News headlines in September 2026

ROME, September 30 (IPS) - Imagine your morning coffee. You smell the aroma as steam rises from the cup. It wisps and swirls, thins, then disappears. You lift the cup to your mouth. The first pure joy of the day.

UNITED NATIONS, September 30 (IPS) - The United Nations High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (PPPR) on September 25 called for faster and more sustained investment in pandemic preparedness. Speakers emphasized that future outbreaks will require coordinated action across governments, health systems, and communities.

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, September 30 (IPS) - Fatuma Makame learned to farm seaweed in the shallow water where her parents worked. These days, she grows it farther from shore.

The UN is continuing efforts to support Palestinians in Gaza amid major challenges to humanitarian access, reconstruction and the restoration of essential services, according to Ramiz Alakbarov, Acting UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

Artificial Intelligence or AI – and the technology behind it – is moving fast. The question being asked across the world is who gets a seat at the table deciding how it's used and who gets to benefit.

UN teams are racing to protect families in Gaza from the coming rainy season, but restricted access to land and shortages of critical supplies are hampering the effort, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Wednesday.

Children have been killed and injured in fresh fighting in Baidoa, in Somalia’s South West State, where families were already facing severe hunger and other overlapping crises.

Homicide rates are falling across much of the world, but organised crime is on the rise in many regions as criminal networks diversify into trafficking, migrant smuggling, and the exploitation of natural resources, a new UN report launched on Wednesday revealed.

What if the world tackled inequality with the same kind of scientific firepower it has brought to the climate crisis?

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has voiced concern over Malaysia’s decision to return 1,476 people to Myanmar amid an ongoing civil war and a dire human rights and humanitarian situation.