News headlines in December 2019, page 7

ABIDJAN, Dec 04 (IPS) - "There is no greater asset to Africa than its youth," a statement that has been repeatedly proclaimed, but the continent still has a long way to go. Despite robust economic growth over the past two decades, a 1 percent increase in growth between 2000–14 was associated with only 0.41 percent growth in employment. This figure suggests that employment stood at less than 1.8 percent a year, far below the nearly 3 percent annual growth in the labor force. If this trend continues, 100 million people will join the multitudes of the unemployed in Africa by 2030.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 04 (IPS) - As the world warms, as inequality widens and as an increasing number of societies suffer from instability and conflict, many people are left wondering what they can do about it.

MILAN, Italy, Dec 04 (IPS) - Local knowledge systems rooted in traditional practices and culture passed down generations provide sustainable solutions to food and nutritional insecurity on the back of climate change, a conference heard this week.

MILAN, Italy, Dec 04 (IPS) - Milan is the city where Leonardo da Vinci painted his iconic Last Supper. Frozen in time is the moment Christ told his disciples there was a traitor among them. Visitors to the painting can examine the expressions on the faces of the disciples and look the food they might have eaten – the bread and wine, and of course the spilt salt. As one delegate to the 10th International Forum on Food and Nutrition noted, the diet did not seem varied or healthy.

STOCKHOLM, Dec 03 (IPS) - The news-media industry has long lamented how the digital revolution has broken its business models. Today, a majority of digital advertising money goes to Facebook and Google, and media companies are struggling to reinvent themselves through digital subscriptions.

MILAN, Italy, Dec 03 (IPS) - Global food systems are ripe for transformation if people are to be nourished and the planet sustainable, says Hilal Elver, Special Rapporteur of the Right to Food of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

MILAN, Italy, Dec 03 (IPS) - A coffee producer will receive a cent and a half from a $2.50 cup of coffee. This one stark fact stood out as scientists, researchers, activists and grappled with solutions for change in food and nutrition practises, which would benefit the greater community.

NEW YORK, Dec 03 (IPS) - Legal action against British American Tobacco (BAT), one of the world's largest tobacco firms, could see the company punished for profiting from child labor and force the industry to finally confront its treatment of vulnerable workers.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 03 (IPS) - Much recent unrest, such as the ‘yellow-vest' protests in France and the US ‘Abolish the Super-Rich' campaignis not against inequality per se, but reflects perceptions of changing inequalities. Most citizens resent inequalities when it is not only unacceptably high, but also rising.

ROME, Dec 03 (IPS) - This is a question we need to ask ourselves but before answering we need to acknowledge the diversity of expectations and aspirations that we all have for oceans, which cover more than two-thirds of the planet's surface.