Global Issues

INFRASTRUCTUREnews World Bank energy strategy review considers reversing phaseout of support for gas production 15 JULY 2025 | ID: 52982 | PROOF SUMMARY As World Bank pushes to provide electricity to 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030 under Mission 300, it considers lifting ban on support for gas production.

New in #ObserverSummer25: Civil society raises alarm as the @WorldBank’s ongoing energy review lifts WBG ban on nuclear and considers return to financing ‘upstream’ gas projects

@re-course.org

tinyurl.com/EnergyReview...

Do Nuclear Tests Still Remain a Future Threat -- as World Commemorates the 80th Anniversary of Hiroshima & Nagasaki? The 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II triggers the question: Is nuclear testing dead or is it still alive–and threatening? The August 6-9 anniversar...

80 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world remembers the only wartime use of nuclear weapons, claiming the lives of between 150,000 and 246,000 civilians. It triggers the question: Is nuclear testing dead or is it still alive–and threatening?
www.ipsnews.net/2025/08/are-...

Excellent. Thanks for dumping here (sorry, couldn't resist!)

More seriously:

bsky.app/profile/glob...

"Disposable nappies produce much more profit than reusables, and so that allows for a much bigger budget for advertising and lobbying."

Great summary of a wider issue: why our consumerist societies are typically throwaway; reduce, reuse, recycle is not profitable

Literally "enshitification"...

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Great article by @adamramsay.bsky.social

"the nappy industry has successfully pushed most parents to leave their children in nappies until they reach an age where it’s much harder to train them. And then, unsurprisingly, they end up staying in them even longer."

Points to much wider concern 🧵

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Thanks for posting. Worth sharing the original on ITV's site also:

www.itv.com/news/2025-08...

This is amongst the most impactful two minutes of broadcasting I’ve ever seen.

By Emma Murphy, International Editor, ITV News. #Gaza

YouTube video by ITV News Aerial footage filmed by ITV News shows the scale of Gaza's destruction | ITV News

"A stain on humanity, that will endure for generations"

Aerial footage of Gaza by ITV News International Editor, Emma Murphy

It's genocide

Combined with FAIR's other excellent piece on US mainstream media also ignoring starvation, these two combined are another indictment on them.

bsky.app/profile/glob...

The Nobel prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen observed some decades ago that famines are always political and economic events, and that the most direct way to analyse them is to look at food quantities and prices. This has led to decades of research on past famines. One observation is that dramatic increases in food prices always mean there is a famine, even though not every famine is accompanied by rising food costs. The price increases we have seen in Gaza are unprecedented. The economic historian Yannai Spitzer observed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that staple food prices during the Irish Potato Famine showed a three- to five-fold increase, while there was a ten-fold rise during the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. In the North Korean famine of the 1990s, the price of rice rose by a factor of 12. At least a million people died of hunger in each of these events. Now, the New York Times has reported the price of flour in Gaza has increased by a factor of 30 and potatoes cost 50 times more.

Follow the money:

Staple food prices during:
- Irish Potato Famine: 3-5x rise
- Great Bengal Famine, 1943: 10x rise
- North Korean famine, 1990s: 12x

At least 1m people died in each.

- Gaza: 30-50x…

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The Nobel prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen observed some decades ago that famines are always political and economic events, and that the most direct way to analyse them is to look at food quantities and prices. This has led to decades of research on past famines. One observation is that dramatic increases in food prices always mean there is a famine, even though not every famine is accompanied by rising food costs. The price increases we have seen in Gaza are unprecedented. The economic historian Yannai Spitzer observed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that staple food prices during the Irish Potato Famine showed a three- to five-fold increase, while there was a ten-fold rise during the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. In the North Korean famine of the 1990s, the price of rice rose by a factor of 12. At least a million people died of hunger in each of these events. Now, the New York Times has reported the price of flour in Gaza has increased by a factor of 30 and potatoes cost 50 times more.

Follow the money:

Staple food prices during:
- Irish Potato Famine: 3-5x rise
- Great Bengal Famine, 1943: 10x rise
- North Korean famine, 1990s: 12x

At least 1m people died in each.

- Gaza: 30-50x…

2/

Soaring food prices prove the Gaza famine is real – and will affect generations to come History shows how devastating famines are and the lasting impact they have. Gaza is no different and a moral stain on those perpetuating it.

theconversation.com/soaring-food...

