News headlines in 2020, page 106

NAIROBI, Feb 14 (IPS) - Widespread hatching and movement of destructive desert locusts will turn into a full-blown crisis in the coming weeks in East Africa and neighbouring countries, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization warns.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 13 (IPS) - When society doesn't act to prevent Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) it has a massive economic cost -- over $1 billion -- on communities globally. And while the practice is starting to become less common over time, experts say a large number of women and girls still remain affected.  

GENEVA, Feb 13 (IPS) - Digital platforms are at the centre of the global economy and daily lives of consumers.

A handful of these platforms have become dominant in specific markets without facing meaningful competition. They include Amazon as a marketplace, Facebook in social networking, Google in search engines and Apple and Google in application stores.

LONDON, Feb 13 (IPS) - Online sexual exploitation is a global epidemic that is increasing at an alarming rate.

At any one time, 750,000 individuals across the world are looking to connect with children and young people online for sexual exploitation.

The expansion of the Internet, advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs), and the development of increasingly sophisticated digital tools that provide anonymity, mean that the number of potential victims is growing exponentially, and so too is the pool of those seeking to abuse them.

ISLAMABAD, Feb 13 (IPS) - When Pakistan's eastern Sindh province passed the ‘Sindh Women Agricultural Workers Bill' on 20 December, giving women in agriculture, livestock, fisheries and other agro-based work the same rights and benefits enjoyed by workers in the industrial sector, it was a revolutionary step for the whole of South Asia. 

Feb 12 (IPS) - Rising global temperatures and warming ocean waters are causing one of the world's coldest places to melt. While we know that human activity is causing climate change and driving rapid changes in Antarctica, the potential impacts that a warmer world would have on this region remain uncertain. Our new research might be able to provide some insight into what effect a warmer world would have in Antarctica, by looking at what happened more than 129,000 years ago.

NEW YORK, Feb 12 (IPS) - 75 years ago following the end of the Second World War and the first time any state has dropped an atomic bomb, not once, but twice, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 51 countries from all continents met to create the United Nations.

DELHI, India, Feb 12 (IPS) - Women's unpaid care work is the hidden engine that keeps the wheels of our economies, businesses, and societies moving, yet it is not accounted for.

GENEVA, Feb 11 (IPS) - There has been a disturbing increase in violence perpetrated against children in conflicts worldwide, coupled with almost total impunity.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 11 (IPS) - Leading scientist and director general of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), NTERANYA SANGINGA, speaks to IPS correspondent Busani Bafana about how the institute is leveraging its successful research to push for greater investment in agricultural research.

Africa needs to invest in agriculture by putting more resources into innovative research and development that can boost food and nutritional security, according to leading scientist, Nteranya Sanginga.