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Published by The Non-profit International Press Syndicate Group
with IDN-InDepthNews as the Flagship Agency
Dear Reader,
We are pleased to send you Edition 36 | 2020 of BEYOND BREAKING THE NEWS, a flagship news product, now in the fifth year, meanwhile published every Monday by the Non-Profit International Press Syndicate Group, with registered offices in Canada, Germany, Japan and Singapore, and correspondents around the world. Previous editions are available on https://newsletter-archive.indepthnews.net. Read. Share. Publish; free of charge but mention us as the source. We would appreciate your Feedback.
Kind regards from the Non-Profit
International Press Syndicate
By Radwan Jakeem
NEW YORK | COLOMBO (IDN) – A major overhaul of the heads of Sri Lankan diplomatic missions abroad will come into effect in the next 30 days and new ambassadors have already been handpicked to key embassies abroad. These include New Delhi, Washington DC, Chennai, Tokyo, Beijing and Ottawa, reports Sunday Times.
At the same time, several retired diplomats who are over 60 years and heading embassies overseas have been summoned back by October 4 — i.e one month’s notice from when they were recalled. They include Kshenuka Senewiratne, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, Asoka Girihagama in Ottawa, Sudanthaka Ganegamarachchi in Stockholm, Damayanthi Rajapaksa in Cairo, A.L. Ratnapala in Havana and Sumith Nakandala in The Hague. Sumith Nakandala will be given time till October 22 when he turns 60.
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Viewpoint by Sven Saaler
The writer is representative of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Japan and Professor of Modern Japanese History at Sophia University in Tokyo. This article appeared the web-based International Politics and Society Journal on September 3.
TOKYO (IDN) – On 28 August 2020, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that he would be stepping down after a record term in office of almost eight years. Abe had already been Prime Minister between 2006 and 2007. In his first term of office, he had been barely able to move anything forward and was described in the media as ‘a complete failure’.
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Viewpoint by Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir
The writer is President of the High Atlas Foundation in Marrakech, Morocco.
MARRAKECH (IDN) – As so many of us ask when we commemorate an anniversary of decades: where have all the years gone? Have we done all we can? Have we been of true service? Did we do right?
We also may wonder on these occasions what might the future hold. Will our dreams – our Moroccan dreams – come true? Will every village and neighbourhood come together, with every young person, every elderly, every woman and a man from all circumstances and be part of designing and deciding the future course of their community? And will the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) be of the best service it could as the Moroccan people create the change they seek?
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Viewpoint by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
The writer is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
BANGKOK (IDN) – As the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the length and breadth of Asia and the Pacific, finance ministries are continuing their relentless efforts to inject trillions of dollars for emergency health responses and fiscal packages. With continued lockdown measures and restricted borders, economic rebound seems uncertain.
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By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
The writer is UN Women Executive Director. The following is her statement for the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women on September 4, 1995.
NEW YORK (IDN) – Exactly 25 years after the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, its significance is undimmed. In that quarter century we have seen the strength and impact of collective activism grow and have been reminded of the importance of multilateralism and partnership to find common solutions to shared problems.
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Viewpoint by Regina Frei & Diego Vazquez-Brust*
SOUTHAMPTON | PORTSMOUTH, United Kingdom (IDN) – The secretive way in which plastic recycling is handled in the UK carries the potential for the next big scandal. While the government’s statutory guidance is supposed to clarify who is responsible, our research suggests that what happens to plastics we believe to be recycled in the UK is in reality quite obscure.
Each council in the UK contracts different companies for the disposal and recycling of household waste, so the rules for residents in different areas vary. But you probably separate recyclables before filling your recycling bin and expect that waste (except when it’s black) to be recycled.
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Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene
The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine based in Abuja, Nigeria.
ABUJA (IDN) – Three years ago, it was a war spiced with condiments and paste over a dish of grain. Nigeria’s Information Minister Lai Mohammed was answering a question by CNN’s Richard Quest about who makes the tastiest jollof rice in West Africa.
But Mohammed heard the question wrong. He thought Quest’s question was about the origin of jollof rice and answered Senegal. The minister had scarcely finished answering when social media began to steam over the mistaken answer that Senegalese jollof rice was tastier than Nigeria’s. The avatars treated it as nothing less than culinary high treason.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah* talks to a Former Somali Diplomat Abukar Arman
MOSCOW (IDN) – Though Somalia is coveted for its strategic location and huge marine resources, it remains one of the largely unstable and underdeveloped countries in Africa. With its longest coastline, bordering Ethiopia to the west, Kenya to the southwest and the Gulf of Eden, it has attracted many foreign countries to the region.
