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Jeux d’argent: La commission du vendeur est-elle un frein à la prévention?

24heures.ch - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 07:00
Une initiative parlementaire veut corriger le dilemme imposé aux kiosquiers: lutter contre l’addiction au jeu et faire du chiffre. Débat prévu mardi.
Categories: Swiss News

Transports publics: Pourquoi la carte journalière «Commune» a perdu des fidèles?

24heures.ch - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 06:35
L’an dernier, les ventes de la nouvelle carte journalière ont fondu de près de moitié dans certaines communes comme Morges, Renens ou Vevey.
Categories: Swiss News

Environment Day – 2025

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 06:34

By External Source
Jun 2 2025 (IPS-Partners)

 
Plastic pollution is choking our planet.

An estimated 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year.

Less than 10% is ever recycled.

Over 23 million tonnes end up in lakes, rivers and oceans annually.

Plastic never truly disappears. It breaks down into microplastics.

These invisible particles are now in our food, our water and even our bodies.

Studies have found microplastics in human blood, lungs, and placentas.

The most vulnerable communities are hit hardest.

Marine life is suffocating.

Coastal economies are eroding.

Food systems are at risk.

We can’t recycle our way out of this crisis.

We need to rethink the system, by reduce, reusing and redesigning.

By 2040, plastic waste could triple if we do nothing.

But we can cut plastic pollution by 80% if we act now.

World Environment Day 2025 calls for a future free from plastic pollution.

A future where circularity replaces waste. Where innovation replaces single use.

Where policy, industry, and people work together.

We are the generation that can break free from plastic.

Let’s not waste this chance.

 


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Categories: Africa

South Asian Cities Faced Relentless, Record-Breaking Heatwaves Last Year

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 06:31

Street vendor exposed to extreme heat, New Delhi, 2024. Credit: Greenpeace India

“Some mornings, I can't even stand, my feet are so swollen. My whole body aches from working all day at the juicer. The doctor said my uric acid is high, but I waited months to get tested. Who has the time or money when missing work means no food?”-- Sana, a street vendor selling sugarcane juice in chronic pain, navigating long hours and poor hydration, in Delhi’s extreme temperatures.

By Selomi Garnaik and G. A. Rumeshi Perera
BENGALURU, India / COLOMBO Sri Lanka, Jun 2 2025 (IPS)

From the blistering heat of Delhi’s streets to Colombo’s humid corners, workers in the informal economy are silently enduring the toll of labour on their bodies and livelihoods.

In 2024, South Asian cities like Delhi and Dhaka, faced relentless, record-breaking heatwaves. Meanwhile, in Nepal, the heaviest rains in decades triggered deadly floods and landslides. Sri Lanka, too, faced repeated severe storms, displacing hundreds of thousands, underscoring the vulnerability of the region to climatic chaos.

Then, why are those hit hardest by climate collapse left out of the rooms where its future is decided?

Ms. Swastika, President of the United Federation of Labour Sri Lanka, highlighted on Labour Day how temperature has affected the workers and their daily livelihoods; asking the fundamental question, ‘when do polluters take accountability?’

Workers in Dhaka holding up messages for climate and labour justice during May Day activities. Credit: Hadi Uddin / Greenpeace South Asia

One of four people living today is from South Asia, yet the region is responsible for barely 8% of the cumulative CO2 emissions, while facing some of the harshest impacts of the climate crisis.

Climate Conversations Cannot Ignore Workers:

According to the World Bank, over the past two decades, more than 750 million people, over half of South Asia’s population, have been affected by one or more climate-related disasters.

It’s quickly becoming clear just what this means for workers: India alone is projected to lose 34 million full-time jobs by 2030 due to heat stress. Bangladesh loses US$ 6 billion a year in labour productivity due to the effects of extreme heat.

In Nepal, where over 70% of the workforce is engaged in agriculture, changing rainfall patterns and flash floods have already slashed yields and forced seasonal labourers to migrate. By 2050, climate change could displace 100-200 million people, leading to a rise in climate refugees.

Yet these impacts are reduced to mere ‘economic losses’, rarely acknowledged as human suffering and almost never compensated. This disconnect between climate damage and accountability lies at the heart of global climate injustice.

