International

Southeast Asian states should collectively negotiate with powerful China to resolve territory disputes. 04 Jul 2012 China’s claim to a disputed island in the South China Sea has angered many in the Philippines. No one will believe that the stand-off between the Philippines and China over a disputed island in the South China Sea is a straightforward bilateral issue.

Luc Gnacadja has rock-solid reason to be upbeat: some 100 heads of state agreed at the Rio+20 – to strive for “a land-degradation neutral world”, characterised by zero growth in desertification.
In doing so they were responding to the UNCCD’s clarion call in a “policy brief” for ‘A Sustainable Development Goal for Rio+20: Zero Net Land Degradation’.

More than 140 countries have passed counterterrorism laws since the attacks of September 11, 2001, often with little regard for due process and other basic rights, Human Rights Watch said in a new report.
The 112-page report, “In the Name of Security: Counterterrorism Laws Worldwide since September 11,” says that while terrorist attacks have caused thousands (read more)…

The status of human rights in Zimbabwe, environmental concerns from toxic waste, future of diamond revenue and level of transparency from the flow of those funds into treasury. Additionally, he addresses the role of the Kimberley Process and suggests ways the global jewellery industry should handle the supply-chain given how Marange diamonds are entering the market.

This is what the scientists say and it is CERN that announced the finding of the most sought-after elementary particle of recent decades, the Higgs boson, opening the doors to the subatomic world. Although other experts are more cautious: what has been registered indicates what could be the signature of the Higgs particle, such is science, very careful.

We are seeing increasing social protests all over the world, with hundreds of thousands on the streets from Santiago to Montreal, from Moscow to Tokyo and everywhere in between. Sudan, after having recently divorced its southern neighbour is a country not know for its human rights and police leniency, so it is encouraging that even here things are moving, even if carefully.

Three weeks of UN talks aimed at hammering out a draft treaty to regulate the $70 billion a year global arms trade finally got under way on Tuesday, a day late because of a diplomatic tussle over Palestinian representation.

Every two years the Olympic Games come round for the world’s sports fans to be distracted from their everyday activity with a couple of weeks of competition that inspires millions of young people all over the world to participate. In Ancient Greece, the Games were always accompanied by a ceasefire in war. The UN calls on the same thing to happen in the modern era.

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Reporters Without Borders is today releasing a report on the crisis in the western state of Arakan, a copy of which it gave yesterday to National League for Democracy parliamentary representative Aung San Suu Kyi, who is currently on a four-day visit to Paris, the last leg of a European tour that ends tomorrow.

Almost half a million people were on the streets in protest July 1, 2012, marking the day this territory was handed back to Chinese sovereignly by the British 15 years ago. It’s not that people are displeased at that changeover, it’s what ‘one does’ these days to show the power-holders that everything is not quite in order, with the insistent demand, let’s get it right!