News headlines in April 2024

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Apr 30 (IPS) - The last time Bahram Sintash saw his journalist father was in 2017. Qurban Mamut, an influential Uyghur editor had come to the United States for a visit but upon his return to Xinjiang in northwest China, he disappeared.

QUILLOTA, Chile, Apr 30 (IPS) - For the rural farmers in Chile, a combination of climate change-induced mega droughts, water policies that make access unaffordable and a State that either doesn’t want to or dares not intervene in the water market means family enterprises are dying out.Lack of water threatens the very existence of family farming in Chile, forcing farmers to adopt new techniques or to leave their land.

Both positive and “worrying” developments have recently unfolded in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a top UN official told the Security Council on Tuesday at an emergency meeting requested by Russia.

The world’s leading humanitarian action forum on Tuesday said that crushing levels of violence and displacement are fuelling unprecedented civilian suffering in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday said he was troubled by “a series of heavy-handed steps” taken by some universities in the United States to disperse and dismantle Gaza war protests.

With the situation in Gaza “worsening by the day”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday appealed for Israeli and Hamas leaders currently taking part in intense negotiations to reach a ceasefire agreement.

Ordinary Gazans remain in a “constant state of trauma” over an impending full-scale Israeli attack on the enclave’s southernmost city of Rafah amid a growing number of strikes there, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday.

Children as young as four are being forced to go to work in Lebanon amid a “massive collapse” in humanitarian funding and escalating hostilities on the country’s southern border with Israel that threaten to spiral into a “full-scale war”, UN child experts said on Tuesday.

A small but growing number of countries are well on their way to producing all of their electricity from renewable sources. Dominica, in the eastern Caribbean, is planning to join these pioneers and become the first small island developing State (SIDS) to stop using fossil fuels for energy generation.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Apr 30 (IPS) - Transgender people and civil society organizations have welcomed the decision of the chief minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, to allocate separate rooms in hospitals for the transgender community so they can avail themselves of uninterrupted healthcare.