'Unseen' News and Views
More than 1,000 Covid-19 Related Incidents Reported
In this March 31, 2020, photo, Kyle Navarro poses in San Francisco. The school nurse was unlocking his bicycle when an older white man called him a racial slur and spat at him. © 2020 AP/ Jeff Chiu
April 2020 (Wall Street International)* — Everything seems to be always in a process of mixing ingredients and the generation of an intermediate or perhaps final product. An evolution.
In the processes of synthesis, dilution, or amalgamation, two or several factors or elements combine and achieve a different state of being together, in accordance with the energies that each brings to the process. During the combination moment all is very unstable and unsettled.
– The current financial crisis, triggered as a result of withholding or delaying payment of assessed contributions by Member States, is nothing new to the United Nations.
Security Council Members Hold Open videoconference meeting in a locked down UN building. Credit: United Nations
Geneva, 17 April 2020 (IOM)* – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) expresses grave concerns for the fate of hundreds of migrants returned to Libya by the coast guard this year who are now unaccounted for.
IOM Libya staff last week provided food and water to hundreds of migrants returned to Tripoli by the coast guard. Photo: IOM/2020
COVID-19 cases are rising daily amid the dense vegetation of the world’s largest rainforest and triggering a growing sense of fear for survival.
With their population now at around 900,000, the coronavirus has reawakened fears of extermination. | Photo: EFE
Nature beckons during a global pandemic
Kishin-en Garden © Alma ReyesThere are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature. (Henry David Thoreau)
16 April 2020 (Wall Street International)* — At the time of this writing, the world is trying desperately, and in some levels, chaotically, fighting an incomprehensible contagion, the COVID-19 Coronavirus.
Stockholm, March 2020 (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – SIPRI)* — International transfers of major arms during the five-year period 2015–19 increased by 5.5 per cent compared with 2010–14.
According to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the largest exporters of arms during the past five years were the United States, Russia, France, Germany and China. The new data shows that the flow of arms to the Middle East has increased, with Saudi Arabia clearly being the world’s largest importer.
– The deadly coronavirus COVID-19, which has shut down the UN secretariat in New York, along with 32 of its agencies globally, has forced over 37,500 UN staffers worldwide to work from their homes.
Credit: United Nations
Asked about a decision to re-open the Secretariat building after nearly a month-long hiatus, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “I don’t know. I think, some experts have said, it’s the virus that will decide.”
Still, there are several other lingering questions which remain unanswered– specifically against the backdrop of a severe new cash crisis threatening the survival of the UN and aggravated by a global economic meltdown.
Somali medic Yasin translates documents for asylum seekers on lockdown in France. © UNHCR/admin
14 April 2020 (UNHCR)* –The COVID-19 crisis has sparked an outpouring of solidarity from people around the world and that includes refugees, keen to help in the countries where they now live.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 