First UN talks to save oceans kick off Monday

June 4, 2017

Miami, Jun 4: World leaders convene at UN headquarters next week for the first major bid to solve the toughest problems facing our oceans, from coral bleaching to plastic pollution, overfishing and rising seas due to climate change.

oceans

The Ocean Conference in New York June 5-9 attempts to rally nations big and small to make meaningful changes to preserve what is arguably the Earth's most important resource, experts say.

US President Donald Trump's recent decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord is expected to be a hot topic at the talks, which no high-ranking US officials are expected to attend.

But despite Trump's decision Thursday to end US participation in the Paris deal, which drew worldwide condemnation, experts at the Pew Charitable Trust said the United States has been a part of crafting a broad “call to action,” and is expected to sign it.

“We are committed to halting and reversing the decline in the health and productivity of our ocean,” says the three-page document, which also expresses alarm at the impact of climate change on the ocean.

The call to action is expected to be signed and released some point during the week-long conference, which will bring government officials, ocean advocates and some heads of state to New York.

The US pullout from Paris means other nations will lead the way at the UN talks, particularly small island nations that have the most to lose.

“How can you worry about someone who is not in the room?” said Ambassador Ronny Jumeau, permanent representative to the United Nations for Seychelles.

“Look at who is here, who is sitting in the front row, and say, 'Now what are we going to do about this?'“

The world just marked its three hottest years in modern times. And the oceans have absorbed about one third of the carbon dioxide released by human activities, protecting the planet from the full brunt of climate change.

Melting glaciers and sea ice at the poles threatens swell sea level to the point of washing away entire islands and populated coastlines — home to 37 percent of the planet's population — in the coming decades.

Just 20 inches (half meter) of sea level rise could displace 1.2 million people from islands in the Caribbean Sea, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Recent studies have shown the troubling extent of plastic pollution, even in the most remote parts of the world.

An uninhabited island in the south Pacific, Henderson Island, thousands of miles from civilization was recently shown to be piling up more than 3,500 pieces of plastic per day.

Even year, more than eight million ton of plastic washes into the oceans, costing at least $8 billion in damage to marine ecosystems and killing an estimated one million sea birds, 100,000 sea mammals and untold numbers of fish.

And famous coral reefs, such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef, are suffering from hot temperatures like never before in modern times, with mass bleaching and die-offs continuing unabated for the past two years.

“Small island states cannot afford to be dismayed or feel down or depressed about any of this,” said Jumeau during a UN press conference.

“We are reaching out to all the friends of the oceans that you can think of to meet the challenges that we face.”

Previous global meetings on problems facing the oceans have taken place, but the World Wildlife Fund's John Tanzer described this one as “historic” because the talks are under the auspices of the United Nations for the first time.

“The reality is that oceans have been in steep decline for at least the last 50 or 60 years,” Tanzer, global oceans lead at WWF, told AFP.

“Here we are in 2017, and it is impossible to talk of anywhere in the world's oceans as being pristine,” he said.

Specifically, nations will talk about how to meet the 2015 UN-adopted Sustainable Development Goal 14, to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources.”

Targets include protecting at least 10 percent of coastal and marine environments by 2020, reducing ocean pollution and strengthening ways to fight illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.

A recent report found that illegal fishing in the Pacific has reached a “staggering” value of up to $740 million a year, with much of the problem blamed on fleets from the US, Asia and Europe which under-report their catches.

Individual nations and advocacy groups are already announcing voluntary steps they will take to conserve oceans and protect marine life.

Those pledges will be updated throughout the conference, and can be seen online at https://oceanconference.un.org/commitments.

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Agencies
February 29,2020

Islamabad, Feb 29: A coalition comprising digital media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter (among others) have spoken out against the new regulations approved by the Pakistani government for social media, threatening to suspend services in the country if the rules were not revised, it was reported.

In a letter to Prime Minster Imran Khan earlier this month, the Asia Internet Coalition (AIC) called on his government to revise the new sets of rules and regulations for social media, The News International reported on Friday.

"The rules as currently written would make it extremely difficult for AIC Members to make their services available to Pakistani users and businesses," reads the letter, referring to the Citizens Protection Rules (Against Online Harm).

The new set of regulations makes it compulsory for social media companies to open offices in Islamabad, build data servers to store information and take down content upon identification by authorities.

Failure to comply with the authorities in Pakistan will result in heavy fines and possible termination of services.

It said that the regulations were causing "international companies to re-evaluate their view of the regulatory environment in Pakistan, and their willingness to operate in the country".

Referring to the rules as "vague and arbitrary in nature", the AIC said that it was forcing them to go against established norms of user privacy and freedom of expression.

