News headlines in June 2022, page 9

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jun 23 (IPS) - Early estimates in the Afghan provinces of Khost and Paktika indicate that the earthquake took lives of over a thousand people, with the death toll likely to rise. Many more have been injured, lost their homes and everything they owned.

Hunger is tightening its grip on more than 20 million Ethiopians who are facing conflict in the north, drought in the south and dwindling food and nutrition support beginning next month, the UN food relief agency warned on Thursday.

LIMA, Jun 22 (IPS) - "They mustn’t stop looking for her," said Patricia Acosta, mother of Estéfhanny Díaz, who went missing on Apr. 24, 2016, along with her five-year-old and eight-month-old daughters, after attending a children's birthday party in Mi Perú, a town in the coastal province of Callao, next to the Peruvian capital.

Indigenous women and girls face grave, systematic, and continuous acts of violence that permeate every aspect of their lives, a UN-appointed independent rights expert said on Wednesday in a hard hitting report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva

KIGALI, Jun 22 (IPS) - Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare systems globally have battled to deal with the repercussions unleashed by the disease. From the outset, Africa was considered particularly vulnerable due to several factors: limited healthcare provision in some areas, high prevalence of HIV and TB in a number of countries, and limited fiscal room to respond to the pandemic’s financial impacts.

Efforts are underway to reinvigorate the Central African Republic’s political process, which has lapsed into a state of “de facto lethargy” even as horrific attacks against civilians have risen, the senior UN official in the country told the Security Council on Wednesday.

The UN human rights office, OHCHR, is urging Iran to call off plans to amputate the fingers of eight prisoners convicted of burglary, Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said on Wednesday. 

BONN, Germany, Jun 22 (IPS) - You probably use wild species far more often than you realise. For many people, especially in more developed economies, the use of wild species sounds like something quite removed from their everyday lives – something perhaps more relevant to other people, in other countries.

In a solemn ceremony, the UN chief on Wednesday honoured the memory of 485 UN personnel who lost their lives in the line of duty during 2021, “the highest number of colleagues” ever lost in a single year while serving the Organization.

ABUJA, Jun 22 (IPS) - For forty days, Kunle Adeyanju – a Nigerian, Rotarian, polio eradication advocate and biker - rode for more than 12,500km from London to Lagos to raise funds for polio eradication.