Monday, March 20, 2023

Six In The Morning Monday 20 March 2023

 

Putin to Xi: We will discuss your plan to end the war in Ukraine

By Phelan Chatterjee
BBC News


Vladimir Putin has said he will discuss Xi Jinping's 12-point plan to "settle the acute crisis in Ukraine", during a highly anticipated visit to Moscow by the Chinese president.

"We're always open for [a] negotiation process," Mr Putin said, as the leaders called each other "dear friend".

China released a plan to end the war last month - it includes "ceasing hostilities" and resuming peace talks.

But on Friday the US warned the peace plan could be a "stalling tactic".




Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late

IPCC report says only swift and drastic action can avert irrevocable damage to world

Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, set out the final part of its mammoth sixth assessment report on Monday.

The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late.


EU Commission pledges €1 billion to Turkey quake recovery

Following an EU-hosted donors conference, the bloc says it will fund humantiarian assistance, but not full-scale reconstruction in Syria.


The European Commission will give €1 billion ($1.1 

billion) to help with reconstruction efforts in Turkey, Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday.

Von der Leyen made the statement at an EU-hosted donors conference for Turkey, which was hit by devastating earthquakes early in February. The quakes killed more than 56,000 people in Turkey and neighboring Syria.

The EU said the conference included some 400 international actors, including governments and NGOs. Syrian and Russian authorities were not invited.


After six months of protests, Iranian women without headscarves has become the 'norm'

After six months of protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, our Observers say that "irreversible" changes have taken place in Iranian society. The most noticeable is the number of Iranian women who are daring to go out in public spaces with their hair uncovered. Although the morality police still patrol the streets, and it's still illegal in Iran for women to go out without a headscarf, the movement has spread across the country. 

This week on The Observers, we heard from two women in Iran who agree that they will no longer wear a headscarf, "no matter what". From big cities to small towns, many women across Iran are making the same decision, after six months of massive protests have turned the tide in Iranian society. 

Survey: 51% support releasing treated nuclear water into ocean

By TOSHIO ISHIMOTO/ Staff Writer

March 20, 2023 at 17:21 JST


Fifty-one percent of respondents to a new Asahi Shimbun survey supported the government’s plan to release treated water from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant into the ocean.

They outnumber those who opposed it, at 41 percent.

Respondents were more evenly divided in the May 2021 and February 2022 surveys than in the latest one.

The government plans to begin releasing treated and diluted water by this summer as Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the plant operator, said tanks for storing treated radioactive water within the plant’s premises are projected to be full by autumn.


Two decades on, trauma from America’s war continues to haunt Iraqis

Updated 10:54 AM EDT, Mon March 20, 2023


 

Salah Nsaif was 32 years old when American soldiers imprisoned him in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003.

Twenty years later, he has left his country and settled in faraway Sweden with his wife and three children, but the horrors of the war there continue to haunt him.

“What happened to me was very painful. It impacted my personal relationships when I left Iraq,” Salah told CNN, adding that he felt like he was in a prison of his own mind. “I didn’t want to see my baby or anyone else and I isolated myself. It took me a long time to stop having nightmares.”

Two decades after the start of the US-led war in the country, Iraqis say that while some of the physical wounds may have healed over time, the psychological trauma from the conflict and its aftermath persists to this day.





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