WASHINGTON DC, Jan 07 (IPS) - Rhoda Weeks-Brown is general counsel and director of the Legal Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Al Capone had a problem: he needed a way to disguise the enormous amounts of cash generated by his criminal empire as legitimate income. His solution was to buy all-cash laundromats, mix dirty money in with clean, and then claim that washing ordinary Americans' shirts and socks, rather than gambling and bootlegging, was the source of his riches.

SHWE THAUNG YAN, Myanmar, Jan 07 (IPS) - In 2015, Worldview International Foundation began a mangrove restoration project, planting saplings of the trees on about 121 hectares of land in Myanmar's Ayyerwady region.

NEW DELHI, Jan 07 (IPS) - Jagriti Gangopadhyay is a post-doctoral fellow at the Manipal Center for Humanities, Manipal, India.

A Chinese researcher has claimed that he helped make world's first genetically edited babies but the development may come at a heavy cost. A designer baby is a GM human embryo with appropriate qualities which have been shaped as per the instructions received from the parents.

PALMEIRAS DE GOIÁS, Brazil, Jan 04 (IPS) - "Solar energy makes my happiness complete," said Divina Cardoso dos Santos, owner of one of 740 houses with photovoltaic panels on the rooftops in a settlement on the outskirts of this central Brazilian city.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 04 (IPS) - Dan Shepard is a UN public information officer specializing in sustainability issues--including SDGs, biodiversity & climate change. Africa Renewal*

Record global greenhouse gas emissions are putting the world on a path toward unacceptable warming, with serious implications for development prospects in Africa. "Limiting warming to 1.5° C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, but doing so would require unprecedented changes," said Jim Skea, cochair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group III.

SHWE THAUNG YAN, Myanmar, Jan 04 (IPS) - Htay Aung is having a moment. The 63-year-old retired professor of Marine Science sits at the foot of a Buddha statue atop a hill on Shwe Thaung Yan sub township, in Myanmar's Ayyerwady region, almost in meditation. Below him, a vast thicket of mangrove glistens in the gold of a setting sun. For Aung, this stretch of mangroves—known as the Thor Heyerdahl Climate Park—is a symbol of joy, hope and all things good.

IXTLÁN DE JUÁREZ, Mexico, Jan 03 (IPS) - "I dream of a healthy, sustainable, well-managed forest," says Rogelio Ruiz, a silviculturist from southern Mexico, who insists that "we have to clean it up, take advantage of the wood, and reforest."

BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan 03 (IPS) - Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

2019 will be a landmark year for the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Four years will have passed since world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Four years since governments recommitted themselves to eradicating extreme poverty, improving universal health care coverage, education and food security, and achieving a sweeping set of economic, social and environmental objectives. Long enough to assess our direction of travel and then refocus work where progress is falling short.

CANDELARIA DE LA FRONTERA, El Salvador, Jan 02 (IPS) - As he milks his cow, Salvadoran Gilberto Gomez laments that poor harvests, due to excessive rain or drought, practically forced his three children to leave the country and undertake the risky journey, as undocumented migrants, to the United States.

KIKWIT, DR Congo, Jan 02 (IPS) - It was almost four years ago in 2015 that members of Farmer's Frame of Idiofa (FFI), a farmers group in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), produced a mere eight tonnes of sweet potatoes on two hectares of land. But the main reason for the low yield had not necessarily been a climate-related one, but an educational one.