News headlines in April 2026

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has raised alarm over the killing of two contracted workers delivering clean water to families in the Gaza Strip.

UNITED NATIONS, April 17 (IPS) - Roughly six months after the ceasefire in the Occupied Palestinian Territory went into effect, the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains precariously fragile, despite a relative decline in hostilities. The crisis, marked by ongoing Israeli airstrikes and shelling, continued blockades on humanitarian aid, and widespread displacement, has pushed the majority of Palestinians in Gaza to the brink. Amid the vast scale of needs, basic services are increasingly strained, and humanitarian experts warn that the situation could deteriorate further in the coming months unless sustained aid and funding are secured.

ROME, April 17 (IPS) - The headlines are wrong about food prices — but right to be afraid, very afraid. Walk into a supermarket in Chicago, Berlin, or Mumbai today, and you will not find the shelves stripped bare or the prices dramatically higher than last month. Despite weeks of alarming headlines about commodity markets, food inflation in most major economies has risen only marginally — a tenth or two-tenths of a percentage point between February and March of this year. In the United States, food inflation moved from roughly 2.9 percent to 3.1 percent. In Germany, from 0.8 to 0.9. In India, from 7.8 to 8.0.

SRINAGAR, India, April 17 (IPS) - As war in the Middle East ripples through global markets, policymakers, economists, and industry leaders gathered in Washington this week to agree that economics is no longer separate from geopolitics. It is now its core instrument.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, April 17 (IPS) - Across the continent, GDP has risen on the back of more workers, more capital and a commodity super-cycle, rather than through genuine gains in productivity and innovation. Too little labour has moved out of subsistence agriculture into higher-productivity manufacturing and modern services.

NAIDIRI, FIJI, April 17 (IPS) - Climate change is no longer a distant threat. Across the Pacific, it is a daily reality reshaping coastlines, livelihoods, and the delicate balance between people and the environment. But in a region long defined by resilience, solutions are not being invented from scratch. They are being remembered, strengthened, and scaled.

The choice of the tenth UN Secretary-General, who will take office in January 2027, could shape global diplomacy, the response to crises across the world and the direction of the multilateral system for the next decade.

Across war-torn Sudan, women and girls “are telling a consistent story of continued experience of danger, and risks for gender-based violence” whether when fleeing to safety or arriving at displacement camps, a senior official with the UN reproductive and sexual health agency UNFPA said on Friday.

Authorities in Myanmar released the country’s ousted president from prison on Friday, along with some 4,000 other people, as part of an amnesty to mark the traditional New Year festival.

5.8 million Haitians, or roughly 52 per cent of the population, are facing crisis levels of food insecurity, or worse. Of those, more than 1.8 million are dealing with emergency levels, which means they are exhausting their last assets and unable to meet even basic food needs.