'Unseen' News and Views
January 2020 (WHO)* – Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans. Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people.
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Credit: Getty (Photo posted here from WHO).
– The United States and 18 other UN member states have come under fire for denying a woman’s legitimate right to “bodily autonomy”—the right to self-governance over one’s own body without coercion or external pressure.
Credit: UN Women
Protesters held signs including “Wake up and Smell the Bushfires” and “It is late but it is not too late”.
16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks at the 2019 United Nations Climate Action Summit at U.N. headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S., September 23, 2019. | Photo: Reuters (Poto from teleSUR).
17 January 2020 (teleSUR)* — Swedish activist Greta Thunberg marched with 10,000 protesters in the Swiss city of Lausanne Friday warning the world’s top leaders and global elite that they “have not seen anything yet” before the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos next week.
17 January 2020 (UN Environment)* — The cautionary tale of the boiling frog describes how a frog that jumps into boiling water will save itself by jumping straight out, but the frog that sits in the water while it gradually gets hotter and hotter will boil to death. The global warming crisis surrounds us today and we must act now to protect ourselves.
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Drug-resistant infections are on the rise as private investment in new antibiotic development declines, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday [17 January 2020]. (*).
Two new WHO reports reveal that while some 50 new antibiotics and 10 biologics are under development, only 32 of the total target WHO-priority pathogens and the majority have very limited benefits when compared to existing antibiotics.
“Children in Libya, including refugee and migrant children, continue to suffer grievously amidst the violence and chaos unleashed by the country’s longstanding civil war”, Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in a statement.
16 January 2020 (UN Environment)* — 2020 is a crunch year for decision makers tackling the biodiversity and climate change emergencies and for humanity as a whole to start paying attention to the breakdown of our planetary systems. The year will host two major events, known as “conferences of parties,” on biodiversity and climate. The biodiversity conference will agree a new set of goals for nature for the next decade.
Photo by the UN-REDD Programme
Average temperatures for the five-year (2015-2019) and ten-year (2010-2019) periods were the highest on record. Since the 1980s each decade has been warmer than the previous one.
This trend is expected to continue because of record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
13 Jan. 2020 (RT)* — Iran is thousands of miles away from Britain, yet because the power elites support them, anti-government protests in Tehran receive much wider coverage in the UK than the ones in France, just across the Channel.
13 January 2020 (UN News)* — It is “essential” for China to continue investigating the source of a previously unknown strain of coronavirus, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared on Monday [13 January 2020], following confirmation that an infected patient is being treated in Thailand.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 