By Gaurav Pant* NEW DELHI | 7June 2024 (IDN) — According to the WHO, pollution globally claims over 7 million lives annually of which more than 2 million are in India. It also has an enormous social and environmental cost, both tangible and intangible, and creates significant challenges for any society to achieve a circular […]
Indians Reject Majoritarian Hindu Politics Though Modi Returns to Power
By Bharat Bhushan* NEW DELHI | 6 June 2024 (IDN) — Despite his reluctance to concede defeat, the results of the Indian general election are a major setback for outgoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His party, the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), has failed to secure a majority on its own. The BJP has heavily lost […]
The Specter of Nuclear Conflict Continues to Haunt
By Daryl G. Kimball The writer is the Executive Director of the Arms Control Association (ACA). The following article appears as the Focus of the June 2024 issue of Arms Control Today. WASHINGTON, D.C. | 6 Jun 2024 (IDN) — Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale, illegal, and brutal assault on Ukraine in […]
First Korea-Africa Summit Paves Way for A New Era of Cooperation
By Taro Ichikawa TOKYO | SEOUL | 6 June 2024 (IDN) — Three decades after Japan organised the First International Conference on African Development (TICAD)—in collaboration with the United Nations, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the African Union Commission (AUC), and the World Bank—its immediate neighbour and former colony (South) Korea convened its first […]
Mexico Elects First Woman President with A Thumping Majority
By Yesko Quiroga* MEXICO CITY | 5 June 2024 (IDN) — It came as no surprise that Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was elected Mexico’s new president on Sunday (June 2). For a year now, the candidate of the ruling coalition has had a lead of between 50 and 60 per cent in most polls. The surprise […]
Jayantha Dhanapala: An Outstanding Practitioner of Multilateralism at its Best—Part 2
By HMGS Palihakkara* Read Part 1: https://indepthnews.net/jayantha-dhanapala-an-outstanding-practitioner-of-multilateralism-at-its-best-part-1/ COLOMBO | 5 June 2024 (IDN) — On the challenge of Artificial Intelligence (AI), there is an animated ongoing discourse about the vistas of material advances AI promises as well as the dangers it can morph into. The human penchant to weaponise almost every technology they invent is […]
Jayantha Dhanapala: An Outstanding Practitioner of Multilateralism at its Best—Part 1
By HMGS Palihakkara* COLOMBO | 4 June 2024 (IDN) — May 27 marked the first year since we lost that voice of reason and warmth—our dear friend and respected senior colleague, Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala. The person as well as the persona of JD, as we used to call him fondly, meant many things to most […]
Still a Few More Chapters to be Written Before Guantánamo Disappears
By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 4 June 2024 (IDN) — “Guantánamo has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the law”. Did you say that? Did I? No. It was the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, speaking in June 2014. How come that the most powerful […]
Promotion of Technology Will Not Help the Poor to Access Water
By Kalinga Seneviratne BANGKOK | 4 June 2024 (IDN) — The recently concluded 10th World Water Forum (WWF) in the Indonesian tourism island of Bali focused on adoption of technology—that will include desalination plants and solar power—as the savior to provide safe drinking water to millions of the poor communities across the world. But activists […]
Debate Brews Over New National Anthem Adopted by Nigerian President
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK | 3 June 2024 (IDN) — Nigerian President Bola Tinubu hardly anticipated a dust up when he signed a law restoring the country’s 1960 anthem “Nigeria We Hail Thee”—and deleting “Arise O Compatriots”—a tune written by a group of Nigerians in 1978 in the aftermath of a […]