News headlines in January 2019, page 2

GEORGETOWN, Jan 29 (IPS) - New data show that globally two billion hectares of land—roughly twice the size of China—have been degraded. And of this amount, 500 million hectares are abandoned agricultural lands. 

STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jan 28 (IPS) - In 1989 I watched Back to the Future, Part II by Robert Zemickis, a complicated story about a youngster who from 1985 time travelled to 2015. Within the movie I spotted a poster from the imaginary 2015: US AIR Surf Vietnam. Back in 1989 I associated Vietnam with the war that lasted from 1955 to the fall of Saigon in 1975 and by different media was brought into the homes of millions, radicalizing and engaging youngsters, not the least me.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 28 (IPS) - Liu Zhenmin* is UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs World leaders have committed to ending poverty everywhere for all people by 2030.

Achieving this aim means facing up to the need for dramatic declines in inequalities – in income, in opportunity, in exposure to risk, across gender, between countries and within countries – over the next decade.

GEORGETOWN, Jan 28 (IPS) - The link between desertification, land degradation and climate change is among several issues occupying the attention of the 197 Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) for the next three days.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 25 (IPS) - The United Nations, which embodies the core principles of multilateralism since its creation more than 74 years ago, is being steadily and systematically undermined by a reactionary and demagogic Trump administration recklessly flaunting American imperialism at its worst.

MEXICO CITY/TAPACHULA, Jan 24 (IPS) - A few months ago, Candelario de JesúsChiquillo Cruz reached Mexico's southern border and ran into a fence reinforced with barbed wire, while a barrier of police officers sprayed him with gas. Today, he is walking freely over the bridge that crosses the Suchiate River, a natural border with Guatemala.

NAIROBI, Jan 24 (IPS) - Ngele Ali is Head of Communications, UNDP Kenya.

It's estimated that 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by water. Unfortunately, our water resources are under serious threats attributable to uncontrolled human activities that are severely impacting livelihoods and the ecosystem.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 (IPS) - While rates have decreased, school violence and bullying is still a major global issue, contributing to lasting impacts on youth, a United Nations agency found.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 (IPS) - The widespread innovations in modern digital technology have a devastating downside to it: the accumulation of over 50 million tonnes of electronics waste (e-waste) globally every year.

NEW DELHI, Jan 23 (IPS) - As I was attending the 24th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—to create a rulebook to operationalise the Paris Agreement—in Katowice, Poland, it dawned on me, like never before, that the negotiations were taking place in a make-believe world.