"Restricting supplies and increasing their value is … immoral and criminal… UN’s top humanitarian aid official has described Israel [halting aid to pressure Hamas] “cruel collective punishment” – something forbidden under international humanitarian law."

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Thanks for sharing. Sadly US media knew about risk of famine for a long time but didn't care much until they couldn't avoid it:

bsky.app/profile/glob...

"They make a desert and call it peace" - Tacitus

bsky.app/profile/news...

With deafening silence from what should be the fourth pillar of a functioning democracy...

bsky.app/profile/glob...

Thanks for sharing. Similarly US media knew about it for a long time but didn't care much until they couldn't avoid it:

bsky.app/profile/glob...

The shocking far-right agenda behind the surveillance tech used by ICE and the FBI Clearview AI’s founders always intended to target immigrants and the political left. Now their digital dragnet is in the hands of the Trump administration.

Thousands of newly obtained documents show that Clearview AI’s founders always intended to target immigrants and the political left. Now their digital dragnet is in the hands of the Trump administration.

Blue whales are going eerily silent—and scientists say it’s a warning sign A six-year study off California’s coast shows how marine heat waves and noise pollution are silencing the ocean’s largest singers. Does saving the ocean start with hearing it?

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

An ocean heatwave “caused the most widespread poisoning of marine mammals ever documented.”

blue whale vocalizations dropped by nearly 40 percent alongside a collapse in krill and anchovy populations

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Gaza air drops 'a grotesque distraction', aid agencies warn Several aid groups say dropping food from the air onto densely populated Gaza is a risk to civilian lives.

And made worse by the fact that airdrops are no suitable alternative:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Gaza air drops 'a grotesque distraction', aid agencies warn Several aid groups say dropping food from the air onto densely populated Gaza is a risk to civilian lives.

And the airdrops appear a token gesture

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

... which GHF has no ability to manage:

bsky.app/profile/glob...

"starvation in Gaza has now passed the tipping point and we are going to see mass-scale starvation mortality…"

"the effort [in containing famine] increases exponentially. It would now take an overwhelmingly large aid operation to reverse the coming wave of mortality, and it would take months."

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"Barely newsworthy

Major US media, likewise, bear a share of responsibility for the hunger-related deaths in Gaza. The conditions of famine have been out in the open for well over a year, and yet it was considered barely newsworthy in US news media."

3/

"This media coverage is urgent and necessary—and criminally late"

"Devastatingly late to care"

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ResponsibleStatecraft.org/media-starvation-coverage/ reposted with this apt title: "Mainstream media largely sidelined starvation story, until it couldn't"

Great and important article, @fairmediawatch.bsky.social

Choice quotes in 🧵

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Not Just Bikes Stories of great urban planning & urban experiences. There are a lot of reasons why Dutch cities are so great; it's not just bikes. Want to support the channel? Sign up to Nebula! https://go.nebula.t...

Reducing car usage is also a potential strategy. #ActiveTravel, better #CityDesign, investment in mass #transit etc. all play a massive role, with other benefits such as #health, #emissionreductions and more.

Huge topic in itself - good starting point: NotJustBikes: youtube.com/c/notjustbikes

Car tires are polluting the environment and killing salmon. A global plastics treaty could help Tires are complex chemical products. When they wear away, they release additives into the environment that can poison wildlife.

Car #tires:
- complex chemical products
- massive source of #microplastics (a macro problem)
- ~45% of all microplastics in terrestrial and aquatic systems.
- Also found inside humans

2 short reads:
theconversation.com/car-tires-26...
theconversation.com/microplastic...

Context: #PlasticsTreaty

Police officer Matt Longman is being attacked for saying what we all know: illegal hunts operate like organised crime.

He stood up for wildlife, now they’re trying to silence him.

New from @michaelfakhri.bsky.social
‘Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine. So while it’s always shocking to see people being starved, no one should act surprised. All the information has been out in the open since early 2024.’
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Mounting civilian casualties in Sudan as fighting intensifies As conflict intensifies between rival militaries in Sudan, the UN humanitarian wing (OCHA) expressed alarm on Monday over mounting civilian casualties and worsening humanitarian conditions across the country.

Mounting civilian casualties in #Sudan as fighting intensifies

#CivilianCasualties #HumanitarianCrisis