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28-Mar-2024
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         Big issues – Narrow Solutions                                                                        Big issues – Narrow Solutions

                    

           

          Fighting between Ukraine and Moscow-based separatists in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine alone, has already killed more than 10,000 people, with more than a million people having fled their homes.This underlines that it may be the most dangerous flashpoint in the globe right now, and there is renewed possibility of escalation with Russia increasing troops and weaponry in Crimea and other areas, and boosting its naval presence in the region.

 

With Ukraine-Russia tensions at the highest level for years, a US 6th Fleet warship is making preparations to  potentially  travel into the Black Sea. 

 

Western leaders are, once again, trying to de-escalate the situation after Ukrainian Prime Minister Petro Poroshenko warned last week of “full scale war”.

 

Prior to the announcement of the Minsk deal, the then US defence secretary Ashton Carter asserted his preference of providing enhanced military assistance  to Ukraine and there are still pockets of support. Angela Merkel has repeatedly said that there is no military solution to the conflict.  She particularly fears that, given current mistrust with Moscow, providing extensive weaponry to Ukraine will only intensify the conflict which could risk becoming a proxy war between Russia and the wider West.

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              Great dying  Warming wiped out 95% of marine life 252 million years ago.  Extreme global warming that left ocean animals unable to breath: Around 95% of marine species and 75% of life on land was wiped out in the great dying, which struck 252 million years ago.  What made the oceans of inhospitable to life has remained unanswered question until now. Previous  studies have linked with a series of  massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia that filled the atmosphere with green house gas.

 

Lessons  from the great dying have major implications for the fate  of today’s warming world. If greenhouse emissions continue unchecked, ocean warming could reach 20% of the level. 2300 it would reach 35 and 50% of the great dying extreme.  Very few marine organisms  stayed  in the same habitats they were living in.  It was either flee or perish. 

       

          Australia’s competition watchdog  recommended tougher scrutiny and a new regulatory body to check the dominance of tech giants face book inc and alphabet inc’s Google in the country’s online news markets and advertising. The recommendation, in a primary report, is being closely watched around the world as law makers wrestle with the powerful tech firms’ large and growing influence in public life, from privacy to publishing. 

 

It comes amid growing concern from authorities worldwide about the tech giants commercial behaviour and distribution of socalled fake news. When you get to a certain stage and you get market power, which both Google and face book have, with that comes special responsibilities and also additional security. Australian competition and consumer commission  chairman Rod  Sims said.

 

Mr. Rod Sims said the firms enormous market share and opaque methods for ranking ads gave the firms the ability and incentive to favour their businesses over advertisers.  The idea of the regulator role would be to keep an eye on that and provocatively bring some transparency

 

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        The US acceded to Pakistan’s demand to overlook its secretive nuclear weapons program following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping convinced Washington to support Islamabad for “stability” in South Asia, according to latest declassified U.S  State Department documents. The documents reveal that the then Pakistan dictator General Zia-Ul  Haq and Chinese Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping were successful in extracting this price from the US in lieu of Islamabad’s support to America against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

 

The US turning a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, Deng also convinced the US to start giving more military and financial aid to Pakistan, according to the US Foreign Relations 1977-1980 volume on Afghanistan.

 

The voluminous document indicates that both Zia and Deng successfully convinced the then Jimmy Carter administration that India under  P M  Indira Gandhi would be pro-Soviet.