Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 24 2006 (IPS) – Argentina has begun hiring engineers, chemists, physicists, technicians and communications and environmental experts in its nuclear industry, which has been paralysed since the 1990s. But in the face of this enthusiasm, activists are wondering if there will be more safety and transparency this time around.
Although one of the arguments for resurrecting nuclear power in the country is the need to curb climate change, caused by burning fossil fuels, most environmentalists say nuclear energy is potentially hazardous, and creates a long-term latent threat in the form of radioactive waste.
But nuclear experts are convinced that atomic energy is the cleanest and safest source of energy in the world. And the Néstor Kirchner …
Fulgence Zamblé
ABIDJAN, Nov 28 2006 (IPS) – Education officials in Côte d Ivoire are revising how children are taught about the dangers of HIV/AIDS in the West African country, this as statistics from June 2006 show prevalence in schools to be at four percent.
The national HIV prevalence rate is 4.7 percent, also according to the 2006 figures down from seven percent in 1991.
In the past, we contented ourselves with mentioning the wearing of condoms or with skimming over the issue during class, Méa Kouadio, a technical advisor to the national education minister, told IPS. But now, he added, officials are urgently promoting abstinence for young people and condom use by adults through a new curriculum adopted for the 2006-2007 school year.
The new programme…
Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 14 2007 (IPS) – The people of Nigeria s oil-rich Niger Delta are poor not because they do not have resources but because they do not have political power. Those who wield power in Nigeria are building skyscrapers in Lagos and Abuja while there is nothing in the Niger Delta. It is the same at the global level.
These are the words of Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, deputy director of the Millennium Campaign for Africa based in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. In the past week, he participated in an Anglican Church conference entitled Prophetic Witness, Social Development and HIV and AIDS which examined progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury who heads the 77 million Anglicans, also attended…
Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 16 2007 (IPS) – The Brazilian capital woke up to another red April Monday. Eight hundred landless peasants occupied the headquarters of the government office in charge of land distribution, while 1,000 indigenous people camped out on the Ministries Esplanade, demanding better healthcare and the formal demarcation of their territories.
Demonstrations by indigenous and rural people have been spreading all over Brazil ever since last week, as part of Indigenous April and the Campaign for Land Reform led by the Landless Workers Movement (MST).
Tuesday, Apr. 17 is International Peasant Struggle Day, which marks the anniversary of a 1996 massacre in Eldorado de Carajás, in Brazil #39s eastern Amazon region, when the police opened fire on a p…
Ernst-Jan Pfauth
UNITED NATIONS, May 24 2007 (IPS) – Valuable resources in every discarded product with a battery or plug computers, televisions, phones and other household gadgets are being trashed in rising volumes worldwide, and unless countries start recycling more of this high-tech scrap, they will soon face serious shortages, experts say.
Computer recycling centre Credit: StEP Initiative
Every year, the world generates 40 million metric tonnes of electronic scrap e-scrap, noted Jeremy Gregory, a postdoctoral associate in the Materials Systems Laboratory and …
Steven Lang
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 25 2007 (IPS) – Water resources are unevenly distributed throughout the countries of Southern Africa. The region boasts of some of the world s largest lakes and rivers, but is also a land of vast deserts.
Women carrying water in eastern DRC, where many struggle to access this resource. Credit: Tiggy Ridley/IRIN
Measured by volume the Congo River, rising in the East African highlands and flowing through the rainforests …
Ellen Massey
WASHINGTON, Aug 23 2007 (IPS) – One of the largest international aid organisations in the world turned the food aid industry on its head recently by declaring that they will turn down 46 million dollars in food subsidies from the U.S. government.
Combine harvesting corn near Stockton, Kansas. Credit: USDA/Dave Hein
The United States budgets 2 billion dollars a year in food aid, which buys U.S. crops to feed populations facing starvation amidst crisis or those that endure chronic hunger.
But the U.S.-based CARE Int…
Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Nov 19 2007 (IPS) – New species of insects have begun to establish themselves all across Europe, raising concerns about the impact of global warming on biodiversity and public health.
The school in Dorsten, a village near the German border with Belgium, had to be closed down recently because oak processionary caterpillars had infested the schoolyard, and teachers and parents were afraid of the health consequences for the students.
The massive presence of these caterpillars in Germany is a very recent consequence of climate change, Stefanie Hahn, a biologist at the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Forestry, told IPS. Because its presence is so recent, we have no systematic information on their evolution among us, Hahn stressed.
These bug…
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 2007 (IPS) – Racing to adjourn for the year, the U.S. Congress this week approved a 560- billion-dollar omnibus 2008 appropriation that includes 70 billion dollars more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and sizable increases in development, refugee, and disaster assistance.
The bill, which President George W. Bush is expected to sign into law later this week, provides for a nearly 50 percent increase to 4.66 billion dollars in spending on fighting diseases, such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, that particularly afflict developing countries.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, a multilateral facility to which the administration has been reluctant to contribute, will get a record 845 million dollars, 120…
Raúl Gutiérrez
SAN ISIDRO, El Salvador, Feb 1 2008 (IPS) – Peasant farmers from the northern Salvadoran province of Cabañas fear that mining operations planned for the region will consume 30,000 litres of water a day, drawn from the same sources that currently provide local residents with water only once a week.
Environmentalists and experts have also warned that if the operations that are now awaiting legal permission actually begin, the cyanide that would be used by the Canadian mining company Pacific Rim to extract gold and silver could contaminate the area s groundwater and soil.
Cabañas ranks second only to Morazán as the province with the highest rate of poverty in this country, where over 55 percent of the population officially lives under the poverty line…