News headlines in 2020, page 8

KATHMANDU, Dec 02 (IPS) - The global pandemic hijacked 2020 and reset priorities, but countries now need to regroup and renew their commitment to cap global warming at well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, as agreed in Paris in 2015.

BULAWAYO, Dec 02 (IPS) - COVID-19 has magnified global food insecurity and is driving unhealthy eating and worsening malnutrition, food experts say. They have called for deliberate global investment in food as medicine on the back of growing diet-related illnesses.

MBABANE, Dec 02 (IPS) - Placing an online order for farming inputs saves Velebantfu Dlamini about USD12 in transport fees for a round trip of about 320 kilometres. The 26-year-old vegetable farmer from Nkhungwini in the Shiselweni Region, south of Eswatini, uses a portal to order from the National Agriculture Marketing Board (NAMBoard) Farm Store. NAMBoard then delivers his order leaving Dlamini with time to stay in the field and look after his crops.

WASHINGTON DC, Dec 02 (IPS) - The UN agency devoted to ending AIDS as a public health threat is calling on top politicians and governments across the world to ensure the right to quality healthcare is upheld, and not just a privilege to be enjoyed by the wealthy.Wealth begets wealth. This simple concept of privilege has added to growing discontent with inequality that has escalated under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

MBABANE, Dec 01 (IPS) - The Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) has appealed to the United Nations to educate citizens to use their roles as consumers to create a momentum for change. This was ahead of the 2021 Food Systems Summit which the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, will host on November 25 next year.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Dec 01 (IPS) - For Zimbabwean organic farmer, Elizabeth Mpofu, access to healthy food is liberation.

Millions of people across the world go to bed hungry. Scores do not have access to nutritious food owing to an inequitable global food system focused on industrial mass food production. The food from this system is less nutritious, more expensive and less friendly to the environment.

Dec 01 (IPS) - Pacific Governments, agencies, donors and civil society now have a central source of reliable and current data to help them to make decisions that affect Pacific Islanders.

OXFORD, Dec 01 (IPS) - Covid-19 is on track to be the deadliest and one of the most catastrophic epidemics since the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, which infected about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population at the time. The number of deaths was estimated somewhere between 17 and 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million worldwide.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Dec 01 (IPS) - According to the Center for Systems Science at Johns Hopkins University, as of November 29th, there have been 62,150,421 COVID-19 cases, including 1,450,338 deaths.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 01 (IPS) - COVID-19 recessions have hit most countries, requiring massive fiscal responses. While most developing countries struggled with mounting debt even before the pandemic, many developed countries also face unprecedented macroeconomic pressures despite earlier spending cuts due to ‘fiscal consolidation’ policies.