Over the years, Somalia has been in quest of political stability, peaceful investment environment and sustainable development. There have been attempts to help the country establish its political institutions and structure political power. In 1991, for instance, a multi-phased international conference on Somalia was held in neighbouring Djibouti.
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Viewpoint by Marshall Auerback and James Carden*
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
NEW YORK (IDN) – In early June, a group of former officials from the George W. Bush administration launched a PAC in support of Joe Biden’s candidacy. The group, 43 Alumni for Biden, boasts nearly 300 former Bush officials and is seeking to mobilize disaffected Republicans nationwide.
The mobilization appears to be having an impact: More recently, “more than 100 former staff of [recently deceased Senator John] McCain’s congressional offices and campaigns also endorsed Biden for president,” according to NBC News, as well as dozens of former staffers from Senator Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.
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By António Guterres
The following are excerpts from UN Secretary-General António Guterres' remarks at Town Hall with Young Women from Civil Society Organizations on August 31. on the sidelines of the Commission on the Status of Women.
NEW YORK (IDN) – The COVID-19 pandemic has in the past six months turned our world upside down. Beyond the virus itself, the response has had a disproportionate and devastating social and economic impact on women and girls.
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By Morgane Wirtz*
This year, hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers settled in Tunisia have packed up to risk their lives again in Libya. For them, "It is better to die for something than to live for nothing".
BRUSSELS (IDN) – It is a large white house with blue shutters in Al-Maharas, a small town in central Tunisia. The ground is immaculate. The rooms are empty. Through the open windows, we hear the sea. The scent of seaweed and sea salt tickles our nostrils. If we close our eyes, it feels like we are on vacation. If we close our eyes.
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Burt Neuborne Shows 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler’s Early Rhetoric and Policies
By Steven Rosenfeld *
The writer is a senior writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (IDN) – A new book by one of the nation’s foremost civil liberties lawyers powerfully describes how America’s constitutional checks and balances are being pushed to the brink by a president who is consciously following Adolf Hitler’s extremist propaganda and policy template from the early 1930s—when the Nazis took power in Germany.
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Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) – There was a great piece of news announced on August 25 by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Wild-polio has been wiped out of Africa, thanks to a vaccine. It only remains in some isolated parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan where public health officials fight the poliovirus against inbred conservative peoples, some of whom who are prepared to kill the health workers on the grounds they are spreading the disease.
This fight to eliminate polio has been going on since 1988, a warning that even when a vaccine for Coronavirus is invented there will be many barriers to surmount before it has done its job.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Just over a month since a cracked shipping vessel leaked over a thousand tons of dirty oil, blanketing the pristine sands of the East African island of Mauritius, authorities have now arrested the ship’s captain for unsafe navigation. He faces a sentence of 60 years if found guilty.
It’s been an environmental nightmare for the tourist destination whose lagoons, lush tropical jungles and mountains attract millions of visitors every year. Some 39 dolphins have been found dead since the Japanese-owned ship struck a coral reef on July 25.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – As the number of cases of the coronavirus inched up in Africa this summer, another number was reaching new heights with less notice.
In Nigeria, Liberia, Morocco and South Africa, protestors have been taking to the streets demanding urgent action against the surge in rape and sexual violence against women. But it is hardly an African problem.
“African countries are not unique in this pattern of increased gender-based violence during the pandemic,” noted feminist writer Rosebell Kagumire and human rights lawyer Vivian Ouya in an online Al Jazeera opinion piece.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – This year’s Goethe Medal has been awarded to African writer and publisher Zukiswa Wanner, Elvira Espejo Ayca of Bolivia and Ian McEwan of the U.K. for their commitment to international cultural exchange.
Zukiswa, a writer, journalist and publisher, is the author of the novels The Madams (2006), Behind Every Successful Man (2008), Men of the South (2010). and two children's books, Jama Loves Bananas and Refilwe. As an essayist, she wrote “The Politics of Race, Class, and Identity in Education” and 2011 Mail & Guardian’s book of Women Introductory essay, “Being a Woman in South Africa”.
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