Region

The United Nations is calling for a number of new taxes in a bid to help aid the world’s poor. In a new report, the World Economic and Social Survey calls for proposals including taxes on carbon emissions, financial transactions, and on the world’s billionaires. Robert Vos of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs unveiled the report.

The online whistleblower WikiLeaks continues to release documents from the Syria Files, more than 2 million emails said to be from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies over a 6 year period ending earlier this year. WikiLeaks spokesperson Sarah Harrison said the files would embarrass not only the Syrian government but many of its political foes.

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.

The first of February this year was a historic day in the Chinese village of Wukan. Several thousand villagers, who had chased out their corrupt old leaders, went to the polls to democratically elect new representatives. A few months later, on 27 May, there was another equally historic democratic election in a factory in nearby Shenzhen…

In the wake of an enormous fine for rigging fundamental interest rates, general outrage at banker’s bonuses, and the devastation ravaging the world’s economy, the stink from the Banking sector is set to rise with a stink bomb attack planned for Barclays Bank. Will the UK government be capable of undertaking the Herculean task of cleaning out the Augean Stables?

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’.

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.