News headlines in 2015, page 12

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 09 (IPS) - A thriving private sector is an essential precondition to improving income and employment prospects and thus key to achieving sustainable development on the ground and in areas most affected by poverty. In the words of the UN Secretary General, "The United Nations and business need each other. We need your innovation, your initiative, your technological prowess. But business also needs the United Nations. In a very real sense, the work of the United Nations can be viewed as seeking to create the idea enabling environment within which business can thrive."

LIMA, Nov 07 (IPS) - Undertaking the challenge of pushing for new legislation to guarantee food security in their countries, legislators from Latin America and the Caribbean, together with guest lawmakers from Africa and Asia, will hold the Sixth Forum of the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger Oct. 15-17.

QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq, Nov 06 (IPS) - You can find those popular Turkish chocolate and orange biscuits, and there are also shovels for the coming winter snow. There's also no shortage of those popular watches boasting the face of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

ANKARA, Turkey, Nov 05 (IPS) - Some 135 million people could be displaced by 2045 as a result of land desertification, according to a recent UK ministry of defence report. This figure could rise to 200 million who are displaced by other climate change impacts like natural disasters by 2050, said British environment refugee specialist Norman Myers.

MENDOZA, Argentina, Nov 05 (IPS) - Purple garlic that is losing its color? More translucent wine? Climate change will also affect the flavours of our food in the absence of measures to mitigate the impacts of global warming, which are already being felt in crops that are basic to local economies, such as in the Argentine province of Mendoza.

GENEVA, Nov 04 (IPS) - When the world's most powerful ambassadors gathered in New York last week to celebrate the United Nations' 70th anniversary, it would have been undiplomatic to mention the looming crisis facing the UN's proudest achievement - its humanitarian aid programmes.

MEXICO CITY, Nov 04 (IPS) - Open data policies in Latin America have not yet enabled communities to exercise their right to access to information, consultation and participation with regard to mining or infrastructure projects that affect their surroundings and way of life.

ROME, Nov 03 (IPS) - Over the eight years since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, the ranks of the unemployed have swollen to over 200 million worldwide. That number captures only a fraction of those who remain vulnerable and insecure, since more than four-fifths of the global workforce is outside the formal sector, with poor access to unemployment or other traditional social security benefits.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 03 (IPS) - An issue mostly associated with Africa and Asia, malaria may not initially come to mind when we think of the Americas.

BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE, Nov 03 (IPS) - Zimbabwe's planned Batoka Gorge power project on the Zambezi River is expected to generate 2,400 megawatts (MW) of electricity, upward from an initial 1,600 MW, but the worsening power cuts that are being blamed on low water levels have renewed concerns about the effects of climate change on mega dams.