21/06/2017
By Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh*
19 June 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service – I spent 40 hours on grueling travel between Palestine and the USA and my documents (and luggage) were checked 15-20 times along the way. The Israeli occupied United States is not much different from Israeli occupied Palestine.
Mazin Qumsiyeh
I will not bore you with details of going from Bethlehem to Jordan.
I do want to tell you that US security agents were at the exit from the Amman-Chicago flight waiting for me checking IDs and when the one checking my ID announced “we got him” loud enough for the other passenger to hear, four of them escorted me to get my checked-in luggage and then to a special security area where agents went through everything I had thoroughly.
They looked through my note book/diary and also copied my speaking schedule. When I got my boarding pass for Chicago to Denver I noted with dread the SSSSS marked on it for extra checks and so between that special examination and the gate I had to undergo two more examinations and rifling through my luggage beyond the already tight security checks of all other passengers.
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21/06/2017
Achieving a negotiated two-state outcome is the only way to lay the foundations for enduring peace that is based on Israeli security needs and the Palestinian right to sovereignty and statehood, the United Nations envoy on Middle East peace on 20 June 2017 told the Security Council.
Wide view of the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question. Nickolay Mladenov (shown on screen), UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, briefs the Council via video conference. UN Photo/Manuel Elias
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21/06/2017
By Johan Galtung*
19 June 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service — Humanity has had and has big projects. Mastery of nature is one, still going on. Middle range phenomena have been mastered, but not the micro level of viri–HIV is a current case–nor the macro level of climate–to the contrary, humanity is making it worse.
Johan Galtung
Another huge project can be called Material-somatic comfort, including health. Well-ness not ill-ness.
Amazingly successful, look at an average day in what can be called the bourgeois way of life.
As is well known, this second project may contradict the first project.
Other huge projects stand in line, calling on our attention.
Spiritual-mental comfort, also called happiness, well-being, is one, not to be to be confused with indicators of material-somatic comfort assuming that one automatically translates into the other.
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20/06/2017
ROME/GENEVA, Jun 20 2017 (IPS) – Nearly 66 million people were forcibly displaced from their homes last year, the United Nation refugee agency reported.
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After three days on the road, South Sudanese refugees arrive at the newly constructed Gure Shembola Camp in Ethiopia. Credit: UNHCR/Diana Diaz
The figure equates to “one person displaced every three seconds – less than the time it takes to read this sentence, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports, stressing the “very high” pace at which conflict and persecution is forcing people to flee their homes.
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20/06/2017
ROME/BANGKOK, Jun 20 2017 (IPS) – Rice is a major food commodity and staple food for many, and adding fish to flooded rice paddies has been a farming tradition practiced in a number of Asian countries for many centuries—even for more than 1000 years in some Chinese areas, the United Nations reports.
FAO promotes advancements of innovative agro-aquaculture systems to enhance blue growth in Asia-Pacific. Credit: FAO
With the adoption of innovative technologies and a wider choice of fish species and rice varieties, the rice-fish farming system can play a significant role in poverty reduction and improving food and nutrition security, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
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20/06/2017
By Thalif Deen*
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 19 2017 (IPS) – As UN staffers in Geneva threaten a strike, protesting a proposed salary cut of over 7.5 percent, a token two-hour “work stoppage” last week forced the Human Rights Council to suspend its meeting.
Credit: UN Photo
But there is more to come, warned Ian Richards, President of the 60,000-strong Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations (CCISUA).
Richards told IPS that a strike would only ever be the last resort. But he accused the United Nations of failing to practice in its own backyard what it preaches to the rest of the world, particularly on labour and human rights.
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20/06/2017
Marking the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on 19 June 2017 paid tribute to the women, girls, men and boys who have suffered the atrocity of sexual violence in conflict, and reaffirmed “our global commitment to eliminate this scourge.”
Women stand in a shelter for girls and women who have endured sexual and gender-based violence, in Mogadishu, Somalia. The shelter is run by the Elman Peace and Human Rights Centre with UNICEF support. Photo: UNICEF/Holt
“Rape and sexual violence in conflict are tactics of terrorism and war, used strategically to humiliate, degrade and destroy, and often to pursue a campaign of ethnic cleansing,” the UN Secretary-General said in his message for the International Day.
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19/06/2017
With the recent escalation of hostilities damaging vital water infrastructure in eastern Ukraine, at least 750,000 children are at imminent risk of being cut off from safe drinking water, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on 16 June 2017 warned.
On 13 February 2017, first-grade students in eastern Ukraine, including 6-year-old Sasha (in red sweater), participate in a drill to practice their response to a shelling. Photo: © UNICEF/UN053119/Zmey
“Nearly three million people in eastern Ukraine rely on water infrastructure that is now in the line of fire,” said Afshan Khan, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia, noting that more families are expected to be cut off from safe drinking water, putting children at severe risk of disease and other dangers.
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19/06/2017
ROME/OUAGADOUGOU, Jun 19 2017 (IPS) – Ignoring the plight of jobless young people in sub-Saharan Africa is a recipe for political instability and global insecurity, warned a high-level symposium of Africa’s interior, environment and foreign affairs ministers in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
“The on-going drought in the Horn of Africa is widespread, triggering a regional humanitarian crisis with food insecurity skyrocketing, particularly among livestock-owning communities, and devastating livelihoods” – FAO. Credit: FAO
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19/06/2017
BUENOS AIRES, Jun 16 2017 (IPS) – In Latin America and the Caribbean, which account for 12 per cent of the planet’s arable land, and one-third of its fresh water reserves, a number of factors contribute to soil degradation and to a rural exodus that compromises food security in a not-so-unlikely future.
Livestock seek shade on a small farm in the arid centre of the northern Argentine province of Santiago del Estero, where men are forced to migrate to cities or to seek seasonal work in more fertile regions, fleeing from drought and poverty. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 