17/09/2018
17 September 2018 (UN Environment)* — With its tropical beaches and rolling hills, spotted with tobacco plantations and pine forest, Cuba might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of degraded land. But behind the tourist idyll lies a grimmer reality.
Jean-Marc Astesana | A new generation of farmers brings productivity back to Cuba’s landscape | Photo from UN Environment.
Today, some 14 per cent of the island nation’s productive lands are affected by drought and desertification, while over three-quarters of its 6.6 million hectares of arable land is affected by soil erosion.
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17/09/2018
16 September 2018 – New UN-backed commitments to take action against the damaging effects of climate change, could result in $26 trillion in economic benefits worldwide, and help create 65 million new “low-carbon jobs” by 2030 – the deadline for the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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UNFCCC | Patricia Espinosa (centre, background), UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, briefs the media in Bangkok in September 2018.
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16/09/2018
NAIROBI, (UN Environment)* – A new accounting of global climate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions finds a broad spectrum of commitments from non-state and subnational actors with potential to support and ultimately outpace governments in their emissions reductions.
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The exhaustive review from UN Environment, released on 10 September 2018 ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS), highlights the crucial role of non-state actors in reducing emissions and reaching climate targets.
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16/09/2018
13 September 2018 (Wall Street International)* – It Matters How This Ends is the debut work of Jamale Mahfouz published in August 2018, in Beirut, Lebanon. Tackling a very sensitive matter, Mahfouz employs stylistic devices such as collage and allusion to emphasize the importance of bringing to light what is long held as taboo and giving voice to a dangerous silence.
Sexual assault and harassment are daily occurrences across the globe, yet the recurrence of such hostilities should never be a reason to belittle or marginalize the voice of any victim or silence their pain.
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15/09/2018
He is “known to despise minorities in Brazil, such as women, blacks and homosexuals, the presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro…” wrote the Brazilian journalist Luciana Rosa.
14 September 2018 (teleSUR)* — The “Women United Against Bolsonaro” Facebook group was created on August 30th, and now has a million members even though it is a closed group. According to local media, about 10,000 women join the group on a daily basis.
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15/09/2018
Tackling economic and political inequality is at the root of strengthening democratic institutions at a time when they are under huge strain, said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on 14 September 2018, marking the official International Day of Democracy.
UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein | Voters inspecting ballot papers on election day in Montserrado in October 2005.
“It means making our democracies more inclusive, by bringing the young and marginalized into the political system,” he continued.
“It means making democracies more innovative and responsive to emerging challenges.”
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15/09/2018
14 September 2018 – While health, education, and income levels have improved overall across the globe, “wide inequalities” both among and within countries, are casting a shadow on sustained human development, a new United Nations report shows.
FAO/Andrew Esiebo | A woman tends to her herd of goats in Niger, a country in Sub-Saharan Africa that recorded the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) value in 2017. As a region, Sub-Saharan Africa fared poorly on development indicators, including health, education and income.
Looking at the widening gap in real terms, a child born in Norway today – the country with the highest human development index (HDI) – can expect to live beyond the age of 82, and spend almost 18 years in school. But the same child, if born in Niger – the lowest HDI – can expect only to live to 60, with just five years of formal education.
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14/09/2018
12 September 2018 — Siri, Alexa and Cortana are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Artificial Intelligence (or A.I.), which is playing an increasingly pervasive role in our lives.
UN Photo/Manuel Elias | Brief dialogue between the Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed and Sophia at the ECOSOC and Second Committee joint meeting on “The Future of Everything – Sustainable Development in the Age of Rapid Technological Change.” 11 November 2017.
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In the background, AI is being used in a huge range of settings, from helping to land a plane, to getting a parcel to you more quickly, and deciding whether you get a job interview.
But there are growing concerns that these powerful technologies pose equally powerful dangers, even posing an existential threat to humanity itself.
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14/09/2018
By Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service*
10 September 2018
The ideas expressed in this Editorial are developed more completely in the section Featured Research Paper: Solidarity for Full Employment (whole paper)
Howard Richards
The problems of drug addiction, gangs, crime, ethnic nationalism, racism, sexism, chronic depression, immigration issues, poverty in old age, mental illness, war, inner city schools, taking necessary measures to save the biosphere that cost jobs, and many others will not be reduced to manageable proportions, much less solved, until human life is reorganized so that most people who need decent employment are able to find it. Would you agree?
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14/09/2018
Genocide remains a “threat and a reality” in the 21st century, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet on 13 September 2018 said, in an appeal to States to do more to act on the “warning signs” that often precede grave violations of international law.
UN Photo/Mark Garten | A wall of photos at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the site of infamous Security Prison S-21 and the Khmer Rouge’s brutal treatment of detainees.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 