1 UN compares net surveillance to apartheid (Haroon Siddique in The Guardian)
The UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, has compared the uproar in the
international community caused by revelations of mass surveillance with
the collective response that helped bring down the apartheid regime in
South Africa. Pillay has been asked by the UN
to prepare a report on protection of the right to privacy, in the wake
of the former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden leaking
classified documents about UK and US spying and the collection of personal data.
The former international criminal court judge said her encounters with serious human rights abuses did not make her take online privacy less seriously. “I don’t grade human rights,” she said. “I feel I have to look after and promote the rights of all persons. I’m not put off by the lifetime experience of violations I have seen.”
She said apartheid ended in South Africa principally because the international community co-operated to denounce it, adding: “Combined and collective action by everybody can end serious violations of human rights … That experience inspires me to go on and address the issue of internet [privacy], which right now is extremely troubling because the revelations of surveillance have implications for human rights … People are really afraid that all their personal details are being used in violation of traditional national protections.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/26/un-navi-pillay-internet-privacy
2 ‘Airpocalyspe’ in China (Khaleej Times) The alarming increase in air pollution levels in Chinese cities and the spurt in the number of lung cancer cases in the country have forced many local authorities to impose curbs on new car registrations. Tianjin, a city with nearly 15 million people and about 2.35 million registered vehicles, is the latest to crack down on new registrations. Authorities in the coastal city near Beijing will not issue more than 100,000 new car plates a year.
3 French jobless at 3.29m (Straits Times) France’s number
of registered jobseekers rose by 17,800 in November to 3.29 million,
the labour ministry said, challenging government claims to have bucked a
trend of spiralling unemployment. Labour Minister Michel Sapin
claimed President Francois Hollande’s pledge to curb growing
joblessness by the year’s end was still on track, if part-time and
short-term workers were added to the total number of jobseekers.
That number actually fell by 6,900 to 4.87 million if those workers were factored in, prompting Mr Sapin to say that the reversal of the upward trend is “well and truly under course in the fourth quarter.” “The number of jobless will continue to decrease in the coming months,” he said. A slight fall in the number of unemployed for October, of 20,500, had raised government hopes France’s years-long jobless crisis may be finally drawing to an end.
The former international criminal court judge said her encounters with serious human rights abuses did not make her take online privacy less seriously. “I don’t grade human rights,” she said. “I feel I have to look after and promote the rights of all persons. I’m not put off by the lifetime experience of violations I have seen.”
She said apartheid ended in South Africa principally because the international community co-operated to denounce it, adding: “Combined and collective action by everybody can end serious violations of human rights … That experience inspires me to go on and address the issue of internet [privacy], which right now is extremely troubling because the revelations of surveillance have implications for human rights … People are really afraid that all their personal details are being used in violation of traditional national protections.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/26/un-navi-pillay-internet-privacy
2 ‘Airpocalyspe’ in China (Khaleej Times) The alarming increase in air pollution levels in Chinese cities and the spurt in the number of lung cancer cases in the country have forced many local authorities to impose curbs on new car registrations. Tianjin, a city with nearly 15 million people and about 2.35 million registered vehicles, is the latest to crack down on new registrations. Authorities in the coastal city near Beijing will not issue more than 100,000 new car plates a year.
Other
Chinese cities including the capital Beijing, Shanghai, Guiyang and
Guangzhou have slapped such curbs on new vehicle registrations. With a
population of 20 million and with more than 5.3 million vehicles on its
roads, officials in the Chinese capital decided to issue just 240,000
car registrations through a lottery every year. Guangzhou, a city of 16
million people — with 2.4 million cars on its roads — also imposed a
ceiling of 120,000 new registrations of small and mid-sized cars.
In
October, the authorities had to virtually shut down the northeastern
city of Harbin following an ‘airpocalypse’, when readings of fine
particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5, which refers to particles smaller than
2.5 microns in diameter, and considered to be among the worst
pollutants) touched a shockingly high level of 24-hour exposure of 1,000
micrograms per cubic metre in some parts of the city, which is about
4,000 per cent higher than the WHO’s recommendations of 24-hour exposure
of 25 micrograms per cubic metre.
Beijing
too suffered an ‘airpocalypse’ earlier in the year when the PM 2.5
reading almost touched the 1,000-mark. The US Environmental Protection
Agency has an air quality index of just 500; anything above it is
classified as being in the ‘beyond index’ category. Many Chinese cities
now routinely report pollution levels in this category. The American
agency describes any reading higher than 300 as an emergency condition.
With such nasty air pollution levels, authorities in China have a major
clean-up task on hand.
That number actually fell by 6,900 to 4.87 million if those workers were factored in, prompting Mr Sapin to say that the reversal of the upward trend is “well and truly under course in the fourth quarter.” “The number of jobless will continue to decrease in the coming months,” he said. A slight fall in the number of unemployed for October, of 20,500, had raised government hopes France’s years-long jobless crisis may be finally drawing to an end.
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