’ll be able to gift the gamer in your life with ease. 

Taking gameplay to the next level

You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to get the power needed to run today’s top games, but when it comes to that second-hand laptop Junior has been using to play Fortnite, it’s time for an upgrade. A single dropped frame can make the difference between life and death in a battle royale, and with nearly 80 million gamers playing Fortnite monthly worldwide, the competition is fierce out there. 

AMD Ryzen and Radeon-powered PCs can improve the way those games look and feel. For those who game or stream on the go, laptops like the Acer Nitro 5 and Acer Predator Helios 500 offer fast performance and solid framerates that you can bring with you anywhere. 

To kick the experience up a notch, you can also bring home a desktop PC to park in a gaming den or family room. Plenty of models from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and more are loaded with Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics cards that can rip through today’s most graphically demanding games, as well as video-editing and rendering apps on computers like the HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop. 

Hardware meets software 

A great gaming experience isn’t just about the hardware – it’s the software and features powering a system that really bring a game to life. Radeon FreeSync Technology lets you extract the performance out of your system and make games look better. It synchronizes the frame rate of your graphics card with the refresh rate of your monitor to eliminate annoying visual glitches, also known as stuttering and tearing. To enable Radeon FreeSync technology, you need to pair a Radeon system with a FreeSync enabled monitor. But all you really need to know is that the technology makes games look better and your gamer won’t lose in a clutch battle due to visual slowdown.

Gamers can fine-tune their systems to find the perfect balance of resolution, detail, and smoothness that their PC can offer using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition. Its interface is built right into their games, giving them a slick, easy-to-use overlay whenever they need to pull it up. 

For those epic sequences or victories you just need to show off, Radeon ReLive makes capturing gameplay seamless and simple. It lets you record, capture, or stream using the overlaid controls, and even fiddle with aspects like mic settings, all without pausing or exiting the game. It’s perfect for the aspiring eSports pro on your list.

Stack it up

The benefits of Radeon graphics extend far beyond just a shiny new card or PC. Radeon FreeSync Technology lets you extract the best possible performance out of your system and make games look better. It synchronizes the frame rate of your graphics card with the refresh rate of your monitor to eliminate annoying visual glitches, called stuttering and tearing. All you really need to know, though, is that it makes games look visually better and your gamer won’t lose in a clutch battle due to visual slowdown.

Gamers can fine-tune their systems to find the perfect balance of resolution, detail, and smoothness that their PC can offer using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition. Its interface is built right into their games, giving them a slick, easy-to use-overlay whenever they need to pull it up. 

For those epic sequences or victories you just need to show off, Radeon ReLive makes capturing gameplay seamless and simple. It lets you record, capture, or stream using the overlaid controls, and even fiddle with aspects like mic settings, all without pausing or exiting the game. 

Boosting the best games

There’s a reason why a new Ryzen or Radeon-powered system will improve your gamer’s experience. The people behind the hardware and software solutions work closely with the people who actually make your gamer’s favorite titles, like Far Cry 5. 

“We as video game developers need to give [gamers] the depth of tools and options to create a really specialist build,” says Darryl Long, Producer, Far Cry 5. “And that means we require the architecture to be able to do that. Having a partnership with AMD gives us the access to the people, the tools, and the support.” 

You can see this synergy at work in many of the hottest games on the market, such as Star Wars Battlefront 2, Destiny 2, and Forza Motorsport 7.   

Want to be a holiday hero this year? 

Give your favorite gamer the gift of smooth gameplay this holiday season. Pro tip: You can shop for a new gaming laptop or gaming desktop directly on AMD’s online store.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Mumford & Sons have written their share of songs that champion holding on. They’ve given them names like “Guiding Light,” “After the Storm,” and “I Will Wait.” So it makes sense that the quartet — who just released their fourth album, Delta, last month — would be drawn to one of the most celebratory anthems of self-perseverance of the year: Ariana Grande‘s “Breathin.”

