From David Beckham to Whoopi Goldberg and Angelique Kidjo, Ambassadors for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other agencies, have signed an open letter to the upcoming G7 Summit of world leaders, underscoring the urgency of suppling vaccine donations now. 

Ending the “war on nature” must be part of global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday in his message for World Oceans Day. 

Confirmation that Europe has just had its chilliest Spring in years is cold comfort for the planet, amid rising greenhouse gas levels which will bring negative impacts for generations to come, UN weather experts said on Tuesday.

PARIS, Jun 08 (IPS) - Increasingly, youth are rising up to declare that they've had enough of the cyclical exploitation of the environment that jeopardizes their own future.

VIENNA/LONDON, Jun 08 (IPS) - The leaders of the G7 group of nations will soon gather in Cornwall, United Kingdom, (June 11-13) to devise plans to ‘build back better’ from the COVID-19 pandemic. The summit takes place in the wake of a crisis that has both revealed and further exacerbated existing economic and social inequalities, including gender inequalities.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 08 (IPS) - With the pandemic setting back past, modest and uneven progress, huge disparities in containing COVID-19 and financing government efforts are widening the North-South gap and other inequalities once again.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and partners are working to restore water supply to roughly 200,000 people, including some 100,000 children, affected by the volcanic eruption last month in Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). 

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, Jun 07 (IPS) - On the night of Friday 4th June, a group of unidentified armed men stormed the village of Solhan in the north of Burkina Faso, shooting indiscriminately, looting the market and burning homes. A report by RFI, the French radio station said there could have been as many as 200 attackers by some accounts of survivors.

The UN chief welcomed the election on Monday of Abdulla Shahid, Foreign Minister of the Maldives, as President-elect of the 76th session of the General Assembly. 

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 07 (IPS) - A hilarious anecdote, recounted in the New York Times years ago, related to the widespread corruption embedded in the political culture of a Southeast Asian country where crooked politicians were willing to provide receipts every time they received a bribe—big time bribes.