MADRID, Sep 23 2022 (IPS)* – Have you eaten today – or are sure you will? The answer depends on where you were born and where you live now. If you are Spanish or live here, you likely did or will, provided that you are not one of this European country’s 900.000 inhabitants who face some sort of hunger, malnutrition or undernourishment.
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Ten of the world’s worst climate hotspots have suffered a 123 percent rise in acute hunger over just the past six years, according to a new report from Oxfam. Credit: FAO
If instead, you are among the 550 million plus Africans who suffer moderate hunger (40 percent of the continent’s total population of 1.300 plus) or severe hunger (some 300 million or 24 percent of all Africans), your answer would be that you will likely –or surely– go to bed hungry… also today.
MADRID, Sep 20 2022 (IPS)* – Day after day, the world’s scientific community, based on solid investigations, elaborates dozens of studies identifying the causes of the existing emergencies facing humanity. They also prepare understandable summaries and conclusions and propose feasible solutions to the current crises and ways to prevent major future risks.
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Between 2010 and 2020 the number of state-based armed conflicts roughly doubled (to 56), as did the number of conflict deaths, finds new report. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
Such studies are promptly submitted to politicians, both directly and through hundreds of summits, conferences, forums and meetings.
Are they just unable to read and understand these texts?
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities; we are eaten up by nothing.” — Charles Bukowski
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17 Sep 2022 – A jet airliner opens up and sends its passengers falling to earth. You’d expect them to scream, to cry, to cling to each other in fear, to prepare for the end, to pray, to think about their loved ones, but they don’t. Instead, they turn on each other and start fighting.“
I hate you! I hate you!” they scream while flailing their fists at each other on their way down. Some try to strangle each other to death. Some try to steal from each other.
Some try to climb on top of others so that the other will die a fraction of a second sooner. Others cling to their possessions yelling “You’ll never take what’s mine!” and kick at anyone who comes too close.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 20 2022 (IPS)* – When world leaders, numbering over 150, make their annual political pilgrimage to address the General Assembly in the third week of September, the security at the world body is exceptionally tight.
And this year is no exception.
Young climate activists from civil society organizations take part in demonstrations at the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, December 2021. Credit: UN News/Laura Quiñones
After two years of on-again and off-again lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the UN Secretariat is back in full swing – but in a virtual high security war zone.
OPINION: The UK’s new prime minister is a market fundamentalist. The resulting crises could define her premiership.
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Liz Truss replaced Boris Johnson as prime minister earlier this month | PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
16 September 2022 (openDemocracy)* — Liz Truss, the UK’s new prime minister, places a high premium on loyalty. This is why many former members of the cabinet, however experienced, have been relegated to the backbenches. There is, though, one survivor from the Cameron-Clegg coalition era – Truss herself.
Million of women don’t know what a salary is all about.
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At the current rate of progress, it will take up to 286 years to close gaps in legal protection and remove discriminatory laws, Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS
MADRID, Sep 15 2022 (IPS)* – While women in rich societies are paid around 25% less than men for equal jobs, those living in impoverished countries receive by far much lower salaries, if any at all.
13 September 2019 (UN News)* – New data published by the United Nations cultural agency on Friday, reveals that without taking urgent measures, around 12 million young children will never set foot inside a school, with girls facing “the greatest barriers”.
“According to our projections, nine million girls of primary school age will never start school or set foot in a classroom, compared to about three million boys”, said Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
According to updated information on the world’s out-of-school children from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), little or no progress has been seen in more than a decade.
(UN News)* — As the number of weekly reported deaths from COVID-19 plunged to its lowest since March 2020, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday [14 September 2022] that the end of the pandemic is now in sight.
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PAHO/Karina Zambrana | A nurse prepares to administer a COVID-19 vaccination northern Brazil.
“We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic”, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists during his regular weekly press conference.
The UN health agency’s Director-General explained however, that the world is “not there yet”.
8 Sep 2022 – In an address to the Trondheim World Festival in Norway, John Pilger charts the history of power propaganda and describes how it appropriates journalism in a ‘profound imperialism’ and is likely to entrap us all, if we allow it.
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In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer.
She told me that the ‘patriotic messages’ of her films were dependent not on ‘orders from above’ but on what she called the ‘submissive void’ of the German public.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 