This Week’s Under-reported News Summary – Dec. 16, 2020

Between the lines
Compiled by Bob Nixon
Dec. 3, 2020 

• Halt relocation of Rohingya refugees to remote island
• Making coal history
• NYPD cops cash in sex trade arrests with little evidence

 Thousands of Rohingya refugees, who fled mass violence in Myanmar are being relocated to an uninhabited island in the Bay of Bengal, named Bhasan Char. In early December, Bangladeshi authorities transported over 1,600 refugees there from a massive camp on the border with Myanmar. Human rights groups protested the move, charging that the refugees were forcibly relocated to the island. Facilities there had not been inspected by the United Nations. Bangladesh plans to send a total of 100,000 refugees to low-lying Bhasan Char, which is vulnerable to cyclones and other dangerous storms.

(“Bangladesh: Halt Relocation of Rohingya Refugees to Remote Island,” Amnesty International, Dec. 4, 2020; “Bangladesh: Halt Rohingya Relocations to Remote Island,”Human Rights Watch, Dec. 3, 2020)

• Over the summer, a 250-megawatt coal-fired power plant on the edge of New Mexico’s Zuni Mountains was permanently shut down. It’s another sign of trouble for the U.S. coal industry, despite pro-coal cheerleading from the outgoing Trump administration. The economic slump brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic severely reduced electric power demand around the world. In Europe, Britain has shut down a third of its remaining coal power plants and Spain cut its coal capacity in half.

(“The Dirtiest Fossil Fuel Is on the Back Foot,” Economist, Dec. 3 2020)

• Teams of undercover New York Police Department vice squad officers regularly descend on black and Latino neighborhoods, leaning into car windows and knocking on apartment doors looking for people who are willing to pay money for sex. The undercover assignments can be lucrative for cops to rack up overtime pay. But as ProPublica reports, these cops frequently make multiple arrests on scant evidence. Undercover vice cops largely ignore affluent white neighborhoods and expensive hotels.

(“NYPD Cops Cash In on Sex Trade Arrests With Little Evidence, While Black and Brown New Yorkers Pay the Price,” ProPublica, Dec. 7, 2020)

This week’s News Summary was narrated by Anna Manzo.

 Link : Here