BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE, Aug 10 (IPS) - Zimbabwe's ballooning informal sector has, in recent years, spawned the over-exploitation of the country's natural resources, with the fisheries taking some of the most felt battering.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Aug 10 (IPS) - The world’s institutions are ill-prepared and poorly designed to effectively address global challenges such as major power conflicts, pandemics, the climate catastrophe, refugee crises, violent extremism, illicit profiteering from natural resources, and the regulation of artificial intelligence systems.

The Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine has begun transitioning one of its reactor units from a hot shutdown to a cold shutdown after a water leak was detected in one of its steam generators, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Thursday.

The United Nations has strongly condemned the assassination of a presidential candidate in Ecuador, urging authorities to investigate the crime.

An international human rights body focused on Ethiopia has voiced deep concerns over the worsening security situation in the northwest of the country, particularly in the Amhara region.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has voiced concern about the reported “deplorable living conditions” of the President of Niger in arbitrary detention, his spokesperson said in a note to journalists published on Wednesday evening.

UN-appointed independent rights experts have called on the Chinese Government to provide information about nine Tibetan human rights defenders serving prisoner sentences of up to 11 years.

Three UN agencies on Thursday appealed for greater access to safe and regular pathways for migration and asylum in the European Union after another deadly shipwreck claimed dozens of lives in the Mediterranean.

NAIROBI, Aug 09 (IPS) - It promised to be the most defining, groundbreaking, and transformative protocol on African women’s rights. Specific in its approach, broad in its reach, and unique in its all-encompassing nature, covering issues such as HIV/Aids, widow inheritance and property disinheritance in a most unprecedented manner.

BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 09 (IPS) - The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are relevant to all countries, whether high, middle or low income. With increasing attention to the SDGs, countries are progressively turning to data as a source to assess and validate the progress that they have made towards achieving them.