The Shortwave Report May 27, 2022

This week's show features stories from Radio Deutsche-Welle, Radio Havana Cuba, and NHK Japan.
http://youthspeaksout.net/swr220527.mp3 (29:00)
From GERMANY- DW has a weekly 30 minute show called Business Beyond. In this excerpted report the subject is billionaires. Inequality is rising to the highest levels ever seen in human history, with the tiny billionaire class doubling their wealth since the start of the Covid crisis. Oxfam and others discuss how this gross imbalance could be rectified. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released a report saying that climate change is increasingly driving conflicts around the world, which saw armed conflicts double in the past ten years, as did the number of refugees.

From CUBA- The UN says that the number of people displaced by war and human rights abuses has topped 100 million for the first time. Ireland is hosting an informal meeting of the Security Council of the UN to discuss media freedom and to scrutinize the murder of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh- the Israel military has decided not to conduct a criminal investigation into the killing. Since 2021 the EU has withheld a large proportion of its funding to Palestinians, under the pretext that Palestinian textbooks need to undergo revisions.

From JAPAN- Iran has vowed to avenge last Sunday’s killing of a senior officer of the Revolutionary Guard Corp, accusing the US and Israel of being involved in the drive-by murder. Then a combination of reports on the meeting of the Quad- Japan, the US, India, and Australia. They discussed trade and security in the Indo-Pacific region, with Biden stating that the US will maintain a strong presence in the area, and that the US would use military force to defend Taiwan from mainland China- this shocked many countries and inflamed China. China and Russia reportedly flew jets near Japanese airspace and Japan scrambled jets in response. China followed with military drills near Taiwan. The Chinese Foreign Minister began a tour of 8 islands in the Pacific, beginning with the Solomon Islands- China said it has no intention of building a military base there. At a UN Security Council meeting western countries and Russia accused each other of spreading disinformation and making cyber threats since the invasion of Ukraine.