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The featured story in today’s NY Times, “Fleeing Boko Haram, Thousands Cling to a Road to Nowhere,” illustrates the dire conditions of thousands of people displaced by Boko Haram who settled along National Route 1. Times journalists interviewed and documented the stories of more than 100 people who fled Boko Haram and now live along the paved stretch of deserted highway north of the city of Diffa, Niger. Food and water is scarce in the region, but residents feel a sense of safety and security because Niger’s military regularly patrols the area.

International humanitarian agencies, including Doctors without Borders and the International Rescue Committee, provide some aid, but are limited in their capacity to help. Despite being one of the poorest areas in the country, local communities help an estimated 80 percent of the displaced with food and shelter. UNICEF set up 27 schools in the region, but fewer than half of the 137,000 children in the area attend school.

Earlier this month, the UN urged long-term action in the fight against Boko Haram and pledged its support to Nigeria’s government. Aid services are desperately needed to help 8.5 million people affected by the fight with Boko Haram and resulting humanitarian crisis.

This is one of the projects that I worked on when I was in Poland. We interviewed Ukrainians and Poles to see the perspective on the Ukrainian employment in Poland. It is not as comprehensive as we would have like, we would have like to ask a question about Syrian refugees but limited to our topic on employment in Poland.

It seems that the people we interviewed have a positive view of Ukrainians in Poland. It is important to point out that we were mostly in an university setting and most of the people that we came across are educated. We did not have access to the different demographics that we initially wanted to interview.

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The Paris Climate Agreement was historic in part because both China and the U.S. agreed to participate and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. China and the U.S. are the top two emitters of greenhouse gasses. This is a huge step from the Kyoto Protocol in the 1990’s, where neither China, nor the U.S. participated, even though the U.S. has consistently been a top emitter and China’s emissions were increasing exponentially at that time.

As the Trump administration rolls back climate regulations, making it nearly impossible for the U.S. to hit our reduction targets under Paris, China is taking the lead in reaffirming its commitments and even hitting benchmarks ahead of schedule in fossil fuel reduction and the incorporation of renewables into its energy supply.  As the U.S. recedes from its global leadership role, China is ready to take the lead on multiple fronts.

 

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is a 30+ year multinational project in the making. It’s goal is to harness nuclear fusion and turn it into energy. It was first discussed in 1985 in the U.S.-Soviet Union summit, and is now based in France. The project is heavily financed by the EU, who has a 45% stake. The U.S., Russia, and China each contribute 9% to the project. The support of the U.S. remains in doubt in light of the Trump administration. This project is expected to produce energy in 2035 and is a decades-long project due to its complexity and various support of stakeholders over the years.

“U.N. talks aimed at banning nuclear weapons, but the big powers — US, Russia, China and other nuclear-armed nations are sitting out a discussion they see as impractical.”

U.S. Ambassador argued that a treaty would end up disarming nations “trying to keep peace and safety,” while “bad actors” wouldn’t sign on or comply. For example, North Korea might been seen as “the bad actor”.

Again, international politics is Realism. You get the power and you can make the rule.

http://time.com/4714710/united-nations-nuclear-waeapons-ban-boycott/

The 60 year old EU is facing many problems. Eg, the euro crisis, the refugee crisis, the rise of populism party (advocating nationalism and abandoning EU), an aggressive Russia under Putin and a “betrayed” US under Trump… What’s worse, some issues above increases EU’s members crisis of faith to EU. In this situation, “a closer union” may not be the right antidote to EU.

The article gives us an interesting proposal: “What is really needed is a creative rethink of the entire European project: The most obvious idea is to drop the rigid one-size-fits-all model and adopt the greater flexibility of a network. ” In other words, there will be a multi-speed, multi-tier Europe under this model; members of EU could be bound to each other with different levels of integration.

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21719188-it-marks-its-60th-birthday-european-union-poor-shape-it-needs-more?zid=307&ah=5e80419d1bc9821ebe173f4f0f060a07

A recent study by the Yale Program on Climate Communications  shows that Americans view climate change as an issue that will effect the country, but not them personally. This disconnect is especially worrying in states like Texas and Florida, that will be hit by climate change the most, yet only 57% of its residents view it as an imminent threat.

This relativist mindset is actually understandable. The U.S. will be impacted by climate change, but the countries that will be hit the hardest are China, India, Bangladesh, Somalia, etc. The urgency of climate change is hard to grasp anyway because of how large the scope is, but seeing research that developed countries won’t be impacted as much is very dangerous since it will undermine their efforts to reduce emissions.

 

 

 

The UN Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs office announced that they have only received $423 million of the $4.4 billion needed to help the people on the brink of famine in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. Earlier this month, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned the international community that it was crucial to raise the funds by the end of March to help 20 million people at risk of famine, including 1.4 million children.

The funds will help provide humanitarian assistance, including food, water, medicine, and other basic necessities to 20 million people at risk of famine. Only 8 percent of the funds have been raised for Yemen, 9 percent for Nigeria, 18 percent for South Sudan, and 32 percent for Somalia.

Terrorism and cyber warfare are the two most important threats to humanity, and NATO and the European Union must take steps to create defense systems. The possibility of starting a cyber-war is analyzed with seriousness and professionalism, given that such a conflict would throw the world into chaos unimaginable.

Until today, 90% of attacks that could be considered legal, terrorist-informational, did not reach any legal discussion because “victims” have been thousands of miles of “attackers” positioned in different countries or continents and in most of them as “attackers” were working in the service of states.

The first reported cases of terrorism informational caused by terrorist groups “established” occurred in 1998 in Sri Lanka by “Tamil Tigers” in Serbia in 1999 by one of Serbian policeman who attacked NATO information systems, and of course in the conflict between Hamas and Israel-Hizbulah since 2006.

There are many cases that do not reach the press because of restrictive legislation on terrorism, for example, several attempts to derail fast trains in Japan (Shinkansen), which are fully computerized or in some cases criminal penetration of air traffic control networks.

Source Knowledge Horizons. Economics

The past two decades has witnessed a number of initiatives by international bodies like; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Council of Europe (COE), G-8, European Union, United Nations and the Interpol, which recognized the inherent cross border reaches of cybercrime, the limitations of unilateral approaches, and the need for international harmony in legal, technical, and other areas.

 

In cyberspace a cyber attacker can hide himself readily, and even disguise his attack to appear to originate from a third party. The problem of attribution for a cyber-action is clearly one that will complicate any effort at security controls. Uncertainty about attribution will also constrain retaliatory action. The current level of research in reliable attribution is not adequate. The cyber crime treaties cannot be implemented unless trust exists between signatories that best efforts are being put to identify the criminals and therefore, transparency is first precondition for success.

The inability to track cyber terrorists would make it difficult for local and international jurisdictions to track the entire network of cyber terrorists as well as to prosecute them due to the lack of proof of identification of these cyber terrorists. The potential adoption of a new variant of Cyber Crime and Terrorism convention by all nations would provide the eco-system that may put the criminals and terrorists under pressure and increases the success probabilities of the international law enforcement agencies.

Source     Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century (21CW),  IEEE Conference