Number 25 | 2022

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced plans to find a new name for the viral disease informally known as ‘monkeypox’ which, says the world body, is “discriminatory and stigmatizing”.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a briefing on the matter, said the virus is no longer behaving as it did in the past and therefore should be renamed.

Viewpoint by Dr Mohamed ElBaradei

Following is the text of comments by Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General Emeritus, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Nobel Peace Prize 2005, at the opening of the 2022 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons on June 20, 2022.

VIENNA (IDN) — It is an honour to take part in this the 2022 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons. I would like to thank the Austrian government for taking the initiative to organize it.

Following is the text of comments at the opening of the 2022 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons on June 20, 2022, by John Polanyi, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986.

VIENNA (IDN) — Ambassador Alexander Kmentt, convener of the 2022 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, has invited me today to give a brief reminiscence of the birth of our nuclear age. Unsurprisingly, given my profession, that birth date roughly coincides with mine. What my remarks will illustrate is the speed of today’s change, as well as the responsibility of scientists for it.

This is the second in a series of two articles. Click here for Part 1

COLOMBO (IDN) — What was never mentioned in connection with power cuts and soaring fuel and energy prices was the privatization of sale of the Yugadanavi power plant to an American New Fortress company in a corrupt mid-night deal in November 2021 by former US citizen President Rajapakse, before he took wing to New York to address the United Nation’s General Assembly to boast about his green energy and fertilizer policies that had bought Sri Lanka to the current disaster!

Viewpoint by Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake *

This is the first in a series of two articles.

Them belly full but we hungry
A hungry mob is an angry mob
A rain a-fall but the dirt, it tough
A pot a-cook but the food no ‘nough

A hungry man is an angry man
— Bob Marley and the Wailers

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — Is the World going to hell in a handbasket? (The etymology of this goes back to Revolutionary France in the eighteenth century when guillotined heads fell into a conveniently placed basket.) No, it is not, despite Covid and despite the worldwide unsettling, brought about by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.