News headlines in 2014, page 8

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 05 (IPS) - When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was at Harvard University early this week to pick up the 'Humanitarian of the Year' award, his thoughts transcended the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the Austrian capital of Vienna which will be the venue of a key international conference on nuclear weapons next week.

GENEVA, Dic 05 (IPS) - When the Korean company Daewoo attempted to acquire half the arable land of Madagascar for free, it unleashed a tsunami of investor interest in agricultural land, popularised as the 'land grab'.

JAKARTA, Dic 05 (IPS) - Last week, Indonesia's new president, Joko Widodo, ordered the country's Ministry of Environment and Forestry to review the licenses of all companies that have converted peatlands to oil palm plantations.

ZWARA, Libya, Dic 05 (IPS) - It could be a squat house anywhere: music is playing non-stop and there is also a radio station and an art exhibition. However, weapons are also on display among the instruments, and most here wear camouflage uniform.

WASHINGTON, Dic 04 (IPS) - The World Bank has taken an unusual but highly visible step away from traditional economics, encouraging policymakers and development implementers to place far more emphasis on research into local human behaviour when drawing up plans and projects.

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 04 (IPS) - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has refused to jettison any of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by an Open Working Group of member states: goals aimed at launching the U.N.'s new post-2015 development agenda through 2030.

ERBIL, Dic 04 (IPS) - After a period of frostiness, Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Turkey seem intent on mending ties, as each of the parties show signs of needing the other.

LIMA, Dic 04 (IPS) - The U.N. mechanism for supporting carbon emissions projects in developing countries – the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – is in crisis as a result of a dramatic slump in the prices being paid for carbon credits.

BONN, Dic 04 (IPS) - So great are the contrasts between the frozen empty expanses of the far north and Africa's baking deserts, steamy rain forests and savannahs that any direct connections between the two seem far-fetched - if they indeed exist at all.

ROME, Dic 04 (IPS) - The fact that in a referendum Switzerland has taken a path that goes in the opposite direction from that of Europe is an unusual fact which calls for reflection, especially because Switzerland has taken a much more progressive path, while we all were accustomed to see it as a very conservative country.