Tag: years

  • After years of delay 6 rights groups get UN accreditation

    After years of delay 6 rights groups get UN accreditation

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    After years of delays, six human rights organizations — including the foundation that runs the online encyclopedia Wikipedia — have finally received permission to raise concerns and participate in discussions at the U.N. body overseeing economic development and social issues.

    The United States had pushed for a vote on the six groups in June in the U.N. Committee on Non-governmental Organizations, which handles requests for accreditation to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, known as ECOSOC. But a majority of the NGO committee’s 19 members voted to end debate on the six applications — which again meant no action.

    The U.S., Italy, Sweden and Estonia then introduced a resolution seeking a vote in ECOSOC, which has 54 member nations. That took place Thursday and Russia asked for a recorded vote, rather than letting the decision happen by consensus.

    The result was 23 countries in favor, 7 against and 18 abstentions. Russia opposed granting what is known as consultative status to the six rights groups, as did China, India, Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

    The six groups now join thousands of NGOs with consultative status at ECOSOC.

    Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch, said: “The decision to grant U.N. accreditation to six human rights groups is a step in the right direction. But it’s only a fraction of the hundreds of organizations whose applications have been unfairly blocked for years by Russia, China, and other abusive governments.”

    The six organizations which won ECOSOC approval for consultative status are: the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, Diakonia in Sweden, No Peace Without Justice in Italy, the Estonian Institute of Human Rights, and two U.S.-based groups — the Syrian-American Medical Society and the Wikimedia Foundation. The foundation runs Wikipedia.

    U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield singled out the two U.S. organizations in a tweet after the vote, citing their world on human rights, freedom of expression and humanitarian issues and saying: “We will continue to fight to ensure civil society voices are heard at the U.N.”

    Amanda Keton, general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, called the vote “a decisive win for the protection of global civic space” in a statement Friday, saying consultative status in ECOSOC will enable the foundation “to work directly with member states and other stakeholders to promote greater and more equitable access to free knowledge globally.”

    Maithili Pai, who focuses on civil society participation for the International Service for Human Rights, a human rights organization based in Geneva and New York, said the vote could make clear that the NGO committee “cannot continue to be a vehicle for reprisals against civil society,” noting that applications for over 350 organizations are still being held up.

    Human Rights Watch’s Charbonneau urged countries that respect human rights to push for an urgent overhaul of the U.N.’s accreditation process for NGOs “and put a stop to efforts to silence human rights activists at the U.N.”

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  • Cheetahs to prowl India for first time in 70 years : worldnews

    Cheetahs to prowl India for first time in 70 years : worldnews

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    This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 71%. (I’m a bot)


    Their return comes decades after India’s indigenous population was declared officially extinct in 1952.The world’s fastest land animal, the cheetah can reach speeds of 70 miles an hour.

    “Completing 75 glorious years of independence with restoring the fastest terrestrial flagship species, the cheetah, in India, will rekindle the ecological dynamics of the landscape,” India’s environment minister, Bhupender Yadav, said in a social media post.

    “The main goal of the cheetah reintroduction project is to establish viable cheetah metapopulation in India that allows the cheetah to perform its functional role as a top predator,” said the country’s environment ministry.


    Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: cheetah#1India#2animal#3years#4home#5

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  • Celsius Had Serious Internal Issues Years Before Bankruptcy, Ex-Executives Say

    Celsius Had Serious Internal Issues Years Before Bankruptcy, Ex-Executives Say

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    Celsius Had Serious Internal Issues Years Before Bankruptcy, Ex-Executives Say

    Former Celsius senior executives have revealed the crypto lending company had been struggling internally for years before going bankrupt, contrary to the firm’s claims that its problems stemmed from the recent market crash.

    Poor Risk Management and Disorganization

    According to the employees, Celsius was disorganized and lacked proper risk management. Internal documents reviewed by CNBC showed that the crypto lender would invest in high-risk crypto projects and borrow money to hedge funds in return for higher yields. The firm would then share the profits with customers.

    Unfortunately, the model failed during the recent market bloodbath induced by Terra’s crash and news about the Fed hiking interest rates.

    “The biggest issue was a failure of risk management. I think Celsius had a good idea, they were providing a service that people really needed, but they weren’t managing risk very well,” Timothy Cradle, Celsius’ former director of financial crimes compliance, said in an interview with CNBC.

    He also claimed that the company also failed to invest in compliance. The former director said he was part of a three-person compliance team at the firm between 2019 and 2021, and the division lacked enough resources to function properly.

    CEL Token Manipulation

    Cradle further revealed that the crypto lender manipulated the price of its native token CEL by “actively trading and increasing the price” of the asset. The “pumping up” of the token was carried out by the company’s executives, who openly discussed it at a Christmas party in 2019.

    “They weren’t shy about it. They were absolutely trading the token to manipulate the price. It came up in two completely different conversations for two completely different reasons,” he said.

    Another Celsius employee who wished to remain anonymous alleged that while Celsius was incentivizing customers to buy CEL, the company’s CEO, Alex Mashinsky, was secretly selling off his tokens.

    The allegations from former Celsius employees align with those of the company’s former money manager Jason Stone, who sued the crypto lender for fraud, lack of proper risk management, and market manipulation.

    Meanwhile, a document from Celsius’s first bankruptcy hearing revealed that about 77% of the crypto assets deposited on the platform belong to the company and not customers.

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