19/01/2013
Bamako/Dakar, 18 January 2013 (IRIN*) – French and Malian military forces have blocked the access of aid workers to Konna in Mopti Region, the scene of heavy fighting over the past week, causing increasing frustration for humanitarians.
**Photo: Anna Jefferys/IRIN. Displaced northern Malians in Mopti (file photo)
“Despite our repeated demands, access to Konna has been refused,” said Malik Allaouna, head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)MSF Brussels, in an 18 January communiqué. “They must permit impartial medical aid to reach conflict-affected zones. We call on all parties to the conflict to not only respect the civil population but also humanitarian action.”
MSF has been negotiating access with the civil authorities and Malian armed forces, and the French government and its military all week. A further meeting was held today, said MSF spokesperson Gregory Vandendaelen, in Brussels, but the outcome is not yet known.
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19/01/2013
The ongoing crisis in Mali has led to serious human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, rape and torture, says a United Nations report*, which warns that increasing ethnic tensions could have alarming consequences on the North African nation.
Displaced children in the Mali capital, Bamako, eat a welcome meal. Photo: UNHCR/H. Caux
Mali is a former French colony. Its economic structure centers on agriculture and fishing. Some of Mali’s prominent natural resources include gold, being the third largest producer of gold in the African continent, and salt. About half the population lives below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.
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19/01/2013
London, January (IRIN*) – The World Economic Forum has released its eighth annual Global Risks Report, which lists top global threats identified by a survey of over 1,000 experts. As in last year’s report, 2013’s risks were topped by economic and financial concerns, particularly the risk of major systemic economic failure.
**Photo: Jason Gutierrez/IRIN. A flooded poor riverside community in Manila – risks are interconnected
So far so predictable. But high in the rankings of nail-biting concerns were also risks related to climate change, both rising greenhouse gas emissions and the failure of governments and businesses to mitigate or adapt to these changes.
At the report’s launch, John Drzik, the CEO of the risk and insurance services group Oliver Wyman, said, “We see two big risks coming together, one is an environmental storm and the other is an economic storm, and we see them on a collision course.”
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19/01/2013
Perth, January 2013 (IRIN*) – Human rights groups have strongly condemned conditions at Australia’s two offshore processing centres for asylum seekers on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Manus.
Photo: Courtesy of Manus Island detainees
Children study in a container without doors
“Conditions are overwhelmingly inadequate, with intolerable physical conditions that seriously add to the mental health problems of detainees,” Ian Rintoul, a spokesman for the Refugee Action Coalition (RAC), told IRIN.
His comments come amid unconfirmed reports of unrest at the centres, and at least one attempted suicide on Manus Island over the weekend.
To date, 181 people have been transferred to Manus (maximum capacity 600), while 363 people have been taken to Nauru (maximum capacity 900).
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14/01/2013
Geneva, by ILO* – Working in private houses as cooks, nannies, cleaners, care workers or just general housekeepers, domestic workers are more isolated than most groups of workers. But from Indonesia to Kenya, Manila to New York City, they are coming together to create their own organizations and, collectively, to demand decent working conditions.
Photo: ILO
Already twenty-one organizations from across the globe have affiliated to the International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN), and at least another fifty similar organizations will be invited to join and participate when the Network has its formal inaugural conference next October in Uruguay.
“It had always been said that domestic workers were too difficult to organize. They’re proving that this is a myth,” says Claire Hobden of the ILO’s Conditions of Work and Employment branch.
According to a new ILO report, which provides the first detailed research into domestic work worldwide, at least 52 million people are currently working in other people’s houses as domestic workers.
Pay can be very low, employment conditions precarious, and the risk of abuse, including physical and sexual violence, high.
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03/01/2013
By RT*, 3 January 2013 — A federal judge issued a 75-page ruling on Wednesday that declares that the US Justice Department does not have a legal obligation to explain the rationale behind killing Americans with targeted drone strikes.
