News headlines in May 2020, page 4

UNITED NATIONS, May 20 (IPS) - At the World Health Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping said they did their "best to stem cross-border transmission" of COVID-19 and help other nations.This week's 73rd World Health Assembly had member states adopt a resolution to review the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organisation (WHO) will also undergo  an evaluation for its response to the outbreak.

HUYE, Rwanda, May 20 (IPS) - How did Rwanda manage to restore more than 800,000 hectares — almost half of its original pledge — in less than a decade? In 2011, when Rwanda committed to restoring 2 million hectares of land in a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested areas by 2020 — it seemed like a big ask. 

NEW DELHI, May 20 (IPS) - Coronavirus outbreaks in China and later across the globe have been unprecedented in both its scale and impacts. In the era of changing world order, this pandemic has drawn the global attention towards the threats posed by the non-traditional security challenges.

UNITED NATIONS, May 20 (IPS) - As a spiraling financial crisis threatens to undermine the UN's day-to-day operations worldwide, a proposal being kicked around, outside the empty corridors of the UN, has triggered the question: will senior officials, including the Secretary-General, the Deputy Secretary-General (DSG), Under-Secretaries-Generals (USGs), including 60 heads of UN agencies, Funds and Programs, and Assistant Secretaries-Generals (ASGs), volunteer to take salary cuts— even as a symbolic gesture?

May 19 (IPS) - With widespread calls for green transitions in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, developing countries are predicted to remain at the bottom of the global economic ladder, a study claims.

BRATISLAVA, May 19 (IPS) - In Russia, which has one of the world's worst HIV/AIDS epidemics with the rate of new infections rising by 10-15 percent per year and at least 1.2 million people infected, an already fragile healthcare system is buckling under the pressure of dealing with COVID-19.

GENEVA, May 19 (IPS) - When the COVID-19 virus travelled from Wuhan, China halfway across the world through Europe, the Americas and beyond in the space of a few weeks, it gave us proof, if one was ever needed, of how tightly interconnected we all are.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, May 19 (IPS) - ub-Saharan Africa has a debt problem. According to the most recent World Bank debt statisticsin 2018 the region had about $493 billion in long term external debt.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 19 (IPS) - Economic growth is supposed to be the tide that lifts all boats. According to the conventional wisdom until recently, growth in China, India and East Asian countries took off thanks to opening up to international trade and investment.

May 18 (IPS) - When the United States and China signed the First-Phase of their Trade Agreement in January this year, President Donald Trump called it a "momentous step", and the world believed they had stepped back from a dangerous brink. But, alas, to cite an idiom that is so current today, it was but a ‘false positive'. As the globe reels from the surgoing COVID-19 pandemic, it is possible that the rapid deterioration of US-China relationship can become one of the worst side-effects of this raging virus.