Uncategorized

By Sean Buchanan | – ROME, Mar 31 2015 (IPS) – Driven by solar and wind, world investments in renewable energy reversed a two-year dip last year, brushing aside the challenge from sharply lower oil prices and registering a 17 percent leap over the previous year to stand at 270 billion dollars. These investments helped […]

Dissent

Dear MSM: The Israeli Elections are about Minority rights, not Iran

contributors

By Sammy Smooha | (The Conversation) There are 5.3 million eligible voters living in Israel today (votes may be not cast abroad). Among these voters there are three main minority (non-dominant) groups. Their numbers break down, according to my own estimates, as follows: Palestinian Arabs are 15%, Mizrahim or “Oriental” Jews (who immigrated from Muslim […]

Uncategorized

European Leaders: GOP Letter Helped Iran in Nuclear Negotiations

contributors

By Sarah Lazare | (Commondreams.org) – An open letter to Iranian leaders from 47 Republican senators has provoked sharp rebuke from European countries that are party to the nuclear talks. Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier blasted the U.S. GOP senators on Thursday, telling journalists, “This is not just an issue of American domestic politics, but […]

Barack Obama

GOP Senators tried to instruct Iran, showed own Ignorance of the Law

contributors

By Curtis A Bradley, Duke University | (The Conversation) – On March 9, forty-seven Republican Senators signed an open letter directed at Iran’s leaders, ostensibly to warn them about the limited effect of any agreement they might reach with President Obama about their nuclear program. Embarrassingly, the letter’s effort to provide a civics lesson to […]

Displaced and Refugees

As Islamic State retreats, aid workers uncover human toll

contributors

By Louise Redvers | (IRIN) – BAGHDAD/LONDON, (IRIN) – A week after launching a major offensive to recapture the city of Tikrit, pro-government forces in Iraq claim they are close to reclaiming large parts of territory held by militants from the group calling itself Islamic State (IS). But for aid agencies the work in Tikrit […]

astronomy and outer space

Saturn’s moon Enceladus has an Ocean, Geysers and maybe Life

contributors

By Andrew Coates | (The Conversation) The Cassini mission that has investigated Saturn since 2004 has revealed much about the giant planet and its many moons. Perhaps most tantalising is the discovery that the moon Enceladus is the source of strong geysers ejecting plumes of water and ice. A new study of Cassini data published […]

Apartheid

Gaza’s sole power plant to close as funding runs out

contributors

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Gaza’s only power plant is due to shut down by the end of this week as donor funding for fuel in the coastal territory has run out, officials said. The energy and natural resource authority told Ma’an that the power plant had been using a Qatari grant to pay for diesel […]

Apartheid

Israeli Blockade could cause Gaza Reconstruction to Take Over a Century

contributors

By IMEMC News | – British rights organization, Oxfam, stated that the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip may take more than 100 years, at the current rate, to complete essential building of homes, schools and health facilities in Gaza unless the Israeli blockade is lifted. According to Al Ray’s report, less than 0.25 percent of […]

African-Americans

In New Gilded Age, Social Protest dominates Academy Awards Ceremony

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – If social and economic inequality were a mine, and if America were deep in this mine with a canary in tow, the canary would long since have expired. Some 400 billionaires have more wealth than the bottom half of Americans. We lived through a year of dramatic incidents […]