'Unseen' News and Views
(UN News)* — Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday [], following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
‘Famine conditions are spreading’ as Sudan’s crisis worsens: UN Security Council
Credit: Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD)
At least 54 countries are in a debt crisis – more than double the number in 2010. A further 57 countries are at risk of debt crisis. In the past decade, interest payments for developing countries overall have risen by 64%, and for Africa by 132%.
African countries are paying over 100 billion dollars a year to creditors. The share of African countries’ budgets going on debt payments is four times higher than in 2010.
Displaced Palestinians walk through the Nour Shams camp in the West Bank. Credit: UNRWA/Mohammed Alsharif
Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.
It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous.
But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.
7 January 2025 (UNEP)* — In the unusually hot summer of 2016, a bacterium that causes anthrax killed more than 2,500 reindeer in Siberia’s remote Yamal Peninsula, according to one study.
Credit: AFP/Olivier Morin
Normally locked deep in a layer of permanently frozen land, or permafrost, the once-dormant pathogen eventually spread to humans, claiming the life of a 12-year-old boy and causing dozens of others to fall ill.
Some researchers believe the outbreak is a sign of things to come. As climate change rapidly warms the Artic, scientists say it could unleash a wave of potentially deadly microbes that for centuries have been trapped in ice.
– In 2021, the Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr became the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to be awarded the Prix Goncourt, France’s oldest and most prestigious literary prize.
Literature
His novel, La plus secrète mémoire des hommes, The Most Secret Memory of Men, tells the story of a young Senegalese writer living in Paris, who by chance stumbles across a novel published in 1938 by an elusive Senegalese author named T.C. Elimane.
This author had once been hailed by an ecstatic Paris press, but had then disappeared from view. Elimane had before every trace of him had vanished, been accused of plagiarism.
After losing a legal process connected with the plagiarism charge, Elimane’s publisher had been forced to withdraw and destroy all available copies of The Labyrinth of Inhumanity.
– As the dust settled over Kariakoo’s bustling streets, Halima Abdallah’s voice trembled through the cracks of a collapsed four-story building.
“Help me, please! I don’t get air,” she gasped, trapped under the rubble.
The recent collapse of a high-rise building in Dar es Salaam, killing 16 people and injuring more than 80, has reignited concerns about the city’s disaster preparedness. Credit: Kizito Makoye Shigela/IPS
For four hours, rescue workers scrambled to locate her. Their efforts, hampered by the lack of proper equipment, relied on tools hastily borrowed from a private company. By the time they reached her, it was too late. Abdallah had died.
(UN News)* — The General Assembly wrapped up the main part of its 79th session on Tuesday [], approving a $3.72 billion budget for the United Nations for 2025 and adopting a new programme to support landlocked developing countries.
Credit: Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNOHCR)
– The United States, long described as a country built largely by immigrants, is planning to clamp down on migrants, refugees and asylum seekers entering the country—which averaged about 2.4 million in 2022-2023, according to the US Congressional Budget Office.
The incoming Trump administration is calling for “mass deportations” of mostly illegal aliens and undocumented workers.
Staggering scale of Sudan crisis ‘demands sustained and urgent attention’
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 