News headlines in July 2022, page 16

RAHIM YAR KHAN, Pakistan, Jul 12 (IPS) - Villagers living with a desert at their doorstep in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province are finding life more bountiful thanks to recent training on how to use their smartphones to buy, sell and gather information.

Access to information is a human right, Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Tuesday, underscoring that for peacekeepers, it can be “a matter of life and death, and the difference between peace and war”.  

“I recall the civil war in Liberia vividly,” says Elfreda Dennice Stewart, a United Nations Police (UNPOL) officer serving with the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).

Surging and deadly gang violence in the Haitian capital has contributed to runaway food insecurity for well over one million people there, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 12 (IPS) - Nero was famously accused of fiddling while Rome burned. Today, some leaders are doing worse. They are throwing fuel on the fire. Literally.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 12 (IPS) - Long a means for powerful nations to influence developing countries, development finance has gained renewed significance in the new Cold War. Unlike during the US-Soviet Cold War, the rivalry now is between mixed market capitalist systems.

TOKYO, Jul 11 (IPS) - Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving Prime Minister of Japan, has died. It was a murder caused by a personal grudge rather than political terrorism. And it was not a direct grudge against Mr. Abe. A religious group had supported Mr. Abe, and a murderer with a grudge against the religious group killed him. Murders targeting politicians are often related to political messages or claims. This is a very unique case in that the murder was committed out of a personal grudge, not against the individual for what he did, but against the organization that supported the individual.

Bulawayo, Jul 11 (IPS) - Nature has diverse values for different people, but it is poorly evaluated, and this is driving the global biodiversity crisis, top scientists say in a new report.

The values that we ascribe to nature are vital parts of our cultures, identities, economies, and ways of life, all of which should be reflected in policy decisions surrounding our natural world, according to a new UN-backed report released on Monday.

Although the UN-brokered truce between the Yemeni Government and Houthi rebels continues to hold, the key issue of road openings remains outstanding, while the country’s “humanitarian catastrophe” is set to worsen, the Security Council heard on Monday.