The UN Secretary-General ‘unequivocally’ condemned the reported strikes this Saturday in the port of Odesa. The attack took place less than 24 hours after the signing of the Black Sea agreements on the export of grain from Ukrainian ports.
The UN Secretary-General ‘unequivocally’ condemned the reported strikes this Saturday in the port of Odesa. The attack took place less than 24 hours after the signing of the Black Sea agreements on the export of grain from Ukrainian ports.
The killing of protestors by security services during large-scale demonstrations in Sudan’s capital Khartoum in June underscores the ongoing political tensions in the country. Against this backdrop, the UN is committed to sustain and build peace in Sudan, say UN Resident Coordinator Khardiata Lo Ndiaye, and Elizabeth Spehar, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support.
Rishi Sunak has pledged to bring inflation in the UK under control and tackle illegal migration
Former UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak says he will prioritize the issues of soaring prices and illegal migration if he is chosen in the Tory party leadership race and becomes Britain’s next prime minister, adding that he plans to put his government on a “crisis footing” from day one.
In a Friday interview with The Times, Sunak, a multimillionaire businessman, said he has spent his life “having to be tough to get results.” The recent scandal over his billionaire wife’s tax affairs only made him stronger, he added. “I’ve got the resilience to deal with some pretty tough stuff when it’s thrown at me, and I’ve got the energy and fight to keep going because I really believe in this.”
Commenting on his privileged background and the fact that he attended one of the most expensive private schools in the country, Winchester College, Sunak – also an Oxford and Stanford graduate – said that education helped change his life, and vowed “to make sure as many people as possible have the opportunity of a transformative education.”
Sunak stated that his priority as prime minister will be to contain inflation, which “has been consistently higher than people thought and has lasted longer.”
“So from day one of being in office I’m going to put us on a crisis footing.”
The former chancellor of the exchequer emphasized the difference between his fiscal approach and that of his competitor, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who has pledged £30 billion in tax cuts. He warned that this could lead to inflation becoming entrenched, which would “be incredibly damaging for millions across the UK.”
Sunak also promised to increase defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030, while Truss pledged 3%. “I’ll invest whatever it takes to keep our country safe,” he said.
Containing illegal migration is another key issue. Sunak says he will continue the controversial policy of sending illegal migrants to Rwanda, despite widespread criticism and legal setbacks. The former chancellor also believes he can build a more “constructive” relationship with French President Emmanuel Macron than outgoing PM Boris Johnson has managed – and that this will help Britain to tackle illegal migration as well.
According to the latest YouGov poll, 31% of Tory members plan to vote for Sunak, and 49% for Truss. To win, Sunak needs to sway to his side undecided voters, people who currently don’t plan to vote, and part of Truss’ electorate, the pollsters noted. The survey was conducted on July 20-21 with 730 Conservative Party members.
The winner will be announced on September 5, after a postal vote of around 150,000 Tory party members.
The killing of protestors by security services during large-scale demonstrations in Sudan’s capital Khartoum in June underscores the ongoing political tensions in the country. Against this backdrop, the UN is committed to sustain and build peace in Sudan, say UN Resident Coordinator Khardiata Lo Ndiaye, and Elizabeth Spehar, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support.
In late July, the UN General Assembly is expected to vote on a draft resolution recognizing the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Read the full story, “Why the UN General Assembly must back the right to a healthy environment”, on globalissues.org →
Ukraine and Russia agreed to a UN-brokered deal on grain shipments out of the Black Sea that Turkey will oversee. The food supplies are badly needed around the globe.
US defense officials have renamed the unidentified phenomena group and expanded its mission beyond space and air
After decades of being tight-lipped or publicly dismissive about the existence of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), the Pentagon is ramping up the unit that tracks such phenomena and expanding its mission to include objects that move underwater or across multiple mediums.
Just eight months after publicly creating its UFO-tracking unit, called the Airborne Object Identification and Management Group, the US Department of Defense (DOD) has given the group a new name to reflect its broader purview: the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The move, which was made earlier this month and announced on Wednesday, reflects a directive from Congress to broaden the military’s probing of unidentified moving objects that could pose security threats.
The AARO will coordinate efforts across the federal government to “detect, identify and attribute objects of interest” that appear around military installations and other sensitive areas, the Pentagon said. And as necessary, the unit will “mitigate and defeat” security threats. “This includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects.”
A transmedium object is one that can operate across multiple environments, such as a spacecraft that can also fly through the earth’s atmosphere or underwater – or both. The AARO will be charged with trying to trace unidentified objects to their sources – whether they be extraterrestrial or an earthly foe.
“It is vital to our national security and the safety of our military personnel that we maintain awareness of anomalous objects in all domains,” Ronald Moultrie, undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, said in a memo this week. “We must also keep pace with the development and employment of novel technology by our adversaries.”
In recent years, a new acronym has been created to replace the term ‘UFO’ – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) – in the hope that science, academia, and the media would be more open to investigating the subject. Last month, NASA officially joined the hunt for UFOs, commissioning a scientific study to demystify the phenomena. The US space agency specifically emphasized that, so far, there has been “no evidence UAPs are extra-terrestrial in origin,” pouring cold water on the prospect of discovering alien technology, but noted that a lack of verifiable data “currently makes it difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of such events.”
The Pentagon released a long-awaited report on UAPs last year, as ordered by Congress, saying that it had reviewed sightings of 144 unidentified aerial phenomena since 2004. Investigators were able to definitively explain only one of those objects, which was identified as a deflated balloon. By last May, when Congress held its first hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years, the Pentagon said it had nearly 400 reports from military personnel of mysterious encounters and sightings.
The AARO will report to Moultrie and will be headed by Sean Kirkpatrick, who most recently was chief scientist at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s missile and space intelligence center.
In late July, the UN General Assembly is expected to vote on a draft resolution recognizing the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
news
