07/12/2012
Asia is at the centre of the changes that will alter the global map of energy trade over the next five years, particularly as Asia’s economic surge alters regional gas and power sectors, says a news report*.
**Windmills in India, which began liberalising its energy sector two decades ago. Photo: © Shutterstock.com
To adapt securely and sustainably, as Maria van der Hoeven, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) explained during a visit to Singapore this autumn, Asia must pursue further reforms to liberalise its markets and mobilise capital for sufficient investment.
“That is why the IEA is stepping up cooperation with IEA partner countries in Asia,” she told the Singapore International Energy Week forum in October.
Demand is shifting to the East while production is rising in the West.
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07/12/2012
A new United Nations report calls for greater investments in agriculture, stressing that it is one of the most effective ways to reduce hunger and poverty while safeguarding the environment, and for creating more favourable investment climates for farmers*.
A scientist at a greenhouse of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, doing research on a particular variety of wheat. Photo: FAO/Jon Spaull
‘The State of Food and Agriculture 2012,’ the annual flagship report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), says that the world’s more than one billion farmers must be central to any agricultural investment strategy, given that they are the biggest investors in this sector.
“A new investment strategy is needed that puts agricultural producers at its centre,” said FAO’s Director-General, José Graziano da Silva, in a news release on the report.
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07/12/2012
By IRIN*, Doha – In the last three decades, 50 million people in the Arab world have been affected by natural disasters, many of them extreme climate events, according to a new report by the World Bank. The report projects the horrific scenario of temperatures regularly rising to over 50 degrees Celsius by the turn of the century, which experts fear could lead to countless more disasters.
**Photo: IRIN. Flash floods are also on the rise.
The disasters of the last three decades have cost at least US$12 billion, according to the report.
“This number does not really account for other enormous losses which unfold over a period of time,” said Junaid Kamal Ahmad, the World Bank’s sustainable development head.
And even this could be a gross underestimate. “The costs of damages are reported for only 17 percent of disasters and rarely capture the suffering that follows the loss of lives and livelihoods,” Ahmad said.
Drought and flood victims account for 98 percent of all people affected by climate-related disasters in the region, according to the report.
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06/12/2012
Cairo, 6 December 2012 – At least five tanks deployed outside the Egyptian presidential palace in a street where supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi had been clashing into the early hours of the morning, witnesses said, Al Jazeera reported at noon on 6 December, adding that Egyptian state news agency said the military deployment around the palace was to secure the building. Read the following report by Shahira Amin.
**Morsi. Photo: Marzouk113 | Wikimedia Commons.
By Shahira Amin for RIA Novosti*, 4 Demeber 2012 – Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), which was to have ruled on Sunday on the legality of the 100-member Islamist-dominated Constituent Assembly that has been drafting Egypt’s new post-revolution constitution, indefinitely postponed its session after judges were barred entry to the courthouse.
The court was to have decided on the dissolution of the Shura, or Consultative Council (the upper house of parliament), but thousands of President Mohamed Morsi’s supporters camped out overnight outside the court in what the judges claimed was a bid to delay the session.
A member of the Gamaa Islamiya group outside the courthouse told Al Jazeera English that the rally was meant to prevent the judges from “trying President Morsi for high treason.”
A day earlier, President Morsi had announced that the draft charter would be put to a popular referendum on 15 December, provoking an outcry from Egypt’s secularists, leftists, and political forces.
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06/12/2012
By RT*, 6 December 2012 – The [aircraft carrier] USS Eisenhower, an American aircraft carrier that holds eight fighter bomber squadrons and 8,000 men, arrived at the Syrian coast yesterday in the midst of a heavy storm, indicating US preparation for a potential ground intervention.
**Middle East map | By W123 | Wikimedia Commons
While the Obama administration has not announced any sort of American-led military intervention in the war-torn country, the US is now ready to launch such action “within days” if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad decides to use chemical weapons against the opposition, the Times reports.
Some have suggested that the Assad regime may use chemical weapons against the opposition fighters in the coming days or weeks.
