A third of people in the 420-million-strong Arab world do not have enough food to eat, according to the United Nations.

In a report published on Thursday, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also said that between 2019 and 2020, the number of malnourished in the Arab world rose by 4.8 million people to 69 million, nearly 16 percent of the population.

The situation was “triggered by protracted crises, social unrests and exposure to multiple shocks and stresses such as conflicts, poverty, inequality, climate change, scarce natural resources and the economic repercussions associated with the recent COVID-19 pandemic”, the report said.

“The increase in the levels of undernourishment has occurred across all income levels, in conflict-affected as well as non-conflict countries,” the FAO said. “In addition, nearly 141 million people did not have access to adequate food in 2020 – an increase of more than 10 million people since 2019.”

“There may be no visible improvement in the situation this year since hunger’s primary drivers will continue to drag the situation further down the road,” Abdulhakim Elwaer, FAO’s assistant director-general and regional representative for the Near East and North Africa, added.

The FAO said hunger has increased by 91.1 percent in the Arab world over the past 20 years.

One-third of Arab world’s population suffers from hunger: UN | United Nations News | Al Jazeera

 City allotments have the ability to rival the productivity of conventional farms, according to a two-year pilot study by the University of Sussex. 

Growers in Brighton and Hove were able to harvest 1kg of insect-pollinated fruit and vegetables per sq metre in a season – which researchers said put their yields within the range of conventional farms.

Dr Beth Nicholls, who led the study is due to present her findings at Ecology Across Borders conference on Wednesday.

She said: “The growing was surprisingly productive. And some people were harvesting a lot more than that – up to 10kg per sq metre. And this is just in insect-pollinated crops, so it’s an underestimation really.” She said the study demonstrated the value of urban food production and how it could be used to reduce food deserts by growing food “closer to where people are” while also reducing food miles and transportation costs.

“The UK imports approximately £8bn of fruit and vegetables each year, but our results show that green spaces in cities, such as allotments and community gardens, could play an important role in meeting that demand at a local scale.” She explained “In a world of increasing urbanisation in both the developing and developed worlds, producing food in and around cities has the potential to improve both nutritional and health outcomes, alleviate poverty and simultaneously provide habitat for wildlife and create sustainable cities.”

There are 10,435 allotments in the UK, spanning 7,920 hectares.

City allotments could be as productive as conventional farms, research finds | Farming | The Guardian

 San Jose in California has officially apologised to Chinese immigrants and their descendants for the role the city played in “systemic and institutional racism, xenophobia, and discrimination”.

In May 1887 Chinatown with its dozens of stores and restaurants was burned to the ground, displacing about 1,400 residents, after the city council had declared the neighborhood a public nuisance.

In May, the town of Antioch, California became the first to apologise for its treatment of early Chinese immigrants, who dug secret tunnels to commute home from work because they were barred from walking city streets after sunset.

Chinese immigrants first arrived in the US in large numbers during the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s. After many also to work on building the railroad or to take up other difficult industrial and agricultural jobs for low wages.

 Three new talks have been added to the audio section, as follows –

Reading Capital as Crisis Theory – Mike Schauerte, 28th November, 2021

Socialists and the Unions – Adam Buick, 3rd December 2021

Alienation – Mike Foster, 10th December 2021

NatWest has been fined £265m after admitting it failed to prevent money-laundering of nearly £400m by one firm.

 It doesn’t take a genius to become a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon according to a recent study.

The fastest-growing group in surveys asking Americans about their religious identity. They describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”

According to a survey released by the Pew Research Center, this group — commonly known as the “nones” — now constitutes 29% of American adults. That’s up from 23% in 2016 and 19% in 2011.

“If the unaffiliated were a religion, they’d be the largest religious group in the United States,” said Elizabeth Drescher, an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University.

What’s your religion? In US, a common reply now is “None” | AP News

 Millions more people will die from Covid-19 in the coming year, and most will be unvaccinated. The vaccines that could save millions of lives are not reaching the poor majority of the world’s population. The contrast is stark: the current share of people fully vaccinated in high, upper-middle income, lower-middle income and low income countries is 69%, 68%, 30% and 3.5% respectively.

The UK, Canada, Germany and other EU states have supported a deliberate policy to withhold vaccines from the poorest countries in the world, and defended an immoral and unethical economic system which places big pharma patents ahead of millions of lives. 

Anthony Costello, a professor of global health at University College London and former director of the WHO’s maternal, child, and adolescent health program, wrote in The Guardian that wealthy countries’ hoarding of doses and refusal share vaccine technology could constitute “crimes against humanity” and that international lawyers should consider pursuing charges.

 The official statistics of global Covid deaths (5.2 million) greatly underestimate the real figures, which may already be more than 20 million deaths. In India, for example, analyses suggest that the real death rates are 10 times higher than the official figure of 400,000. Meanwhile, another study has found that more than 1.5 million children have been orphaned by the pandemic.

Patent-protected vaccines are sold at great profit to wealthy countries by a few pharmaceutical companies. The global vaccine price ranges from $2 (for AstraZeneca) to $37 per dose, with mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna the most expensive. Between January 2020 and December 2021 the market capitalisations of Moderna rose from $6.9bn to $134bn; Pfizer from $206bn to $314bn; and BioNTech from $6.6bn to $84bn.

What can the world do when massive financial interests are placed before the survival of millions of men, women and children? 

 One is a patent waiver. A year ago India, South Africa, Kenya and Eswatini among others called for one, so that emerging economy companies were not under threat of future litigation. The USA and France eventually supported them. But Germany, Canada, Japan, South Korea and the UK blocked this move to protect big pharma. Bill Gates, a major donor to Covax, also defended patent rights. After months of wrangling, the WTO has failed to broker an agreement.

The richest countries are vaccine hoarders. Try them in international court | Anthony Costello | The Guardian

 Millions of Americans are working into their senior years because they can’t afford not to have a job.

Over the next decade, the number of workers ages 75 and older is expected to increase in the US by 96.5%, with their labor force participation rate projected to rise from 8.9% in 2020 to 11.7% by 2030, a rate that has steadily increased from 4.7% in 1996.

By 2040, the US population of adults ages 65 and older is expected to increase to 80.8 million from 54.1 million in 2019.

The number of workers who retired during the pandemic was about 2 million more than expected. 50.3% of US adults ages 55 and older said they were out of the labor force due to retirement in the third quarter of 2021, compared to 48.1% in the third quarter of 2019. Though in recent months, the unretirement rate of US workers has gradually increased toward pre-pandemic levels.

As the ageing US population grows, participation in retirement plans has declined since 2000.

 Nearly half of all families in the US have no retirement savings at all and inequality among Americans based on retirement savings is greater than income inequality. 

Over 15 million adults ages 65 and older are economically insecure, with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty line, with Black, Hispanic and women ages 65 and older more likely to live in poverty.

With the average estimated social security retirement benefit in 2021 at $1,543 a month, even with a 5.9% cost of living adjusted increase for 2022, millions of Americans who rely on social security benefits are forced to continue working past retirement age in order to make ends meet.

As the US population ages, with millions of Americans having no retirement savings, the number of older Americans with student debt, either for themselves or for children, is on the rise.

Nearly 9 million Americans ages 50 and older still have student debt, and the amount owed by this demographic is growing faster than any other age group. 

In 2015, 40,000 Americans had their social security retirement benefits garnished for student loans.

‘At 75, I still have to work’: millions of Americans can’t afford to retire | US retirement | The Guardian

 The poorest half of the population have had their incomes squeezed by £110 since 2019.