IPS Africa led a team of reporters that produced ten days of outstanding coverage of the climate change negotiations that took place in Durban, South Africa over the past weeks. During the last four days of the official negotiations a twelve-page printed TerraViva supplement was included daily as part of The New Age newspaper, distributed inside the conference hall to the delegates and to its usual readership across KwaZulu Natal province.

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IPS Director General, Mario Lubetkin, travelled to the Gulf, where he held meetings in Qatar and United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In Qatar IPS Director General met Ahmad Saad Abdel Al Boainin, Director General of Qatar News Agency (QNA) and his staff, to explore enhanced cooperation between the two news agencies.

Furthermore, Lubetkin met Al Jazeera Arabic Channel’s Director of the News, Mustafa Souag, and Shafaat Khan, Head of Foreign Operations, Al-Jazeera Network to evaluate ongoing cooperation and strengthen future collaboration.

In the UAE Lubetkin visited the National Media Council (NMC) to meet officials including WAM (Emirates News Agency) Director General, Ibrahim Al-Abed. Lubetkin underlined the excellent level of relations between WAM and IPS and their close collaboration during the last decades through specific cooperation agreements of mutual benefit.

“It is important to tackle the new realities in the field of communication and information, in view of the geopolitical changes that are taking place in the world,” IPS Director General stressed. “The media should have the ability to analyse these phenomena in a context, especially media in the South, which means that they must explain to their audience how our situation is changing.”

Lubetkin explained why IPS news agency decided to devote all its professional work to generating the indispensable interpretive analysis of these and other phenomena. “This is the way we believe can help people better understand the events and interpret them,” he added.

Prof. Alfred Opubor. Credit: Courtesy Adea-Comed website.

IPS deeply regrets the passing away of Professor Alfred Opubor, an internationally renowned specialist in the field of communication and member of IPS Africa Board of Directors, in early December in Cotonou, Benin.

Prof. Opubor’s expertise was communication theories and message systems, and their applications in development. A former university professor and head of the department of mass communication, he was also a researcher, government policy adviser and senior communication specialist in the United Nations system. Read more »

Media is perhaps the most powerful force today in shaping our understanding of events and peoples in the world around us. As a global news agency whose mission is to give a voice to the South and promote dialogue and cooperation, IPS has seen first hand how its work has the potential to bring together people from different cultural backgrounds. The alliance among civilizations is one of our core themes. Our partner QNA brings news from the UN AoC ongoing in Doha, Qatar.

Doha, December 11 (QNA) – Helping nations going through transition as well as empowering women and youth are among the five imperatives vital to shape our future generations United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said here Sunday.

In his address to the fourth United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Forum which opened at the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha today, he said, “Our differences are nothing compared to our shared humanity. As I begin my second term as UN Secretary General I have identified five generational opportunities to decisively shape our future for decades to come.” Read more »

“The journalists who turned the world upside down. Voices of another information” is the title of a book published recently in Italy telling the story of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency.

It is a patchwork story told by over one hundred journalists and key global players of the last 50 years. Long-time IPS correspondents, Heads of States and Nobel Prize Laureates among others give personal memories of the distinctive story of IPS, which today is the world’s leading news agency on issues such as development, environment, human rights and civil society.
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