27 March 2021 (Wall Street International)* — As almost every new technology emerging, ML (Machine Learning) is a double-edged sword that can be used as a solution or as harm depending on the situation.
Machine Learning can be used as a solution or as harm depending on the situation | Image fromWall Street International.
So, it is only natural to assume that adversaries will become more and more interested in learning how to attack involving ML models.
During my time as an oceans campaigner at Greenpeace, I’ve sat in a tiny boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean, watching a fishing boat pull in miles of drift nets. The nets were full of tuna, but there were also dead spinner dolphins, manta rays, thresher sharks and more – a grim demonstration of devastation at sea. I’ve been right up close with some of the biggest fishing vessels in the world, watching as they haul out incomprehensible numbers of fish.
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 23 2021 (IPS)* – At least 85 poor countries will not have significant access to coronavirus vaccines before 2023. Unfortunately, a year’s delay will cause an estimated 2.5 million avoidable deaths in low and lower-middle income countries. As the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General has put it, the world is at the brink of a catastrophic moral failure.
Anis Chowdhury
Vaccine apartheid
The EU, US, UK, Switzerland, Canada and their allies continue to block the developing country proposal to temporarily suspend the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement to enable greatly increased, affordable supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, drugs, tests and equipment.
Meanwhile, 6.4 billion of the 12.5 billion vaccine doses the main producers plan to produce in 2021 have already been pre-ordered, mostly by these countries, with 13% of the global population.
(UN News)* — Turkey’s decision to withdraw from an important treaty on protecting women is “a very worrying step backwards”, a group of independent UN human rights experts said on 23 March 2021.
UNDP Turkey / Levent Kulu | Two women walk in the Taksim district of Istanbul, Turkey.
“This decision…sends a dangerous message that violence against women is not important, with the risk of encouraging perpetrators and weakening measures to prevent it”, said Dubravka Šimonović, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women.
ROME (FAO)* – Acute hunger is set to soar in over 20 countries in the coming months without urgent and scaled-up assistance, warn the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) in a new report issued on 23 March 2021.
Agong and her child in South Sudan, where over 7 million people are projected to fall into crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity.
Nairobi/Stockholm, 22 March 2021 (UNEP)* – A book by Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), launched on World Water Day, reports that the sanitation waste of 50% of the global population is still disposed of without having been treated – posing enormous risks to both public health and the environment.
Geneva, 23 March 2021 (WMO)* – The ocean drives the world’s weather and climate and anchors the global economy and food security. Climate change is hitting the ocean hard, but also increasing hazards for hundreds of millions of people.
23 March 2021 (UN News)* — United Nations humanitarian personnel are on the ground evacuating and assisting tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees, after a devastating fire tore through their densely populated camp in southern Bangladesh.
UNICEF Bangladesh 2021 | Charred remains of shelters and belongings of Rohingya refugees after a devastating fire tore through the Kutupalong refugee camp on 22 March.
Though exact numbers are yet to be confirmed, initial estimates indicate that more than 87,000 refugees could have been affected in the fire, which started around 3pm on Monday (local time) in Camp 8W of the Kutupalong mega camp.
It is not currently clear exactly how the fire started.
The blaze then rapidly spread to Camps 8E, 9 and 10. In all, about 66 per cent of the four camps’ populations have been impacted, according to the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM).
UN chief ‘profoundly concerned’ over rise in violence against Asians
Unsplash/Jason Leung | In San Francisco in the United States, demonstrators take to the streets to protest against the rise of race-related hate crimes against people of Asian descent.
.
22 March 2021 (UN News)* — The UN Secretary-General António Guterres has issued a statement expressing his profound concern over the rise in violence against Asians, and people of Asian descent, during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Collective commitment needed to end the ‘poison’ of racism: UN cultural chief says
UN News/Shirin Yaseen | Anti-racism protesters in Brooklyn, New York, demonstrate demanding justice for the killing of African American, George Floyd.
(UN News)* — With the COVID-19 pandemic providing fertile ground for the resurgence of racism and discrimination, the head of the UN’s educational and cultural agency, UNESCO, on 22 March 2021 called for countries to stand united in what she described as “these testing times”.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 