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News for a Sustainable World
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 35 | 2021. This weekly is the flagship news product of the Non-Profit International Press Syndicate Group with registered offices in Canada, Germany, Japan and Singapore, and correspondents around the world. Feel free to share and re-publish articles pro bono mentioning the source. Previous editions are available on https://newsletter-archive.indepthnews.net. Your feedback is most welcome.
Kind regards from the Non-Profit
International Press Syndicate
Viewpoint by Bill Dahl*
QUERETARO, Mexico (IDN) — In August 2021, NBC News published a piece about the renewed interest in schools providing survival skills and urban disaster preparedness. The increase in attendance in these schools have one thing in common: climate change. Furthermore, the most common demographic is families with young children. I explore several of these emerging human adaptations to climate change by humans in this article.
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Viewpoint by Alok Sharma, President of COP 26 Climate Conference
LONDON (IDN | UNDESA) — Solar changed Neville’s life. I saw this for myself when, as UK Secretary of State for International Development, I visited his home in Kenya, and he told me how off-grid solar power was helping him to study for his degree.
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By Kalinga Seneviratne
SYDNEY (IDN) — A new report released by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) says that an estimated 75 to 80 million people in the developing regions of Asia have been pushed back into poverty last year threatening to derail the region’s progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — I like this. It’s from yesterday’s New York Times. Senator Christopher Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut who supports President Joe Biden’s withdrawal, said those arguing to keep troops in Afghanistan were the ones who failed to win the war for two decades and perpetually pushed to stay even though “we have been losing for six to eight years.”
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By Thalif Deen
NEW YORK (IDN) — When the 15 member UN Security Council (UNSC) voted on a resolution August 30 condemning “in the strongest terms the deplorable attacks” at the Kabul airport on August 26, 13 countries voted in favour and none against.
But two countries abstained on the resolution—and both were permanent members of the UNSC—namely Russia and China, with the other three, the US France and UK, initiating the resolution.
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Viewpoint by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies*
NEW YORK (IDN) — Americans have been shocked by videos of thousands of Afghans risking their lives to flee the Taliban’s return to power in their country—and then by an Islamic State suicide bombing and ensuing massacre by U.S. forces that together killed at least 170 people, including 13 U.S. troops.
Even as UN agencies warn of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury has frozen nearly all of the Afghan Central Bank’s $9.4 billion in foreign currency reserves, depriving the new government of funds that it will desperately need in the coming months to feed its people and provide basic services.
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This article is transmitted under a new partnership between IDN-InDepthNews and Uni Apro, a Regional Organisation of Services workers in Asia Pacific, part of UNI@uniglobalunion.
By Kim Lui
SINGAPORE (IDN) — Representatives from international textile retailers have reached a new, 26-month agreement with UNI Global Union and IndustriALL that builds on the progress made by the ground-breaking Bangladesh Accord while promising to expand the scope of the Accord’s legally binding commitments.
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Viewpoint by Donald A. Collins
Donald A. Collins is a former US Navy officer, banker, venture capitalist, and a free-lance writer who has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas.
WASHINTON D.C. (IDN) — A nuclear attack on New York city? It can’t happen. But the question of a nuclear war has been feared since Hiroshima.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — A leak from the world’s fifth biggest diamond mine in northern Angola is causing an “unprecedented environmental catastrophe,” researchers at Kinshasa University are reported to say.
The leak threatens some two million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Raphael Tshimanga, director of the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Centre. The group’s website has highlighted the spill on its website—calling on Congolese policymakers to prevent the spread of the pollution disaster.
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By UN News
NEW YORK (IDN) — Countries which have not yet ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) are urged by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to do so without delay.
The UN chief made the appeal in his message for the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, observed on Sunday, 29 August.
The date marks the 30th anniversary of the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan, the largest of its kind in the former Soviet Union, where more than 450 nuclear devices were exploded over four decades.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Fighter jets, ammunition and other military hardware are among the top featured items in a new “landmark development in bilateral relations” between Moscow and Abuja.
The munitions are described as part of a “legal framework” to enable Russia to supply equipment and training to the West African nation facing threats from an Islamist militant movement and other security challenges.
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By Kalinga Seneviratne
SYDNEY (IDN) — To cover up America and its allies humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, the Anglo-American media is spinning tales of a great “humanitarian” airlift to save Afghani women from assumed brutality when Taliban consolidate their power across Afghanistan. But, at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva on August 24 the Chinese changed the narrative calling for the US, UK, Australia and other NATO countries to be held accountable for violations of human rights committed during the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.
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Viewpoint by Niba Mirza*
NEW DELHI (IDN) — Documentaries have always been a potent medium to exchange ideas, information and knowledge. They manifest an inherent tendency of the human beings to document reality of their times and communicate with each other.
Among others, this year’s World Forum 4.0 shall feature “Documentaries for Development,” a unique concept developed by Mr. Manish Uprety F.R.A.S., Special Adviser - Asia and Africa, of the Audiovisual Regional Hub of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Comunicación Audiovisual Parlamentaria, ALCAP, or the Latin American Parliamentary Association of Audio-Visual Communication.
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By Krishan Dutta
BANGKOK (IDN) — While the COVID-19 pandemic’s relentless cyclone continues across the globe wreaking havoc on economies and social systems, a new book sheds light on the adversarial reporting culture of the media, and how it impacts on racism and politicization driving the coverage.
‘COVID-19, Racism and Politicization: Media in the Midst of a Pandemic’ published by the UK-based Cambridge Scholars Publishing explores the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role of national and international media, and governments, in the initial coverage of the developing crisis.
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Viewpoint by Shastri Ramachandaran
NEW DELHI (IDN) — In the wake of the US retreat from Afghanistan, as the world’s leading nations engage with the Taliban in Kabul, India appears to have shot itself in the foot and gone into a sulk. When New Delhi does break its sullen silence, it only serves to remind the world of its seething animus against Pakistan.
As the regional superpower with unique civilisational connections and people-to-people ties with Afghanistan, India ought to have been a prominent player at this juncture of historic transition.
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By Radwan Jakeem
NEW YORK | NUR-SULTAN (IDN) — In a joint statement, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), comprising six member states, has highlighted the role of Kazakhstan’s First President Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose decree shut down the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site on August 29, 1991.
The statement was published by the press service of the Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 26 in the run-up to the International Day against Nuclear Tests, which this year is commemorated on the 30th anniversary of the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site.
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By Thalif Deen
NEW YORK (IDN) — The rigid new restrictions imposed by New York city—currently facing a surge in the deadly Delta corona virus variant—have prompted scores of US companies to impose mandatory vaccinations on all employees, mostly returning to work after temporary lockdowns.
The mandate follows the approval on August 23 of the Pfizer vaccination by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after a prolonged study of its effectiveness.
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Viewpoint by Sugeeswara Senadhira
COLOMBO (IDN) — The Taliban’s fanatical yearning to attack everything opposed to what they mistakenly believe as Islam was displayed in two acts of destruction in the year 2001. The return of Taliban as rulers of Afghanistan raise question whether the remaining remnants of a Buddhist civilization in the region would be wiped out in coming years.
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By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW (IDN) — United States investors are looking forward to exploring several opportunities in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a policy signed by African countries to make the continent a single market.
Speaking at the 13th US-Africa Business Summit from July 27 to July 29, organised by the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA), a leading reputable American business association, the investors said there are ways the continent can benefit from them, including in sectors like pharmaceuticals, automobiles, agro-processing and financial technology.
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