News headlines in May 2024

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 31 (IPS) - On 6 May, people went to the polls in Chad, ostensibly to elect a president who’d usher in democratic civilian rule. Ten days later, the Constitutional Council confirmed there’d be no change: the elected president was the leader of the military-backed transitional government supposedly handing over power, Mahamat Idriss Déby.

Aid corridors in southern Gaza must be fully opened to allow the entry of food, fuel and other desperately needed relief items, a senior official with the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday.

The thorny issue of how to protect the unwary from deepfakes was just one of the key issues in the spotlight at a UN conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI) held in Geneva this week, where a staggering 25,000 enthusiasts – and robots - from 145 countries added their voices to longstanding calls for checks and balances on the all-conquering tech.

Continued hostilities and evacuation orders in Gaza have led to the closure of key humanitarian facilities in Rafah, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Friday.

The UN’s top human rights official on Friday voiced serious concern over the dramatic deterioration of the situation in Burkina Faso, where almost 1,800 people are reported to have been unlawfully killed between November last year and April.

On Thursday, a humanitarian flight operated by the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) flew from Panama to Haiti – specifically the Port-au-Prince airport – for the first time in three months, according to Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) repeated launches using ballistic missile technology not only violate Security Council resolutions but also pose a serious risk to aviation and maritime traffic, a senior UN official said on Friday.

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine has strongly condemned the latest deadly Russian missile strikes in Kharkiv.

Far too little aid is reaching people in Gaza to the extent that children are now starvingUN humanitarians said on Friday, in a renewed appeal to Israel to respect international law regarding the safe passage of lifesaving relief in the war-shattered enclave.

Famine in Sudan is “imminent” if aid agencies continue to be prevented from providing relief, UN humanitarians warned on Friday.