News headlines in June 2019, page 5

STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 17 (IPS) - Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another.

-- Leonard Cohen Stranger Song

A friend of mine who became wealthy as an art dealer but eventually lost his fortune told me: "Money isn´t everything, but it helps." This made me think of Donald Trump, who likes to describe himself as an entrepreneur, i.e. "owner of a business enterprise who, by risk and initiative, attempts to make profits."¹ The keyword is profits. According to Trump, success is measured through wealth. Like chess and poker, entrepreneurship is about winning and losing. Trump characterizes people he dislikes as loserswhile he considers himself to be a winner.

ANKARA, Jun 17 (IPS) - Events marking the 25th anniversary of the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the World Day to Combat Desertification opened here Monday, Jun. 17 with a call for urgent action to protect and restore degrading land.

ANKARA, Jun 17 (IPS) - The coming decades will be crucial in shaping and implementing a transformative land agenda, according to a scientist at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) framework for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN).

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 17 (IPS) - In a world that is becoming more and more industrial by the day, air pollution appears to be on the rise.

While there have been efforts in major cities to combat the grave effects that pollution can have on the overall health of its citizens, there is still more progress to be made.

NAIROBI, Jun 17 (IPS) - Land restoration could attract large private investments in the fight against climate change over the coming decades, if Governments and the United Nations put the right incentives and conditions in place.

MADRID, Jun 17 (IPS) - Yet another under-reported human-made disaster: the relentless desertification of Planet Earth that may make uninhabitable some regions like the Middle East, endanger food security, aggravate climate crisis, and force more and more millions of people to flee.

ROME, Jun 17 (IPS) - One third of the planet's land surface is under the threat of desertification, impacting over 250 million people.

BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 14 (IPS) - Wendell Balderas is Media & Communications Manager of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) decision authorizing the sale of Philip Morris International (PMI)'s heated tobacco system, IQOS, in the United States inadvertently puts a foot in the door to increase sales of new tobacco products in the developing world.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 14 (IPS) - UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told a Chatham House meeting in London last week that the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), one of the legacies of the late Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "spawned tremendous progress" in the battle against poverty worldwide.

CÚCUTA, Colombia, Jun 13 (IPS) - Not long ago, 15-year-old Nelsmar attended a middle-class school in central Venezuela. That was before her family was uprooted by the economic and humanitarian crisis in her country, which has pushed nearly 3.9 million persons to migrate or flee, according to recent estimates of the Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela.