News headlines in December 2018, page 3

Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Italian Nobel laureate honoured for her work in neurobiology, once gave a splendid conference with the title "The imperfect brain". There she explained that man has a brain that is not used completely, while the reverse is true for the cockroach. In the growing fog that envelops the planet and its inhabitants, looking at things from the point of view of a cockroach would probably give us a new perspective. Also because the cockroach survived the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, it is 300 million years old, and it is distributed around the planet in over 4,000 species. All things that give it a great advantage over man.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 19 (IPS) - The UN's major donors – led by the United States – have long been accused of influence-peddling and misusing their financial clout not only to grab some of the high ranking jobs in the world body but also threaten funding cuts to push their own domestic agendas.

KISUMU, Kenya, Dec 19 (IPS) - Currently 30 square kilometres of Lake Victoria, which stretches to approximately 375 kilometres and links Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, is covered with the evasive water hyacinth that has paralysed transport in the area.

But scientists are harvesting and fermenting the weed, and one intrepid chemistry teacher has built a business out of it.

MARRAKECH, Morocco, Dec 18 (IPS) - One of the most common words used by speakers during the Global Compact on Migration was "dignity"—granting migrants the dignity they deserve. As with any advocacy, there is a danger a word can lose meaning through overuse. But on the streets of Morocco the same word means a lot to migrants looking for work. And when they find it—both work and dignity—it can alter the entire migration equation. 

BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec 18 (IPS) - Vladimir Bozovic is Advisor of Government of the Republic of Serbia

Entire human history is one great struggle for freedom. To many, slavery is a synonym for something in the past, for transatlantic slave trade, but, unfortunately, slavery still exists in many different forms.

KUALA LUMPUR & SYDNEY, Dec 18 (IPS) - The notion of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and later, South Africa) was concocted by Goldman Sachs' Jim O'Neill. His 2001 acronym was initially seen as a timely, if not belated acknowledgement of the rise of the South.

But if one takes China out of the BRICS, one is left with little more than RIBS. While the RIBS have undoubtedly grown in recent decades, their expansion has been quite uneven and much more modest than China's, while the post-Soviet Russian economy contracted by half during Boris Yeltsin's first three years of ‘shock therapy' during 1992-1994.

PHNOM PENH, Dec 18 (IPS) - Vietnam's shift from a centrally planned to a market economy has transformed the country. And while it is now is one of the most dynamic emerging countries in Southeast Asia, this has sometimes been at the expense of the environment. But the country has begun to prioritise green growth.

WASHINGTON DC, Dec 18 (IPS) - Chris Wellisz is on the staff of Finance and Development at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) *Oleksii Sobolev was a fund manager by day and a pro-democracy protester by night. After work, he would leave his office at Dragon Asset Management in Kiev to join the crowds camped out in Independence Square demanding the resignation of a president they viewed as corrupt.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 18 (IPS) - Sicily Kariuki is the Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Health in Kenya. Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

According to Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, the implementation of UHC is "more a political than an economic challenge".

FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO, Mexico, Dec 17 (IPS) - "If thousands of people flock to this town, how will we be able to service them? I'm afraid of that growth," ZendyEuán, spokeswoman for a community organisation,said in reference to the Mayan Train (TM) project, a railway network that will run through five states in southern Mexico.