More than 1.4 million people have been displaced by conflict in Myanmar — including 520,000 children — with 1.1 million forced to flee since the beginning of the political crisis and escalation of violence in February 2021.

The figures do not include the half a million Rohingya children who have been living in camps in neighbouring Bangladesh for more than five years.

Save the Children warned that the Myanmar crisis is one of the most underfunded humanitarian crises globally.

Olivier Franchi, Save the Children’s Asia Programmes Director, said: “People don’t just take the decision to leave their homes lightly — this rapid escalation in children having to flee is down to the very real everyday threats to their lives from fighting in Myanmar.”

Number of children forced from homes in Myanmar crosses half million mark – Save the Children – Myanmar | ReliefWeb

 Humans require insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas to regulate glucose in the blood, to live.

A study by researchers at Harvard Medical School, the City University of New York’s Hunter College and Public Citizen, found that 1.3 million Americans rationed insulin due to the high costs of insulin in 2021. 

That number represents an estimated 16.5% of the US population with diabetes.

Black insulin users were more likely to report rationing insulin, at 23.2%.

The study found insulin rationing was most commonly reported by those without health insurance coverage and individuals under the age of 65 not eligible for Medicare. 

One vial of Humalog cost $21 (£18) in 1999 and jumped to $332 (£287) in 2019. US prices for insulin have soared in recent decades. Yet prices have remained relatively the same and at a fraction of US prices in every other industrialized nation.

Without health insurance over-the-counter insulin can costs more than $1,000 (£865) a month. Even with health insurance coverage, insulin still costs a few hundred dollars every month,

Because you can’t afford the $100 (£86), that’s insulin rationing. You’re withholding a vital hormone for life.  When somebody is rationing, it’s simply because the pharmaceutical companies are putting their profits over patients’ lives.

Diabetes is currently the seventh-leading cause of death in the US, though a 2017 study suggests the number of Americans dying from diabetes is much higher due to diabetes frequently being overlooked in causes of death. 

More than a million Americans ration insulin due to the high cost of the drug | Diabetes | The Guardian

From the Stuart Hall Foundation’s Autumn Keynote delivered by Arudhati Roy at the Conway Hall on September 30, 2022.

“The dangerous brinkmanship being played out in the Ukraine is being somewhat obscured by the noise of propaganda on both sides. But history’s clock could very well be racing towards sunset.

The various points of view on the war also involve some pretty tortuous yoga asanas – some pretty drastic seeing and unseeing – depending on where you have decided to place yourself. Many on the Left cannot find it in themselves to call out Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. They believe that Ukrainian outrage against Russia has been entirely confected and cultivated by Western Imperialism. That the Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s never happened. They deny that millions of Ukrainians – the historian Timothy Snyder estimates five million – died in the famine of the early 1930’s under Stalin’s policy of forced collectivization.

They see Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a defensive war against an existential threat to itself by NATO. That’s not untrue. The fact that Russia does face a very serious threat is hard to deny. The hitch is that that the “defensive” war is being fought offensively on Ukrainian soil and against the Ukrainian people. 

When the Cold War ended, demilitarisation and nuclear disarmament should have begun. Instead, NATO did the opposite. It amassed more weapons, fought more wars and used the territory of its allies and proxies for the aggressive and provocative forward deployment of troops and missiles. If Russia had done through proxies in Europe or the US what NATO is doing to it, there is little doubt that we would be seeing the moral arguments and western media coverage turned inside out. 

None of this makes Vladimir Putin a revolutionary anti-imperialist or a democrat of any kind. None of it alters the fact that he believes in an overtly fascist, anti-Semitic, anti-Homosexual, Christian nationalist ideology (which ironically, he calls “de-Nazification”) propounded by his two favourite ideologues, Alexander Dugin and Alexander Prokhanov. 

