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Germany was voted onto the United Nations Security Council for the sixth time on Friday, after it secured a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly. The place was effectively guaranteed going into the vote: Germany and Belgium ran unopposed for the two spots in the Western European and Others category. Israel was initially also in the running, but withdrew its bid last month. Germany received 184 votes from the 190 cast ballots. […] In a tweet, the German Foreign Office in Berlin said: “We are looking forward to this huge task and responsibility. Many thanks to all those who placed...

Honduras's support for US embassy move thought to play role in Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces winning contested vote and becoming only fourth woman to head General Assembly The UN General Assembly on Tuesday overwhelmingly elected Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces as its next president, making her only the fourth woman to lead the 193-member world body in its 73-year history. She defeated another woman — Honduras’ UN Ambassador Mary Elizabeth Flores Flake — by 128-62 with two abstentions in the secret-ballot vote. Honduras’s and Ecuador’s diverging stances on a resolution condemning the US for moving its embassy to...

The United Nations has never been shy about attacking the United States. In recent years, U.N. officials accused the Obama administration of failing to address police brutality and sexual assault in the military. After a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville last year, the U.N. team tasked with monitoring the implementation of the global convention against discrimination called on high-level U.S. politicians and public officials to unequivocally reject racial hate speech. Also last year, the world body called President Trump's attacks on the media "dangerous." Now, a top human rights investigator is criticizing the United States for failing the poor. Philip...

GENEVA (Reuters) - Poverty in the United States is extensive and deepening under the Trump administration whose policies seem aimed at removing the safety net from millions of poor people, while rewarding the rich, a U.N. human rights investigator has found. Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty, called on U.S. authorities to provide solid social protection and address underlying problems, rather than "punishing and imprisoning the poor". In a report, Alston said that as welfare benefits and access to health insurance were being slashed, President Donald Trump's tax reform awarded "financial windfalls" to the mega-rich and large companies,...

The United States vetoed on Friday a Kuwaiti-drafted UN Security Council resolution that condemned Israel's use of force against Palestinian civilians, underlining Washington's differences with friends and foes alike over the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Later, a second, US-drafted resolution that blamed Hamas for the violence and upheld Israel's right to defend itself failed to attract any other country's support when it was put to vote in the 15-member council. Blasting the council majority, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the two votes showed it was willing to blame Israel and unwilling to blame Hamas, the Islamist group that...

Donald Trump is deliberately forcing millions of Americans into financial ruin, cruelly depriving them of food and other basic protections while lavishing vast riches on the super-wealthy, the United Nations monitor on poverty has warned. Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur who acts as a watchdog on extreme poverty around the world, has issued a withering critique of the state of America today. Trump is steering the country towards a “dramatic change of direction” that is rewarding the rich and punishing the poor by blocking access even to the most meager necessities. “This is a systematic attack on America’s welfare...

The Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad has been accused of using chemical weapons, barrel bombs and torture against its own people during a seven-year civil war. On Monday, it took up the rotating presidency of the United Nations-backed Conference on Disarmament. The move was met with outrage from Western governments, but there was little they could do to prevent Syria from taking over the world’s only permanent multilateral body for negotiating arms control agreements for four weeks.

Dan Love .. led Operation Cerberus ... Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, wants to rein in the law enforcement authority of the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service and is crafting legislation he says will either restrict or abolish their authority. Lee said Monday he aims to hem in powers he says were never envisioned under the Federal Land Management Policy Act of 1976. "Our federal land management agencies have drifted far from their intended purposes.. The BLM has expanded its operations far from public lands." ... The senator added federal land agencies exercise police powers on private land...

Colonel Richard Kemp: UN Encourages Terrorism Against Israel By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel — May 21, 2018 … Speech made by Colonel Richard Kemp at the emergency session of the United Nations Human Rights Council on the deteriorating situation in Gaza on 18 May 2018. Col. Kemp, decorated for his bravery with the UN Protection Force in Bosnia, tells the United Nations Human Rights Council: “Your failure to admit Hamas is responsible for every drop of blood spilt encourages their violence and use of human shields, makes you complicit in further bloodshed.” VIDEO CAN BE VIEWED AT: http://israelnewsagency.com/un-terrorism-gaza-hamas-iran-jihad-human-rights-israel-idf/...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had a message for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un Wednesday during an interview with Fox’s Martha McCallum. “Here’s what’s crazy,” Graham said, “to keep building ICBMs that can deliver a nuclear weapon to America and believe that Donald Trump won’t do anything about it, that probably worked with Obama but I’m here to tell North Korea that our president has drawn a red line.” “If you keep threatening the American homeland with a nuclear weapon we’re going to destroy your regime,” he warned. “It's that simple.” “So if you want to survive, Kim Jong Un,...

