STOCKHOLM, Sep 22 2022 (IPS) – After general elections on the 12th September, Sweden is on the threshold of a new era. The Sweden Democrats (SD) won almost 21 percent of the votes and thus became the largest in a bloc of right-wing parties that now have a collective majority in the parliament. A nation that for a long time prided itself of being a beacon of tolerance and openness will now experience a historical transformation. The Sweden Democrats was once founded by Nazi sympathisers and for decades shunned by mainstream politicians. However, SD has now tipped the political scale in a country previously known for its stable and predictable politics, and some of the party’s former fo…
Credit: Oritro Karim
NEW YORK, Jul 17 2024 (IPS) – Cities, once thought to be modern utopias that foster innovation, inclusivity, and commerce, actually ended up being hubs for environmental degradation. Although the concept of urban living is inextricable from humanity, there are proposed ways to make them less environmentally taxing. One such solution is the idea of a sustainable city, otherwise known as a metropolis that effectively consumes fossil fuels and disposes of emissions with regards to the longevity of the planet as well as the economic wellbeing of its citizens. Cities can also be considered sustainable so long as they curb the consequences of consumption…
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct 31 2023 (IPS) – In 1968, the tobacco company Philip Morris introduced a new cigarette brand called Virginia Slims. Under the slogan “You’ve come a long way, baby” it was exclusively marketed to women. The advertising campaign exploited the civil rights movements of the 1960s, indicating that those cigarettes were enjoyed by strong, independent, and liberated women. A blatant lie – why would “independent” women choose to poison themselves with a commodity which each year causes more than 480,000 deaths in the US alone – nearly one in five deaths? Another question arising from this deceitful ad is: “How far have women come on their way to independence and liberation?”
In Iran, which has seen some of the highest COVID-19 infection and death rates in the world, a number of reporters are now facing jail after being detained earlier this month for challenging official statistics about the outbreak of the disease in the country. People in Rasht, Gilan Province, Iran, taking precautions to prevent infection by wearing masks in public.
BRATISLAVA, Mar 20 2020 (IPS) – Growing intimidation and repression of journalists reporting on the coronavirus is threatening public health in some countries, press freedom monitors have warned.
Repressive regimes desperate to control the narrative around the disease’s spread ha…
President Uhuru Kenyatta leads the charge against Covid-19. He speaks to the nation fromHarambee House, Nairobi, March 14, 2020. Photo-State House
NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 6 2020 (IPS) – Covid-19 infections continue to rise, bringing normal life to a virtualstandstill and causing countries to shut themselves off from the rest of the world.
Increasingly, governments are turning to ever more stringent measures including curfews and lockdowns, with police and military being used to enforce those measures.
Perhaps necessary as the velocity of the virus has already infected nearly 1.2 million people and killed nearly 65,000 people worldwide, wreaking havo…
Dr Michelle Belisle is the Director, Education Quality and Assessment Programme at .
NOUMEA, New Caledonia, Aug 10 2020 (IPS) – School as we all know it hasn’t changed that much in over a century. However, in the face of new threats to health and wellbeing, the future of those familiar structures that bring teachers and students together is starting to be questioned.
Large numbers of people in crowded spaces for long periods – it all runs contrary to what the experts advise to keep us safe from contagious diseases like COVID-19. Class size is no longer an academic debate over quality of instruction versus budgetary restrictions, but rather a life and death disc…
Face masks hanging on window bars in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
NEW YORK, Oct 1 2020 (IPS) – Covid-19 deaths worldwide have surpassed . With of coronavirus infections rapidly mounting again, the numbers of Covid-19 deaths are to surge in the coming months.
It took approximately 40 weeks to reach the first million Covid-19 recorded deaths. Some have the second million Covid-19 deaths to take about 10 weeks, arriving in late December, and the third million to take an additional 4 weeks, arriving in late January.
Approximately 60 percent of the 1 million Covid-19 deaths to date have taken place in 6 countries (Figure …
Black Lives Matter protest in London May 31. Credit: Tara Carey / Equality Now
Nov 20 2020 (IPS) – I’m part of a that has been following more than 800 Black American families for almost 25 years. We found that people who had reported experiencing high levels of racial discrimination when they were young teenagers than those who hadn’t. This elevated depression, in turn, showed up in their blood samples, which revealed accelerated aging on a cellular level.
Our research is not the first to show than other racial or ethnic groups. The experience of constant and accumulating stress due to racism throughout an individual’s lifetime can wear and tear dow…
The UN will be commemorating World Water Day on Monday March 22.
In northern Ghana some 50% of people lack access to safe drinking water. Credit: UNDP Ghana
EAST SUSSEX, UK, Mar 20 2021 (IPS) – In the midst of a global pandemic, when the presence of water in our lives has never seemed more important, its future availability has also never been more uncertain.
Water scarcity is now such a threat that it is even possible to trade in ‘water futures’ joining commodities like gold and oil on Wall Street, with traders .
So, while farmers and pastoralists struggle to know when the next rainfall will come, and women and children walk for hours to collect wate…
A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Antoine-Jean Gros: Napoleon Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa.
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 24 2021 (IPS) – By the end of April 2019, a government campaign to vaccinate more than 40 million children under five against polio in Pakistan was suspended after a series of attacks on health workers and police. On 23 April, a police officer protecting polio workers was gunned down in Bannu, the same day a polio worker was in Lahore seriously wounded by a father “protecting his child from vaccination”, these incidents were followed by the murder of anothe…