The Week with IPS 3/24/2017

2017/3/24	Click here for the online version of this IPS newsletter
	New Tuberculosis Drugs May Become Ineffective: Study Lyndal Rowlands New antibiotics that could treat tuberculosis may rapidly become ineffective, according to new research published by the Lancet ahead of World Tuberculosis Day. The rise in multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, which affected 480,000 people in 2015, could mean that even newly discovered drugs ... MORE > >
	Free Education Helps Combat Child Labour in Fiji Catherine Wilson In the South Pacific nation of Fiji, free and compulsory education, introduced three years ago, in association with better awareness and child protection measures, is helping to reduce children’s vulnerability to harmful and hazardous forms of work. But eliminating child labour, which is also ... MORE > >
	New Recipe for School Meals Programmes in Latin America Diego Arguedas Ortiz Sunita Daniel remembers what the school lunch programmes were like in her Caribbean island nation, Saint Lucía, until a couple of years ago: meals made of processed foods and imported products, and little integration with the surrounding communities. This changed after Daniel, then head of ... MORE > >
	Local Solutions to Rebuild Oldest Cuban City in Hurricane Matthew's Wake Ivet González Clearings with fallen trees in the surrounding forests, houses still covered with tarpaulins and workers repairing the damage on the steep La Farola highway are lingering evidence of the impact of Hurricane Matthew four months ago, in the first city built by the Spanish conquistadors in ... MORE > >
	Investing in Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Farmers Sally Nyakanyanga To take his mangoes to Shurugwi, 230 kms south of Harare, requires Edward Madzokere to hire a cart and wake up at dawn. The fruit farmer sells his produce at the nearest “growth point” at Tongogara (the term for areas targeted for development) where the prices are not stable. “As a fruit grower, ... MORE > >
	Sweetened Research, Sugared Recommendations Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Tan Zhai Gen In 2015, Coca Cola’s chief scientist was forced to resign after revelations that the company had funded researchers to present academic papers recommending exercise to address obesity and ill health, while marginalizing the role of dietary consumption. Coca-Cola, the world’s largest producer of ... MORE > >
	No Water, No Life – Don’t Waste It! Baher Kamal During the final exams of Spanish official high school of journalists, a student was asked by the panel of professors-examiners: If scientists discover that there is water in Planet Mars, how would you announce this news, what would be your title? The student did not hesitate a second: “There is ... MORE > >
	Asia's Water Politics Near the Boiling Point Manipadma Jena In Asia, it likely will not be straightforward water wars. Prolonged water scarcity might lead to security situations that are more nuanced, giving rise to a complex set of cascading but unpredictable consequences, with communities and nations reacting in ways that we have not seen in the past ... MORE > >
	Three Times as Many Mobile Phones as Toilets in Africa Busani Bafana Though key to good health and economic wellbeing, water and sanitation remain less of a development priority in Africa, where high costs and poor policy implementation constrain getting clean water and flush toilets to millions. A signatory to several agreements committing to water security, ... MORE > >
	Fishing Villages Work for Food Security in El Salvador Edgardo Ayala After an exhausting morning digging clams out of the mud of the mangroves, Rosa Herrera, her face tanned by the sun, arrives at this beach in southeastern El Salvador on board the motorboat Topacio, carrying her yield on her shoulders. For her morning’s catch – 126 Andara tuberculosa clams, ... MORE > >
	Secret Tax Deals Increased Dramatically After Luxleaks Ida Karlsson Despite the LuxLeaks scandal, the number of secret tax deals is skyrocketing. Such deals between companies and governments across Europe increased by almost 50 percent the year after the scandal broke. Despite the controversy, the number of these individual secret agreements drawn up between ... MORE > >
	Oh Happy Day! Baher Kamal Once a year, there is a day when the seven billion inhabitants of Planet Earth should feel happy or at least are encouraged to do so--the World Happiness Day, which is marked every year on March 20. So far, so good. But what happiness is all about? And who are the world’s happiest people… or ... MORE > >