International Orangutan Day on 19 August coincides with the start of the International Primatological Society Congress in Nairobi, Kenya, and is a much-needed reminder that orangutans’ survival hangs in the balance.
16 August 2018 (UN Environment)* — There are three species of orangutan in the world and they are only found on two islands in Southeast Asia – Sumatra and Borneo. All three species are critically endangered.
Last year saw the amazing discovery of a new species, the Tapanuli orangutan. This is the eighth great ape species known to exist on Earth.
However, the Tapanuli orangutan faces extinction, threatened by plans to build a huge hydroelectric power dam in Batang Toru, North Sumatra.
19 August 2018 (Wall Street International)*— This is where things stood in 1994, when a Timemagazine cover shouted that the Tiger was “Doomed”, and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbit warned –“There may not be another chance to save Tigers”.
This new crisis galvanized the conservation community. It became clear that saving the tiger was not a battle to be won once and forever, but a continual process of holding old threats in check and preventing new ones from emerging as conditions change.
16 August 2018 (UN Environment)* – The eastern highlands of the Democratic Republic of the Congo make up the country’s highest and most rugged region. It is home to a series of mountains 80 to 560 km wide, extending from the Rwenzori Mountain in northeastern Congo through the Virunga volcanic ranges to the Mitumba Mountains.
Eastern DR Congo is also home to an estimated 160,000 to 200,000 gold miners who work in about 1,000 artisanal mining sites. The Butuzi site, located in the Mitumba Mountains, is one of them. It occupies an area that was once dominated by an Afro-montane forest, now almost completely deforested.
DataTempo/CP2 conducted the survey poll for the senate race between August 8 and 11.
Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff leads the senatorial race in Minas Gerais, Brazil. | Photo: EFE | Photo from teleSUR.
18 August 2018 (teleSUR)* – If Brazil’s general elections were held today, former President Dilma Rousseff, now a senatorial candidate in the state of Minas Gerais, would win the race with 26.8 percent of the vote.
The prediction comes after a poll published by DataTempo/CP2 between August 8 and 11.
Rousseff’s nearest rival, journalist Carlos Viana of the Humanist Party of Solidarity, or PHS, is polling in second place with 11.2 percent of the vote.
Earlier, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that some 230 million dollars in US stabilization funds for Syria will be redirected “to support other key foreign policy priorities.”
19 August 2018 (Sputnik)* – In one of his latest tweets, President Donald Trump has announced that the United States has halted the “ridiculous” 230-million-dollar annual payment to Syria.
“Saudi Arabia and other rich countries in the Middle East will start making payments instead of the US,” Trump tweeted, signaling his readiness to develop the country’s military.
Aug 16, 2018 – Bayer shares registered yet another sharp decrease on Thursday (16 August), dropping as much as 6.5% in Frankfurt to hover near the 76 euros level as investors fear the German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant may face numerous litigations in the US after its controversial merger with Monsanto.
On 10 August, a California state jury ordered US-based Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to Dewayne Lee Johnson, a former groundskeeper for the Benicia Unified School District in the San Francisco Bay area, who has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
He attributes his condition to the company’s proprietary herbicide glyphosate he used
17 August 2018 (openDemocrcay)* – In a recent article for the Washington Post Sheri Berman worries whether democratic socialists, who are now advancing on the left, believe in democracy.
Looking back into twentieth century history, she reminds us that the difference between democratic socialists and social democrats lay in the fact that the former were unwilling to compromise over entering governmental coalitions with bourgeois parties – in that way inadvertently helping along the advent of fascist regimes.
The flow of the river is ceaseless and its water is never the same. The bubbles that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming, are not of long duration. So in the world are man and his dwellings. — (Kamo no Chomei, Japanese poet and monk).
16 August 2018 (Wall Street International)* – “Why are Japanese homes so small?” and ”Why are buildings in Japan demolished after 30-35 years?” — are often the perplexing questions that come to mind after acquiring an adequate taste of Japanese urban life.
17 August 2018 – Rapid advances in gene editing and so-called “DIY biological laboratories” which could be used by extremists, threaten to derail efforts to prevent biological weapons from being used against civilians, the world’s only international forum on the issue has heard.
UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré | The United Nations Office at Geneva, where multilateral discussions on biological weapons have been taking place.
At meetings taking place at the United Nations in Geneva which ended on Thursday [16 August 2018], representatives from more than 100 Member States which have signed up to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) – together with civilian experts and academics – also discussed how they could ensure that science is used to positive ends, in line with the disarmament blueprint set out by UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
Some 20,000 people participated in Friday’s [17 August 2018] protests, which took place a few hundred meters from the Gaza border.
Medics said Israeli gunfire killed two men and wounded at least 270 other Palestinians, 40 of them with live bullets. | Photo: Reuters | Photo from teleSUR.
17 August 2018 (teleSUR)* – Israeli forces opened fire on a group of Palestinian protesters, killing at least two and injuring over 40, during a demonstration near the eastern Gaza Strip, the Gaza Health Ministry said Friday [17 August 2018].
Medics said Israeli gunfire killed two men and wounded at least 270 other Palestinians, 40 of them with live bullets.
