Within the first month of India’s nationwide lockdown starting March 2020, 122 million people lost their jobs. Daily-wage laborers and small traders comprised roughly 75 percent. A report found that a year of the lockdown pushed 230 million Indians into poverty. By the end of 2020, 15 million workers were still out of jobs. Sanket Jain reports on the recently rising suicide rates in India.
The U.S. military launched 469 foreign interventions since 1798, including 251 since the end of the first cold war in 1991, according to official Congressional Research Service data. Benjamin Norton reports for Multipolarista.
The United States and South Korea seem to be attempting to send a clear message to both North Korea and China of their united military posture in the region. It comes as the U.S. encirclement of China continues rapidly. Aditya Sarin analyzes the situation.
Although the South Caucasus region has traditionally been in the Kremlin’s geopolitical orbit, it is the European Union that seems to be playing the major role in peace talks, border delimitation and the reopening of transportation links. During the past six months, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev met three times through the mediation of European Council President Charles Michel, reports Nikola Mikovic.
The report, “Reconciling Conservation and Global Biodiversity Goals with Community Land Rights in Asia,” comes ahead of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference. To be held next month in Kunming, China, the conference is expected to adopt the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Conservation Framework (GBF), which includes placing under protection 30 percent of the world’s land and water by 2030, reports Deepa Padmanaban.
Regular contributor Sanket Jain has been named a Top 10 finalist for Oxfam's 2021-22 Journalism for an Equitable Asia Award for his coverage of India's rural poor during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019