News headlines in March 2022, page 3

Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday night condemned recent terrorist attacks in Israel that have claimed the lives of at least 11 Israeli citizens.  

BERLIN, Mar 30 (IPS) - In a short period, the war in Ukraine has already had a major effect on the world economy. The United States and the European Union have levied sanctions on an unprecedented scale against Russia, energy prices have skyrocketed, and with the Black Sea closed, the world’s most fertile region is no longer linked to its markets. This will cause an appreciation of food prices that could wreak havoc in the European periphery.

Nearly half of all pregnancies, totalling 121 million each year worldwide, are unintended, according to a new report published on Wednesday by the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA. 

Now entering its third year, the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to hold back some 405 million school children worlwide from a full return to the classroom, according to a new report released on Wednesday by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The second full day of the World Entrepreneurs Investment Forum (WEIF 2022) on Tuesday, saw women entrepreneurs demanding better opportunities and better access to financing to help ensure a more equitable, sustainable role in business development in the Arab region.

MADRID, Mar 29 (IPS) - While several politicians -and media– have been viewing the ongoing armed conflict in South Sudan as a “civil war” between rival ethnic groups, so nothing to worry about, there are some key facts that should be considered for the sake of having a wider, more accurate panorama. One of them is that this country is rich in oil.

At least 1,100 civilians have been killed in a month of fighting in Ukraine, a senior UN humanitarian official told the Security Council on Tuesday, stressing that the conflict “shows no signs of abating.”

JOHANNESBURG, Mar 29 (IPS) - As countries around the world—from Kenya to Canada, South Africa to Sweden—relish the prospect of an unofficial transition of COVID-19 from pandemic to endemic and start to ease pandemic-related restrictions, many of us in the tuberculosis (TB) community find it hard to relate. In TB, we know what can happen when a pandemic becomes an accepted fact.

The United Nations on Tuesday remembered the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and its continued impact on the modern world, by honouring the tradition of resistance to slavery and unity against racism, through personal stories of courage.

Amid deteriorating security in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the top UN envoy in the country has called for a comprehensive political strategy that includes measures to address the structural causes of the conflicts.