Tag Archives: health
UN says nearly 93,000 killed in Syrian conflict
UN says nearly 93,000 killed in Syrian conflict (AP) / 13 June 2013 Syria’s upwardly spiraling violence has resulted in the confirmed killings of almost 93,000 people, the United Nations’ human rights office said Thursday but acknowledged the real number is likely to be far higher. A new analysis of the Syrian death toll documented 92,901 killings between March 2011 and the end of April 2013. But the U.N.’s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, who oversees the Geneva-based office, said it was impossible to provide an exact current figure. The last such analysis, released in January, documented nearly 60,000 killings through the end of November. Since then, U.N. officials had estimated higher numbers. The latest figures add more confirmed killings to the previous time period, and find almost 27,000 more between December and April. “The constant flow of killings continues at shockingly high levels, with more than 5,000 killings documented every month since last July,” said Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. “This is most likely a minimum casualty figure. The true number of those killed is potentially much higher.” Among the victims were at least 6,561 children, including 1,729 children younger than 10. “There are also well-documented cases of individual children being tortured and executed, and entire families including babies being massacred — which, along with this devastatingly high death toll, is a terrible reminder of just how vicious this conflict has become,” Pillay said. Her office commissioned San Francisco-based nonprofit Human Rights Data Analysis Group to study eight data sets provided by various groups containing 263,000 reported killings. Those lacking a name, date and location of death were excluded, and some duplicates were found. The figures trace the arc of violence. Since the start of the peaceful protests against President Bashar Assad in March 2011, which turned into an armed rebellion and then morphed into civil war, the average monthly number of documented killings has risen from around 1,000 per month in the summer of 2011 to an average of more than 5,000 per month since last July. At its height from July to October 2012, the number of killings rose above 6,000 per month. “Civilians are bearing the brunt of widespread, violent and often indiscriminate attacks which are devastating whole swaths of major towns and cities, as well as outlying villages,” Pillay said. “Government forces are shelling and launching aerial attacks on urban areas day in and day out, and are also using strategic missiles and cluster and thermobaric bombs. Opposition forces have also shelled residential areas, albeit using less fire-power, and there have been multiple bombings resulting in casualties in the heart of cities, especially Damascus.” The vast majority of the victims are male, but three-quarters of the reported killings do not indicate a person’s age, and the analysis could not differentiate between fighters and non-combatants. The most documented killings were in rural Damascus, with 17,800 people dead. Next were Homs, with 16,400; Aleppo, 11,900; and Idlib, 10,300. Continue reading
Global Carbon Trading System Needs Urgent Support Warns UN chair
7 June 2013, 1:27 pm By Ed King The world’s main system of carbon trading needs urgent support from governments if it is to continue functioning effectively and give developing countries access to green technologies. The UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has 6900 registered projects in 86 countries, and has issued 1.3 billion certified emission reductions (CERs) since its launch. One CER is the equivalent to a tonne of carbon dioxide. But falling demand for these credits and a lack of policy clarity from governments has left the CDM struggling, with prices dropping by 90%. CDM Executive Board chair Peer Stiansen told a meeting at the UN climate talks in Bonn he was happy with the integrity of the mechanism, but said the global economic outlook and struggling EU emissions trading system indicated there would be no quick fix. “We have proved we can deliver on scale, and that is an important achievement, because we need scalability for this mechanism,” he said. “But currently we are seeing low demand in CERs, which rests in low prices and lack of incentives. It is very frustrating, and we’re seeing the market cannot continue for project developers, and many are leaving.” CDM projects aim to develop low carbon solutions in developing part of the world (Photo: Curt Carnemark/World Bank) Last September a panel set up to assess the health of the CDM warned that allowing it to fail would make it harder to raise finance in the future to help developing countries cut carbon. Joan MacNaughton, vice chair of the high level panel and a former UK civil servant, told the Guardian : “The carbon market is profoundly weak, and the CDM has essentially collapsed. It’s extremely worrying that governments are not taking this seriously.” New restrictions on what types of projects would be accepted by the CDM were introduced at the end of 2012, leading to a spike in applications before that came into effect. Since then Stiansen says they have fallen to around 20 a month. It’s a substantial drop compared to previous years, and the chairman suggested it was indicative of the current uncertainty in the markets over the global desire to pursue a low carbon agenda. “We hope this will be a temporary dip and that countries will move and make decisions to create more demand,” he said. “In 2014 there is a provisional step-up