News headlines in 2016, page 65

Daylesford, Australia, May 12 (IPS) - A previously little-known law firm called Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama, has recently been exposed as one of the world's major creators of ‘shell companies', that is, corporate structures that can be used to hide the ownership of assets. This can be done legally but shell companies of this nature are widely used for illegal purposes such as tax evasion and money laundering of proceeds from criminal activity.

DHAKA, Bangladesh, May 12 (IPS) - Facing the bleak prospect of millions of its citizens being displaced in coming years due to sea level rise caused by climate change, Bangladesh is building up existing coastal embankments in a bid to protect coastal lands and people.

ROME, May 12 (IPS) - At the launching today, of the FAO-Nobel Peace Laureate Alliance for food security and peace, FAO's Director-General said that "peace and food security are inextricably linked – we cannot achieve one without the other. By integrating food security and peace-building initiatives, we can work together to ensure that hunger is neither a cause nor a result of conflict."

UNITED NATIONS, May 11 (IPS) - Jack Norton was on a glacier in northern India. A seemingly impenetrable fortress of sweeping ridges and towering walls of granite, capped by hanging glaciers. It seemed, he said, that nothing could touch it, nothing could beat it down.

UNITED NATIONS, May 11 (IPS) - We tend not to worry when things are going well.

If people can take care of their daily business and send their kids to school without fear of violence, resolve disputes through a functioning justice system when the need arises, express their views both in private discussions and in public processes, feel they can truly contribute to decisions that affect their lives, and know effective institutions are in place to deliver basic services to their families and communities without interruption or the need for bribes, chances are they will be broadly content with the way their society is managed.

UNITED NATIONS, May 11 (IPS) - Despite its many lifesaving benefits breastfeeding still struggles to compete with the marketing used by the multi-billion dollar baby formula industry, according to a new report published this week.

ROME, May 11 (IPS) - Greece is again in the media, because a new negotiation is due between the embattled country and its creditors. The North-South divide of Europe is coming back with force (while the East-West relationship is increasingly looking as beyond repair). The German minister of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble , has come back with his peculiar view of the economy as a branch of moral and ethical discipline, and not as a reading of reality. He has asked the Greeks "to not get distracted" by the refugees crisis, and not forget their primary task, which is to pay their debt. The request is to cut 2% of the Gross National Product; in case there will not be a 3.5% budget surplus within 2018.

Bangkok, May 11 (IPS) - Investment in science, technology and innovation (STI) needs to be the backbone of productivity-led economic recovery and sustainable development. Despite significant increases in productivity over the past few decades, economic growth in developing economies of Asia and the Pacific has been primarily driven by factor accumulation. However, the average rate of productivity growth slowed between 2000-2007 and 2008-2014 by 65%, which has contributed to the economic slowdown and can undermine efforts to effectively pursue the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We must revive growth in productivity, one of the keys to which is a highly-skilled labor force.

ROME, May 11 (IPS) - "Where food security can be a force for stability, we have to look to food and agriculture as pathways to peace and security. This is a great challenge, but one that we can meet together as we embark on achieving the 2030 Development Agenda." These were the words of FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva as he discussed the interplays between food security and peace in New York last March.

Antwerp, Alfaz, May 11 (IPS) - We are dealing with mass migration, basically into EU, and European nationalisms, many in favor of exits from the EU.

Why this mass migration, maybe to the point of Völkerwanderung, mainly into EU–but then what kind of EU–and why the European nationalisms now found one way or the other in many member states?