Workers, particularly in the Global South- must be central to the climate conversations. For them, climate change isn’t abstract: it’s failed crops, deadly heat, toxic air, and unsafe workplaces. These daily realities threaten their health, livelihoods, and dignity.

Despite this, climate planning and response mechanisms are designed by ministries and consultants isolated from the ground realities of workers. Labour ministries, welfare boards or labour unions are rarely included in national climate adaptation frameworks or climate budgeting. Heat Action Plans often overlook worker-centric measures like paid rest breaks, hydration stations, or medical preparedness for outdoor labourers.

This is not just a gap. It is a governance failure.

When national or global climate plans ignore labour protections they deepen existing injustices. Outdoor workers, gig workers, migrant workers, and women in informal employment must be seen not as “vulnerable groups” but as central stakeholders, whose inclusion is essential for a just and durable climate response.

The Unpaid Bill: Who Owes Whom?

For over a century, profits were extracted from the earth and the pain outsourced to its most exploited workers. Now, those frontline workers are leading the call for climate accountability. Polluters Pay Pact, an international movement supported by trade unions, climate justice groups, and frontline communities that calls on the world’s largest fossil fuel and gas corporations to compensate those who are living with the fallout of their actions.

Just five oil and gas companies made over $100 billion in profits in 2024 alone, while informal workers are breathing toxic air, suffering heat extremes and losing workdays- without compensation or insurance. This isn’t aid, its owed justice.

The Polluters Pay Pact must result in binding commitments: climate-linked funding, worker led adaptation, and a global recognition of labour as central to climate action.

Most importantly, the pact is not waiting for international summits to act. Across the region, grassroots campaigns are gaining momentum- taking legal action, seeking compensation for heat-related losses, and pushing for fossil fuel taxes to fund worker protections.

This marks the beginning of a new phase in climate accountability: one that is worker-led, justice-driven, and grounded in the principle that those who suffer should not be left to shoulder the costs alone.

The way forward: From Survival to Dignity

The Polluters Pay Pact is beyond compensation. It’s about correcting a system that treats labour as disposable and emissions as externalities. To make climate justice real and tangible, governments must move beyond symbolic acknowledgments of “climate vulnerability’’ to institutional reforms that protect the people that hold up our economies.

It is inspiring to see countries like Sri Lanka take the fight to the International Court of Justice, highlighting how vulnerable nations are bearing the brunt of a crisis they did little to cause. By co-sponsoring the resolution and emphasizing intergenerational equity and human rights, Sri Lanka is underscoring that climate inaction by high-emitting states is a violation of basic rights like access to water and food. There is growing momentum from South Asian countries demanding climate justice.

Here is what ‘labour justice is climate justice’ would mean:

Classify climate risks as workplace hazards– National labour laws across South Asia must classify climate-induced hazards as occupational risks. This would entitle workers to compensation, paid rest, and workplace safety standards during extreme weather events.

Investment in localised worker centered infrastructure– Governments must prioritise tangible, community-level infrastructure like citizen-led early warning systems, much of which should be financed by new taxes on the oil and gas industry. Shade, hydration points and cooling infrastructure at high-risk sites, must become standard in heat-prone districts. The health care system needs to be strengthened to treat heat-related illness.

Embed Worker Voices in Climate Governance– Worker Unions of street vendors, construction workers, gig workers, waste pickers and migrant workers must be formally represented in local and national climate adaptation planning. Policies made without them are policies bound to fail.

We must move from damage to repair, from exploitation to protection. Climate action will only succeed by including those who face its worst impacts. Polluters must pay- investing in worker resilience across South Asia would save life and uphold climate justice.

Selomi Garnaik and G. A. Rumeshi Perera are climate and energy campaigners for Greenpeace, South Asia.

