
APEX, North Carolina / SAN FRANCISCO, California, April 8 (IPS) - Let the race begin! April 1st was the deadline for candidates to be nominated for Secretary-General. Was it a coincidence that the deadline was April Fool’s Day? Judging by the quality of the official candidates, we suspect so.

PORTLAND, USA, April 7 (IPS) - As stated in Hamlet, “Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.” Although death is inevitable for all living beings, human mortality, which is expected to reach approximately 64 million individual deaths worldwide in 2026, is not evenly distributed across populations.
Read the full story, “Inequalities in Human Mortality”, on globalissues.org →

TOKYO, Japan, April 7 (IPS) - As tensions surrounding Iran deepen and uncertainty spreads across global energy markets, Japan is once again confronting a structural weakness: its heavy dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

MOROGORO, Tanzania , April 7 (IPS) - At Mazimbu village, not far from Tanzania’s Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Stephano Jaka still remembers the night he trapped and killed a rat that had been feasting on his maize cobs – stored in a meticulously woven basket designed to protect grains from rodents.