Brazilian authorities fail to protect one of the Amazon’s most endangered tribes after refusing to evict illegal loggers and settlers from tribal land. [BBC] The successful fight against polio stands as an example of the power of global initiatives. More than 10 million people are thought to have been benefitted from mass vaccination campaigns. [The [...]
Tag Archives: Afghanistan
Press Review: Afghanistan’s forests devastated by timber market & Educating Maasai girls in Kenya
Arrests and intimidation of activists in Zimbabwe could signal an atmosphere of violence and instability during the country’s upcoming elections. [The Guardian] War crimes suspect Bosco Ntaganda turns himself in at the US embassy in Rwanda and asks to be sent to the International Criminal Court. [BBC] Working to change the low education rates of [...]
Press Review: Zimbabwe bans election observers & Indigenous land rights activist murdered in Venezuela
Zimbabwe announces its intention to bar Western observers during an upcoming constitutional referendum that would limit presidential powers as well as elections. [BBC] A protest movement in Cambodia hopes to overturn a 20-year jail sentence given to a 72-year old activist who helped villagers fight against land grabs. [The Guardian] Venezuela says it is investigating [...]
Press Review: Bhutan goes organic & Drilling in Peru’s Manú National Park
Bhutan prepares to become the first country to transform 100% of its agriculture to organic methods. [The Guardian] After years of denial, evidence has surfaced that the big energy company Pluspetrol is planning to tap gas reserves in Peru’s Manú National Park. [The Guardian] Environmentalists call Brazil’s plans to fill the Amazon forest with 168 [...]
Press Review: Illegal wildlife trade funding civil conflicts & Iran’s lawyers face intimidation
A new report from the World Wildlife Fund finds that the illegal wildlife trade, worth $19 billion per year, funds civil conflicts and is a major contributor to the instability of many nations, including Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. [BBC] Despite the UN upgrade of North Korea’s food situation, starvation and hunger are [...]
Press Review: 2012 worst year on record for journalists & The state of women’s rights in Afghanistan
As a reminder of China’s ongoing fight for freedom, the founder of the Human Rights Foundation reprints Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo’s court statement to mark the three year anniversary of his prison sentence. [Huffington Post] 2012 stands as the worst year on record for the number of journalists in prison around the world. Turkey is [...]
Signs of the NY Times: Environmentalism the Reagan way. Pakistan: drug casualty of the Afghan war. Political lessons from China. Patience with Arab Spring.
Op-Ed contributor Cass Sunstein has an idea for climate change progress in the U.S. It’s not actually a new idea, and it stems not from a consideration of what’s best for the environment or for those people in America and abroad who are most severely affected by global warming. The idea is about money and [...]
Signs of the NY Times: UN Intervention in Mali? Not only American Women would suffer under Romney. David Brooks V. The Environment.
Griots in Mali call for UN intervention. Reminder: The “Global Gag Rule” would come on day one of the Romney administration. The Taliban V. Education in Pakistan. NY Times columnist David Brooks writes likes he’s on the board at Exxon.
USA: ‘Targeted killing’ policies violate the right to life
A series of speeches over the past two years by officials from the administration of President Barack Obama, and an article published in the New York Times on 29 May 2012, have revealed some details of the purported legal rationale for current policies and practices of the United States of America (USA) in the deliberate [...]
Press Review: Thousands missing in Syria & India eradicates polio
Human rights groups estimate that at least 28,000 Syrians have disappeared during the 19 months of uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. [The Guardian] The international community largely ignored the mass executions of 20,000 imprisoned Iranian activists during the 1980s. Now an independent tribunal in the Hague is set to hear the facts. [The Guardian] India [...]
News from the United Nations General Assembly
US President Barack Obama’s 30-minute speech at the U.N. General Assembly this Tuesday has generated both praise and criticism. In his address, Obama called for an end to the violence in the Muslim world that had been sparked by an anti-Islam short-film broadcast on Youtube. While condemning the video and labelling it “crude and disgusting”, the [...]
Breaking: Middle East anti-American protest
UPDATE: one killed in anti-Islam film protests in Pakistan, according to reports Iraq: UPDATE: 7 people are now said to have died Four Iraqis are reported dead and 11 injured, after a deadly blast was initiated by a suicide bomber near Baghdad’s Green Zone. As for right now, it is believed that the attack can [...]