His claim about Ukraine, Crimea and Belarus being inseparable territories that made up Ancient Rus, a theory based on the millennial myth of the Christian baptism of its leader Volodymyr/Valdemar in Crimea in AD 988, has been (correctly) met with hilarity…

…Ordinary people in Europe are gearing up to face the harsh winter that is nearly upon them, with very little or no heating, as Russia, in response to economic sanctions, threatens to shut off their gas supply. As Ukrainians fight on with relentless courage, and the chances of a negotiated settlement fade away, anxiety is building over the possibility of the war expanding and escalating. Putin has announced the ‘partial mobilisation’, whatever that means, of 300,000 military reservists. Perhaps for now the US is far away enough and safe enough, but all of Europe, Russia and much of Asia could become the theatre of a war unlike any the world has ever seen. A war in which there can’t be a winner.

Isn’t it time for everybody to step back? Isn’t it time to begin a real conversation about complete nuclear disarmament?

God forbid, Russia resorts to using US logic for turning to nuclear weapons…

…Where are we headed? Even those of us who stand squarely with the Ukrainian people against the Russian invasion of their country cannot help but marvel at the difference in tone and tenor of the Western Media’s coverage of the war in Ukraine and the breathless admiration with which it covered the US and NATO’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. This January, Tony Blair, the most passionate purveyor of the fake news about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, which was used to justify the invasion, and President George Bush Jr.’s most enthusiastic ally in the invasion, was ordered Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the senior most British order of chivalry…

…Between nuclear hawks and mining corporations, it’s a race to the bottom…

…In every line I write, every word I speak, what I’m really saying is, We are not Zero. You haven’t defeated us.

For millions in the world with their backs to the wall, these debates about hope and despair are a luxury. Even here, underneath the reek of wealth in the city of London, a visitor can sense a sort of tense, vibrating unease, like the rumble beneath your feet as a train approaches the platform.

None of this will matter in the event of a nuclear war. That will simply end us. It’s time for the two sides to step back. And for the rest of the world to step in. Armageddon doesn’t contain a clause for second chances.

Arundhati Roy on Things that Can and Cannot Be Said: The Dismantling of the World as We Know It (thewire.in)

The world will only take meaningful action on the climate crisis once people in rich countries start dying in greater numbers from its effects, Gabon’s environment minister has said.

“With everything that’s happened in the last year in the Horn of Africa and Pakistan – those places really count,” White said. “But with the once-in-a-500-year drought in Europe, fires in France, and the New York subway becoming Niagara Falls, we might be at a point where things are getting bad enough that developed nations start taking the climate more seriously.” He pointed out that “It’s a horrible thing to say but until more people in developed nations are dying because of the climate crisis, it’s not going to change.”

Lee White said governments were not yet behaving as if global heating was a crisis, and he feared for the future he was leaving to his children.

He explained that broken promises on billions of dollars of adaptation finance have left a “sense of betrayal” saying the $100bn of promised climate finance from rich nations was not reaching poor countries, which was driving distrust in the UN climate process. He said he had seen only small amounts of climate funding for his country despite big promises.

“Over and over again, developed nations have committed and not delivered. They’ve committed to reduce emissions and they’re not delivering sufficiently. They’ve committed to funding and that funding doesn’t ever seem to materialise…”

Gabon is holding one of the largest ever sales of carbon credits, generated by protecting its portion of the Congo basin rainforest, the world’s second-largest and the last that sucks in more carbon than it releases.

White said his country, which gets about 60% of its state revenue from oil, accepted that the oil economy would go and that greater emphasis needed to be placed on sustainable forestry and timber. 

“We’ve not really actively promoted the death of the oil industry like Costa Rica,” he said, referencing the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance launched at Cop26 in Glasgow by the Central American country and Denmark. “We recognise that the oil industry will disappear.”

Nothing will change on climate until death toll rises in west, says Gabonese minister | Cop27 | The Guardian

  14.5% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to livestock farming, an industry that emits not only carbon dioxide (CO2), but also methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) — two gases considered to play a similar role to CO2 in driving global warming. Though methane and nitrous oxide do not remain in the atmosphere as long as CO2, their respective climate warming potential is about 25 times and 300 times higher than that of carbon dioxide.

Most emissions in livestock farming result from feed production (58%) and are released during animals’ digestive processes (31%); ruminants such as cattle, sheep and goats produce large quantities of methane. Processing and transport account for sizable share of greenhouse gas emissions (7%), as well, as does the storage of manure (4%).

