News headlines in 2024

May 16 (IPS) - The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasonsAfghanistan is grappling with a growing crisis of mental illness, particularly among its women, as highlighted in a United Nations report. Officials from the mental health department at Herat regional hospital have observed a concerning uptick in the number of women afflicted by psychological disorders in the province.

LONDON, May 16 (IPS) - There’s change at the top in Solomon Islands – but civil society will be watching closely to see whether that means a government that’s grown hostile will start doing things differently.

Jeremiah Manele is the new prime minister, emerging from negotiations that followed April’s general election. He’s part of OUR Party, led by outgoing four-time prime minister Manasseh Sogavare. The party came first, winning 15 of 50 constituencies, but several incumbents who stood for it lost their parliamentary seats, and Sogavare only narrowly held his. Weakened, Sogavare stood aside to allow Manele to prevail as the consensus candidate of the post-election coalition his party stitched together.

SEATTLE, Washington, May 16 (IPS) - A major mistake we often commit in our analysis of the US political discourse on the Gaza war is that we assume that the US and Israel behave as if they are two political entities with separate agendas and sets of priorities.

UNITED NATIONS, May 16 (IPS) - As the ancient Greek saying goes: those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first drive them mad. Perhaps destruction is too far-fetched here, but madness is closer home—in Washington DC

With the 7-month-old Israeli-Gaza conflict showing no positive signs of a permanent solution, there is a lingering sense of growing political craziness in Capitol Hill, the seat of the US government, once described as Israeli-occupied territory.

The bi-annual UN forum on entrepreneurship and innovation wrapped up its work in Bahrain on Thursday focusing on women entrepreneurs from conflict zones, who stressed the importance of investing in their activities as a means of building peace, security, and stability in their communities.

A renowned Palestinian orthopaedic surgeon’s death in Israeli detention has been labelled “horrifying’ by a UN human rights expert, prompting calls for an independent international investigation.

The global economic picture has improved since January, but vulnerabilities remain, the mid-year update of the World Economic Situation and Prospects report published on Thursday has revealed.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) began public hearings on Thursday stemming from South Africa’s recent request for emergency provisional measures to immediately halt Israeli operations under way in Rafah, in southern Gaza, where more than one million Palestinians were sheltering during the seven-month-long war in the besieged enclave.

Iraq is a nation brimming with potential but still haunted by legacies of past turmoil, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for the country, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, said in a briefing to the Security Council on Thursday.

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine condemned air strikes in Kherson city on Thursday, which injured dozens of civilians, including two children, and damaged homes and an education facility.