News headlines in July 2024

ROME, Jul 04 (IPS) - A 30-year-old woman speaks before tens of thousands gathered in southern Pakistan. Men of all ages listen to her speech in almost reverential silence, many holding up her portrait and chanting her name: Mahrang Baloch.

NAIROBI & ADDIS ABABA, Jul 04 (IPS) - Investing in teachers and school leaders in Africa is the most important factor in promoting educational opportunities for girls, keeping them in school and ending child marriage, ultimately reducing gender inequality through education.

NEW DELHI, India, Jul 04 (IPS) - As the temperature soars to new heights in India, so does domestic violence. It’s a well-established correlation that is largely left out of the climate change discussion, but the gap is glaring and needs to be bridged.

The UN Secretary-General has reiterated his solidarity with countries affected by Hurricane Beryl, releasing $4 million from the Organization’s emergency response fund to kickstart relief efforts.

Deep global divisions and conflicts must end to clear a path to tackling world’s two existential threats: climate change and the negative impacts of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, UN chief António Guterres told the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Astana on Thursday.

Bombing continued overnight into Thursday in Gaza where some of the tens of thousands of people uprooted in response to Israeli evacuation orders have had to turn back after finding nowhere to shelter, UN humanitarians reported.

SYDNEY, Jul 03 (IPS) - Fifty years ago on 1 May 1974, the Sixth Special Session of the General Assembly (April–May) adopted a revolutionary declaration and programme of action on the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) “based on equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and cooperation among all States, irrespective of their economic and social systems”. The hope was that a NIEO would “correct inequalities and redress existing injustices, make it possible to eliminate the widening gap between the developed and the developing countries and ensure steadily accelerating economic and social development and peace and justice for present and future generations”. Alas, what evolved is far from what was envisioned or called for.

LONDON, Jul 03 (IPS) - Myanmar’s army, at war with pro-democracy forces and ethnic militias, must know it’s nowhere near victory. It recently came close to losing control of Myawaddy, one of the country’s biggest cities, at a key location on the border with Thailand. Many areas are outside its control.

ATLANTA, Georgia, Jul 03 (IPS) - Zionism is broken. It is finished as a political philosophy and cannot long survive. Having earned the visceral opposition of multitudes of people and countries around the world for engaging in vast overkill in Gaza, that historical reality will likely become clear to the Israeli people over time.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 03 (IPS) - The US gun lobby justifies the unfettered American gun ownership in the US on a misguided premise: Guns don’t kill people, it’s bullets that kill people.

The accusations of genocide and war crimes in Gaza have been directed firstly, at Israel, for the killings of more than 37,700, mostly civilians, and over 86,000 injured, in retaliation for the 1,200 killed by Hamas last October, according to estimates from Gaza health officials, as cited by Cable News Network (CNN) last week.