of ambition on the Kyoto Protocol, and positive movements in the ADP [talks on a global emissions deal in 2015] would hopefully raise expectations and raise more demand.” The UN is taking steps to simplify what critics say has become a complicated and lengthy application process. Stiansen said the initial registration and review process on new submissions will be streamlined to just over two weeks. The CDM has also opened three offices in Africa, with a fourth planned in the Carribbean, to promote applications from those regions. “What we have to offer is our moral support. The ones who can take action would be the parties – such as voluntary cancelation of CERs,” he said. “It is limited what the board can do. I want to re-emphasise this is a problem of demand – I do not see this as a problem of supply.” Stiansen’s bleak forecast is shared by analysts, some of whom fear continued lack of demand could hit investment in green development projects in poorer parts of the world. Anja Kollmuss from Carbon Market Watch told RTCC the CDM board has to tighten its application process to ensure projects are environmentally acceptable, but admits that unless governments took steps to drive demand the short-term outlook is bleak. One hope is that a possible aviation emissions agreement could boost demand for CERs. Earlier this week the world’s leading airlines called on governments to agree to a new greenhouse gas offsetting scheme for the aviation industry. “What may happen is that if ICAO [international aviation body] comes to an aviation agreement and they do agree on a market-based mechanism there might be an increase in demand from aviation – but this wouldn’t start till 2020. “I’m not too optimistic that anything will change anytime soon in terms of prices in the CDM” Continue reading
Circuit Factory: On the circuit to fitness
On the circuit to fitness Nivriti Butalia / 8 June 2013 ‘Cooler than Cavalli’, ‘The Challenge’, ‘Male Breast Awareness programme’, ‘Time to Speak the Truth’, ‘Social life? Please. I work out’ are all headers on the website of Circuit Factory, a large gym equipment-packed tin-roofed warehouse in Al Quoz Industrial Area, where there exist equal measures of dust and sweat. The tagline of The Circuit Factory, at least on their Facebook page and website, is ‘Most Powerful Weight Loss System In The Sandpit Babes’ (sic). Fitness enthusiasts work out at Circuit Factory in Al Quoz. — Supplied photo You could call it a gymnasium. But that might be similar to calling the Burj Khalifa a skyscraper — there is the risk of underestimation as scales aren’t quite gauged. Owned by the Al Tayer group, and with 3,000 members, Circuit Factory is a towel-toting community of fitness enthusiasts, who by their mere attendance are committed to pushing their bodies to the outer reaches of its comfort zone, and then tipping over. They have a mission, part of which is “to transform people’s lives by proving that great health and a great body is neither complicated nor inaccessible”. Upon showing up, a trainer very quickly writes your name on a sheet of paper and you’re made to sign a disclaimer that states you have no medical issues, and which presumably absolves the guys at the warehouse of any responsibility. Broken bones, stiffened mus cles, shattered nerves – all at your own risk. Perhaps the piece of paper should be more than perfunctorily glanced at. But the tempo is bustling. All around you people in various kinds of gym-gear are making a bee line for one end of the tin shed. Everyone is assembling. There must be two dozen people at a start line for what seems like a race start. Trainers are shouting. There is a nervous chaos – unless that’s what they call adrenalin. It’s a run alright — a kilometre and a half outside, cutting past other warehouses and stretches of dusty roads, traversing the less-frequented roads. There are fellow circuit trainers, much more athletic, all whizzing past. The sound and fury of rubber-soled footsteps pervades your ears. Trainers yell ‘Go! Go! Go!’ amid other shorthand codes of encouragement. You feel any minute now Nicholas Cage is going to swoop down from a loud hovering chopper, dangle down a rope ladder, ask for your hand and rescue you or that is, at least, the prayer. The run is only the first bit. And apparently there are variations in every class. Once you finish running the seemingly interminable stretch of dust-road, it’s back into the warehouse for more muscle-torture. Hamid, the trainer, says after the day’s training: “The first day is the hardest.” He also provides the assurance, the careful distinction, that no, it doesn’t get easier, it gets better. You tell Hamid the purpose of your attendance is a battle against belly fat. He tosses you a circuit-factory aphorism: weightloss is 80 per cent food, 20 per cent exercise. The run is succeeded by a circuit — repetitions of squats and strides and jumps and thrusts. ‘Burpees’( squat thrusts) seems to be a favourite. By the second repetition, it’s heartening to see most fellow trainees dissolve into puddles of sweat. People’s sizes vary. The fat and the marginally fat trot –if not alongside, at least somewhere in the orbit of the gazelle-like Adonis figures who seem to be not just surviving, but doing so with a stoic, sculpted grace. People you both dislike and yearn to be. Circuit Training is not everyone’s cup of tea, but the results show. The trainers assure you that if you keep at it, you’ll become one of them in no time – a top of the class figure, soaked-in-sweat with calves of steel. For more info see: circuitfactory.ae/classes.php nivriti@khaleejtimes.com Continue reading
