News headlines in June 2026

CIVICUS discusses the outlook ahead of Peru’s runoff presidential election with David Hidalgo, journalist and executive director of OjoPúblico, a Peruvian digital investigative journalism outlet.

SAMARKAND, June 4 (IPS) - In a significant policy shift symbolising rising environmental ambition, Uzbekistan on Thursday announced that it will become a donor of international environmental funding to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), as the Eighth GEF Assembly opened in the historic city of Samarkand.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, June 4 (IPS) - The outcome of the current Iran war is still in doubt, but one consequence is already becoming clear: it has weakened America’s capacity to project power. Many are asking who won. The more important question may be what the war has cost.

In the wood-panelled rooms of New York’s storied Explorers Club, where portraits of pioneering adventurers line the walls, diplomats, scientists and ocean advocates gathered on Tuesday evening with a shared sense of urgency – and anticipation.

A UN peacekeeper serving in Lebanon died early Thursday after mortar fire on his position near Marjayoun in the country’s southeast, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has announced.

SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, June 4 (IPS) - For three decades, Iffat Rachid Edriss walked Lebanon’s coastline with a clear purpose: protecting the sea she loves.

The joint declaration issued by Russia and China on 20 May, Joint Declaration of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the Establishment of a Multipolar World and a New Type of International Relations, has been read in sharply different ways. Some welcome its language of sovereign equality, multilateralism and a UN-centred international order. Others dismiss it as legal rhetoric deployed in bad faith. Both responses miss the more important point.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 3 (IPS) - Governments are falling 90 percent short of adaptation finance targets and leaving people in climate-vulnerable communities drastically under-equipped to cope with the devastating impacts of climate change, Oxfam warns ahead of Bonn climate talks (8-18 June).

SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, June 3 (IPS) - As the Global Environment Facility (GEF) steps into the starting blocks of its next financial cycle, the Interim CEO Claude Gascon reflects on what he termed a “moment of transition and delivery”.

PORTLAND, USA, June 3 (IPS) - In 2026, the population of the United States is significantly larger, older, and more diverse than it was 250 years ago when the country declared its independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain on July 4, 1776.