They stopped by BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge this week to cover it, perhaps surprisingly maintaining its orchestral elements and electronic pulse. In fact, there’s nary an acoustic guitar to be found here (though there is a banjo, if you were checking), all in keeping with the group’s more panoramic new(ish) direction as heard on Delta. “This is Mumford & Sons in 2018,” multi-instrumentalist Ben Lovett told MTV News earlier this year.

While Mumford’s “Breathin” might be missing the stakes of Ari’s beloved original (and that incredible drum sound courtesy of producer Ilya), the band does bring in about two dozen strings to pull off the cresting swells of its melody. And Marcus Mumford doesn’t try to be Ari in his vocal inflections, letting the hopeful lyrics speak for themselves without much flourish.

It’s the second time this week we’ve heard a new take on one of Ari’s modern classics, after The 1975 reimagined “Thank U, Next” as a soulful gospel stomp.

You can watch the cover above, then check out Mumford & Sons talking to MTV News about Delta in full in the clip below.

New York City – A Jewish professor’s office at a university in New York City has been vandalised with anti-Semitic graffiti, including swastikas and an anti-Semitic slur, underlining recent concerns of a rising number of hate crimes against Jews in the United States.

According to the New York Police Department (NYPD), Elizabeth Midlarsky, a professor in psychology and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College in Manhattan, discovered the swastikas on the wall of her office on Wednesday afternoon.

“There were two swastikas and the word ‘YID’ on the wall,” Detective Hubert Reyes of the NYPD told Al Jazeera.

“YID”, from “Yiddish”, is widely considered a slur against Jews.

The detective said no one had been arrested, adding that the NYPD’s hate crime task force was investigating for “a possible biased crime”.

‘Outraged and horrified’ 

Midlarsky did not respond to requests from Al Jazeera for comment, but the college newspaper Columbia Daily Spectator, quoted her saying that she was in a state of shock.

“I stopped for a moment because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Midlarsky said.

According to multiple reports, this is the second time Midlarsky’s office has been defaced with anti-Semitic slurs. The first time it happened was in 2007.

Columbia University’s Teachers College did not respond to questions sent by Al Jazeera but, in a letter to its community, Thomas Bailey, president of the college, said: “We are outraged and horrified by this act of aggression.”

“We unequivocally condemn any expression of hatred, which has no place in our society. We are outraged and horrified by this act of aggression and use of this vile anti-Semitic symbol against a valued member of our community,” Bailey wrote.

Rising hate crimes

The US has seen an uptick in hate crimes, particularly against African Americans, the LGBTQ community and the Jewish and Muslim communities, since President Donald Trump took office in 2016.

In early November, the NYPD said there had been a 22 percent increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2018.

Writing in the Washington Post following the massacre of 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in October, Rabbi Danny Schiff, foundation scholar at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, said even though anti-Semitism is at a low ebb in the contemporary US compared with any other moment in Jewish history, “anxiety over an anti-Semitic resurgence is never far from the surface, and the inexorable drumbeat of anti-Semitism can hardly be said to have been silenced”.

White nationalist Robert Bowers attacked the synagogue during the Saturday Sabbath service on October 27, screaming, “all Jews must die”.

Earlier this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) said that hate crimes had increased in 2017 by 17 percent, the largest increase in more than 10 years.

It said it had documented 7,175 hate crimes across the country through the course of the year. At least 20 percent of all incidents were linked to anti-religious bias.

It also said that anti-Semitic incidents had increased by 37 percent between 2016 and 2017.

The FBI report corroborated earlier findings published in May by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, which found that hate crimes reported to the police in the country’s largest cities had increased by 12.5 percent in 2017.

The report concluded that in New York City, home to 1.1 million Jews and considered the largest concentration of Jews outside Israel, the community “have consistently been the top target and the overwhelming majority of anti-Semitic attacks in the ten largest cities”.