IPS UN Bureau

 


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Categories: Africa

Defence tech innovation is Europe’s ‘Do or Die’ moment

Euractiv.com - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 06:30
Ukraine has shown that modern warfare is a fusion of World War I and World War III – combining trench warfare with cutting-edge technologies. Europe must now master both.
Categories: European Union

Life Below Water Goes Deep: Our Planet’s Greatest Untold Story

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 06:28

Credit: NOAA Photo Library

The third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC 3), scheduled to take place in Nice, France from 9-13 June, will bring together Heads of State, scientists, civil society and business leaders around a single goal: to halt the silent collapse of the planet's largest – and arguably most vital – ecosystem.

By Diva Amon and Lissette Victorero
NICE, France, Jun 2 2025 (IPS)

As David Attenborough reflects in his new documentary Ocean, “After living for nearly 100 years on this planet, I now understand the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea”. We wholeheartedly agree – and urge governments convening at the 3rd United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3) in France next month to remember that life below water goes deep.

Everything below 200 metres – the deep sea – works silently to keep Earth habitable. It’s our planet’s greatest untold story: a living archive of evolution, adaptation, and resilience. This hidden world is not just a scientific wonder, it’s a cornerstone of life.

The deep sea captures a quarter of the carbon dioxide we emit, regulates global temperatures, drives ocean currents, and supports biodiversity that nurtures ocean health, enabling the fisheries that nourish billions.

Despite its importance, the deep sea remains largely unexplored. A recent study revealed that humans have only seen 0.001% of the deep seafloor, an area approximately a tenth of the size of Belgium. Still, even with our limited glimpses, the discoveries are astonishing. Just months ago, scientists off Canada’s coast discovered thousands of glowing golden skate eggs clustered beside an active underwater volcano – an otherworldly nursery never seen before.

The fiery seamount, pulsing with geothermal heat, acts as a natural incubator for skate pups that, like all in the deep, are adapted to crushing pressures and a total absence of sunlight, and continue to challenge our understanding of the limits of life.

And yet, even as we begin to glimpse its mysteries, the deep sea faces destruction.

An unknown realm already under siege

Ancient seamounts, abyssal plains, hydrothermal vents, and more – home to some of nature’s most extraordinary adaptations – face destruction before we’ve even catalogued, understood, or valued their inhabitants. The deep harbours communities that exist nowhere else on Earth; living time capsules that could hold keys to understanding life’s origins or solutions to some of humanity’s greatest challenges.

No wonder many are recognised in global agreements as vulnerable ecosystems, places where special care is most needed to maintain a healthy ocean.

For over 70 years, destructive fishing practices have inflicted extensive damage on the deep, including seamounts. Bottom trawlers drag nets weighted with heavy rollers across the seabed, flattening everything in their path while hunting deep-dwelling fish of extraordinary age and resilience – some over 250 years old.

These practices destroy coral forests and sponge gardens that have grown over centuries or even millennia – ecological cathedrals that may never return. This destruction not only erases ecosystems, it unravels the foundations of complex and connected ocean systems, stripping away vital breeding and feeding grounds.

Meanwhile, a nascent deep-sea mining industry is pushing to open the ocean floor to commercial extraction. Each operation could damage thousands of square kilometres, crush delicate life, create clouds of sediment that can impair breathing, communication, or feeding of ocean species far beyond the mining site, and destroy habitats that have developed over thousands to millions of years.

The destruction of these largely out-of-sight ecosystems doesn’t only just mean the loss of extraordinary and undiscovered species and ecosystems. It means undermining the processes that make life on Earth possible, from climate regulation to food security. And, as with many environmental crises, those already most vulnerable will likely suffer the greatest burden.

A warning from the scientific community.

Since 2004, scientists have been raising the alarm about the destruction of deep-sea ecosystems and the potential knock-on effects, first from bottom trawling, and now from deep-sea mining. Their message remains consistent and urgent: we must understand the deep before we decide to condemn it to ruin.

Today, this warning has become a global call to action. Over 900 marine scientists and policy experts have endorsed a moratorium on deep-sea mining. They are joined by an unprecedented alliance of 33 countries – including France, Palau, Brazil, Germany, Canada, and Samoa – as well as parliamentarians, celebrities, youth leaders, major companies like BMW, Google, and Volvo, and leading financial institutions such as Credit Suisse, Lloyd’s, and NatWest.

This growing coalition underscores a simple truth: the deep sea is too important, fragile, and poorly understood to gamble with.

