SEATTLE, USA, Feb 01 (IPS) - The specters of slave patrols and Ku Klux Klan night riders haunted the viral videos. They showed cowboy-hatted Border Patrol agents on horseback insulting and threatening Haitian families with children as they crossed the Rio Grande into Texas. The outrage reverberated around the world and inside the Beltway. But the story soon disappeared from the news cycle.

For the first time, the United Nations on Wednesday celebrates World Wetlands Day, recognizing that these fragile ecosystems make a crucial contribution to biodiversity, climate mitigation, freshwater availability, and economic resilience.

The launch of a possible intermediate-range ballistic missile by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) drew condemnation from UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday.

Following a verdict in the case of the brutal murder of two its experts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) nearly five years ago, the UN on Tuesday urged authorities to uphold their moratorium on the death penalty. 

The United Nations’ Secretary-General on Tuesday made the “strongest possible appeal” for all parties in Ethiopia to immediately end the fighting in Tigray and other areas, in the spirit of the General Assembly’s Olympic Truce which began just a few days ago.

The UN human rights office OHCHR, has said it is very alarmed over the continued disappearance of six people who were abducted in the Afghan capital Kabul, in connection with recent women’s rights protests.

Marking the first anniversary of the military coup in Myanmar, the independent UN expert monitoring the country implored States on Tuesday to take more robust action, reiterating his call for an arms embargo to stop the killing of innocent people.

Bulawayo, ZIMBABWE, Feb 01 (IPS) - On January 10, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) arrested three men found with fertilizer worth about 130,000 US dollars.

Tens of thousands of tonnes of extra medical waste from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has put tremendous strain on health care waste management systems around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.   

BANGKOK, Thailand, Feb 01 (IPS) - One year since a democracy-suspending coup, press freedom is dying in Myanmar. A military campaign of intimidation, censorship, arrests, and detentions of journalists has more recently graduated to outright killing, an escalation of repression that aims ultimately to stop independent media reporting on the junta’s crimes and abuses.