(UN News)* — The UN trade and development body, UNCTAD, has called for action to curb cryptocurrencies in developing nations, in three policy briefs published on Wednesday [10 August 2022].
.
Unsplash/Kanchanara | Digital coin crypto currency.
.
Although private digital currencies have rewarded some individuals and institutions, they are an unstable financial asset that can bring social risks and costs, the agency warned.
UNCTADsaid their benefits to some are overshadowed by the threats they pose to financial stability, domestic resource mobilization, and the security of monetary systems.
Cryptocurrencies are an alternative form of payment. Transactions are done digitally through encrypted technology known as blockchain.
10 August 2022 (UN News)* — Dozens of people are said to be missing after a boat of migrants and refugees sank in the Aegean Sea on Wednesday off the Greek island of Karpathos, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
“Very sad news from the Aegean: Dozens of people are missing after a boat sank off the island of Rhodes this morning (Wednesday),” UNHCR’s office in Greece said in a tweet.
News media reported that the vessel sank at dawn after setting sail from southern Türkiye yesterday, heading for Italy.
“A major search and rescue operation is underway,” said UNHCR.
On International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, World Food Programme agronomist Deborah Suc tells Simona Beltrami she’s lost her shyness for sticking up for others – and the environment.
‘The consequences of climate change are hitting us really hard,’ says Deborah Suc who works for WFP in her native Indigenous community in Guatemala. Photo: WFP/Nelson Pacheco
8 August 2022 (WFP)*— As record hunger sweeps the globe, Indigenous peoples’ communities – who’ve been marginalized and left behind throughout history – remain disproportionately affected by food insecurity and malnutrition.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 9 2022 (IPS)* – The mandatory initial permit granted by Brazil’s environmental authority for the repaving of the BR-319 highway, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, intensified the alarm over the possible irreversible destruction of the rainforest. | En español
.
View of a bridge in severe disrepair on the BR-319 highway, in the heart of the Amazon, which the Brazilian government plans to repave along the 405-kilometer central section, out of a total of 885 kilometers, because it has deteriorated to the point that is impassable for much of the year. Those who venture along it take three times the normal amount of time to drive the entire length, with the risk of seriously damaging their vehicles. CREDIT: Tarmo Tamming/Flickr
3 Aug 2022 – “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples.”
.
So said Pope Francis last week, at a powwow in Alberta, at the start of his “apology tour” across Canada — for the participation of the Catholic Church in the multi-century horror of Native American “residential schools” on this continent, which more accurately might be called concentration camps for 6-year-olds.
This papal mega-apology, while cheered by some, has been widely criticized as little more than a wimpy shoulder-shrug — sorry about that — for a governmental, church-complicit policy, lasting well into the 20th century, of snatching indigenous children from their families and squeezing their culture, if not their life, out of them.
AIsrael launched multiple air strikes on Gaza on August 5, in another eruption of open warfare between Israel and Palestinian militants. The latest attacks come just over a year after hundreds were killed in an intense period of conflict in the territory.
Fatima Shbair/AP/AAP
Israel announced its missile strikes were targeting military leaders of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad militant organisation in Gaza. Israel alleged Islamic Jihad forces were making “threatening movements” near the Israeli border.
Israel’s strikes killed two key leaders of Islamic Jihad in Gaza and severely damaged its military capabilities.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 8 2022 (IPS)* – The battle against racism and inequality will be a long one in Brazil, because a prejudice against the intellectual capacity of blacks is a problem rooted in the national culture, and even in the minds of Afro-Brazilians themselves, as well as highlighted in the country’s official history.| En español
Students protest in Porto Alegre, a city in southern Brazil, against budget cuts in education. Black students, generally the poorest, suffer the most from the deterioration of schools, the reduction of scholarships, the shrinking of school meal programs and the loss of opportunities to study. CREDIT: CPERS- Fotos Públicas
The basic idea spread is that Brazil is the creation of its Portuguese colonizers, especially with regard to everything that requires brains, lamented Luciana da Cruz Brito, professor of history at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB).
MADRID, Aug 8 2022 (IPS)* – Nothing –or too little– has changed since Hollywood started producing its spectacular western movies. Rough men, ranchers, mercenary killers, saloons, cowboys, guns, gold fever, the ‘good sheriff’… and the ‘bad indians”. Those movies were anything but fiction–they were real history.
Add to this mix, the deeply-rooted, widely dominating culture of the so-called “white supremacy.”
The female guardians of Venezuela’s Imataca Forest Reserve | An FAO-GEF project, which also aims to increase gender equality in the forestry sector, has continued supporting the Kariña women in actively leading the development of their territories and the conservation of the area’s biodiversity. Credit: FAO
(Washington, DC) – Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis cannot be effectively addressed unless the United States and other governments ease restrictions on the country’s banking sector to facilitate legitimate economic activity and humanitarian aid, Human Rights Watch said on 4 Augusto 2022.
Biden must release Afghanistan’s foreign reserves to alleviate suffering, argues Ecuador’s ex-central bank director.
.
It’s virtually impossible for Afghanistan’s central bank to fulfill its basic functions without access to its international reserves, argues Andrés Arauz | Ali Khara / Reuters / Alamy Stock Photo
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 