'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
(Wall Street International)* — President Barack Obama sits in front of the American flag: “We are entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time,” he warns.
Although he is using familiar expressions and hand gestures, there is something strange about the video. Obama’s face looks weird, and his voice sounds flat and forced.
23 September 2021 (UN News)* — Every day, hundreds of millions of people go to bed hungry. Three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. Two billion are overweight or obese and yet 462 million, are underweight. Nearly a third of all food that is produced, is lost or wasted.
(WFP)* — As the harsh Afghan winter looms closer, recent surveys conducted by the World Food Programme (WFP) have revealed that only five percent of families have enough to eat every day, while half reported they had run out of food altogether at least once in the past two weeks.
From the very start, addressing the existential threat of nuclear weapons has been central to the work of the United Nations.
In 1946, the very first General Assembly resolution sought “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”
Seventy-six years later, we have yet to achieve that resolution’s goals.
24 September 2021 (United Nations)* — Achieving global nuclear disarmament is one of the oldest goals of the United Nations.
It was the subject of the General Assembly’s first resolution in 1946, which established the Atomic Energy Commission (dissolved in 1952), with a mandate to make specific proposals for the control of nuclear energy and the elimination of atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.
– Food processing extends shelf-life and can transforms raw food into attractive, marketable products. It can also prevent contamination. The transformation can involve numerous physical and chemical processes such as mincing, cooking, canning, liquefaction, pickling, macerating, emulsification, irradiation and lyophilization.
Processed, canned food lines the shelves at a Canadian supermarket. Credit: Trevor Page
New York, 21 September 2021 (UNEP)* – Today, at Climate Week NYC 2021, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Global Environment Facility (GEF) and partners launched UrbanShift – a new global initiative to improve lives and transform cities into green and liveable spaces that address climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
Credit: Unspalsh/Koukichi Takahashi
Cities are home to 4.2 billion people, more than half of the world’s population. But they face growing challenges – from floods, storms and heatwaves triggered by the climate crisis to dangerous air quality, lack of affordable housing and deep social divides.
Indigenous Peoples’ food systems have survived for centuries, generating an incredible diversity of food without depleting the natural resource base of surrounding ecosystems. ©National University of Columbia/Daniel Baena
(FAO)* — The running fresh water of the Amazon River is a welcoming sound to the peoples of the indigenous resguardo (reserve) in Puerto Nariño, southern Colombia.
This watercourse is the only access to the banks of rivers, lakes, flood plains and mainland areas that connect the 22 communities where the Tikuna, Cocama and Yagua peoples live.
Why food? According to scientists from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), land use for farming is responsible for one-quarter of all global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).
