14 November 2014
China and the United States made an ‘ambitious joint plan’ against the growing challenges of climate change with a joint accord to curb carbon emissions.
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Source: The New York Times | U.S. and China Reach Climate Accord After Months of Talks
Source: The New York Times | China’s Climate Change Plan Raises Questions
7 October 2014
An analysis conducted by Conflict Armament Research, a London-based organisation that is collecting evidence of weaponry used by the Islamic State, has recently uncovered 21 nations as sources of ISIS’s ammunition- with more than 80 percent of the ammunition having been manufactured in the USA, China, the Former Soviet Union, post-Soviet Russia and Serbia. A small sample of cartridges, including ammunition manufactured as recently as 2013, was found to be of Iranian origins. (more…)
Source: The New York Times | ISIS’ Ammunition Is Shown to Have Origins in U.S. and China
17 September 2014
President Obama urged world powers to accelerate the global response to the Ebola outbreak that is ravaging West Africa, warning that unless health care workers, medical equipment and treatment centers were swiftly deployed, the disease could take hundreds of thousands of lives. Mr. Obama said at a meeting with doctors who had just returned from West Africa that the world ‘has the responsibility to act, to step up and to do more. The United States intends to do more.’ He announced a major American deployment to Liberia and Senegal of medicine, equipment and 3,000 military personnel. (more…)
Source: The New York Times | Obama Presses Leaders to Speed Ebola Response
13 May 2014
Every year since the International Court of Justice’s 1996 Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, the UN General Assembly has adopted by a large majority a follow-up resolution. Each resolution reiterates that ‘the continuing existence of nuclear weapons poses a threat to humanity and all life on Earth’, and underlines ‘the unanimous conclusion of the International Court of Justice that there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control’. The ICJ derived this obligation from Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which provides that
[e]ach of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.
On 24 April 2014 the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) instituted legal proceedings before the ICJ against nine nuclear weapons possessing states: France, India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel, China, Russia and North Korea. (more…)
1 May 2014
The New York Times reported that on Tuesday, the US blacklisted eight Chinese companies, a Dubai company and two Dubai executives for evading restrictions on transactions with Iran regarding weapons, oil and banking. The eight Chinese companies were used to conduct business with Iran by illicitly moving millions of dollars through US-based financial institutions. Additionally, the Dubai executives were accused of ‘shady and deceptive oil deals with Iran.’ This is the first significant enforcement of Iranian sanctions in three months and dispels the impression that relations between Iran and the US were beginning to normalise. (more…)
Source: The New York Times | U.S. Announces Actions to Enforce Iran Sanctions