The arrival of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the 11 US Navy aircraft carriers that has the capacity to hold thousands of men, is now stationed at the coast of Syria, DEBKAfile reports.
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06/12/2012
Tokyo, December 6 (RIA Novosti*) – Tokyo began deploying warships on Thursday in anticipation of a rocket launch by North Korea later this month, media reports said.
**Source: kasamaproject.org
Japan has sited three Aegis-class air defense ships – the Kongo, Myoko and Chokai – in Japanese territorial waters, to intercept the missile or any debris from it if it threatens Japanese territory, Kyodo news agency reported on Thursday.
Land-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles have also been delivered to Miyako Island in Okinawa Prefecture.
Japan’s Defense Ministry said it plans to deploy the PAC-3 interceptors in several different locations – Naha and Nanjo on Okinawa Island, Ishigaki Island and Miyako Island.
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06/12/2012
Denmark, Finland and New Zealand tie for first place with scores of 90, helped by strong access to information systems and rules governing the behaviour of those in public positions, while Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia once again cling to the bottom rung, according to a new report*.
Source: Transparency International.
A growing outcry over corrupt governments forced several leaders from office last year, but as the dust has cleared it has become apparent that the levels of bribery, abuse of power and secret dealings are still very high in many countries, according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2012, which shows corruption continues to ravage societies around the world.
“Two thirds of the 176 countries ranked in the 2012 index score below 50, on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean), showing that public institutions need to be more transparent, and powerful officials more accountable.”
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06/12/2012
Abuja — The Nigerian government’s failure to produce promised funding to address the worst lead poisoning outbreak in modern history is leaving thousands of children to die or face lifelong disability, the Nigerian Youth Climate Action Network (NYCAN) and Human Rights Watch* said on 6 December 2012.
A young boy sits on a stack of ore sacks in the mining processing site in Bagega village. © 2011 Marcus Bleasdale/VII for Human Rights Watch
The organizations opened a social media campaign on December 6, 2012, urging people to post comments to President Goodluck Jonathan’s official Facebook page, asking him why he has broken his promise to release funding for the cleanup of lead-contaminated areas in Zamfara State.
“More than 400 children in Zamfara State have died from lead poisoning according to official estimates,” said Babatunde Olugboji, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch.
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04/12/2012
By Laura Kenyon, Greenpeace*, 4 December 2012 – Halogenated anilines and perfluorinated chemicals are two things you’ve probably never heard of before. In addition to being mouthfuls to pronounce, both are toxic chemicals that are harmful to the environment and life, both in water and on land. Some anilines can become carcinogenic, or cancer-causing, and several perfluorinated chemicals are known to be toxic for the reproductive and nervous systems of mammals.
03 December 2012. Life inside A Dye Factory © Qiu Bo / Greenpeace
Even though these chemicals might be unfamiliar there is a chance you are already in a close relationship with them, as they may have been used in the manufacturing of the clothes you are wearing.
These hazardous chemicals were both found in water samples taken in the textile heartland of China, in the coastal Zhejiang Province.
That’s where the connection to your clothes comes in. Many popular global fashion labels, including Levi’s, Calvin Klein and GAP, source textiles from the manufacturing facilities in the area where the samples were taken, as shown in the Greenpeace International report “Toxic Threads: Putting Pollution on Parade“.
And that means that many of us are wearing toxic fashion.
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04/12/2012
A United Nations independent expert called on Greece to boost measures to protect the rights of migrants, while stressing that it is also the European Union’s (EU) responsibility to address the plight of a growing number of irregular migrants trapped in the Mediterranean country on their way to European destinations. The expert referred to the “widespread xenophobic violence and attacks against migrants in Greece.”
A mother and her children at a detention centre in Greece. Photo: UNHCR/J.Björgvinsson
“As the large number of irregular migrants stuck in Greece is mainly a result of EU policies and practices, there is a strong need for solidarity and responsibility-sharing within the EU in order to ensure full respect of the human rights of all these migrants,” the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, François Crépeau, on 3 November 2012 said at the end of a nine-day visit to Greece.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 