'Unseen' News and Views
(UN News)* — Eight new animated characters on a mission to protect the planet, have been pressed into service by the UN to empower children worldwide and boost the drive towards sustainability by 2030.
The Climate Action Superheroes are the face of a new campaign, to be launched on UN social media platforms this Saturday [6 November 2020], aimed at mobilizing children under 12 to recycle and to save water and energy.
(UNESCO)* — There are fewer grounds today than in the past to deplore a North–South divide in research and innovation. This is one of the key findings of the UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030 launched on 10 November 2015.
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For two decades now, the UNESCO Science Report has been mapping science, technology and innovation (STI) governance around the world on a regular basis. The report is published every five years, on 10 November, to mark World Science Day for Peace and Development.
Since STI do not evolve in a vacuum, this latest edition summarizes the evolution since 2010 against the backdrop of socio-economic, geopolitical and environmental trends that have helped to shape contemporary STI policy and governance.
8 November 2020 (United Nations)* — Celebrated every 10 November, World Science Day for Peace and Development highlights the significant role of science in society and the need to engage the wider public in debates on emerging scientific issues. It also underlines the importance and relevance of science in our daily lives.
– US third quarter GDP numbers released two weeks ago delighted stock markets and President Trump. Output had picked up by 7.4%, annualised as 33.1%, the largest quarterly economic growth on record, almost double the old record of 3.9% (annualised as 16.7%) in the first quarter of 1950, seven decades ago.
Anis Chowdhury
Spinning numbers
This news could not have come at a better time for Trump, who is struggling for re-election, as his Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) declared that this affirmed Trump’s claim, “we’re coming back, and we’re coming back strong”.
The CEA spun the White House press release headline accordingly, “The Great American Recovery: Third Quarter GDP Blows Past Expectations”.
The coronavirus pandemic has swept across a world that was already profoundly unequal. The failure to tackle inequality has left the majority of countries far more vulnerable and unprepared for both the health and economic impacts of the disease.
In the Central African Republic, the Covid-19 represents a health crisis which is added to an already alarming humanitarian crisis. One in two people in need of humanitarian assistance, and about 70% of health services are provided by humanitarian organizations. Photo: Aurelie Godet/Oxfam
She lives in a settlement for displaced people outside Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital city. Fifteen people share her makeshift two-room home, including Shayista’s daughter and her children.
UN food agencies warn of rising levels of acute hunger with potential risk of famine in four hotspots – Burkina Faso, northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen cause for concern but acute hunger on the rise across the globe.
ROME, 6 November 2020 (FAO)* – The world has been put on a heightened famine alert with a new report by two United Nations agencies that contains a stark warning; four countries contain areas that could soon slip into famine if conditions there undergo “any further deterioration over the coming months”.
6 November 2020 (UN News)* — Globally, millions of children are at a heightened risk of polio and measles – dangerous but preventable diseases – amid disruptions to vital immunization programmes due to the coronavirus pandemic, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organization (WHO) have said.
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6 November 2020 (UNEP)* — On the launch of the report, Impacts of Sand and Dust Storms on Oceans: A Scientific Environmental Assessment for Policy Makers, author and University of Oxford lecturer, Nick Middleton discusses how the dust cycle affects and interacts with other global-scale biogeochemical cycles.
– When the United Nations was struggling to cope with a cash crisis back in April 1996, one of the many drastic measures it undertook was to cut down on its staff.
Work and reforms of the UN ‘at risk’, Antonio Guterres warned Member States, amidst ‘record-level’ cash crisis, October 2020. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas. The UN Secretariat building in New York
So, it took the path of corporate America, and ironically, for a cash-strapped institution, it offered a “golden handshake”—a severance pay of about $80,000 dollars each — to those who would voluntarily leave the near-bankrupt Organization.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 