In early November, police arrested a suspect for vandalizing a Brooklyn synagogue with pro-Nazi slogans earlier in the month. The man had written “Hitler,” “Jews better be ready” and “Die Jew rats”.

All eyes will be on Buenos Aires, Argentina on Thursday and Friday as leaders from 19 of the world’s top economies, as well as representatives from the European Union gather for the 13th G20 summit.

This year’s meeting comes as tensions grow between China and the United States over trade differences, a conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalates and pressure mounts to hold Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to account for the murder of writer Jamal Khashoggi.

Here’s what you should watch for at this year’s summit:

Who will meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman?

The Saudi Crown Prince, also known by his initials MBS, landed in Buenos Aires on Wednesday, two days before the G20 is set to begin.

It will be his first chance to potentially meet Western leaders since the murder of Saudi journalist Khashoggi in Turkey. After offering several contradicting accounts, the kingdom admitted last month Khashoggi had been killed in its Istanbul consulate on October 2 and his body dismembered.

Riyadh has said that Prince Mohammed had no knowledge of the killing, which Turkey said was ordered at the highest level of Saudi leadership. Erdogan ruled out King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, however.

The murder has strained relations between Saudi Arabia and several other countries, with rights groups and politicians calling for Prince Mohammed to be held to account.

Human Rights Watch submitted a request to Argentina’s federal judge on Monday, asking the country to investigate Prince Mohammed for possible war crimes in Yemen and the murder of Khashoggi. On Wednesday, a judge asked Argentina’s foreign ministry to seek information from Turkey, Yemen and the International Criminal Court.

Among the few leaders Prince Mohammed is expected to meet is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The pair will discuss the killing of Khashoggi, but the “main aim” would be developing Russia-Saudi relations, said Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told German daily Sueffeutsche Zeitung on Tuesday that Prince Mohammed requested to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip during the summit.

UN Secretary-General said on Wednesday he is willing to meet Prince Mohammed at the summit to discuss an end to the war in Yemen. 

On Tuesday, US National Security Adviser John Bolton said there are no plans for a meeting between MBS and President Donald Trump at the summit. But White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said she could not rule out possible interaction between MBS and Trump at the summit.

Although Trump admitted last week that Prince Mohammed may have known about the murder, the president said the US will remain a “steadfast partner” with the kingdom. The US placed economic sanctions on 17 Saudi nationals allegedly involved in Khashoggi’s murder.

Rights groups have also vowed to protest against Prince Mohammed’s appearance at the G20.

2. Trump-Xi meeting: Will there be a breakthrough?

Trump will host a dinner for his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Saturday where the pair are expected to try to come some sort of compromise on trade.

It will be the first meeting between the leaders of the world’s biggest economies since Washington imposed tariffs on $250bn in Chinese imports and China retaliated with its own measures.

China hopes to convince Washington to hold off on hiking tariffs to 25 percent from 10 percent on January 1.

Although officials from both countries have expressed scepticism, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Tuesday that the summit offers “an opportunity to break through what has been disappointing discussions” over the last several months. 

“In his view, there is a good possibility that a deal can be made and [Trump] is open to it,” Kudlow told reporters.

But Kudlow cautioned that if conditions are not met on a number of issues, including intellectual property theft and other practices, the president is prepared to hike tariffs on Chinese imports.

For the China’s part, Beijing’s ambassador to Washington said on Tuesday that his country is going into the G20 hoping for a deal, but warning of dire consequences if US hardliners try to separate the two economies.

Speaking to Reuters news agency before heading to join Chinese President Xi Jinping’s delegation G20, Cui Tiankai said China and the United States had a shared responsibility to cooperate in the interests of the global economy. 

Asked whether he though hardliners in the White House were seeking to separate the closely linked US and Chinese economies, Cui said he did not think it was possible or helpful to do so, adding “I don’t know if people really realise the possible consequences – the impact, the negative impact – if there is such a decoupling.”

