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UN Establishes a Committee on Global Geospatial Information

Author: 

Matt Ball
UN Establishes a Committee on Global Geospatial Information
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The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) voted to establish a committee on global geospatial information management in order to enhance international dialogue and cooperation on spatial data infrastructures. The UN recognizes the benefits of geospatial information for application to humanitarian, peace and security, environmental and development challenges as well as to responses to climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, famines, population displacement, and food and economic crises.

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The Global Food Crisis, Mapped

Author: 

JUSTIN GILLIS
The Global Food Crisis, Mapped
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Oxfam, the antihunger group, has been running a campaign to call attention to the global food crisis, its consequences and its potential solutions. The Times outlined the challenge of future food security on a warming planet in this article several weeks ago, and this week my colleague Jeffrey Gettleman described the appalling famine unfolding in Somalia.

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More vaccines for poor could save 6.4 million lives

Author: 

Kate Kelland
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(Reuters) - Millions of children's lives and billions of dollars could be saved if vaccines were more widely available in 72 of the world's poorest countries, according to a series of studies published on Thursday.

In studies in the Health Affairs and The Lancet journals, public health experts and scientists projected that if 90 percent of children in those countries were immunized, more than $151 billion in treatment costs and lost productivity could be saved in 10 years, giving economic benefits of $231 billion.

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The Real Successes of Foreign Aid

Author: 

BILL GATES
The Real Successes of Foreign Aid
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Landov

CHILDREN LINE UP for hot dogs and orange juice at a project run by Save the Children in Parys, South Africa. Virtually everywhere, infant mortality is down and life expectancy is up.

Stepping into the public square to announce that foreign aid is important and effective can be lonely work. As someone who has attempted to make that case over the past decade, I can assure you that the world is often eager to hear just the opposite.

But aid money can and does work. It improves people's lives and makes the world a better and safer place.

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Food security key to global peace: FAO candidate

Author: 

Charles Abbott
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(Reuters) - The world has to act against hunger, which affects 13 percent of the population, if it wants to strengthen global security, a candidate to run the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said on Tuesday.

Franz Fischler, an Austrian who is former EU agriculture commissioner, said during an interview the whipsaw effect of volatile food prices complicates the effort to expand local production and improve the welfare of subsistence farmers. Prices spiked in mid-2008, plunged in 2009 and hit a record high early this year.

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