This June, the One Ocean Science Congress and the monumental UNOC3, in Nice, France, present pivotal opportunities for governments to act. The official focus of UNOC3 is Sustainable Development Goal 14: “Life Below Water”, but this must extend deeper…literally.

Governments must seize this moment to make bold, lasting commitments:

    1) Protect seamounts and other vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems from destructive fishing practices such as bottom trawling.
    2) Implement a moratorium on deep-sea mining until independent scientific studies understand its full ecological cost.
    3) Invest in deep-sea science that is uncoupled from extractive interests.

The choice before us

The science is unequivocal: the deep sea provides essential services critical to all life on Earth. What we stand to gain through understanding this realm far outweighs what we’d earn by destroying it.

As world governments gather in Nice, we face a simple choice: protect our planet’s most mysterious and vital frontier, or exploit it blindly before we even begin to understand what we are losing.

The health of our ocean – and our own well-being – depends on us choosing wisely.

Dr. Diva Amon, a marine biologist, is a researcher and adviser at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the director of SpeSeas, an ocean conservation NGO based in Trinidad and Tobago. She is also a co-lead of the Biodiversity Conservation Task Force of the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative, and SpeSeas is a member of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.

Dr. Lissette Víctorero is a deep-sea ecologist specialised in deep-sea fisheries and the macroecology of vulnerable habitats such as seamounts and hydrothermal vents. She serves as Science Advisor to the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition and co-leads the Fisheries Working Group of the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI).

IPS UN Bureau

 


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Categories: Africa

GA Tapped For Reaper Support | Iran Stepped Up Uranium Production | Taiwan Ramps Up Drone Development

Defense Industry Daily - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 06:00
Americas General Atomics Aeronautical Systems won a $34.8 million deal, which procures Air Vehicle and Ground Control Station spares in support of the successful operational capability of the Marine Air Ground Task Force Unmanned Aircraft System Expeditionary Medium Altitude Long Endurance MQ-9 Reaper air vehicles. Work will be performed in Poway, California, and is expected to be completed in May 2028. Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. Bell Boeing won a $21.9 million deal, which provides for non-recurring efforts for the engineering, component production, supportability, and management necessary to facilitate the incorporation of tailored wiring and structural improvements on the nacelle via forced retrofit at the depot level of maintenance for previously delivered MV-22 Osprey aircraft for the Marine Corps. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas (98.5%); and Ridley Park, Pennsylvania (1.5%), and is expected to be completed in May 2027. Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. Middle East & Africa Iran has further stepped up its production of highly enriched uranium, according to a confidential UN nuclear watchdog report, as Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Saturday that Tehran deems nuclear weapons “unacceptable.” According to the latest report by the International […]
Categories: Defense`s Feeds

Meloni’s latest ‘bridge’: from Europe to Central Asia

Euractiv.com - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 06:00
The Italian prime minister said EU initaitves in the region were "promising and fascinating".
Categories: European Union

Polish presidential result spells trouble for Tusk

Euractiv.com - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 05:51
For Law and Justice, Nawrocki's win offers renewed hope of clawing back power.
Categories: European Union

Unpacking the South African land law that so inflames Trump

BBC Africa - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 02:50
The law allows for land to be seized without compensation in rare cases and 'in the public interest'.
Categories: Africa

Unpacking the South African land law that so inflames Trump

BBC Africa - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 02:50
The law allows for land to be seized without compensation in rare cases and 'in the public interest'.
Categories: Africa

Un nouvel ambassadeur pour remplacer Gildas Agonkan

24 Heures au Bénin - Mon, 06/02/2025 - 01:18

Le ministre béninois des Affaires étrangères, Olushegun Adjadi Bakari, a donné des précisions sur le sort de Gildas Agonkan, ambassadeur du Bénin au Niger, rappelé pour consultation.

Rappelé du Niger suite à des propos controversés sur les relations bilatérales, l'ambassadeur du Bénin, Gildas Agonkan sera remplacé dans les prochains jours.

