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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
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Dear Reader,
We are pleased to send you Edition 04 | 2022. 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 Manish Uprety F.R.A.S. and Jainendra Karn
Manish Uprety is an ex-diplomat & ALCAP’s Special Adviser for Asia & Africa and Jainendra Karn is a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of IDN-InDepth News.
NEW DELHI (IDN) — Post Magna Carta and the Treaty of Westphalia, international relations between nations are like the sacred marriage vows of Henry VIII or Elizabeth Taylor; and no one knows what the future might unfold. Indo-British relations can also be seen explored in the same light.
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Viewpoint by Dr Ram Puniyani
This article is the 18th in a series of joint productions of South Asian Outlook and IDN-InDepthNews, the flagship of the International Press Syndicate. The writer is a former professor of biomedical engineering and former senior medical officer affiliated with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (now Mumbai) and meanwhile a social activist and commentator.
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Viewpoint by Herbert Wulf
This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished with their permission.
BONN (IDN) — When Kim Jong-un took power in North Korea in December 2011, many observers speculated that the young 28-year-old, politically inexperienced son of the late Kim Jong-il and grandson of the first president, Kim Il-sung, would hardly remain in power for long. The communist Kim dynasty was likely to end soon. Today, after ten years, the dictator is firmly in control. What is his economic and security record after ten years?
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By Ramesh Jaura
BERLIN | PRAGUE (IDN) — On January 24, 1946, the United Nations General Assembly adopted by consensus its very first resolution Resolution 1 (I), which established a commission of the UN Security Council to ensure "the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction". The Resolution is entitled "Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy".
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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — The Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen on January 21, which killed at least 70 civilians, has shifted the focus once again to the festering seven-year-old conflict in the Middle East, which the UN has described as “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster”.
The disproportionate retaliation was a response to a drone attack by the Houthis based in Yemen, which killed about three in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an integral partner of the Saudi military coalition.
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Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — “George, you have to understand that Ukraine is not even a country. Part of its territory is in Eastern Europe and the greater part was given to us.” These were the ominous words of President Vladimir Putin of Russia to President George W. Bush in Bucharest, Romania, at a NATO summit in April 2008. (This is the beginning paragraph of Fiona Hills’s article on January 24 in New York Times.)
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By Caroline Mwanga
NEW YORK (IDN) — It is "dangerous to assume that Omicron will be the last variant, or that we are in the endgame" of the pandemic. "On the contrary, globally, the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge," exactly two years and a day since he declared the deadly virus a public health emergency of international concern, says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the UN's World Health Organization (WHO).
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By Jaya Ramachandran
GENEVA (IDN) — The World Health Organization (WHO) a specialized agency of the United Nations, has warned that fundamental and life-saving primary health care services in Afghanistan are under severe threat. It is, therefore, making an urgent appeal to international donors to rapidly finance the Sehatmandi programme, as they have done for almost two decades.
The programme is the backbone of Afghanistan’s health system, providing care for millions of people through 2 331 health facilities.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — A massive new complex housing Amazon’s proposed South African headquarters along with a hotel and other businesses continues to face stiff opposition from indigenous Khoisan, environmental and community groups despite city officials already approving of construction of the nine-story construction.
Opponents say the project will ruin a historically significant riverside site in Cape Town and harm the environment. The Khoisan were some of the country's first inhabitants and their presence in the southern tip of Africa dates back thousands of years.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Nature conservancies, with the stated goal of protecting wilderness and endangered wildlife, have enabled the removal of tribal peoples from their ancestral homelands in Africa to allow superior “western” models of conservation to prevail, according to the activist group Survival International.
Under the western model, half of all land must be kept in a natural state to protect Earth, as the National Geographic Society recently declared on its magazine pages, if a stable climate and high quality of life are to be preserved in the near future.
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By Jan Servaes*
BRUSSELS (IDN) — This remarkable quote appears on page 6 of Howard French's latest book, published in October 2021, "Born in Blackness. Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World. 1471 to the Second World War". In doing so, he casts a lot of doubt on traditionally held opinions about Africa over the centuries.
Howard French, professor of journalism at Columbia University in New York and former bureau chief of the New York Times in the Caribbean and Central America, West and Central Africa, Tokyo, and Shanghai, tries to make it clear that the way we think about history is often wrong.
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Viewpoint by Sugeeswara Senadhira
The writer is a senior Sri Lankan journalist and political commentator.
COLOMBO (IDN) — “Solicitation of foreign interference in an election represents a betrayal of public trust because it threatens to undermine the people’s right of self-determination—a foundational norm of our Constitutional order,” said Dean of Cornell Law school, Jens David Ohlin in his book ‘Election Interference’ published by Cambridge Press.
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Viewpoint by Orria Goni and Luckystar Miyandazi
Orria Goni is SDG Financing and South-South Cooperation Advisor, UNDP, and Luckystar Miyandazi is Regional Tax Specialist, UNDP. This article was posted on UNDP Blog.
NEW YORK (IDN) — On October 30, 2021, the leaders of the world's 20 largest economies, the G20, endorsed a two-pillar blueprint to address the tax challenges arising from the digitalization of the economy. The agreement includes partial reallocation of taxing rights to market jurisdictions and a 15 per cent global minimum tax for multinational enterprises (MNEs).
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By Kester Kenn Klomegah*
MOSCOW (IDN) — Many Africans remember Fidel Castro and Ernesto Guevara, internationalist symbols in the struggles for the independence of the peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean. Africa and Cuba have maintained cordial relations for decades, before and after the Cold War.
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Viewpoint by Alexey Gromyko*
This article was issued by the European Leadership Network on January 20, 2022.
MOSCOW (IDN) — The current discussions between Russia and NATO pivot on Russia’s requirement for the Alliance to provide legally binding security guarantees: specifically, that the alliance will not expand east, which will require revoking the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit decision that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO”.
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