Even though COVID-19 cases and deaths have declined in recent weeks, the world is facing a “two-track pandemic”, the UN’s top health official said on Monday in his ongoing campaign to get more vaccines to developing countries. 

Attacks by armed groups including Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province pose grave threats to Central Africa’s fragile stability, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative told the Security Council on Monday, while spotlighting crucial democratic gains that must be protected.

NEW DELHI, India, Jun 07 (IPS) - What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you read the words, women and power? The accepted wisdom is that women can be powerful, but not without the constant reference to their gender - which is often based on a set of unconscious biases towards them. Is she competent enough, effective, articulate without being too assertive or too aggressive. Is she a straightjacket, is she too emotional, will her family life impact her work or vice versa. Is she smart enough to camouflage her intelligence, is she ready for a key position, is it worth making her powerful?

SCRANTON, USA, Jun 07 (IPS) - You don’t have to look too hard to find some news network or media outlet talking about water pollution, plastic waste, CO2 emissions, and climate change.

MUMBAI, India, Jun 07 (IPS) - In May, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) uploaded a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) related to ‘COVID-19 Vaccination of Persons without prescribed Identity Cards through CoWIN’ on its website.

During the last decade, more people around the world have gained access to electricity than ever before. However, the number still not connected has grown in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, according to a new UN report on universal access to energy, launched on Monday. 

Communities in rural Burkina Faso urgently need greater protection from violent extremists, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, insisted on Monday, in response to a deadly assault at the weekend that claimed the lives of at least 132 innocent people.

UN independent human rights experts have called for the immediate release of a jailed social media activist in Belarus amid what they described as a “black hole” for media freedoms in the country, according to a statement issued on Monday. 

A Ugandan woman entrepreneur who was left with just a wheelbarrow and a red dress, when a business partner ran off with all her money has been recognized with an award by the UN trade agency (UNCTAD) after she grew her company into a nationwide enterprise with five million customers.

RÍO DE JANEIRO, Jun 04 (IPS) - Health, fiscal, environmental and political crises have not prevented Brazil from attracting private capital to expand infrastructure, according to the sector's minister, Tarcísio de Freitas.