07/10/2012
By RIA Novosti*, Cairo, October 7 – Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi took the personal responsibility for failing to implement in full a plan for Egypt’s recovery that he pledged to execute in the first 100 days of his presidency.
Image source: Think Africa Press
“The designated program was not partly implemented but I take the full and personal responsibility for this omission,” Morsi said addressing Egyptians live on television.
Monday will mark 100 days of Morsi in office. In early July he proposed the so-called “100 Days Program” that he pledged to implement by October 8. The plan included 60 provisions that were divided into five main blocks defining the main directions for the Egyptian interior policy.
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07/10/2012
Beirut – Hundreds of thousands of mostly South Asian migrant workers in Bahrain face exploitation and abuse despite government reforms intended to protect them, Human Rights Watch said in a new report.
These twelve men share a one room labor camp, with no beds and no air conditioner. © 2010 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch
The 123-page report, “For A Better Life: Migrant Worker Abuse in Bahrain and the Government Reform Agenda,” documents the many forms of abuse and exploitation suffered by migrant workers in Bahrain and details the government’s efforts to provide redress and strengthen worker protections.
Bahraini authorities need to implement labor safeguards and redress mechanisms already in place and prosecute abusive employers, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. “The government should extend the 2012 private sector labor law to domestic workers, who are excluded from key protections.”
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07/10/2012
Geneva – With its financial reserves at zero, the United Nations refugee agency is facing an “unprecedented” combination of crises, its top official warned today as he appealed to the international community to provide the necessary financial support. The total number of refugees worldwide is estimated at more than 42 million.
*Mali refugee students set up “government” in UNHCR-backed school in Niger. Photo: UNHCR
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, noted that his agency, known by the acronym UNHCR, is currently dealing with four acute crises as it tries to protect and assist 700,000 people who had fled conflict in Syria, Mali, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by the end of September, on top of last year’s record exodus of 800,000 refugees worldwide.
“As a matter of fact, UNHCR is presently overstretched,” the UN refugee chief said in Geneva on 5 October, stressing that all the current problems come on top of dealing with long-standing chronic problems, such as one million Somali refugees who have fled conflict and drought in their homeland to Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
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06/10/2012
By JulietteH, Greenpeace – It’s not often that one of the world’s richest companies doesn’t get what it wants. But today in a Dutch court, Shell not only failed to win the sweeping injunction it applied for, but was told in quite forceful terms that it must accept the consequences of its reckless plans to drill for oil in the Arctic.
Here’s what the judge said:
“A company like Shell, that is taking actions… that are controversial in society and which many people will object to, can and should expect that actions will be taken to try to change its mind.”
Two weeks ago, Shell took Greenpeace Netherlands and Greenpeace International to court, asking for an incredibly broad injunction against Greenpeace.
What Shell initially asked for would have meant that any Greenpeace “action” – illegal or legal – within 500m of Shell property could have led to a million euro fine for the organization. Yep – a friendly activist handing out leaflets about Arctic drilling on a street corner could have broken the terms of the injunction.
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06/10/2012
By Anne-Sophie Corbeau* – Concerns about a gas supply crisis usually focus on pipeline disruptions, but large parts of the world depend on liquefied natural gas (LNG). Japan, South Korea, Chinese Taipei and India rely entirely on LNG for their gas imports, helping LNG represent a total of 9% of global gas demand. Those economies’ dependency brings critical and specific vulnerabilities, especially since any disruption to LNG supply would have global implications.
LNG can be redirected fairly easily, and the liquefaction trade has increased significantly since 2009. But that growth hides the fact that global LNG trade is very dependent on one gas producer: Qatar, which provided 30% of the 2011 LNG trade and sent almost half of that supply to just those four most dependent economies.
Any event significantly reducing Qatari LNG supplies could have severe effects on energy security. Not only would the LNG importers suffer, but so would other gas importers, with prices potentially rising sharply as economies dependent on LNG diverted supply from other markets.
There is currently little spare LNG output capacity in the world, as LNG producers tend to produce as much as they can. Therefore, other options would have to be used: primarily increased domestic output, notably in the Americas and possibly China, and fuel switching in the power sector.
