MADRID, Apr 25 2023 (IPS)* – Apologies to those Western politicians and media who continue to say that Ukraine’s brutal proxy war stands behind whatever catastrophes, disasters or crises occur in the Planet.
Is this accurate?
Rhine River, Cologne,,Germany, 10.08.2022. Credit: Shutterstock.
Scientific evidence confirms that, much earlier than that war, Europe, like many other regions, was already walking closer to the edge of extreme weather consequences.
Europe’s worst drought in 500 years?
“The drought episode that affected Europe in 2022 could well be the worst in 500 years,” reports Copernicus, the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme which “looks at our planet and its environment to benefit all European citizens and offers information services.”
MADRID, Apr 19 2023 (IPS)* –– As many as 45 African countries –out of the Continent’s 54 nations–, all of them grouped in what is known as Sub-Saharan Africa, have now been further squeezed to their bones, as funding shrinks to lowest ever levels, and as a portion of the so-called aid goes back to the pockets of rich donor countries.
See what happens.
The IMF has made some encouraging improvements in paying attention to social protection, health, and education, but it needs to do much more to avoid, in its own words, “repeating past mistakes”, says new report. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS
Donald Trump Is Currently Being Charged with 34 Felonies
John Scales Avery
11 Apr 2023 – The State of New York, under the leadership of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr., has arrested the former president, finger-printed him, and charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, in violation of Penal Law §175.
Trump’s Major Crimes
The crimes for which he is currently being prosecuted are relatively minor compared with his major crimes. Here is a list of what I consider to be his greatest crimes:
He claimed that climate change was “a hoax”, withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, and sabotaged the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to control greenhouse gas emissions.
Although he was aware of the serious nature of COVID-19, he claimed that it was no more dangerous than the flu in order for business to continue as usual. In this way he was responsible for hundreds of thousands of excess deaths in the United States.
He encouraged his followers to attack the United States Capitol on January 6, 2020, in order to overthrow the results of the presidential election in which he was defeated.
5 April 2023 (UNEP)*— Every year, the world loses enough forest trees to fill Portugal. Much of that deforestation happens on Indigenous lands and often without their prior and informed consent. But these communities are demanding change and fighting to protect their ancestral lands.
Getty Images
Indigenous groups are doing this by demonstrating effective conservation, patrolling forests, and at times, even taking governments and developers to court with the ultimate goal of protecting fast-disappearing forests.
ROME, Apr 11 2023 (IPS)* – If an alien landed on Planet Earth today and started watching television and reading the newspapers, it would probably not realize that humanity and the natural world face an existential threat – one that has taken us into the Sixth Mass Extinction, is already devastating the lives of many, especially in the Global South, and is set to hit the rest of us soon.
8 Apr 2023 – The Empire of Lies is to discuss how the United States and its military alliance created, encircle, attack, and destroy its potential rivals or Governments and leaders abusing their (including NATO) powers, proxy politics, and victor-centric justice.
Prof. Bishnu Pathak
Before any kind of action against the rivals, the US spreads the jingoistic propaganda itself and even through NATO. NATO is a constituent of a collective, defensive, and rich countries’ alliance that mostly functions under control or leadership of the USA.
The main objective of NATO is to guarantee the security and freedom of its member countries by political-military triumphalist means. NATO remains the major security mechanism of the intercontinental community and expression of its shared democratic values nato.usmission.gov/about-nato/
(UN News)* — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast in their latest World Economic Outlook published on Tuesday [], that global growth will bottom out at 2.8 percent this year before rising modestly to around three percent in 2024, representing a 0.1 per cent fall on its January projections.
World Bank/Dominic Chavez | Men unload sacks of onions from a truck in Bamako, Mali, a landlocked developing country. Their lack of direct access to the vital trade links often result in landlocked countries paying high transport and transit costs.
Global inflation is also heading down, signalling that the tightening of monetary policy through major interest rate rises is bearing fruit, though more slowly than initially anticipated, said the IMF’s Director of Research, from 8.7 percent last year to seven percent this year, and 4.9 percent in 2024.
MADRID, Apr 11 2023 (IPS)* – Research after research, world’s scientists renew their loud alerts against the high dangers of human-driven ‘superbugs’ – bacterias and pathogens that no longer respond to antimicrobials, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.
.
No way.
“If people do not change the way antibiotics are used now, these new antibiotics will suffer the same fate as the current ones and become ineffective” . Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS
The pressure of giant industrial sectors appear to be heavier than the needed political well to reduce the dangerous impacts of the excessive use of those drugs which are widely employed to prevent and treat infections in humans, aquaculture, livestock, and crop production.
5 Apr 2023 – More than five centuries after it was formulated in a series of papal decrees, the Vatican issued a formal announcement on March 30 repudiating the Euro-supremacist “Doctrine of Discovery.” In essence, the “doctrine” said that all lands not occupied by “Christians” passed into the hands of the European conquerors as soon as they were “discovered,” and their inhabitants enslaved.
The contrast between the resolution on Libya adopted this week at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) and the UN Fact-Finding Mission’s final report detailing violations and abuses in Libya is staggering.