Tyres are well suited for recycling. They are easy to collect and do not require any costly sorting process. However, in Europe, still only about 50% of the tyres are recycled. The rest is incinerated or disposed of in landfills. There is still room for improvement to reach the highest international tyre recycling levels. Among the most active, “certain areas in Canada are excellent; for example [in] Alberta, they use all of their tyres for material recycling,” says Valerie Shulman, Secretary General of the European Tyre Recycling Association ETRA, in Brussels, Belgium.
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UN asks Security Council for cross-border aid OK
The U.N.’s chief humanitarian official on Thursday asked the Security Council to approve cross-border relief operations into Syria to deliver aid to civilians.
It was the opening of a public briefing by the U.N. agency chiefs for humanitarian affairs, refugees, women in conflict, and children in conflict, who used the Security Council platform as a way of speaking over the heads of the deadlocked council nations to appeal to the world for pressure to allow relief for Syria‘s civilians.
The agency chiefs launched their campaign Monday with an op-ed in The New York Times that said: “There still seems to be an insufficient sense of urgency among the governments and parties that could put a stop to the cruelty and carnage in Syria.”
Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos said the U.N. agency is currently hampered by Syria‘s requirement that two Syrian government ministers must sign approval papers for every truck allowed into the country. She said children are starving to death in Syria for want of food aid.
The Security Council has been deadlocked for months on the Syrian war, and is not expected to act or make any statement after Thursday’s briefing.
Western and Arab nations blame the conflict on Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s government. Russia insists on assigning equal blame for the suffering to the Syrian rebel opposition, and has cast vetoes to block draft council resolutions.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, thanked Turkey for taking in Syrian refugees, and especially called for international funding for Jordan and Lebanon to help them operate their refugee camps.
More than 5 million people have been displaced by the Syrian conflict, which began over two years ago. In the past few weeks, the humanitarian agencies have separately warned that their resources are running low, and added that without additional funds they will be forced to scale back relief efforts.
Over a million refugees in neighboring countries have been given shelter while U.N. agencies have helped 5.5 million Syrians get access to food, water and sanitation as well as basic health services.
The U.N. special representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Bangura, said women in Syria have been “raped, tortured and humiliated.”
“Many have
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/fT7G7XMeItY/
Ray Chambers Appointed UN Special Envoy For Health MDG Financing
By The Huffington Post News Editors
Ray Chambers was appointed today by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as the Special Envoy for Financing of the Health Related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Chambers is the first person to hold the newly created position.
MDGs were set by the UN in 2000 and reflect that body’s effort to combat disease, hunger, poverty, and child mortality; promote gender equality; and improve maternal health, among other objectives. All 193 UN members have agreed to attempt to achieve the eight goals by 2015.
Chambers, a philanthropist who co-founded the charity Malaria No More, and who is co-chair of the Board of Directors of GBCHealth, has been the UN‘s Special Envoy for Malaria since 2008 (a role that the Secretary General has concurrently renewed for Chambers). In that time period, Chambers oversaw an effort that raised more than $4 billion to combat malaria, and distributed more than 400 million mosquito nets.
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