News headlines in 2026

UNITED NATIONS, May 8 (IPS) - The 10-month-old Middle East conflict—which has triggered a rise in the cost of living worldwide, and an increase in the prices of food, groceries and gasoline—is likely to impose burdens on hundreds of UN staffers, delegates, journalists and civil society representatives and thousands more, during the General Assembly sessions beginning September.

LILONGWE & VIENTIANE, May 7 (IPS) - For decades, pesticides have been a quiet pillar of Malawi’s agriculture, guarding crops against pests, improving yields, and sustaining millions of livelihoods. But beneath this success story lay a troubling reality: weak regulation, unsafe handling practices, and growing threats to human health and the environment.

NEW YORK, May 7 (IPS) - If you woke up with severe fever, would you stay home from work? What if the choice meant losing a week’s wages, or deciding if you could afford the trip to a doctor at all?

DOHA, Qatar, May 7 (IPS) - In 2024, 273 million children, adolescents, and youth were out of school globally as per the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. While that is a staggering number, the figure is incomplete. The 2026 Global Education Monitoring report warns that the global out of school population may be undercounted by at least 13 million once humanitarian sources are used to correct data gaps in conflict-affected contexts.

Bahrain and the United States have circulated a draft Security Council resolution calling for Iran to cease attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, their ambassadors outlined to journalists at UN Headquarters in New York on Thursday.

As oil prices have risen amid geopolitical turmoil, one perhaps overlooked driver of climate change is coming into sharper focus: the production of plastics which are deeply tied to fossil fuels.

In Somalia’s Puntland region, dried out watering holes, animal carcasses and old pots filled with ash have become part of the landscape as worsening drought conditions deepen a growing hunger crisis.

An Israeli airstrike overnight on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut has sparked a new wave of displacement among civilians already impacted by months of conflict, the United Nations said on Thursday.

What do more than half of all doctors in Australia, over 40 per cent of Nobel laureates from the United States, and most of the workforce in some Gulf States have in common?

A deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean poses a low global public health risk and is “not the start of another COVID pandemic”, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.