 About 87% of methane and nitrous oxide emissions in livestock farming are attributable to cattle farming because of the sheer number of animals.

A 2021 study published in Nature Food found that that plant-based foods account for just 29% of greenhouse gasses emitted by the global food industry. In contrast, 57% of greenhouse gas emission in the industry are linked to breeding and rearing cows, pigs and other livestock, as well as producing feed.

 A quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions in the food industry are said to result from beef production alone.  99.48 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per kilogram, beef production remains the biggest source of greenhouse gases. This is almost double the carbon dioxide equivalents per kilogram linked to lamb and mutton production (39.72 kilograms). Pork and poultry production show lower carbon dioxide equivalents, at 12.31 kilograms and 9.87 per kilogram of meat, respectively. Both also emit fewer emissions than cheese production (23.88 kilograms) and fish farming (13.63 kilograms).

Most greenhouse gas emissions from plant-based foods are lower than those linked to animal-based foods. Take the example of rice. Producing one kilogram of the food staple results in 4.45 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents — less than half the emissions released when producing one kilogram of poultry. 

 Beef, lamb and mutton industries require 116 times the land needed to cultivate rice. Animal farming accounts for 78% of agricultural land worldwide. Yet expanding agricultural and pastureland leads to habitat destruction. 

News and current affairs from Germany and around the world – DW

 “The Cops are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing,” she said.

The Cop conferences, she added, “are not really meant to change the whole system”, but instead encourage gradual progress.

“So as it is, the Cops are not really working, unless of course we use them as an opportunity to mobilise.”

 Thunberg called for more people to get involved in climate activism, saying the time had come for “drastic changes” to the status quo.

“In order to change things, we need everyone – we need billions of activists,” she said.

Greta Thunberg to skip ‘greenwashing’ Cop27 climate summit in Egypt | Cop27 | The Guardian

 According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 10.6 million people were diagnosed with TB in 2021, a 4.5% increase on the previous year, prompting accusations that the disease has been neglected because it affects the poor.

Dr Lucica Ditiu, the executive director of the Stop TB Partnership, said: “…Despite this shockingly upward trend of TB mortality and infection rates, funding for fighting TB decreased in 2020 and 2021 from an already pathetically low level. This is infuriating and it makes me wonder why there is such a lack of investment for TB. Is it because governments do not care for their own people? Is it because the life of a person dying from TB is less important or is it because TB affects mainly poor people from poorer countries, and it is more comfortable to simply neglect them?”

Prof Jamie Triccas, a TB researcher at the University of Sydney, explained, some potential vaccines have reached late-stage trials, but the funding needed to develop them isn’t there.

According to the Treatment Action Group and the Stop TB Partnership, the total amount of global funding for tuberculosis research was $915m in 2020 – far below the $2bn goal set by the UN in 2018. Of that total, 13% of it was spent on vaccine research, while billions were invested in Covid vaccines. According to the WHO there has been decline in global spending on essential TB services from $6bn in 2019 to $5.4bn in 2021, which is less than half of the global target of $13bn.

“It is perhaps the quintessential disease of poverty and therefore does not have the political pressure and financial incentives behind it that do diseases that affect the more affluent parts of global society,” said Mel Spigelman, president of the TB Alliance.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, said: “If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that with solidarity, determination, innovation and the equitable use of tools, we can overcome severe health threats. Let’s apply those lessons to tuberculosis.”

The main source of international funding for TB is the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which last month received $14.25bn of the $18bn it wanted to fund its work for the next three years. The UK failed to commit any money.

Global tuberculosis cases increase for the first time in 20 years | Global health | The Guardian

 At a school in the centre of Colombo, Sri Lanka, it has become common for children to faint in the middle of class. Their parents can barely afford a meal a day and they have been arriving at school quietly starving. 

“Parents can’t afford the meat, eggs and milk that children need,” says Sandarenu Amarasiri, a teacher, adding that many were also missing school because financial hardship meant they could not afford transport, uniforms and shoes.

With 90% of people relying on state handouts, child malnutrition has soared across Sri Lanka. 

According to Save the Children, two-thirds of families are now struggling to feed themselves.

