News headlines in 2016, page 37

ROME, Aug 16 (IPS) - Children are being smuggled, sexually abused, maimed, killed for their vital organs, recruited as soldiers or otherwise enslaved. Not only: 69 million children under five will die from mostly preventable causes, 167 million will live in poverty, and 263 million are out of school. And 750 million women will have been married as children by 2030.

NEW YORK, Aug 16 (IPS) - The French philospher Voltaire once said that "if we believe in absurdities, we shall commit atrocities."

Indiscriminate killing of self and innocent others, ostensibly in the name of some religion, is among the most absurd of beliefs. And rather than ceasing, the spiral of violence appears to know no end. There appears to be no locus, and no focus, beyond random killing.

DJIBOUTI CITY, Aug 15 (IPS) - Bags of wheat speed down multiple conveyor belts to be heaved onto trucks lined up during the middle of a blisteringly hot afternoon beside the busy docks of Djibouti Port.

UNITED NATIONS / ROME, Aug 14 (IPS) - Ambassador Hahn Choong-hee, UN representative of the Republic of Korea, spoke with IPS about the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2270, which was unanimously adopted on 2 March 2016.

ROME, Aug 12 (IPS) - As Iran currently executes the highest number of juvenile offenders in the world, hundreds of Iranian minors helplessly watch their childhoods pass them by as they await their fatal ends behind bars.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 12 (IPS) - Consider this: in 1956 Sweden and Kenya's population was roughly at 7 million. Today Sweden has about 9.8 million, while there are about 44 million Kenyans.

Fertility levels are declining gradually and Kenyans are living longer. It is estimated that there will be 85 million people in Kenya by 2050, with three quarters of these being below 35 years. While Kenya's median age is 19, Sweden's is 42.

NEW YORK, Aug 12 (IPS) - Many of us can remember the difficulties of getting our first job – the searching, the frustration of rejection, the nervous wait for an interview or the first day of work. Today's staggering unemployment rates in many countries make it an especially difficult time for young job-seekers.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 12 (IPS) - At the age of 14, Kaillana de Oliveira of Brazil knows she won't be as tall as most professional basketball players, because of family genetics. But she is not letting that get in the way of her dream of standing out in the sport.

ROME, Aug 11 (IPS) - "No one can deny the terrible similarities between those running from the threat of guns and those fleeing creeping desertification, water shortages, floods and hurricanes."

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 11 (IPS) - The debt crisis in Europe continues to drag on. Drastic measures to cut government debts and deficits, including by replacing democratically elected governments with ‘technocrats', have only made things worse. The more recent drastic expenditure cuts in Europe to quickly reduce public finance deficits have not only adversely impacted the lives of millions as unemployment soared. The actions also seem to have killed the goose that lay the golden egg of economic growth, resulting in a ‘low growth' debt trap.