“The lessons of history are still there. In the last century, we had two world wars, And in between them, the Great Depression. I don’t think anybody should really try to have a repetition of history. These things should never happen again, so people have to act in a responsible way.”

3. Doubts over Trump-Putin meeting

Trump recently cast doubt over his planned meeting with the Russian president.

The pair are currently scheduled to meet on Saturday, but Trump said late on Tuesday that he may cancel the meeting due to escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

Kiev declared martial law in several of the country’s regions this week after Russia seized three Ukrainian ships near the Crimean peninsula. 

“Maybe I won’t have the meeting,” Trump told the Washington Post. “Maybe I won’t even have the meeting … I don’t like that aggression. I don’t want that aggression at all,” he said.

Responding to Trump’s comment, a Kremlin aide said on Wednesday that the US should speak through established channels, not the media. The Kremlin also said it expected the meeting between the two leaders to go ahead.

Speaking to NBC News, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he wants Trump to deliver a message to Putin in Argentina:”Get out of Ukraine, Mr Putin.”

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and now controls both sides of the Kerch Strait where the incident took place.

If the Trump-Putin meeting goes ahead, the two are expected to discuss the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty after Trump said in October the United States would quit the agreement because Russia was not honouring it.

On Tuesday, US National Security Adviser Bolton said he believes the Trump-Putin meeting will be a continuation of their discussion in Helsinki. 

At that closed-door meeting, which took place in July, the two leaders said they touched on a range of issues, including international security and trade.

The Helsinki summit was overshadowed though when Trump failed to challenge Putin over interference in the US elections. He was later forced to admit he misspoke and clarify that he does accept the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia did meddle in the 2016 presidential elections.

4. ‘No to the G20’: Anti-capitalist and other protests expected

As with other G20 summits, anti-capitalist and other protests are expected throughout conference. 

The major demonstrations will kick off with the People’s Summit on Wednesday. Participants of the alternative meeting will discuss a number of issues from food security to how to combat climate change. The People’s Summit will continue through Friday when a large demonstration is expected.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group of women whose children and grandchildren were disappeared during Argentina’s Dirty War, are also expected to protest on Thursday.

Rights groups also plan to protest the potential appearance of Saudi Prince Mohammed over the kingdom’s role in Yemen and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Argentina has declared Friday a public holiday and suspended train service on Friday and Saturday.

The government, which faces near daily protests over its economic austerity programme, has vowed to crack down on protests, saying “illegal acts” will not be permitted.

The event will be guarded by 22,000 police and 700 security ministry agents, and the government has been in contact with a number of foreign security services, including those in the United States, Britain, Brazil, Italy and Spain, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich told reporters on Tuesday,

Bullrich also told local media that residents should leave the city until the summit concludes.

5. Signing of the USMCA

The United States, Mexico and Canada are expected to sign a revised North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Friday, which has been dubbed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). 

The agreement, announced in October, updates the 1994 NAFTA agreement and promises to lead to “freer, fairer markets, and to robust economic growth”.

It is unclear who will sign the deal behalf of each of the countries. Canadian media reported on Tuesday that the final text of the agreement was also still being hammered out.

If the agreement is signed on Tuesday, it will then be sent to each of the country’s legislatures where it must be ratified before it can enter into force.

6. May to seek post-Brexit trading future

UK Prime Minister Theresa May will use the G20 to sell Britain’s post-Brexit trading future outside the EU.

But Trump has done her no favours by mocking a hard-fought withdrawal agreement negotiated between London and Brussels.

After a year and a half of arduous negotiations, the 27 leaders took less than half an hour to rubber-stamp a 600-page treaty on Sunday that sets the terms for the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union on March 29 and a 26-page declaration outlining ambitions for a future free trade relationship.

May now faces the arduous task of winning parliamentary backing for the deal, which foresees London following many EU rules to maintain easy trade access, with the British leader expected to face fierce resistance in the coming weeks from both supporters and opponents of Brexit within her government and other opposition parties.

Follow all of the latest updates from the G20 here. 

