'Unseen' News and Views
20 August 2019 — While the world’s oceans contain some 200,000 identified living species, the actual numbers could reach the millions – all exposed to the dangers of climate change, pollution and over-exploitation. To stem these threats, the United Nations is meeting to negotiate a treaty that would protect three-quarters of the earth’s surface by 2030.
Deteriorating water quality worldwide is slashing the economic potential of heavily polluted areas, according to a new World Bank report, released on Tuesday [20 August 2019]. It also warns that the “invisible crisis of water quality” is threatening human and environmental well-being.
John Hogg / World Bank | Water, along with pollutants and contaminating agents, flows into a canal in Maputo, Mozambique. (File) Photo: John Hogg / World Bank
– Recently, Christine Lagarde, outgoing Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), argued that developing ‘countries need a seat at the table’ to design rules governing international corporate taxation.
Anis Chowdhury
This acknowledges recent IMF findings that developing countries lose approximately USD200 billion in potential tax revenue yearly, about 1.3 per cent of their GDP, due to companies shifting profits to low-tax locations.
Oxfam estimated in 2018 that extreme poverty could be eradicated for USD107 billion annually, i.e., about half the lost revenue.
Afghanistan is at a “crucial moment” in its history as it marks 100 years of independence, the head of the UN Mission there said on Monday [19 August 2019], following a series of terror attacks in recent days.
Geneva, 16 August 2019 (IOM)* – In total, at least 514 people have lost their lives in the Americas in 2019, compared with 384 recorded through this point in 2018 – an increase of just over one-third.
This is the earliest point in any of the past six years that IOM’s Missing Migrants Project has reached a threshold of 500 or more deaths in the Americas.
In prior years, the 500-death mark was reached in either September (2016), October (2017, 2018) or December (2015), or, in the case of 2014, not at all, as only 495 deaths were recorded of migrants in transit in the Americas that year.
Women (67 deaths) and children (40) made up just over one-fifth of all deaths recorded in the Americas in 2019, although remains also were recovered from 137 sites where the age and gender of the deceased has yet to be determined.
August 2019 (Wall Street International)* — We are at the beginning of the 21st century, which means these words will be read mostly by non-people: automata or stunned crowds that no longer act as individuals, words will be chopped up, atomized and turned into search engine keywords within industrial conglomerates of cloud computing, located around the world in remote, hidden places, words will be copied millions of times by algorithms designed to send an advertisement to someone, somewhere, who accidentally identifies itself with something I say.
The work of women humanitarians makes a “huge difference” to the lives of millions of women, men and children in urgent need, the United Nations chief said in his message for World Humanitarian Day.
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“Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.” – Walker Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome
Edward Curtin
News headlines for July, 2, 2019 seen at a kiosk in Grand Central Station: Trump says tanks will be on display July 4th as a sign of the nation’s firepower; bombing kill dozens and hurts schoolchildren as Taliban talks resume; Israel is blamed for deadly missile strike in Syria; could a mandatory keto diet improve U.S. military performance; and Japan resumes commercial whaling.
The traveler saw these notices of strength and power and passed them by in disgust.
On the train from New York City, the advertisement on the wall with a picture of a disconsolate white guy read: “They say laughter is the best medicine. But not when it comes to ED.”
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 