I. The countdown to World War Trump has begun1. As I argued in my previous September 2019 WSI article, the US approach toward Iran, coupled with NATO/EU enlargement, the 1999 war “over” Kosovo, and the deployment of US/NATO Missile Defense systems in eastern Europe, and now the Trump administration decision to dump the 1987 INF Treaty and possibly deploy war-fighting intermediate range missiles, has helped to generate a post-Cold War “insecurity-security dialectic” throughout the wider Middle East and the world in which Russia and China have reached out for closer political-economic and military ties with both Iran and Turkey—in the formation of a new Sino-Russian axis.
The bill will raise the minimum retirement age and increase workers’ pension contributions.
Brazil’s Senate session votes on the pension reform bill in Brasilia. | Photo: Reuters | Photo from teleSUR.
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22 October 2019 (teleSUR)*— Following a majority vote in the Senate, Brazilian Congress approved Tuesday [22 October 2019] President Jair Bolsonaro’s proposal for neoliberal pension reform, one of his main and most controversial measures to “fix” the economy when elected in 2018.
A Buddhist humanist from Burma, Maung Zarni is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center – Cambodia.
Zarni is coordinator for Strategic Affairs for Free Rohingya Coalition and an adviser to the European Centre for the Study of Extremism, Cambridge, UK.
22 October 2019 — Although exposure to lead remains a key global health concern, particularly as it impacts childhood development, only 73 countries have legally binding controls for lead paint, the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported.*
Photo: UNEP | Children and pregnant mothers in developing world face widespread exposure to toxic lead in paint. Photo: UNEP
Lead exposure killed more than one million people in 2017, according to data cited by WHO, which is why the UN agency and partners are this week urging countries to take action to ban lead paint.
After nearly two weeks of fighting in northeast Syria, the UN’s huhumanitarian wing has estimated that around 180,000 have been forced to leave their homes or sheltermanitarian wing has estimated that around 180,000 have been forced to leave their homes or shelters, including 80,000 children, all in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.*
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Tuesday [22 October 2019] that despite a shaky five-day ceasefire, airstrikes and a ground offensive launched by Turkey on 9 October, targeting Kurdish held areas across the border, has had a “significant humanitarian impact.”
$4 Billion Humanitarian Appeal Nearly 50 Per Cent Unfunded Heading into Final Auarter of 2019
UNICEF/UNI214259/Souleiman
NEW YORK (UNICEF)* – Millions of children living in areas affected by conflict and disaster are at risk because of substantial shortages in funding for lifesaving humanitarian programmes, UNICEF said today [22 October 2019].
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 