Author: Amnewsworld

Three straight years of drought have wiped out harvests and hampered people’s access to food and COVID-19 is compounding their suffering, WFP warns. An estimated 1.5 million people need urgent help. Those experiencing “crisis” or “emergency” hunger conditions—three times the number forecast mid-year—are mostly children and women. Of the ten hardest-hit southern districts, Amboasary is the epicenter; families barely scrape together enough food with raw mangoes and tamarind often their only food source. Mothers can no longer breastfeed and are forced to give their infants water which is in scarce supply. A WFP assessment in Amboasary last month found three…

The campaign will target children in 46 districts in 16 governorates, including Baghdad, Babylon, Anbar, Dahuk, Erbil, Kerbala, Kirkuk Missan, Najaf, Ninewa, Salah Al-Din, Suleymaniya, Wassit and Basra. On Sunday, Iraqi health authorities, in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF began a mass polio vaccination campaign targeting more than 1.9 million children under the age of five. The campaign will be conducted in locations across Iraq, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which, like previous disease outbreaks and humanitarian emergencies has disrupted access to essential health services, including routine immunization. The campaign is urgent because even brief interruptions…

On October 8, 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) published the “Strengthening Wage Protections for the Temporary and Permanent Employment of Certain Aliens in the United States” interim final rule, amending the existing four-tier wage structure governing the calculation of prevailing wage levels. The new regulation significantly increases the wage levels of the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) wage survey across all occupations.  It affects H-1B (Specialty Occupation), H-1B1 (Free Trade Agreement Workers in a Specialty Occupation from Chile and Singapore) and E-3 (Specialty Occupation Workers from Australia) employment-based nonimmigrant petitions, as well as permanent labor certification program (“PERM”) applications.  The interim final…

Save the Children is deeply worried about lone child refugees arriving separated from their parents from Ethiopia into Sudan, as they are at risk of exploitation and abuse. Their number could be in the hundreds, the child rights organization warned today. So far, 139 children who were separated from their parents or caregivers have been registered at just one of several entry points along the border, Save the Children said, so the total number could be far higher. In total at least 43,000 refugees have already crossed the border from Ethiopia to Sudan so far. Save the Children emphasizes the urgent need…

A new analysis, seen by the BBC, suggests the goals of the UN Paris climate agreement are getting “within reach.” The Climate Action Tracker group looked at new climate promises from China and other nations, along with the carbon plans of US President-elect Joe Biden. These commitments would mean the rise in world temperatures could be held to 2.1C by the end of this century. Previous estimates indicated up to 3C of heating, with disastrous impacts. But the experts are worried the long-term optimism is not matched by short-term plans to cut CO2. For more than a decade, researchers from the Climate…

New immigration rules will be “simple and flexible”, ministers have promised, as the UK’s points-based post-Brexit system prepares to go live. From Tuesday all foreign nationals, including from the European Union, who want to work in the UK from 1 January will have to apply online for a visa. Those seeking a skilled worker visa will need a job offer, to be proficient in English and earn at least £25,600. Free movement from and to the EU will come to an end on 31 December. The UK left the EU on 31 January but has been largely following its rules…

On June 24th, the University of Calgary leadership team published its response to an open letter, dated June 9th, from hundreds of students, alumni, and faculty. The original letter had called on the university to make a series of anti-racist statements, and commit to a series of actions to address racism on campus. The specific statements and actions were helpfully catalogued in the open letter. While the university president declined to give details on his plan of action, he declared in his June 24th response that “it is no longer adequate to simply not be racist, it is time to be anti-racist”; and…

Despite a detainer lodged by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Santa Clara County Jail officials released a known criminal alien back in the community who went on to kill two people, according to ICE. Fernando De Jesus Lopez-Garcia had a significant criminal history spanning nearly 15 years — a history including convictions for assault with a deadly weapon, battery of an officer, battery of a spouse, inflicting corporal injury on a spouse, and vandalism — when officials in Santa Clara County Jail released the dangerous illegal alien back on to the streets. ICE’s Pacific Enforcement Response Center lodged an…

Peering down from their balconies at the luxury Waikiki hotel, more than a thousand migrants gaze out towards the sea that carried them on their desperate journey fleeing Africa. Their rickety fishing boats lie piled up on docksides waiting to be scrapped. Smashed hulls still bob in the water, a reminder of the eight lives claimed this week off Lanzarote as hundreds more migrants reached Spain’s Canary Islands. The survivors’ safety in hotel accommodation amid the sprawling resorts of southern Gran Canaria is testament to local islanders’ proud benevolence. But generosity is running thin as tempers fray amid a growing…

The region was already a challenging place for many of its 550 million children, but the pandemic has intensified many of the crises they face – and created new ones. About half may be going hungry. The well-being of children in sub-Saharan Africa is under siege from all directions since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. The region is now suffering its first-ever economic recession, pushing about 50 million people into extreme poverty, a majority of whom are children. This would be the largest single year change ever recorded in either absolute or percentage terms – and by a wide…