20 July 2018 — United Nations migration agency staff in Yemen say the key port city of Hudaydah remains “a difficult environment” for the delivery of aid to thousands of people displaced by heavy fighting this week.
OCHA/Giles Clarke | The port in the city of Hudaydah is a major lifeline for Yemen, bringing in food and humanitarian assistance. These cranes have been out of service since mid-2015, with little hope of repair anytime soon. (file)
“The situation is very bad and we’re doing our best to provide them with temporary shelter and support for the time being,” said Stefano Pes, IOM Yemen’s Officer in Charge, noting that agency staff and partners are working in a difficult environment to deliver food, and non-food items, shelter kits and good quality tents.
ONE CAN look at events in Gaza through the left or through the right eye. One can condemn them as inhuman, cruel and mistaken, or justify them as necessary and unavoidable.
Uri Avnery
But there is one adjective that is beyond question: They are stupid.
If the late Barbara Tuchman were still alive, she might be tempted to add another chapter to her groundbreaking opus “The March of Folly”: a chapter titled “Eyeless in Gaza”.
THE LATEST episode in this epic started a few months ago, when independent activists in the Gaza Strip called for a march to the Israeli border, which Hamas supported.
It was called “The Great March of Return”, a symbolic gesture for the more than a million Arab residents who fled or were evicted from their homes in the land that became the State of Israel.
ROME, 20 July, 2018 (FAO)* — Millions of small-scale farmers and foresters will be able to better protect their lands from the impacts of climate change, and improve their livelihoods thanks to renewed global efforts announced today on the sidelines of World Forest Week (COFO24).
Farmers share results of new climate-smart agriculture practices in Nepal. | Photo fromFAO.
20 July, 2018 (FAO)* — What does William Shakespeare have in common with Mexican beekeeper Francisco Lenin Bartolo Reyes? Both men understand the importance of the honey bee, a small but invaluable ally of the human race.
19 July 2018 (Wall Street International)* —Prejudices and restrictions are taking on new forms, and these distortions, arising from the non-globalization of phenomena and behaviors, create divisions, polarities and consequent unreasonable explanations about human behavior. We will exemplify.
Even today, many people (including researchers, physicians and psychologists) speak of homosexuality and heterosexuality as organic and genetic imposition, as unchosen attitude or unchosen sexual orientation.
19 July 2018 – After close to three years of siege, 6,900 women, children and men were finally able to leave the Syrian towns of Foah and Kafraya over the past few days, following a local agreement between parties to the conflict.
UNICEF/UN0207849/Al-Issa | On 3 April 2018 in the Syrian Arab Republic, a child at a school-turned shelter in Zeyarah village, north of Aleppo city.
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The two largely Shia pro-Government towns, in the mostly rebel-held Idlib Governorate, had been besieged by non-state armed groups since October 2015, and people trapped there have been in dire need of life-saving assistance, including food and medical care.
17 July 2018 — While today’s headlines about Myanmar focus on crimes against humanity and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, a story just as consequential and longer in the making has gone largely unreported. A new Human Rights Watch* report describes the impact on small-scale farmers throughout the country whose land has been confiscated over the past 30 years by Myanmar’s government and military.
Despite the improved economic growth, risks to the economic outlook are rising, the United Nations economic and social affairs chief on 19 July 2018 said, warning against “increasingly unilateral trade measures” that are challenging the multilateral trading system.
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Mariana Ceratti/World Bank | The Port of Salvador in All Saints Bay, Bahia, handles both cargo and cruise ships. | Photo from UN News Centre.
UN Refugee Agency chief Filippo Grandi, on 19 July 2018 gave a cautious welcome to the decision by several EU countries to take in some 450 migrants who have been stranded at sea for days, warning that a “ship-by-ship” arrangement was not sustainable.
UNHCR/Giuseppe Carotenuto| Asylum-seekers and migrants aboard a dinghy in international waters off the coast of Libya in November 2016.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 