News headlines in January 2023, page 21

The World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned about the COVID-19 surge in China, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday, in his first virtual briefing for the year. 

In Ukraine, the country’s farmers and smallholders urgently need more support to avoid a food crisis, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Wednesday, as it announced a $15.5 million initiative to help them.

Arbitrary detention must end “once and for all”, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Tuesday in an appeal to governments everywhere. 

WASHINGTON DC, Jan 03 (IPS) - Over the last decades, the private investment fund sector has grown into a multi trillion-dollar industry. Private investment funds are vulnerable to money laundering because they contain a variety of structural risk factors that help camouflage illicit behavior.

ACCRA, Jan 03 (IPS) - As the effects of COVID-19 on Africa’s health sector become clearer, it looks the continent will need to take urgent steps to overcome the disruptions suffered in the breakdown in antenatal and postnatal care for women and newborns and neonatal intensive care units. The pandemic brought some setbacks to the gains achieved in maternal mortality over the past decade.

The New Year holiday period witnessed a fresh surge of deadly attacks by Russian forces in Ukraine, Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told journalists on Tuesday. 

UN agency chiefs appealed to the Security Council on Tuesday to extend a deal guaranteeing cross-border aid access to northwest Syria, that’s due to expire in eight days.

Amid a reported surge in COVID-19 infections in China, coronavirus experts have been meeting at the UN health agency on Tuesday, to discuss next steps.

SYDNEY, Jan 02 (IPS) - 2022 has been a year of great uncertainty when it seemed the world perilously reached the brink of self-destruction – be it human-induced climate change or military conflict. Welcoming 2022, we had enough reasons to be optimistic; but it was another ‘year of living dangerously’ – Tahun vivere pericoloso in the words of Soekarno, or an annus horribilis in the words of the late Queen Elizabeth.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 02 (IPS) - I recently overheard a conversation among three young people at a café in an African city. It was a passionate discussion on the management of funds allocated to the COVID-19 response and the effectiveness of the mechanisms in place to manage the money to achieve the intended purposes.