 Unicef’s regional director for south Asia, George Laryea-Adjei, says that “children are going to bed hungry, unsure of where their next meal will come from”.

In Sri Lanka’s poverty-stricken regions in the north, parents have started leaving their children in care homes as they can no longer feed them.

 Food inflation has continued to rise, hitting a record 94.9% in September according to the Colombo Consumer Price Index, meaning parents have been unable to afford even basics such as rice and dal, while vegetables and meat have become unaffordable luxuries for many households.

Despite a $2.9bn (£2.5bn) loan from the International Monetary Fund tentatively agreed last month, it has done little to ease Sri Lanka’s economic woes, with experts warning it could be years before the country is back on its feet.

Fish, milk and chicken have become distant memories, and now many families live off only rice, lentils and sambol, a simple dish made from grated coconut. 

‘Parents can’t afford meat, eggs and milk’: children bear the brunt of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis | Global development | The Guardian

 The trade union Unison collected data from 391 councils, compiled through freedom of information requests and financial statements, and found that almost nine in 10 have a predicted budget gap in the 2023/24 financial year. Unison’s investigation found that waste collections, leisure centres, nurseries and other vital services are already being cut in some local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales as they prepare for a tough year ahead. The data suggested the cumulative funding gap is to worsen to more than £5.28bn in 2024/25.

Christina McAnea, the general secretary of Unison, said, “Cash-strapped councils are having to resort to ever more desperate measures after years of austerity just to keep services going. Now the government looks set to make their predicament infinitely worse with emergency cuts to spending after the mini-budget fiasco…”

With inflation and energy prices eating into budgets, local authorities across the UK are facing a £3.2bn budget shortfall next year. With inflation and energy prices eating into budgets, local authorities across the UK are facing a record black hole that is unlikely to be plugged by central government as the Treasury is seeking to squeeze spending to make up for a £30-50bn shortfall in the public finances. 

The Local Government Association has warned Jeremy Hunt in a letter that the £3bn-plus shortfall facing councils will lead to cuts, particularly as inflation has worsened since the last local government finance settlement was announced. “Without immediate additional funding, councils will face increasingly stark decisions about which services to stop providing as rising costs hit budgets. This means not just isolated closures of individual facilities but significant cuts to services people rely on, including those to the most vulnerable in our society,” it said.

The biggest budget shortfall of £80m next year is being faced by Birmingham city council. 

Birmingham council leader Ian Ward said, “This is a perfect storm for local government and without government action, councils will have no choice but to significantly cut local services. So, if the government is truly committed to levelling up, then the chancellor’s autumn statement on 17 November must not signal a return to austerity.”

Edinburgh council reported this week it is also facing a £80m black hole, up from £70m last month, with the Labour local leader warning of “probably the worst cuts I’ve seen in my time in this council”.

Kent county council said it was increasing its projected overspend to £70m, up from £50m just three months ago, with its Conservative council leader telling colleagues: “We’ve never been looking at a projected set of pressures on this scale; no one should doubt the gravity of the situation.” It said not a single department would be immune from cuts.

In Lancashire, the council said this week that its project shortfall has almost trebled, from £30.5m to £87m. It is looking at cost-cutting measures on everything.

Wirral Council shutting nine libraries by the end of this month, with two being handed to community and church groups.

Gateshead Council looking at closing two leisures centres deemed “unaffordable” as it grapples with a £6.5m shortfall. 

Leeds city council cancelling Bonfire Night events in six locations next month to save £200,000 of non-essential spending at a time of budget pressures.

Hillingdon council planning to close all three of its nurseries, which provide more than 100 childcare places across the borough.

 Hampshire County Council planning to scrap a transport scheme that takes thousands of disabled children to school to save £1m. Home pick-ups would be replaced with drop-off points.

Norfolk county council planning to reduce access to recycling centres by closing them on Wednesdays, with its Tory council leader warning he had never dealt with funding reductions on this scale, to plug a £60m gap

The Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) said its councils were facing pressures “on a scale never seen”, with “painful cuts” to come.

UK councils slashing services to meet £3.2bn budget shortfall | Local government | The Guardian