News headlines in 2019, page 20

BANGKOK, Thailand, Oct 25 (IPS) - The tobacco industry's new rhetoric that smoking is harmful and that its so-called less risky products will reduce the global tobacco epidemic, should see the industry stop opposing or fighting government efforts to reduce tobacco use. However, this is not the case.

GENEVA, Oct 25 (IPS) - By the time of publication, representatives, senior officials, and Heads of State and Government of 120 countries from around the world will have converged on Baku in Azerbaijan for the XVIIIth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

ACCRA, Ghana/BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 25 (IPS) - There is evident correlation between countries with high levels of children under five years of age who are stunted or wasted and the existence of political instability and/or frequent exposure to natural calamities, experts say.

But current food systems in Africa are not addressing nutrition because of the combination of poor investment in the agriculture value chain, inadequate policies and lack of accountability in addressing malnutrition.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 25 (IPS) - In a "historic achievement for humanity", two of three wild poliovirus strains have been eliminated worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday, following the conclusion by a group of experts that WPV3, type three of the disease, has been eradicated completely.

Oct 25 (IPS) - Cheap and reliable solar technology has bolstered the use of tubewells in Sindh; but as groundwater is sucked out rapidly, life is under a grave threat

At the southern end of Pakistan's Sindh-Balochistan border near the Kirthar mountain range, Sindh's Kachho desert has witnessed an unprecedented surge in the use of solar-powered tubewells for groundwater extraction in agriculture.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 24 (IPS) - As massive protests escalated worldwide last month, millions of children walked out of schools to demonstrate against the lackadaisical response – primarily from world leaders --to the ongoing climate emergency resulting in floods, droughts, typhoons, heat waves and wildfires devastating human lives.

STOCKHOLM / ROME, Oct 24 (IPS) - On October 11, the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee announced that this year´s Peace Prize is awarded to Ethiopia´s prime minister Abiy Ahmed: "For his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea."¹ Let us hope that Abiy remains a worthy Peace Prize winner and that warfare and human suffering on the Horn of Africa will finally come to an end.

ABUJA / NEW YORK, Oct 24 (IPS) - Hamza Idris, an editor with the Nigerian Daily Trust, was at the newspaper's central office on January 6 when the military arrived looking for him.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 24 (IPS) - A partnership between United Nations and African Union (AU) agencies will help African economies insure themselves against the droughts and other extreme weather events that plague the continent, organisers say.

KHULNA, Bangladesh, Oct 23 (IPS) - October 24 is International Freshwater Dolphin Day. Last year Bangladesh celebrated the international day for the first time, but the country has been instituting policies and programmes for years to protect the Sundarbans — home of Asia's last two remaining freshwater dolphin species.

IPS Correspondent Rafiqul Islam travelled to Khulna to file this report. Israfil Boyati lives along the shoreline of the Bay of Bengal.In the past he used to catch fish in the canals and rivers of Bangladesh's Sundarbans mangrove forest — one of the world's largest and a habitat to many endangered species, including the endangered Bengal tigers and freshwater dolphins.