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Drugs have long attracted the harshest penalties here.

Under the Dangerous Drugs Act, anyone found with 200 grams of cannabis, 40 grams of cocaine, and 15 grams of heroin or morphine risks being charged with drug trafficking – a crime that carries the death penalty.

The burden of proof doesn’t even fall on the prosecution.

It is the accused who must show the drugs are not theirs.

As a result, the majority of people behind bars in Malaysia are there because of drugs.

Nearly three-quarters of the 1,281 people on death row at the end of October have been convicted of drug crimes. And just over half of the more than 65,000 prisoners in the country’s jails.

But with the government now in the process of abolishing the death penalty, the country’s punitive approach to drugs is also under review.

“The bulk of prisoners are drug-related offenders and this is where we have to re-look the definition of drugs – dangerous drugs, especially – with the development of certain drugs that can be used for medicinal purposes like marijuana or morphine that can be used in cancer treatment,” Malaysia’s de facto Law Minister Liew Vui Kheong told Al Jazeera in an interview.

Around the world, there has been a discernible shift in policies towards drugs, particularly in relation to the medicinal use of cannabis and marijuana.

In October, Canada legalised the recreational use of marijuana arguing it would reduce the profits of organised crime and ensure regulation of a drug millions of Canadians were already taking. It had allowed the use of the plant for medicinal reasons since 2001.

Argentina, meanwhile, provides medical marijuana for free and 30 states in the US have also approved the drug for medical reasons.

Even in Asia, where drug policies have long been among the world’s most draconian, exemplified by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs”, Thailand is taking steps to legalise the use of cannabis for research and medicinal purposes.

In Malaysia, two recent cases of men facing the death penalty for selling medical marijuana have given the debate renewed urgency.

Muhammad Lukman, 29, was sentenced to death at the end of August, three years after he was arrested in possession of three litres of cannabis oil, 279 grams of compressed cannabis, and 1.4kg of a substance containing tetrahydrocan nabininol (THC), the psychoactive element of cannabis.

In court his lawyer argued he was an alternative healer who helped ease the pain of those with cancer and other conditions, even giving away the drugs for free to those from poor backgrounds.

A petition to free him has more than 70,000 signatures and support from MPs in the ruling coalition.

‘Prohibition era’

Amiruddin @ Nadarajan Abdullah, popularly known as Dr Ganja (the local name for marijuana), is facing 36 charges including the death penalty on similar grounds.

Amiruddin began using cannabis to cope with the pain from kidney problems and a tumour in his back.

“The war on drugs has failed,” said Intan Mustika, co-founder of the Malaysia Society of Awareness, which has been campaigning for the legalisation of cannabis for medicinal use since 2011. “We are living in a prohibition era, in Asian countries especially. We need a different approach.”

The same year that MASA was founded, an audit of Malaysia’s criminal justice system found drug crimes dominated the caseload at all levels with few alternatives to imprisonment or pre-release schemes.

“People will continue to use drugs, for a variety of reasons, no matter how strict the laws are,” Ruth Dreifuss, former president of Switzerland and chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, told Al Jazeera.

“So when a government cracks down harshly not only on drug trafficking but also use and possession, this inevitably leads to mass incarceration and prison overcrowding.”

Fifa Rahman spent six years advocating for decriminalisation as a policy officer at the Malaysian Aids Council.

She left Malaysia in 2016 thinking her work had gone to waste.

“People didn’t see there were rational reasons for decriminalisation,” she told Al Jazeera on the phone from Leeds were she’s now studying for a doctorate. “People thought it was a crazy idea.”

Despite its generally punitive approach to drugs, Malaysia has run harm reduction programmes for drug-users since 2005 as part of its attempt to curb the spread of HIV and protect public health.

According to Harm Reduction International, the country is one of only a handful of upper middle-income countries that have made a “sizeable national government investment” in harm reduction, spending $5.4m in 2015, according to the Global AIDS Response Progress Report.

