MADRID, Feb 23 (IPS) - While the world’s biggest powers and their giant private corporations continue to attach high priority to their military –and commercial– dominance, both of them being shockingly profitable, entire generations are being lost to deadly armed conflicts, devastating climate catastrophes, diseases, hunger and more imposed impoverishment.

LONDON, Feb 23 (IPS) - It’s been 25 years since the 1997 Asian financial crisis led to the creation of the G20 forum for finance ministers; and 15 years since this became a leader-level meeting following the global financial crisis. During this period, there has been significant shift in the global finance and economic landscape.

MUTARE, ZIMBABWE, Feb 23 (IPS) - After other adolescent girls her age have gone to bed at around 10 pm, Kudzai commutes to a shopping centre near her home in Penhalonga, a mining area 25 kilometres outside the third largest Zimbabwean city of Mutare, to look for men to solicit sex.

The UN General Assembly on Thursday called for ending the war in Ukraine and demanded Russia’s immediate withdrawal from the country, in line with the UN Charter.

Aid continues to roll into northwest Syria, with 53 trucks crossing from southern Türkiye on Thursday, the UN reported in its latest update on response to the devastating earthquakes that struck the two countries on 6 February. 

The first-ever conference to discuss draft global guidelines for regulating digital platforms ended on Thursday in Paris with a call to uphold the right to seek and receive information in the face of rising disinformation online.

A top UN human rights official called on authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to redouble efforts to promote intercommunal trust amid a spate of deadly attacks targeting civilians.

Top UN officials have called for halting escalating cycles of violence following Israeli-Palestinian clashes and airstrikes on Wednesday that left 11 dead and more than 100 injured.

Maternal health setbacks in many parts of the world have contributed to the worrying finding that a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth around every two minutes, UN agencies said on Thursday. 

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 22 (IPS) - BRAC’s Empowerment and Livelihood Program (ELA) has benefitted tens of thousands of girls, and its recently released report shows an organization willing to adapt to the circumstances to continue to ensure adolescent girls and young women receive meaningful sexual and reproductive health rights support.