While the world’s attention is focused on the Zika virus, a new UN report warns that a future global epidemic could result in millions of deaths and could be far worse than the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa. The hard hitting report urges the World Health Organization to reform in order to be ready to combat future crises.
More than 58,000 children are at risk of dying from starvation in Somalia if they are not provided with urgent humanitarian assistance the United Nations has warned. The international community has failed to tackle the famine crisis due to the internal conflicts and an ongoing war in the African country. Press TV reports: UN aid chief for Somalia Peter de Clercq said on Monday that more than 300,000 children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. The UN official also said that they urgently need medical, food, and other humanitarian support.
Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s years-long confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London has been ruled unlawful by the U.N.’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and his lawyers have now called for Sweden’s extradition request to be dropped immediately.
The ruling is not binding and the British Foreign Office maintains the legal obligation to extradite Assange. Accordingly, he will be arrested should he decide to vacate the embassy premises.
UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has dismissed a UN panel’s ruling that Julian Assange should be allowed to go free, saying that their ruling is “ridiculous”. The UN panel said that Assange had been “arbitrarily detained” and should receive compensation from the British government. BBC News reports: Philip Hammond rejected the decision, accusing Mr Assange of evading justice. Mr Assange hailed it as a “significant victory”, but the UK government insisted the ruling was not legally binding and the report “changes nothing”.
UN Rules Julian Assange is “Arbitrarily Detained”
Paul Craig Roberts
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has ruled that Wikileaks’ Julian Assange has been arbitrarily detained by the “democratic” governments of Sweden and the UK and is entitled to his freedom and compensation for detention by the two “democratic” governments.