(UN News)* — COVID-19 deaths in Africa have risen sharply in recent weeks, amid the fastest surge in cases the continent has seen so far in the pandemic, the regional office for the World Health Organization (WHO) on 15 July 2021 said.
IMF/James Oatway | A volunteer carer called Trinity is working in a COVID-19 field hospital in Nasrec, Johannesburg.
Fatalities are rising as hospital admissions increase rapidly as countries face shortages in oxygen and intensive care beds.
COVID-19 deaths rose by more than 40 per cent last week, reaching 6,273, or nearly 1,900 more than the previous week. The number is just shy of the 6,294 peak, recorded in January.
Young people were already facing disproportionate levels of unemployment and under-employment before the pandemic. More than one out of five youth were not in employment, education, or training, the majority of them young women.
15 July 2021 (ILO)* — On World Youth Skills Day 2021, ILO Senior Youth Employment Specialist, Susana Puerto, speaks about the impact of COVID-19 on young people’s education and job prospects and the skills that are in demand by employers and a changing world of work.
NEW YORK, 14 July 2021 (UNICEF)* – Nearly 40 per cent of migrant and displaced youth identified education and skills training as their top priorities, while 30 per cent named employment opportunities, according to a new UNICEF poll announced on the eve of World Youth Skills Day.
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These findings were revealed through a U-Report poll of more than 26,000 people, including almost 9,000 young people (aged 14-24), across 119 countries.
The poll, conducted between 6 May and 1 June 2021, asked respondents about their aspirations to learn and earn, and the unique barriers they face – as a girl or as a refugee, trying to access the labour market with or without legal status.
Why we should take extraterrestrial intelligence seriously
Speculation about extraterrestrial presences has been around a very long time | Image from Wall Street International.
Horatio upon seeing the ghost of his father: “O day and night, but this is wonderous strange.” Hamlet: “Therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
(Shakespeare in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5)
15 July 2021 (Wall Street International)* — If someone wanted to ruin his career, taking UFOs seriously has been a good way to do it. In polite circles, the idea that nonhuman species are visiting Earth from distant civilizations has ranked high on the kook scale. Now that might be changing.
With financial support from the EU, Turkey has toughened up its migration policies – putting hundreds of thousands at risk
The Seyrantepe cemetery in Van, where many Afghans who attempted to cross Turkey are buried | Karolina Augustova
15 July 2021 (openDemocracy)* — As the US continues withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, and the Taliban increases its control in the country, around 1,000 Afghans have been arriving to Turkey’s eastern border with Iran every day.
“We are going to lose the war in Afghanistan and it will help bankrupt us. One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan’s modern history — to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947.”
— Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire – America’s Last Best Hope: 8/2010
Were George W. Bush and NATO Pathological Liars to Invade Afghanistan?
After 9/11, America led NATO’s invasion of Afghanistan was a revulsion against truth as it was in complete disconnect to the living consciousness of global community.
David Corn (“Is the President a Pathological Liar? Bush’s unhealthy relationship with reality”: LA Weekly: 12/11/2003), outlines the compelling facts:
(UN News)* — The worsening security situation across Afghanistan in the wake of foreign troop withdrawal and Taliban advances, has forced an estimated 270,000 from their homes since January, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reported on Tuesday[13 July 2021], bringing the total internally displaced to more than 3.5 million.
The agency said that families were fleeing extortion by non-State armed groups and the dangers posed by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, along major roads.
(UN News)* — Although a new European Union (EU) climate initiative unveiled on 14 July 2021 could change global trade patterns to favour countries where production is relatively carbon efficient, its value in mitigating climate change will likely be limited, the UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD, has warned.
Unsplash/Maxim Tolchinskiy | Air pollution from power plants contributes to global warming.
The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) comes into force in 2023 as part of new measures to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, including taxes on imports such as oil, coal and gas.
Berlin (IOM)* – At least 1,146 people died attempting to reach Europe by sea in the first six months of 2021 according to a new briefing on 13 July 2021 released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
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At least 1,146 people died attempting to reach Europe by sea in the first six months of 2021. Photo: IOM
Deaths along these routes more than doubled so far this year compared to the same period in 2020, when 513 migrants are known to have drowned.