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15 global challenges that cannot be addressed by any government acting alone

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  The 15 Global Challenges  from t he Millennium Project, a global participatory think tank. 1. How can sustainable development be achieved for all while addressing global climate change? 2. How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict? 3. How can population growth and resources be brought into balance? 4. How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes? 5. How can decisionmaking be enhanced by integrating improved global foresight during unprecedented accelerating change? 6. How can the global convergence of information and communications technologies work for everyone? 7. How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor? 8. How can the threat of new and reemerging diseases and immune micro-organisms be reduced? 9. How can education make humanity more intelligent, knowledgeable, and wise enough to address its global challenges? 10. How can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts,...
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Church Bell and Fresh Fish

By Jim Sheng
For whom the church bell tolls? Bells rung to announce fresh fish stagecoach from London arrived!

In December 1900 the Derby local newspaper Mercury carried a story that  possibly captures something of the clip-clopping magical sound-world of stagecoaching with the live backing of church belfries.

When the coach from London arrived 'in olden times' there was an arrangement for church bells to be rung so that people who had ordered a delivery of fish might rush to get it as fresh as possible.

It was said that the six bells of St Peter's would call out 'Here's fresh fish come to town!' Next came All Saints', further along that stretching main streetway in Derby, with a peal of 10 bells this time, 'Here's fresh fish come into the town!' Just beyond All Saints' stood little St Michael's, with three bells only, and one of those cracked, and the sense of its peal was 'They're stinkin!" But St Alkmund's with its six-pack a little further on again replied 'Put some salt on 'em, then!"

(Excerpted from Victorian Derby -- A portrait of life in a 19th-century manufacturing town by Harry Butterton, Published by Breedon Books Publishing, 2006.)
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