U.N. health agency declares COVID-19 no longer a global emergency
Though the emergency phase is over, the World Health Organization's pandemic designation still holds.
Global Issues
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El Niño could push temperatures even higher: climate agencies
The onset of a possible El Niño climate event later this year combined with rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could push global temperatures to a new warming record.
Faking content is getting easier. Digging for truth is getting harder.
There's a growing industry and more tools for producing and distributing disinformation. Meanwhile, authorities are getting more aggressive and hostile toward journalists.
UNICEF raises alert over lagging confidence in childhood vaccines
Public perception of the importance of vaccines for children fell during the pandemic in 52 of 55 countries studied.
Opinion | The great Twitter cull looms for leaders and organizations
Hundreds of accounts of world leaders and their institutions, plus 40 organizations and their leaders, were to be demoted.
Cost of gender inequalities in food and agriculture put at 1% global GDP
Closing the gender gap in productivity and wages would increase global GDP by nearly $1 trillion and reduce the number of food-insecure people by 45 million, FAO reports.
Developing nations forecast to lose US$800B from debt and slowdown
UNCTAD said it expects global growth in 2023 to drop to 2.1% but only if the financial fallout from higher interest rates is contained to the bank runs and bailouts of the first quarter.
At 75, U.N. health agency is lightning rod for equity and cooperation
As the World Health Organization celebrated its 75th anniversary – commemorating World Health Day and the day its constitution took effect, recognizing health as a human right – the COVID-19 pandemic's lessons were inescapable.
Slower trade growth projected in 2023 mainly due to war in Ukraine
The World Trade Organization expects trade growth to slow to 1.7% this year because of Russia's war in Ukraine, high inflation, tight monetary policy and market uncertainty.
Putin, charged with war crimes, takes over U.N.'s most powerful arm
Russia's status as president of the U.N. Security Council, despite its leader waging an illegal war on Ukraine and facing war crimes charges, is bound up in a frozen-in-time power structure dating to the end of World War II.
Stockpiles of nuclear weapons available for use increased in 2022
The number of nuclear warheads that are available to nations for deployment reached 9,576 at the start of 2023, up from 9,440 a year earlier, according to a watchdog's new report.
Nations back ambitious clean water and sanitation goals this decade
The voluntary commitments that came from the conference – the first such gathering since a U.N. water conference in Argentina in 1977 – fall far short of a legally binding agreement like the 2015 Paris Agreement for climate change.
New IPCC report urges 'hope' and climate justice for most vulnerable
Almost half of the world’s population lives in regions highly vulnerable to climate change and where deaths from floods, droughts and storms were 15 times higher in the past decade.
Study says bottled water industry undercuts safe drinking water for all
It finds the expanding bottled water industry – expected to grow to US$500 billion a year in sales by 2030 – isn't aligned with the U.N.'s 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.
WHO chief calls 3-year pandemic 'a chaotic patchwork of responses'
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus offered three lessons the world must learn to be able to effectively cope with future global health crises.
U.N. panel prepares last report of series to shape climate policy
The head of the U.N.'s Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate experts called for quick action because "make no mistake, inaction and delays are not listed as options."