Secretary-General António Guterres has strongly condemned a deadly attack on Wednesday against a UN Peacekeeping logistics convoy near the town of Kidal in northern Mali.  

PESHAWAR, Jun 01 (IPS) - The arrest of Afghan musicians in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan has elicited protests from local politicians, artists and rights activists who demand their release and say they should be allowed to stay as refugees.

NEW YORK, Jun 01 (IPS) - Conflict has taken a horrific toll on civilians in Ukraine over the past three months with many families struggling to meet even their most basic needs, including education. Over 1,600 schools and universities have been damaged or destroyed since Russia’s invasion on February 24, according to Ukraine’s Education Ministry. Armed forces on both sides have reportedly bombed schools or used them as bases or for storing weapons.

Thirty non-endemic countries have reported more than 550 confirmed cases of monkeypox, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed progress towards universal access to electricity and clean cooking fuels and technology, and fallout from the war in Ukraine could result in further setbacks, according to a UN-backed report, published on Wednesday. 

Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine is causing immense suffering and devastation there, but also creating a “perfect storm” which could devastate the economies of “many developing countries”, the UN chief warned on Wednesday.

Accompanying Somalia’s newly-appointed drought envoy on his first field visit, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official for the Horn of Africa country warned on Tuesday of the devastating outlook for millions of affected Somalis, amidst heightened risks of famine.

In Ukraine, nearly 100 days since the Russian invasion, at least two children have been killed every day with many more injured, UN humanitarians said on Wednesday, the International Day for Protection of Children.

ROME, Jun 01 (IPS) - Developing countries – in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America and in the Middle East - are facing a combination of crises that are unprecedented in recent times. Over the last three years they have had to face the COVID-19 crisis, the food crisis, the energy crisis, the climate change crisis, the debt crisis and, on top of all this, a global recession. The crises have overlapped, and each has added to the problems created by the previous ones.

SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jun 01 (IPS) - New outcries for gun control have followed the horrible tragedies of mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo. “Evil came to that elementary school classroom in Texas, to that grocery store in New York, to far too many places where innocents have died,” President Biden declared over the weekend during a university commencement address.