BY UN NEWS
More than a hundred countries are intervening in a Special Emergency Session of the General Assembly seeking a resolution on the crisis in Gaza, after the Security Council has failed four times.
Jordan, representing the group of Arab States, has presented a resolution to the Assembly that, unlike those of the Council, is not binding, but political.
BY UN NEWS
In one week, more than 100,000 people arrived in Armenia from Karabakh, including around 30,000 children. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is among humanitarian agencies mobilized to help the refugees.
Read More “UNICEF in Armenia creates safe spaces for children from Karabakh”
BY EURONEWS
Less than a two-hour drive from where families sleep in tents and earthquake rubble remain in piles, the world’s most powerful financial institutions are gathering for a week of discussions on economic challenges during times of war, inequality and climate change.
Read More “Morocco welcomes annual IMF-World Bank meeting a month after deadly earthquake”
By “Peace News “
01 JUN 2023
Hundreds of peace activists protested outside USAF Lakenheath in Suffolk on 20 May, demanding that the US keep its nuclear weapons out of Britain.
By Radina Gigova, CNN
On June 6, Ukraine suffered an environmental catastrophe. The collapse of the Kakhovka dam in the south of the country sent water thundering downstream, killing more than 100 people according to Ukrainian officials. It wiped out villages, flooded farmland and nature reserves, and swept up pollutants like oil and agricultural chemicals as it made its destructive path towards the Black Sea.
The causes of the collapse have yet to be established – whether it was targeted as part of Russia’s war in Ukraine, or whether it was a structural failure – but what is certain is that it is one of the biggest ecological disasters Europe has seen in the last few decades.
And Ukraine is calling it “ecocide.”
Read More “Greta Thunberg has accused Russia of ‘ecocide’ in Ukraine. But what does that mean?”
Amnesty accuses Spain and Morocco of cover-up over Melilla enclave migrant deaths
By Joan Faus
BARCELONA, June 23 (Reuters) – (This June 22 story has been corrected to fix the year to 2022 from 2002 in paragraph 2)
Amnesty International on Friday accused Spain and Morocco of a cover-up for failing to properly investigate events at the border of the Spanish enclave of Melilla last year, when tens of migrants and refugees died during a mass attempted crossing.
On June 24, 2022, around 2,000 Sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees attempted to enter Spain’s North African enclave from Morocco. At least 37 died and at least 76 are still missing, the NGO said.
Read More “Amnesty accuses Spain and Morocco of cover-up over Melilla enclave migrant deaths”
Some people live to be well beyond 100. But what genes and environmental factors contribute to such extreme longevity, and what can we learn from other long-lived animals? Read More “Extreme longevity: The secret to living longer may be hiding with nuns… and jellyfish”
KYIV, 25 May 2023 – An increasingly regular barrage of night-time missiles hitting Ukraine is causing children and families significant distress, and putting their lives at risk, Save the Children said today. Read More “Ukraine: Sleeping children at risk of death and injury in new wave of night-time attacks”
Two catastrophic earthquakes struck Türkiye and Syria on 6 February, killing thousands of people and injuring many more, with the numbers expected to rise as rescuers scramble to pull survivors from the rubble in freezing conditions.
By Zoe Sottile, CNN
(CNN)–YouTube superstar MrBeast is making the world clearer – for at least 1,000 people.
The content creator’s latest stunt is paying for cataract removal for 1,000 people who were blind or near-blind but could not afford the surgery.
“We’re curing a thousand people’s blindness,” says MrBeast – real name Jimmy Donaldson – in the Saturday video, which reached over 32 million views as of Sunday afternoon.
The video features touching before-and-after footage of patients seeing with clear vision after finishing the surgery. The YouTuber also gave cash donations and other gifts to some of the participants.
Jeff Levenson, an ophthalmologist and surgeon, worked with Donaldson to perform the first round of surgeries in Jacksonville, Florida. Levenson has coordinated the “Gift of Sight” program for over 20 years, which provides free cataract surgery for uninsured patients who are legally blind due to cataracts.
“Half of all blindness in the world is people who need a 10-minute surgery,” Levenson says in the video, referring to the cataract removal surgery.
Levenson explained to CNN he became inspired to help people access cataract surgery after undergoing his own cataract correction surgery.
“In the days and weeks after my own cataract surgery, I was stunned by how bright and beautiful and vivid the world was,” he said. “But I was shocked by the idea that there are hundreds of millions, probably 200 million people around the world, who are blind or nearly blind from cataracts and who don’t have access to the surgery.”
Levenson got a call from a member of Donaldson’s team in September. “I had never heard of MrBeast,” he said. “So I almost hung up. But I gratefully did not hang up.”
They started by calling homeless shelters and free clinics to create a list of patients in the Jacksonville area who needed cataract surgery but could not afford it. Eventually, they had a group of 40 patients – and Levenson performed all of their surgeries in a single day, starting at 7 a.m. and ending at 6 p.m.
Levenson said that patients were in “disbelief that somebody would actually seek them out to to rescue them from blindness, and then have the kindness and generosity of spirit to offer the surgery.”
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The ophthalmologist also connected Donaldson’s team with SEE International, for which he serves as the chief medical officer. The nonprofit provides free eyecare around the world to patients in need. The organization helped Donaldson reach even more patients, for a total of 1,000 surgeries completed around three weeks. The video shows patients receiving the surgery in Jamaica, Honduras, Namibia, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Vietnam and Kenya.
Levenson said he hopes the video and Donaldson’s generosity inspire “a concerted effort to end needless blindness.”
“If MrBeast can light a fire, and if we can get governmental and private support behind it, we can end half of all the blindness in the world,” he said. “Without all that much cost, and with incredible gains in human productivity and human potential.”
Source: edition.cnn
