Six In The Morning Saturday 27 August 2022

 

‘Time has run out’: UN fails to reach agreement to protect marine life

This fifth round of discussions was meant to establish a UN Ocean Treaty that would protect biodiversity in international waters

Edward Helmore in New York and agencies

The latest round of talks at the United Nations aimed at securing protections for marine life in international waters that cover half the planet ended without agreement Saturday.

The fifth round of discussions, which began two weeks ago, were designed to establish a UN Ocean Treaty that would set rules for protecting biodiversity in two-thirds of the world’s oceanic areas that lie outside territorial waters.

But UN members failed to agree on how to share benefits from marine life, establish protected areas, or to prevent human activity with life on the high seas.

Hungary warns education becoming ‘too feminine’

State body report outlines concerns that boys could develop ‘mental and behavioural problems’

Maryam Zakir-Hussain

Officials in Hungary have published their concerns that the country’s education system is becoming “too feminine”, in a report released this summer.

Issued by the state audit office, the report outlines fears that the phenomenon of “pink education” could create demographic problems and be harmful to the development of boys.

The document, which was published last month, labels “emotional and social maturity” as “feminine traits” and states that if education “favours” these traits then it will result in “the overrepresentation of women in universities”.

Pakistan: Death toll from heavy flooding nears 1,000

Two months of unprecedented monsoon rains have sparked severe floods across much of the country. Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif declared an emergency and called for international aid.

Nearly 1,000 people have been killed during devastating floods caused by monsoon rains that have hit much of Pakistan since June, officials said Saturday.

The new death toll was announced a day after Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif declared an emergency and asked for international help in responding to the disaster.

Rescuers have struggled to evacuate thousands of people left marooned by the floods, and the rainy season still has another two weeks to run.

Chinese badminton star ordered to throw Olympic semi in Sydney 2000

 Former Chinese badminton champion Ye Zhaoying claims she was forced to throw her semi-final at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 to increase the chances of a gold medal for one of her compatriots, in an interview broadcast on Saturday by Danish television TV2.

Twenty-two years later, the former world number one, who won bronze in Australia, says she was pushed by the team management to lose her match against Gong Zhichao so as not to "tire her too much" ahead of a final against Danish champion Camilla Martin.

"They asked me to do this. They told me not to let it look like I was losing on purpose. But at the same time, they wanted me not to tire Gong Zhichao too much," Ye alleged on TV2.

They once fought to defend South Korea. 70 years later, these foreign veterans are choosing to be buried there

Jessie Yeung, CNN 

For more than 30 years, British veteran James Grundy made an annual 5,500-mile journey to South Korea, to visit the graves of bodies he had recovered as a young man thrust into war.

Grundy was just 19 when he joined the Korean War in 1951, according to the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea (UNMCK). As part of a recovery unit, he recovered fallen soldiers from battlefields across the Korean peninsula and transported them for burial at the cemetery, located in the southern coastal city of Busan.

The cemetery remains the only UN cemetery in the world -- and for many, a final site of reunion between veterans, widows and loved ones lost in the Korean War.

Six of 43 missing Mexico students were given to army: Official

The revelation by a top official ties the military to one of Mexico’s worst human rights scandals.

Six of the 43 students “disappeared” in 2014 were allegedly kept alive in a warehouse for days then turned over to the local army commander who ordered them killed, the Mexican government official leading a Truth Commission said on Friday.

Interior undersecretary Alejandro Encinas made the shocking revelation directly tying the military to one of Mexico’s worst human rights scandals, and it came with little fanfare as he made a lengthy defence of the commission’s report released a week earlier.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador established the Truth Commission after he was elected to office in 2018.