Australia: Support Citizens Wrongfully Held Abroad

(Sydney) – The Australian government should develop a clear policy on identifying and addressing cases of wrongful detention of Australian nationals abroad, Human Rights Watch said in a recent submission to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Reference Committee. The Committee is currently reviewing the Australian government’s responses to the wrongful detention of Australian citizens […]

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EU releases €1.1 million emergency assistance for flood victims in Bangladesh

The Commission has released €1.1 million in humanitarian aid after devastating floods hit Bangladesh in recent weeks.  This funding complements the ongoing distribution of hygiene and sanitary items, shelter tools, and kitchen sets from EU-funded emergency stockpiles. The funding announced today comes in addition to over €33.5 million already allocated in EU humanitarian assistance to […]

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World News in Brief: West Bank deaths, Venezuela rights violations, soaring debt worldwide

Israel’s large-scale operation in the north is continuing, OCHA said in a daily news update, which accounts for 27 of the deaths “where lethal war-like tactics” have been deployed, according to humanitarians, including 10 killed by airstrikes. “Four members of the Israeli forces have been killed in the same period by Palestinians in Hebron and […]

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Air Pollution Threatens Health and Drives Climate Change

September 7 is the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies. Each year, an estimated seven million people around the world are killed by effects from air pollution, which include cancer, strokes, and heart and lung diseases. Around 99 percent of the world’s population lives in locations with air quality exceeding limits set by the World […]

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First delivery of mpox vaccine doses from the Commission arrive today in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Today, close to 100,000 mpox vaccine doses will arrive in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), making these the first delivery of the vaccine to the country. A second delivery amounting to around 100,000 vaccines is expected to arrive in the coming days. These vaccines are part of the 215,000 MVA-BN® vaccine doses that […]

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UN rights chief calls for global ‘zero tolerance’ against antisemitism

This comes just a day after the UN human rights office (OHCHR) issued a statement expressing horror over the reported summary execution of six Israeli hostages who were among those abducted by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups during the 7 October terror attacks. Their bodies were recovered by the Israeli military over the weekend, from a […]

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Movie Based on Migrant Worker’s Life Faces Backlash in Saudi Arabia

This month, Netflix released “The Goat Life,” a movie centered on the experiences of an Indian migrant worker, Najeeb Muhammed, who worked in Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s and, after being stranded in the desert, was forced to work as a goat herder. It is based on the 2008 bestselling book, “Goat Days,” which […]

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Include Disability in Planned Relocation Processes

Last week, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a global SOS– Save Our Seas – regarding rising sea levels. “Surging seas are coming for us all,” Guterres warned, making an urgent plea for global leaders to invest in “new adaptation and protection measures.” These measures must foreground disability rights.    As sea levels rise, planned relocation – a process that involves […]

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Killings of Israeli Hostages in Gaza Spark Outrage, Protest

On Monday, a Telegram channel belonging to Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, released videos of six Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered Saturday, filmed before their death. The Israeli government says the four men and two women were fatally shot by their captors shortly before its troops reached the tunnel in Gaza where they […]

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720 Australian and Brazilian Children Better Protected from AI Misuse

LAION, the German nonprofit organization that manages a dataset used to train popular artificial intelligence (AI) tools, has removed from its dataset some children’s photos that were secretly included and misused to power AI models that in turn could generate photorealistic deepfakes of other children. The move follows the Stanford Internet Observatory’s December 2023 report that found known […]

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