News headlines in January 2026

BRATISLAVA, January 14 (IPS) - Israel must lift all restrictions on medicine, food and aid coming into Gaza, rights groups have demanded, as two reports released today (Jan 14) document how maternal and reproductive healthcare have been all but destroyed in the country.

BANGKOK, Thailand, January 14 (IPS) - Take a deep breath. Did you know that in many countries in Asia and the Pacific, the air we breathe falls short of the safety standards for air quality set by the World Health Organization? While the start of a new year signals new beginnings, it also marks the continuation of the recurring air quality crisis across many countries in the region.

Global unemployment remains stable, but progress toward decent work has stalled, according to a new report from the International Labour Organization (ILO), which warns that young people continue to struggle in a job market which risks being further undermined by AI and trade policy uncertainty.

Nomadic Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay probably never dreamed that 21^st-century readers would be delving into his private correspondence some 77 years after his death. But that’s probably part of the professional hazard (luck?) of being a literary luminary, or, as Yale University Press describes him, “one of the Harlem Renaissance’s brightest and most radical voices”.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, January 13 (IPS) - At the moment, ICE’s advancement in the U.S. is apparently dividing the nation’s population into desired and undesirable elements. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was born after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and intended to be a response to terrorism. However, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, federal immigration agents have become the president’s praetorian guard, implementing his immigration politics.

LONDON, January 13 (IPS) - The richest 1% have exhausted their annual carbon budget – the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while staying within 1.5 degrees of warming – only ten days into the year, according to new analysis from Oxfam. The richest 0.1% already used up their carbon limit on the 3rd January.

UNITED NATIONS, January 13 (IPS) - Judging by the mass US withdrawal from 66 UN entities, including UN conventions and international treaties*, is it remotely possible that the unpredictable Trump administration may one day decide to pull out of the UN, and force the Secretariat out of New York– despite the 1947 UN-US headquarters agreement?

Standing outside a colourfully painted building in southeastern Haiti, at the entrance to a bustling shop called Gods Will Depot where bags of food are stacked to the ceiling, Ketia surveys the large pile of groceries she has selected for her family: a big sack of flour, packages of spaghetti, boxed milk, some bars of soap.

More civilians in Sudan continue to be killed and displaced as fighting escalates in multiple parts of the country, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday.

Conflict-related sexual violence in Sri Lanka remains largely unaddressed more than 15 years after the end of the civil war, with survivors still denied justice, recognition and reparations, according to a new report by the UN human rights office, OHCHR, on Tuesday.