'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
We are again reaching the point in the business cycle known as “peak debt,” when debts have compounded to the point that their cumulative total cannot be paid. Student debt, credit card debt, auto loans, business debt and sovereign debt are all higher than they have ever been.
Map showing the extent of Mesopotamia | Author: Goran tek-en | CC BY-SA 4.0
3 September 2019 (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.
Photo by Wikimedia
This summer, Europe has sweltered in its hottest ever July since records began, causing multiple deaths, closed offices and disruptions to flights and vital services.
Wildfires broke out in the Arctic, with smoke-filled air swirling across an unprecedented area of Arctic wilderness.
2 September 2019 — Lise Grande, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, described Sunday’s deadly airstrikes in Dhamar City as a “horrific incident”, and the scale of the casualties, as “staggering”. “These are very dark times for Yemen,” said Ms. Grande. “There have been days of fighting and strikes in the south and hundreds of casualties”.
The strikes hit a former community college compound on the northern outskirts of Dhamar City. According to sources on the ground, as many as 170 prisoners were being held in a detention facility within the compound.
The Yemen UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has confirmed that 52 detainees are among the dead. At least 68 detainees are still missing. Casualties are most likely to increase as rescue efforts are still on going.
– The world’s high seas, which extend beyond 200 nautical miles, are deemed “international waters” to be shared globally– but they remain largely ungoverned.
Scientific expeditions in recent years have revealed that the high seas, 200 nautical miles from coastal shores, harbor an incredible array of species that provide essential services for life on Earth. Credit: The Pew Charitable Trusts
“It’s a jungle out there”, remarks one diplomat, describing a virtually lawless wide-open ocean which has steadily undergone environmental destruction, including illegal fishing and overfishing, plastics pollutions, indiscriminate sea bed mining and degradation of marine eco systems.
30 August 2019, Yokohama (FAO)* – Agriculture is crucial to Africa’s development but needs increased mechanization to boost economic productivity, reduce harvest and post-harvest losses and meet growing demand for food.
Policy Change Jeopardizes Rights to Health, Life
30 August 2019 (Human Rights Watch)* — The Trump administration has axed a program that allowed immigrants with serious health conditions – including children and people with disabilities – and their families to remain in the United States while receiving life-saving medical treatment.
El Niño and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a naturally occurring phenomenon involving fluctuating ocean temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific coupled with changes in the atmosphere: It is associated with hazards such as heavy rains, floods and drought in different parts of the world.
A woman carrying her son arrives to check her name on the draft list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) at an NRC centre in Chandamari village in the northeastern state of Assam, India. in January 2018. © Reuters/Anuwar Hazarika (Photo posted here from UNHCR).
Women in the region are earning 17 per cent less than men per hour, on average, and while an increasing number of women are entering the labour force, their treatment is still far from equal, according to a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report. | español | français
LIMA, 27 August 2019 (ILO)* – Persistent gender gaps and lack of progress in achieving gender equality at work, requires countries in Latin American and the Caribbean to adopt a series of transformative measures, according to a new ILO Thematic Labour Overview Report.
India excluded 1.9 million from citizenship dividing families who have submitted the same documents to prove they are living in India before Bangladesh’s independence in 1971.
Indian rendered 1.9 million people from northeastern state of Assam stateless. | Photo: Reuters (Photo from teleSUR).
1 September 2019 (teleSUR)* — Nearly 2 million people have been left off a list of citizens released Saturday [31 August 2019] in India’s northeastern state of Assam, after a mammoth years-long exercise to remove so-called illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.
.