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06/10/2012
Some 1.7 million more teachers are needed to achieve universal primary education by 2015, the second of the eight anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the heads of various United Nations agencies said in a joint statementmarking World Teachers’ Day on 5 October 2012.
Kisojo Model Primary School in Kyenjojo District in Uganda. Photo: UNICEF/NYHQ2010-1482/Shehzad Noorani
“On this day, we call for the creation of supportive teaching environments, adequate teacher training and safeguards for the rights of teachers,” the agency chiefs said, calling on governments to provide required training and fair salaries reflecting the importance of the profession while teachers, in turn, must be accountable to their students and communities, the UN reports.
“We must break the vicious cycle of declining professional conditions for teachers in order to improve the quality of learning for all,” they added. “The world expects a lot from teachers – they, in turn, are right to expect as much from us.”
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05/10/2012
Rome, 5 October 2012 – Rural women and girls represent about a quarter of the world’s population. In developing countries, most of them are smallholder farmers, according to a new report.
Woman waters seedlings in the Lake Tana area of Ethiopia’s Amhara Region. ©IFAD/Petterik Wiggers
Each year the United Nations recognizes their achievements and challenges on 15 October, the International Day of Rural Women.
This year the day takes on added significance with the inception of an inter-agency UN programme on accelerating progress toward the economic empowerment of rural women, adds the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
The joint programme is a five-year initiative of UN Women, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), IFAD and the World Food Programme (WFP). It will be implemented initially in Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Nepal, Niger and Rwanda.
“The initiative’s goals are to improve food and nutrition security, increase women’s incomes, strengthen their leadership position in rural institutions, and foster a more responsive policy environment for rural women’s empowerment at the national and international levels.”
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05/10/2012
By IRIN* – Women are pioneering Mauritania’s fledgling dairy industry and trying to get Mauritanians to support local small producers, but they face steep competition from the heavily subsidized European milk sector.
**Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN. Mauritania is home to Africa’s first camel milk dairy.
Ari Hara, a women’s cooperative in Ari Hara Village, turns milk into sweetened yoghurt, which is supplied to shops in the nearest town, Boghé, 350km southeast of Nouakchott.
Since the cooperative was established in 2009, it has helped its members – who practise farming and pastoralism – ensure their families have enough to eat in times of drought.
“I still remember the day I could buy 50kg of rice for the house with my own money,” Ramata, a cooperative member, recalled, beaming. They could increase sales if they had the capacity to market their yoghurt in towns farther away, for which they would need better roads and a refrigerated van.
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05/10/2012
By RT*, 5 October – States that send arms to Syria face upheavals and unrest due to sectarian violence, their stability will be in jeopardy and the state of affairs will be no better than in Syria, warned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki in an interview to RT.
Source: Russia Today
“He who starts a fire will be destroyed by fire in the end,” Al-Maliki stated, predicting that sponsorship of the Syrian opposition will backfire on supporting states.
RT: What do Iraq and Russia have in common in terms of their approach to the Syrian crisis; and do you think the two countries can come up with a joint proposal on how to settle it?
Nouri Al-Maliki: Of course, the crisis is a matter of serious concern both for the countries in the region and for the world’s major powers. And it’s not only countries – this issue has been on the agenda of many international organizations.
We have repeatedly said that we take the Syrian crisis as our own problem.
It is a very important country, with its own political position. We did warn everyone earlier – and keep reminding – that the fire that started in Syria will spill over the borders to engulf other countries of the region and, in the end, it will have a global impact. The Middle East is one of the major energy producers of the world.
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05/10/2012
Image: Oxfam
This is the equivalent to the number of people who go hungry in the world today. In its new report, Our Land, Our Lives, Oxfam warns that more than 60 per cent of investments in agricultural land by foreign investors between 2000 and 2010 were in developing countries with serious hunger problems.
However, two thirds of those investors plan to export everything they produce on the land.
Nearly 60 percent of global land deals in the past decade have been to grow crops that can be used for biofuels.
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Posted in Africa |
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 