News headlines in June 2023, page 21

For Valdecir Nascimento, 63, the Black movement in Brazil was a “turning point” for her as a young woman, leading her from the revolutionary stilt houses in Alagados, to joining more than 1,000 participants last week at UN Headquarters for the second session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.

Reforming the global financial system, moving beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of economic progress, and addressing technology challenges are crucial to achieving a more just and equitable future for all, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday.

Despite critical gains by Central African nations in advancing stability and cooperation, the region faces multiple crises, and the coming months mark “an important turning point”, the top UN official there told the Security Council on Monday.

When it comes to fighting for a sustainable future, the world’s cities are “critical battlegrounds” and more important than ever to making multilateralism work for all, said the UN chief in a video message on Monday to the United Nations Habitat Assembly.

A staggering 315,000 grave violations against children in conflict took place between 2005 and 2022, said UN Children’s Fund UNICEF on Monday, describing it as a “stark illustration of the devastating impact of war” on the young.

As international negotiators committed to hammering out a draft treaty by November on ending plastic pollution, the UN chief stressed in his message for World Environment Day on Monday, the importance of curbing the “catastrophic” consequences of waste plastics.

The UN Secretary-General has expressed his deep sadness over the loss of life and injuries sustained during India’s worst rail disaster this century, when three trains collided in the eastern state of Odisha on Friday.

Perfectly foamed milk. A delicate butterfly enswirled atop. A bittersweet tang on the palate. A perfect cappuccino? It is beyond that. This particular cup was masterfully frothed and served by Denny, an inmate in Tangerang, a prison to the west of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, who joined a UN-supported training programme aimed at helping prisoners to re-integrate into society after serving time.

Kourou/Koualou, a tiny village in a neutral zone straddling Benin and Burkina Faso, was the centre of a one-million-litre-a-year cross-border illicit fuel trade, a snapshot of a phenomenon that spreads far across the 6,000-kilometre-wide African Sahel region.

ROCKY POINT, Jamaica, Jun 02 (IPS) - Long before the COVID-19 Pandemic, fishers at the Rocky Point fishing beach in Clarendon were forced to venture farther out to sea to make a living or find alternatives to make ends meet.