The United States on Monday blocked the adoption of a UN Security Council statement that would have called for an independent probe of deadly violence on the Israel-Gaza border, diplomats said, according to an AFP report. "The Security Council expresses its outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians exercising their right to peaceful protest," read a draft of the statement, a copy of which was seen by the news agency.

The United Nations' International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) is finishing up their Global Week of Action Against Gun Violence. According to IANSA, the goal of the week-long meeting is "for us to advocate collectively for an end to illicit trade and misuse of small arms and light weapons." Under the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA), governments agreed to improve national small arms laws, import/export controls, and stockpile management – and to engage in cooperation and assistance. In 2005 they also adopted...

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – A 5-year-old girl suffered serious injuries after she was attacked by a bear overnight in east Orchard Mesa. The girl had gone outside around 2:30 a.m. early Sunday to investigate noises she thought were being made by her dog, the girl’s mother told Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers. But the girl’s mother heard her daughter screaming and went outside to see a “large black bear” dragging her daughter, CPW officials said. The bear dropped the girl after her mother screamed at it. Their home is in the east Orchard Mesa area, above the Colorado River corridor,...

VIENNA, Austria — The chief inspector of the UN’s nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resigned Friday, a spokesperson for the agency said. No reason was given for Tero Varjoranta’s sudden departure, which comes days after US President Donald Trump took America out of the deal between Iran and world powers over its nuclear program.

I have been researching Artificial Intelligence or AI since the United States, France, and Britain joined forces to strike Syria. Throughout the whole ‘shock and awe’ I kept thinking about AI, so I knew this incident was connected. When I cannot get a certain topic off my mind, I delve deeply into it. Thus, I have found this, and I am not shocked – just validated. Countries are spending billions on ‘third revolution in warfare’ as UN debates regulation of AI-powered weapons. I put the UN down, but in this case, thank God for it. This article was published April...

Accountability is sorely lacking in the administrative state. Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats make decisions significantly affecting our daily lives with too little involvement from our elected officials. The Congressional Review Act was intended to restore at least some degree of democratic accountability to the administrative process. It requires agencies to submit to Congress every rule they wish to impose on you, giving the people you elected an opportunity to oversee what federal bureaucrats are up to. That’s the theory, at least. In practice, agencies have failed to comply with their obligations under the statute, withholding rules from Congress and thereby avoiding...

60-year-old Canadian humanitarian worker Peter John Dalgish has now been arrested in Nepal and is under investigation for child sex crimes, according to a police report on Global News. According to police, Dalglish was taken from a home in a district north of Kathmandu. Police said in a statement two girls, 12 and 14 years old, were “rescued” from the same house.

One of the world’s leading experts on humanitarian work with street children and children affected by war has been arrested on pedophilia charges. Canadian humanitarian worker Peter Dalglish, who helped found the charity Street Kids International, was taken in by police in Nepal on Sunday (April 8), Xinhua news agency reported. The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police said they wanted to question Dalglish over claims he was involved in pedophile activities in Kavre district, around 50 kilometers north of the capital, Kathmandu. An initial investigation claims the 60-year-old had offered children foreign trips and better education before sexually...

Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari stated that they are hoping that the triple mechanism made up of Russia, Iran and Turkey will pressure Turkey to withdraw their military units. Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari spoke to Russian news agency Sputnik and said Turkey is in violation of the Astana agreements, UN Security Council resolutions and Non-Aligned Movement’s principles. Jaafari said: “According to the Astana agreements, Turkey should have sent lightly armed police to observe and inspect terrorist organizations in Idlib.” But Turkey deployed soldiers...

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Thursday she shares incoming national security adviser John Bolton’s disdain for the world body and believes the two will work well together. Bolton, who was U.S. envoy to the United Nations for President George W. Bush, will become President Donald Trump’s national security adviser on Monday. He once said it would make no difference if 10 floors were knocked off the U.N. headquarters in New York. “I know John Bolton well. I have gotten advice from him, I have talked to him. I know his disdain for the U.N. I...