News headlines in 2018, page 43

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 14 (IPS) - To make the case for privatization from the 1980s, their real problems were often caricatured and exaggerated.Historically, the private sector has been unable or unwilling to affordably provide needed services. Hence, meeting such needs could not be left to the market or private interests. Thus, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) emerged, often under colonial rule, due to such ‘market failure' as the private sector could not meet the needs of colonial capitalist expansion.

BRAZZAVILLE, Congo, Aug 14 (IPS) - Adelheid Onyango is Adviser for Nutrition at the World Health Organization's Regional Office for Africa and Bibi Giyose is Senior Nutrition and Food Systems officer, and Special Advisor to the CEO of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).

When faced with a crisis, our natural reaction is to deal with its immediate threats. Ateka* came to the make-shift clinic with profuse diarrhoea: they diagnosed cholera. The urgent concern in the midst of that humanitarian crisis was to treat the infection and send her home as quickly as possible. But she came back to the treatment centre a few days later – not for cholera, but because she was suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Doctors had saved her life but not restored her health. And there were others too, who like Ateka eventually succumbed to severe malnutrition.

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Aug 14 (IPS) - Mikesh Ram would watch his rice crops begin to rot during the dry season in Guyana, because salt water from the nearby Atlantic Ocean was displacing freshwater from the Mahaica River he and other farmers used to flood their rice paddies.

OVALLE, Chile, Aug 14 (IPS) - Eighteen national science prize-winners in Chile have called for a halt to the over-extraction of water in the four regions over which the Atacama Desert spreads in the north of the country, a problem that threatens the future of 1.5 million people.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Aug 13 (IPS) - Many in Zimbabwe are questioning whether the country can break with its horrid past or embrace a new future after a watershed election that saw Emmerson Mnangagwa win the presidential race by a narrow margin and the opposition lodge a formal petition challenging the results in the Constitutional Court.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 13 (IPS) - This article is part of a series of stories on Disability inclusion.

Children with disabilities are up to four times more likely to experience violence, with girls being the most at risk, according to the United Nations Children's Fund.

RÍO DE JANEIRO, Aug 10 (IPS) - An alternative network in Brazil promotes women's participation in elected offices with media support. This campaign, like others in Latin America, seeks to reverse a political landscape where, despite being a majority of the population, women hold an average of just 29.8 percent of legislative posts.

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 10 (IPS) - Every Sunday afternoon, Thembi Majola* cooks a meal of chicken and rice for her mother and herself in their home in Alexandra, an informal settlement adjacent to South Africa's wealthy economic hub, Sandton.

WASHINGTON DC, Aug 10 (IPS) - Joep Roest is Senior Financial Sector Specialist, Inclusive Markets, Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP).

On the face of it, the 2017 Global Findex shows that Bangladesh has made great strides toward financial inclusion since the previous Findex was released in 2014.

LONDON, Aug 09 (IPS) - Duncan Macqueen is a principal researcher on forests at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).*

Mozambique's forests are disappearing at an alarming rate, with most of the destruction caused by excessive logging, corruption and weak laws.