News headlines in 2019, page 52

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 17 (IPS) - Over 820 million people across the globe are currently undernourished, according to a new report released here.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jul 17 (IPS) - Ella Mazani is a mobile phone farmer.

"My mobile phone is part of my farming. It supports my farming and my family's welfare through the services I get via the phone," the smallholder maize farmer from Shurugwi in central Zimbabwe quips. 

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 17 (IPS) - The Trump administration, in its continued hostility towards the United Nations-- and as part of its policy aimed at undermining multilateral institutions and international commitments-- has withheld its annual contributions to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) – for the third consecutive year.

ILLINOIS, United States, Jul 16 (IPS) - "It has never happened before," is a sentence that is becoming excessively common in the news  due to a changing climate where new extremes are becoming normal.

NAIROBI, Jul 16 (IPS) - It is an image of resistance that went viral across the world. Alaa Salah, a young Sudanese student, dressed in a traditional white thobe standing atop a car with an enthralled crowd surrounding her as she and they boldly chanted Al-Thawra—Arabic for revolution.

NEW YORK, Jul 16 (IPS) - Tamara Tutnjevic Gorman is Policy Manager - Ending Violence against Children, World Vision

Despite what you might have heard, things are getting better, every year. We are making amazing progress on fighting diseases, reducing the preventable deaths of children, and investing huge amounts to advance medicine and knowledge and to create better living conditions.

STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jul 16 (IPS) - Wars, conflict – it´s all business.
One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero.
Numbers sanctify, my good fellow!

-- Charles Chaplin Monsieur Verdoux

On 8 July, Bosco Ntaganda was by the International Criminal Court (ICC) found guilty of crimes against humanity. The 41-year-old rebel leader, nicknamed The Terminator, had ordered his fighters to "target and kill civilians", kidnap children to be brought up as soldiers and girls to become sex slaves, while personally partaking in the crimes. The Court had gathered evidence from 2,000 survivors from the rampage that Ntaganda and his army ran through the north-eastern Congolese region of Ituri, where beginning in 1999, 60,000 people have been murdered by warring rebel armies. Eighty witnesses testified directly during the court proceedings, thirteen were "experts" and the rest victims.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 (IPS) - A United Nations-backed probe into atrocities committed by the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq has frequently been criticised for making slow progress during its first two years of operations. Lately, that could be changing.

GENEVA, Jul 16 (IPS) - Ambassador A.L.A. Azeez is Chair-Rapporteur of the Human Right Council's Social Forum 2018 & Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva*

As I reflect on the varied views and perspectives that emerged during the Human Rights Council's Social Forum 2018 -- where the theme of Olympic ideal and inclusive sports and their contribution to the promotion of the human rights, peace and development through sports were extensively deliberated on -- I observed an immediate connect with the preparations that are currently underway for the hosting of the Olympics 2024 in France.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 16 (IPS) - On 17 June, a Facebook white paper proposed a new global digital currency it plans to launch in the first half of 2020. The Libra will be managed by a ‘not for profit' Swiss-based Facebook-led consortium of ‘for profit corporations', with Uber, eBay, Lyft, Mastercard and PayPal among its founding members.