• Listen to this segment with Maya Rockeymoore

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Uprising’s guest expert Maya Rockeymoore, President of the Center for Global Policy Solutions, a social change non-profit dedicated to making policy work for people and their environment, analyzes today’s news headlines:

The United Nations High Commission on Refugees has announced that there are more than 50 million refugees worldwide – the highest number since World War II. The annual report by the UN agency was compiled from reports by governments and non-governmental organizations, and found that 51.2 million people were displaced from their homes by the end of 2013. Shockingly, half of those are children. The report states, “if displaced people had their own country it would be the 24th most populous in the world.” Afghans form the largest group of displaced people, at about 2.5 million, with Syrians at a close second, with 2.4 million. Click here for a Commondreams.org article about the story.

The US House of Representatives passed a legislative amendment yesterday, 293-123, to block the National Security Agency’s ability to monitor Americans’ communications without warrants. This is the second time the House has passed such a measure. A majority of representatives from both major parties voted for the bill, which also prohibits the government from installing “back-door” software and hardware into products. It still needs to pass the Senate and be signed by President Obama in order to become law. Click here for a Huffington Post article about the story.

In more news on government secrecy, the website Wikileaks this week published a draft of another secret trade agreement, called a Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) between the US and European Union. Commondreams.org is reporting that the agreement, ” lays out the deregulatory strategies championed by some of the world’s largest banks and investment firms,” and that “if enacted, [it] would give the world’s financial powers an even more dominant position to control the global economy by avoiding regulations and public accountability.” Wikileaks has in the past leaked draft chapters of the Trans Pacific Partnership, another secretive trade agreement being pushed by the Obama Administration. Click here for a Commondreams.org article about the story.