News headlines in August 2026, page 2

WASHINGTON DC, August 6 (IPS) - This is supposed to be the year the world finally sees and recognizes pastoralists. The United Nations has designated 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, bringing long-overdue attention to communities who have sustained some of the world’s most fragile and important landscapes for generations.

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, August 6 (IPS) - Abdu Rozork awoke suddenly to the sound of children screaming. Heavy monsoon rains had sent a landslide barrelling into the section of their bamboo shelter where the women and children were sleeping.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned on Wednesday the deadliest Russian strikes on Kyiv this year, which killed 17 people and caused extensive damage to civilian infrastructure overnight.

Independent UN human rights experts on Thursday condemned a fresh round of US sanctions against Cuba, calling them an attempt to force change on “a sovereign State through threats and coercion.”

Agencies are on high alert amid reports that the rapidly spreading Ebola Bundibugyo virus species in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has infected 19 internally displaced people, killed five of them, according to the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR).

Gangs in Haiti continue to terrorize communities with the “wanton, intentional infliction of incredible pain” on people who often are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nearly eight million people in South Sudan – more than half the population – face crisis-level hunger, with famine risk now flagged in four counties, as the Security Council meets this morning in New York. A cholera outbreak has killed more than 1,700 people, and some aid workers are being killed and abducted even as they try to reach those most at risk. Follow live coverage below.

At least 300 children in Gaza have been reportedly killed in as many days since a ceasefire agreement came into effect last October to suspend military operations between Hamas fighters and the Israel Defense Forces, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday.

CIVICUS speaks about China’s recently implemented Ethnic Unity Law with Gulchehra Hoja, a correspondent for Reporters Without Borders and a Uyghur activist and journalist known for her reporting on human rights abuses against Uyghur people in China.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe , August 5 (IPS) - New chickpea seed research and production have become the new frontier of climate resilience in southern Africa as farmers battle failing cereal production.