But May’s change in government, as well as a realisation of the costs of incarceration, have given additional momentum to non-punitive approaches.

MASA’s Intan, who has hypokalemia, a potassium deficiency that causes muscle cramps and spasms, said she has been jailed a “few times” for drug use, but that cannabis helped ease the pain of her illness when conventional medicines couldn’t.

“All the time in hospital it looked like there was nothing that would work for me,” the 40-year-old said. “I would rather be illegally healed than legally die.”

‘Punished for desperation’

Crucial for the success of any policy change will be support from the police who are concerned about the increasing amount of synthetic drugs, like methamphetamines, that are being seized.

The Narcotics Criminal Investigation Department told local media it seized drugs worth a record $83.5m between January and November this year, the highest since the unit was established 22 years ago.

A data-based review of any decriminalisation within five years might help reassure police and public security groups, Fifa said. She adds that her research showed most of those jailed in Malaysia for drug crimes were poor people.

“I don’t think that prison is the best approach,” she said. “These are generally people who did not get the best opportunities in life and are being punished for their desperation.”

Malaysia spends about $10 a day on each of the 65,222 inmates in the country’s jails, according to Liew. That figure includes food, clothing and personal items provided to the prisoners, as well as the salaries of the guards and other staff.

Changes to the legislation surrounding drugs would mean that some prisoners would no longer have to serve a sentence, he added, with the money instead being used to develop education programmes for young people around the misuse and abuse of drugs.

MASA is working on research designed to show the medical benefits of cannabis, and have met senior politicians in their campaign to get the drug legalised for medical purposes.

“I think most Malaysians are quite open to the idea that ganja is medicine,” Intan said. “It’s not something people don’t recognise. It’s been used way back by our ancestors.”

A major study published on Thursday warned of a malnutrition crisis in almost every country in the world with India holding about one-third of the world’s burden for stunting.

Forty-six million children in India are stunted because of malnutrition and 25.5 million more are defined as “wasted” – meaning they do not weigh enough for their height, according to the Global Nutrition Report 2018.

Worldwide, 150.8 million children are stunted and 50.5 million are “wasted”, the report said.

“The uncomfortable question is not so much ‘why are things so bad?’ but ‘why are things not better when we know so much more than before?’” said Corinna Hawkes, co-chair of the report and director of the Centre for Food Policy.

Asia is one of the hardest-hit areas when it comes to malnutrition although the region experienced the largest reduction in stunting from 2000 to 2017 – from 38 percent to 23 percent.

In India, high rates of malnutrition lead to anaemia, low birth rates, and delayed development – perpetuated from generation to generation.

Dr Basanta Kumar Kar – who is part of a health committee at NITI Aayog, India’s government think-tank – said stunting in children is poor growth that can cause profound damage to both body and mind.

“Malnutrition is linked to mortality, morbidity, brain/cognitive development, and overall physical growth of a child. A malnourished child is vulnerable to infections and many life-threating diseases,” Kar told Al Jazeera.

“The odds against these children making it to secondary school, let alone managing an intellectually or physically challenging job, is slim. Malnourishment is hence also linked to productivity,” he added.

Of the three countries that are home to almost half (47.2 percent) of all stunted children, two are in Asia: India (46.6 million) and Pakistan (10.7 million).

Researchers behind the Global Nutrition Report, which looked at 140 countries, said the problems called for a critical change in the response to this global health threat.

The Global Nutrition Report is an independently produced annual analysis of the state of the world’s nutrition.

Malnutrition is linked to mortality, morbidity, brain/cognitive development and overall physical growth of a child

Dr Basanta Kumar Kar 

‘Stunted and wasted’

The Global Nutrition Report 2018 found while malnutrition rates are falling globally, their rate of decrease is not fast enough to meet the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

Apart from children’s diets, the report flagged up gender inequality, early child-bearing, open defecation, education, and economic staus as influential factors in India’s malnutrition crisis.

