International

Image: Nearly 39,500 people sought asylum in Switzerland last year, making it one of Europe’s top seven destinations in terms of asylum requests per resident (Keystone). Voters have backed government plans to speed up asylum procedures in Switzerland. Proponents say the reforms will make the system fairer for all. On Sunday, 66.8% of voters backed […]

(A boat filled with refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean floats off the coast of Italy.   © Italian Navy/Masimo Sestini) By: Adrian Edwards in Geneva and Medea Savary in Italy. GENEVA, May 31 (UNHCR) – At least 880 people are believed to have drowned last week in a spate of shipwrecks and boat capsizings on […]

New York. May 26, 2016–The NGO Committee of the United Nations voted today to deny the Committee to Protect Journalists consultative status with the Economic Social Council (ECOSOC). Without such status, CPJ is unable to access U.N. bodies and processes, notably the Human Rights Council in Geneva, where accredited NGOs can deliver a counter-narrative to […]

(Helen Clark is one of the leading candidates to succeed Ban Ki-moon, but critics inside Turtle Bay say she’s weakening the U.N.’s promotion of human rights.) By Colum Lynch. Helen Clark, the U.N.’s development czar, has emerged as a front-runner in the race for U.N. secretary-general, inspiring international hopes that a powerful woman could lead […]

By P.K.Balachandran COLOMBO: Buddhist heritage is emerging as a major plank in Asian diplomacy. South, South East and East Asian countries are using Buddhism and their Buddhist heritage to build bridges with each other, going beyond traditional parameters like geographic proximity and strategic and economic necessity. India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first […]

(Trump … ‘I’m not sure he knows what he thinks’ Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters) As he appears in new documentary The Divide, the great intellectual explains why Brexit is unimportant, why Trump’s climate change denial is catastrophic – and why revolution is easier than you think. by Leo Benedictus. Have you seen The Divide, the British […]

US ambassador says move by Organization of Islamic Cooperation represents an ‘epidemic and severely damages the credibility of the UN’ Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, said the move was part of a larger trend ‘to block the participation of NGOs on spurious or hidden grounds’. A group of 51 Muslim states has […]

EXCLUSIVE by JAMES MILLS.  BEYONCE’S new high street sportswear range for Topshop is made using sweat shop labour earning just £4.30 a day, we can reveal.The revelation heaps more pressure on under-fire fashion tycoon Sir Philip Green, who faces a grilling from MPs about his role in the collapse of BHS. The chain’s demise put […]

Recent data show Sanders has double-digit lead in support over Republican candidate while Clinton would face tight race. Sanders has performed best in “open” primaries, which independent voters are allowed to participate in [EPA] By Ryan Rifai. Recent polls have demonstrated that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders holds a much higher potential to defeat Donald […]

Presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte speaks to supporters during an election campaign rally ahead of the presidential and vice presidential elections, in Manila on May 7, 2016 (AFP Photo/Mohd Rasfan) Ayee Macaraig. Manila (AFP) – Anti-establishment firebrand Rodrigo Duterte stormed to a huge win in the Philippine presidential elections, according to poll monitor data released Tuesday, […]

By A. O. SCOTTMAY 5, 2016. Jacques Audiard’s “Dheepan,” which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes a year ago, arrives in North American theaters having lost none of the timeliness that was widely noted last May. Screening in the South of France a few months after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, as the Syrian refugee problem […]

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the South Asia Media Solidarity Network (SAMSN) marked World Press Freedom Day by releasing The Road to Resilience: Press Freedom in South Asia 2015-16. The 14th annual report documents the press freedom situation, national and regional activities to empower journalists and capsule reports on important issues of South […]

New Delhi, April 23 (IANS) Prominent journalists, activists and scholars from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, the US and other countries have urged the Nepal government to release well-known journalist, Himal editor Kanak Mani Dixit, saying he was a courageous voice for transparency and freedom of expression in Nepal and across South Asia. “It is with deep […]

(Solar Impulse 2 flying over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California0- Keystone) Solar Impulse 2, the Swiss solar-powered plane, landed in California on Saturday, completing a risky three-day flight across the Pacific Ocean as part of its journey around the world. Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View, in […]

By Story Hinckley. Bernie Sanders says actor George Clooney, an outspoken Hillary Clinton supporter, is backing the wrong presidential candidate. George Clooney admits that he has raised for an “obscene” amount of money for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton through fundraising efforts directed at the financial elite, something that Sen. Sanders has decried throughout his […]

