News headlines in June 2023, page 12

NAIROBI, Jun 16 (IPS) - Plastic bags were a part and parcel of life in Kenya. More than 100 million plastic bags were used annually in Kenyan supermarkets alone, with at least 24 million plastic bags discarded every month. Kenya was choking under the weight of plastic bags.

LONDON, Jun 16 (IPS) - Regulation of a technology typically emerges sometime after it has been used in a product or service, or, worse, the risks become apparent. This responsive approach is regrettable when real harm is already being done, as now with AI. With existential risk, the approach would risk the end of human existence.

The UN is providing “multifaceted support” to Mali ahead of this weekend’s constitutional referendum, the head of its peacekeeping mission in the country, MINUSMA, said in a briefing to the Security Council on Friday.

The UN refugee and migration agencies are calling for urgent and decisive action to prevent further deaths at sea following Wednesday’s tragedy in the Mediterranean. With 78 bodies retrieved, 104 people rescued, and hundreds more missing and feared dead, the 14 June shipwreck off the coast of Greece is one of the worst and most deadly in years.

UN humanitarians continue bringing life-saving aid to survivors of the flooding from the Kakhovka Dam, but they’ve warned that hundreds of thousands more people in the country’s south face severe water shortages.

Words are not enough to alleviate the multiple crises afflicting Haiti, said the President of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Friday, in an appeal for urgent international action.

Sea ice is reducing at an unprecedented rate, prompting polar scientists to call for an urgent increase in research and observation, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Friday.

Women’s land rights are in the spotlight ahead of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Droughtobserved on 17 June, at events around the world, from Kenya to Viet Nam, including a high-level event at UN Headquarters in New York on Friday.

With the conflict between rival militaries in Sudan entering its third month, the people of Darfur are “trapped in a living nightmare”, the UN’s top aid official has said.

CUZCO, Peru, Jun 15 (IPS) - Adopting a “healthy housing” approach is improving the living conditions of rural Peruvian women like Martina Santa Cruz, a 34-year-old farmer who lives with her husband and two children in the village of Sacllo, 2,959 meters above sea level in the Andes highlands municipality of Calca.