Despite available data, progress on tacking malnutrition is “simply not good enough”, according to the report.

Globally none of the countries with sufficient data are on course to meet all nine targets on malnutrition. India is not set to meet any of them, the report said.

Efforts have been made to ensure children are breastfed and get nutritious food in the crucial first two years of life and to improve the water they drink and sanitation in their homes.

“We are conscious of the fact that a large proportion of our children are stunted and wasted. To attack this problem, we have launched a nutrition mission this year where we will be using new technology to attack this problem,” Rakesh Srivastava, from India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development, told Al Jazeera.

India is the world’s fastest-growing major economy and during the last two decades has recorded economic expansion that helped lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. But it still remains a deeply stratified society with extreme inequality between its rich and poor.

Nikhil Day, at Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, a peasant and workers’ organisation in the western state of Rajasthan, expressed alarm at Thursday’s report.

“We are constantly shocked and disgraced by reports like these. In a country like India – where there is so much emphasis on economic growth rates – our apathy for malnutrition and food security is telling.”

“It robs children of their future and countries of their humanity. This should be a national priority,” he said.

The United States sent two Navy ships through the Taiwan Strait in the third such operation this year as the US military increases operations in the strategic waterway despite opposition from China.

The voyage on Wednesday will add to tensions with China, but is likely to be viewed in self-ruled Taiwan as a sign of support from US President Donald Trump’s government amid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing.

“The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the US commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the US Pacific Fleet said in a statement. “The US Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows.”

An anonymous US official told AFP news agency Chinese ships asserted a “presence” during Wednesday’s sailing, but all interactions between the two navies were “safe and professional”.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said the island’s forces monitored the two ships in the strait and it was a normal transit through international waters. 

There was no immediate reaction from China. Beijing protested after the US Navy sailed two warships through the Taiwan Strait on October 22, characterising the move as an affront to its sovereignty.

US-China flashpoints 

The latest move comes ahead of an expected meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Argentina on the sidelines of a G20 summit.

The US Navy conducted a similar mission in the strait’s international waters in July, the first in about a year.

Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan, which China claims as a “breakaway province”, but is bound by law to help the island defend itself and is its main source of arms.

The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taiwan weapons valued at more than $15bn since 2010.

China has been ramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island.

Over the weekend, Taiwan’s ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party suffered heavy losses in mayoral and county elections to the China-friendly Kuomintang, which has been welcomed by Beijing.

Taiwan is only one of a growing number of flashpoints in the US-China relationship, which also include a trade war, US sanctions, and China’s increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea.

Three years after Ellie Goulding and The Weeknd scored smash hits from the Fifty Shades soundtrack (“Love Me Like You Do” and “Earned It,” respectively), the former artist has paid tribute to the latter with a cover that’s appropriately all hot and bothered.

While visiting BBC Radio 1’s famed Live Lounge on Wednesday (November 28), Goulding delivered a faithful performance of The Weeknd’s most recent single, “Call Out My Name.” Like Abel’s original version, the cover packs a ton of emotion and intensity into just four minutes — so much so, that when Goulding was done, she admitted, “I’m hot, I’m hot… in temperature!”

And for an extra dose of satisfaction, Goulding even snuck in a bit of Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” in the song’s final moments. “It’s quite sexy, I think,” she admitted — and we’d have to agree.

Speaking about her decision to cover “Call Out My Name,” Goulding told host Clara Amfo that she was simply drawn to the song’s emotion.

“I didn’t necessarily think about the context… I just really love the way [The Weeknd] sings in this song. It’s very meaningful and very heartfelt,” the newly engaged singer said. She also noted that this isn’t the first time she’s tackled a Weeknd tune — back in 2012, she recorded a cover of “High For This,” and he reached out to tell her he was a fan. “So I feel like I can get away with doing this,” she told Amfo.

Goulding’s Live Lounge visit also included a performance of her new Swae Lee-featuring, Diplo-produced single, “Close to Me.” Check that out below.