  (Marina Walker Guevara, deputy director of ICIJ, talks with Le Monde reporters at the organization’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., on January 22, 2015. Photo credit: © Melissa Golden/Redux ) by Maria Teresa Ronderos & Algirdas Lipstas. As the traditional media business model crumbles, leading to massive layoffs in newsrooms—with investigative journalism teams often among […]

( Killed in a face encounter) LUCKNOW, INDIA // A special court in India has sentenced 47 policemen to life in prison for killing a group of Sikh pilgrims in 1991 whom they had claimed were militants, a prosecutor said on Tuesday. The officers were convicted of shooting dead the pilgrims to try and earn […]

By Claire Lauterbach We do agree with Ramon Fonseca about one thing: that “Each person has a right to privacy, whether they are a king or a beggar.” But that’s where our commonality with co-founder of disgraced Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca ends. Last year, a whistleblower leaked 11.5 million documents about the firm’s business […]

For some Americans, Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of a global elite which benefits from tax avoidance schemes. Bernie Sanders, her opponent, is its antithesis  by Matthew Turner The revelation that the rich and wealthy are shovelling money in overseas tax havens is not a particularly surprising one. Nevertheless, the sheer scale of the 11.5 million document leak […]

(Campaign by mothers) BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will honor victims of Argentina’s “Dirty War” on Thursday, the 40th anniversary of a military coup that led to a seven-year crackdown against Marxist rebels, labor unions and leftist opponents. Obama described the 1976-1983 dictatorship, during which the Argentine security forces killed up to 30,000 […]

(Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo A poster features portraits of Cuba’s President Raul Castro, left, and President Barack Obama and reads in Spanish “Welcome to Cuba” outside a restaurant in Havana, Cuba, March 17, 2016. ) When President Obama arrives in Cuba on Sunday, he will be the first sitting president in nearly 90 years to set […]

( Image:Denmark lost to Switzerland in the 2015 version of the World Happiness Report but was named the happiest country once again in this year’s report (AFP Photo/Sophia Juliane Lydolph)   New York (AFP) – Denmark, closely followed by Switzerland, is the happiest country in the world while crisis-torn Syria and Burundi are the most […]

BERLIN (Reuters) – Critics of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policies called on her to change course after voters in three regional elections punished her conservatives and flocked to a new anti-immigration party that wants German borders closed. Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) lost support in all three states – the industrial state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, the […]

 by Nick Reilly in discover This is the ‘Still Not Asking For It’ photo series by photographer Rory Banwell. And it’s taking a brilliant stand against sexual assault and the so-called rape culture in Australia. The photographs show a series of men and women standing topless with black tape covering their nipples alongside powerful messages scrawled on […]

by Emily Crockett on March 8, 2016. March 8 is International Women’s Day, celebrated in today’s Google Doodle with a video asking women all over the world to finish the sentence, “One day I will…” The answers run the gamut from personal dreams like “play in the Major Leagues” to more global aspirations like Malala […]

Amnesty International says it has traced cobalt used in batteries for household brands to mines in DRC, where children work in life-threatening conditions   A cobalt mine between Lubumbashi and Kolwezi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photograph: Federico Scoppa/AFP/Getty Images Modern-day slavery in focus is supported by: Humanity United /Annie Kelly Children as […]

By H.K. Seneviratne, LL.B, Attorney-at-Law– A way out from the constitutional impasse Former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva setting forth an argument that constitutional obstacles do exist for the incumbent President to contest for a third term notwithstanding the removal of two term limit of presidents made on 9 September 2010 by way of the […]

Ravaya, an alternative Sinhala language weekly, which has been campaigning for a democratic governance and minority rights for more than 25 years has now published a public appeal for signatures for what it calls a Public Petition for Reforms in the light of impending presidential election within few months time. The petition is calling these […]

[High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré] 22 October 2014 – At the root of crises confronted by the United Nations usually lies a “complex web” of violations of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights requiring solutions that can only come from more emphatic and comprehensive protections, the Organization’s […]

It gives me great pleasure to speak to you today as part of this distinguished panel. I wish to thank the International Association of Tamil Journalists – or IATAJ – which has organised this forum. I also wish to thank the individual sponsors who back this effort through their varied contributions, all coming together to […]