**Aeryon Scout UAV in flight | Credit: Dkroetsch | Wikimedia Commons.
United States District Court Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in her finding this week that the Obama administration was largely in the right by rejecting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times for materials pertaining to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to execute three US citizens abroad in late 2011 [pdf].
Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both US nationals with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, were killed on September 30 of that year using drone aircraft; days later, al-Awlaki’s teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was executed in the same manner.
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03/01/2013
By Dietmar Henning, WSWS*, 3 January, 2013 — Austerity measures dictated by the German government are plunging the peoples of Europe into a social catastrophe. Before Christmas, the National Conference on Poverty (NAK), an amalgamation of charities, churches and the German Trade Union Federation (DGB), presented its “Shadow Report”, which concludes that the growth and consolidation of poverty is “politically desired”.
**Berlin | Photo: Dnsob | Wikimedia Commons
The report, entitled “Those in the shadows are not seen”, is a response to the fourth official government report on poverty and wealth, which will probably be released by the cabinet in January 2013.
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03/01/2013
By Ben Ayliffe*, January 2, 2013 – In another example of why drilling for oil in the Arctic is such a monumentally bad idea, Shell’s drilling rig, the Kulluk, has run aground off the island of Sitkalidak, near Kodiak in Alaska.
Shell’s drill rig, the Kulluk, runs aground after being towed from the Arctic back to Dutch Harbour in Alaska, USA. Source: Greenpeace
The ancient rig was being towed back to harbour after a spectacularly unsuccessful summer drilling season when it ran into serious trouble and hit the shore.
Last Thursday [29 December 2012] the Kulluk was being towed from the Arctic by Shell’s brand new $200 million tug the Aiviq when it hit heavy weather in the Bering Sea that caused the 400 foot towing line to break and the rig to drift free.
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03/01/2013
By EurActiv*, 3 Januray 2013 — A new study has found that Arctic Sea ice melt is creating a warming spiral, with the thinner winter sheets that replace long-term sea ice absorbing more solar heat and energy.
ice-berg-creative-commons-rita-willaert | EurActiv
The paper by scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany discovered that solar radiation through ‘first year ice’ was three times greater and allowed 50% more energy absorption than was with the case with ‘multi-year ice’.
This in turn could change the face of the Arctic. “Ice melt and less sea ice cover will [themselves] make it more likely that more ice will melt in the next years ahead,” Marcel Nicolaus, one of the report’s authors, told EurActiv. “We see that light transmission through sea ice will increase in the future.”
While previous studies had indicated that solar radiation was melting sea ice at the surface, and warmer oceans were melting it at the bottom, the new paper found that Arctic ice sheets were increasingly melting from within too.
“We showed here that the older multi-year ice is covered with fewer ponds at the surface, while the newer, younger ice has more ponds,” Nicolaus said. “This albedo radiation transfer effect will be more pronounced in the future,” he added.
Increased Arctic light transmission will also affect sea life in the Arctic oceans, although more research is needed to understand how.
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02/01/2013
By Russia Today (RT)*, 2 January 2013 — Live from the brand new central studio in Moscow, RT broadcasting has kicked off 2013 by talking to prominent opinion makers about the upcoming New Year events and issues.
Photo from livejournal.com user m_simonyan | Russia Today (RT).
During RT’s first broadcast in 2013 Anissa Naouai, Kevin Owen and Rory Suchet have discussed pressing topics of the outgoing year and what effect, if any, it will have in 2013.
American and European economic worries as well as US gun politics, but also the Russian opposition movement, were commented on by RT’s guests.
“This is the year we see banksters in jail,” Max Keiser has told the first broadcast team in Moscow.
The host of RT’s ‘Max Keiser Show,’ speaking from London, added that ordinary people will continue to suffer in 2013 from government-imposed and bank-sponsored bailouts throughout the world. Max also promised “50 shades of fun” for his special someone on the first night of the New Year.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 