TOKYO, Japan, Jan 21 (IPS) - Innovative financing to resolve COVID-19 crisis was needed, a joint African and Asian parliamentarians’ webinar heard this week.

The webinar, facilitated by Asian Population and Development Association (APDA), was aimed at enhancing support for the implementation of International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)commitments in the face of the pandemic.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 20 (IPS) - Siddharth Chatterjee, is UN Resident Coordinator (RC) in Kenya, and RC designate to ChinaCOVID-19 is like a rainstorm, a thunderous and powerful rainstorm all over the world. If we didn’t know before, we certainly know now just where the holes are in our roofs, or where there are no roofs. We see ever more clearly who is getting drenched and who is dying, and who remains dry.

KINGSTON, Jamaica, Jan 20 (IPS) - For decades, every time it rains heavily in Jamaica, a daunting deluge of plastic bottles and bags, styrofoam and other garbage trundles its way down a network of countless gullies and streams. If they don’t get snagged somewhere, they end up in the Kingston Harbour or close to the beaches ringing the tourist-heavy North coast.

Jan 20 (IPS) - COVID-19 vaccination programmes are gathering pace in high-income countries, but for much of the world, the future looks bleaker. Although a number of middle-income countries have started rolling out vaccines, widespread vaccination could still be years away.

NEW DELHI, India, Jan 20 (IPS) - When the Doha talks were launched in September, the Afghan people's hopes for an end of war and violence were high. So far, many have been disappointed as the negotiations have not done much to improve the security situation.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jan 19 (IPS) - A long-running gag says “in Zimbabwe there is freedom of speech, but no freedom after the speech”. But for journalists and activists who have been forced to endure nights in the country’s overcrowded and filthy holding cells, this is no laughing matter as prison inmates have no personal protective equipment to guard against COVID-19.

NEW YORK, Jan 19 (IPS) - Two events generated significant interest and global solidarity in the final days of December 2020. A court in Saudi Arabia handed down a five years and eight months sentence to activist Loujain Al-Hathloul for publicly supporting women’s right to drive.

Nicholas Opiyo, Ugandan human rights lawyer and defender of persecuted members of the LGBTQI community and political opponents of the president was arbitrarily detained on trumped up charges of ‘money laundering.’ Nicholas Opiyo was granted bail on 30 December following an outpouring of global support for his activism for justice.

In handing out the verdict to Loujain Al-Hathloul, the court partly suspended her sentence raising hope that she might be released from prison in a couple of months due to time already served.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jan 19 (IPS) - According to the mainstream narrative, President Trump’s incitement of his supporters during the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory led to the ‘insurrection’ at the US Capitol on January 6, resulting in the banning of Trump’s social media accounts and his second impeachment by Congress.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 19 (IPS) - Covid-19 infection and death rates in the Western world and many developing countries in Asia and Latin America have long overtaken East Asia since the second quarter of 2020. Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering prevailing Western accounts of the Asian financial crises, there have been no serious efforts to draw policy lessons from East Asian contagion containment.

NEW DELHI, India, Jan 18 (IPS) - As a Muslim woman born and brought up in Denmark, Nadia Helmy Ahmed broke many stereotypes when she started boxing at the age of 15. “Back then it was not common for girls to take up elite boxing, let alone common for Muslim girls, I used to be the only girl in my gym, along with ten others boys,” said Nadia to IPS News.