April 30, 2024 No comments
Guterres calls on Israel and Hamas to end Gaza war
INTERNATIONAL, 30 April 2024, Peace and Security - With the situation in Gaza “worsening by the day”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday appealed for Israeli and Hamas leaders currently taking part in intense negotiations to reach a ceasefire agreement. “For the sake of the people of Gaza, for the sake of the hostages and their families in Israel and for the sake of the region and the wider world, I strongly encourage the Government of Israel and the Hamas leadership to reach now an agreement,” he said, speaking to journalists in New York. Mr. Guterres expressed fear that without an agreement, “the war, with all its consequences both in Gaza and across the region, will worsen exponentially”. Prevent Rafah escalation Nearly seven months have passed since...
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April 30, 2024 No comments
Gaza protests: UN rights chief flags ‘disproportionate’ police action on US campuses
INTERNATIONAL, 30 April 2024, Human Rights - The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday said he was troubled by “a series of heavy-handed steps” taken by some universities in the United States to disperse and dismantle Gaza war protests. In recent days, demonstrations unfolding through tented encampments on school grounds – sparked by students at New York’s prestigious Columbia University who are demanding authorities divest from Israel due to its occupation and military assault on Gaza – have spread nationwide. University authorities from the west to east coast have taken different approaches, ranging from Columbia’s initial response to authorise police to clear protests by force to continuing negotiations and allowing the encampments to remain. Columbia protests intensify Columbia’s protesters ignored an ultimatum from the university to leave...
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April 30, 2024 No comments
‘Extraordinary, deep anxiety’ in Gaza over feared Rafah attack
INTERNATIONAL, 30 April 2024, Peace and Security - Ordinary Gazans remain in a “constant state of trauma” over an impending full-scale Israeli attack on the enclave’s southernmost city of Rafah amid a growing number of strikes there, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday. “There is an extraordinary, deep anxiety prevailing right now in Gaza because the question everybody asks is whether, yes or no, there would be a military offensive,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told journalists in Geneva. Following several reports by the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, of “intensive strikes on Rafah” that caused dozens of fatalities, Mr. Lazzarini said a full-scale invasion of Rafah – currently home to around one million displaced Gazans – depended on “whether or not a ceasefire deal will...
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April 30, 2024 No comments
Gaza war spillover compounds misery for most vulnerable in Lebanon
INTERNATIONAL, 30 April 2024, Peace and Security - Children as young as four are being forced to go to work in Lebanon amid a “massive collapse” in humanitarian funding and escalating hostilities on the country’s southern border with Israel that threaten to spiral into a “full-scale war”, UN child experts said on Tuesday. In a call for an immediate end to the war in Gaza which sparked intensifying exchanges of fire between armed militants Hezbollah and the Israeli military, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that airstrikes are hitting “deeper and deeper” into Lebanon, with 344 people killed to date, including eight youngsters. “Together with those killed and the scores who have been injured, 30,000 children have now been displaced” out of some 90,000 since Hezbollah fighters...
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April 30, 2024 No comments
Could the answer to 100% renewable energy in Dominica be under the ground?
INTERNATIONAL, 30 April 2024, Climate and Environment - A small but growing number of countries are well on their way to producing all of their electricity from renewable sources. Dominica, in the eastern Caribbean, is planning to join these pioneers and become the first small island developing State (SIDS) to stop using fossil fuels for energy generation. It’s called geothermal energy, and it’s an exciting prospect for the country. Geothermal has none of the intermittency issues of wind and solar – in other words, it provides stable energy day and night – and doesn’t take up any surface real estate, keeping the Roseau Valley in its pristine state. Most SIDS are dependent on imported fossil fuels for electricity generation and transport, putting a major strain...
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