"We are not against regulation of social media, and we acknowledge that Pakistan already has an extensive legislative framework governing online content. However, these Rules fail to address crucial issues such as internationally recognized rights to individual expression and privacy," The News International quoted the letter as saying.

According to the law, authorities will be able to take action against Pakistanis found guilty of targeting state institutions at home and abroad on social media.

The law will also help the law enforcement authorities obtain access to data of accounts found involved in suspicious activities.

It would be the said authority's prerogative to identify objectionable content to the social media platforms to be taken down.

In case of failure to comply within 15 days, it would have the power to suspend their services or impose a fine worth up to 500 million Pakistani rupees ($3 million).

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Agencies
June 7,2020

Boston, Jun 7: Dozens of scientists doing research funded by Mark Zuckerberg say Facebook should not be letting President Donald Trump use of the social media platform to spread both misinformation and incendiary statements.

The researchers, including 60 professors at leading US research institutions, wrote a letter to the Facebook CEO on Saturday asking that he consider stricter policies on misinformation and incendiary language that harms people," especially during the current turmoil over racial injustice.

The letter calls the spread of deliberate misinformation and divisive language the researchers' goal of using technology to prevent and eradicate disease, improving childhood education and reform the criminal justice system.

The researchers' mission "is antithetical to some of the stances that Facebook has been taking, so we're encouraging them to be more on the side of truth and on the right side of history as we've said in the letter, said Debora Marks of Harvard Medical School, one of three professors who organized the letter.

The other organisers are Martin Kampmann of the University of California-San Francisco and Jason Shepherd of the University of Utah.

All have grants from a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative program working to prevent, cure and treat neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The initiative is run by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

They said the letter had more than 160 signatories. Shepherd said about 10% are employees of Chan Zuckerberg foundations.

The letter objects specifically to Zuckerberg's decision not to at least flag as a violation of Facebook's community standards Trump's post that stated when the looting starts, the shooting starts after unrest in Minneapolis over the videotaped killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer.

The letter's authors called the post a clear statement of inciting violence.

Twitter had both flagged and demoted a Trump tweet using the same language.

The Associated Press emailed the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative press office for comment. It did not immediately respond.

Some Facebook employees have publicly objected to Zuckerberg's refusal to take down or label misleading or incendiary posts by Trump or other politicians. But Zuckerberg who controls a majority of voting shares in the company has so far refused.

On Friday, Zuckerberg said in a post that he would review potential options for handling violating or partially-violating content aside from the binary leave-it-up or take-it-down decisions I know many of you think we should have labeled the President's posts in some way last week, he wrote.

"Our current policy is that if content is actually inciting violence, then the right mitigation is to take that content down not let people continue seeing it behind a flag. There is no exception to this policy for politicians or newsworthiness.

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News Network
July 4,2020

Geneva, Jul 4: The World Health Organization has updated its account of the early stages of the COVID crisis to say it was alerted by its own office in China, and not by China itself, to the first pneumonia cases in Wuhan.

The UN health body has been accused by US President Donald Trump of failing to provide the information needed to stem the pandemic and of being complacent towards Beijing, charges it denies.

On April 9, WHO published an initial timeline of its communications, partly in response to criticism of its early response to the outbreak that has now claimed more than 521,000 lives worldwide.

In that chronology, WHO had said only that the Wuhan municipal health commission in the province of Hubei had on December 31 reported cases of pneumonia. The UN health agency did not however specify who had notified it.

WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference on April 20 the first report had come from China, without specifying whether the report had been sent by Chinese authorities or another source.

But a new chronology, published this week by the Geneva-based institution, offers a more detailed version of events.

It indicates that it was the WHO office in China that on December 31 notified its regional point of contact of a case of "viral pneumonia" after having found a declaration for the media on a Wuhan health commission website on the issue.

The same day, WHO's epidemic information service picked up another news report transmitted by the international epidemiological surveillance network ProMed -- based in the United States -- about the same group of cases of pneumonia from unknown causes in Wuhan.

After which, WHO asked the Chinese authorities on two occasions, on January 1 and January 2, for information about these cases, which they provided on January 3.

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a press conference on Friday that countries have 24-48 hours to officially verify an event and provide the agency with additional information about the nature or cause of an event.

Ryan added that the Chinese authorities immediately contacted WHO's as soon as the agency asked to verify the report.

US President Donald Trump has announced that his country, the main financial contributor to WHO, will cut its bridges with the institution, which he accuses of being too close to China and of having poorly managed the pandemic.

The WHO denies any complacency toward China.

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