Cotonou procédera à la « nomination d'un nouvel ambassadeur », selon les propos tenus par le ministre béninois des Affaires étrangères Olushegun Adjadi Bakari, ce 1er juin 2025, sur l' « Entretien Grand Format » de Bip radio.

Lors d'une cérémonie à Gaya, au Niger, le 1er février 2025, Gildas Agonkan a présenté des excuses publiques au peuple nigérien au nom des autorités béninoises, évoquant des "choses graves" ayant engendré des "sacrifices" et des "problèmes" à Gaya. Ces propos ont été perçus à Cotonou comme une reconnaissance implicite des accusations nigériennes selon lesquelles le Bénin aurait soutenu des actions déstabilisatrices contre le régime en place à Niamey.
M. M.

Categories: Afrique

Exposition : Bucarest, mon amour. Trente ans après

Courrier des Balkans - Sun, 06/01/2025 - 23:59

27 mars – 1 juin 2025 | Vernissage le 27 mars 2025 à 19h
Galerie Macadam de l'Institut culturel roumain | 1 rue de l'Exposition, 75007 Paris
En 1994, une journaliste française venue pour la première fois à Bucarest y prenait en photo des lieux insolites. Trente ans et maintes visites après, devenue une spécialiste reconnue du domaine littéraire roumain, elle revient sur ses pas, l'appareil photo à la main. Ses images en noir et blanc racontent une histoire d'amour. Un amour qui dure (…)

- Agenda / ,
Categories: Balkans Occidentaux

172 agents de l'Etat dont 9 handicapés à recruter au MEF

24 Heures au Bénin - Sun, 06/01/2025 - 23:32

Le ministère du travail et de la fonction publique organise les samedi 19 et dimanche 20 juillet 2025, un concours direct et/ou externes de recrutement de 172 fonctionnaires de l'Etat dont 9 personnes en situation de handicap au profit du ministère de l'économie et des finances.
Dans le cadre de ce concours qui vise à renforcer les capacités du ministère de l'économie et des finances, il sera procédé au recrutement de 25 élèves contrôleurs budgétaires dont 01 personne en situation de handicap ; et 11 élèves fonctionnaires de l'Etat et 136 fonctionnaires de l'Etat dont 08 personnes en situation de handicap.
Le communiqué du ministère du travail

Categories: Afrique

La rencontre entre les Guépards et leurs supporters (en images)

24 Heures au Bénin - Sun, 06/01/2025 - 23:30

C'est dans une ambiance conviviale et festive que les Guépards du Bénin ont rencontré le public sportif béninois, samedi 31 mai 2025, au Centre Éya, situé à Akpakpa à Cotonou. Echanges, photos, dédicaces et partage ont été les temps forts de ce moment de communion entre la sélection nationale et ses supporters.
Quelques images de la rencontre

Categories: Afrique

« Changing Diabetes in Children », nouvelle initiative pour les enfants atteints de diabète de type 1

Algérie 360 - Sun, 06/01/2025 - 22:50

Une nouvelle étape a vu le jour dans la lutte contre le diabète infantile en Algérie. Le Ministère de la Santé et Novo Nordisk Algérie […]

L’article « Changing Diabetes in Children », nouvelle initiative pour les enfants atteints de diabète de type 1 est apparu en premier sur .

Categories: Afrique

Fonction publique : changement des horaires de travail dans 20 wilayas à partir du 1ᵉʳ juin

Algérie 360 - Sun, 06/01/2025 - 22:14

À l’approche de la saison estivale, les autorités algériennes ont annoncé une adaptation des horaires de travail dans les wilayas du Sud et du Grand […]

L’article Fonction publique : changement des horaires de travail dans 20 wilayas à partir du 1ᵉʳ juin est apparu en premier sur .

Categories: Afrique

Bereits zwei Tote nach Champions-League-Final: Erneut Ausschreitungen vor PSG-Feier im Parc des Princes in Paris

Blick.ch - Sun, 06/01/2025 - 22:11
Nachdem es bereits am Samstagabend zu Ausschreitungen in der französischen Hauptstadt kam, ist die Pariser Polizei am Sonntag vor einer speziellen Feier im Parc des Princes erneut gefordert.
Categories: Swiss News

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