UNITED NATIONS, Jul 21 2025 (IPS)* –Electric vehicles contribute to an ongoing environmental and humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Mining operations cause deforestation, pollution, food insecurity and exploitative labor practices.
A young girl washes her hands in a puddle near a UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC. Photo Credit: UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti
Advertisers paint electric vehicles as an environmentally friendly option to help save the planet. In the West, American states like California and New York incentivize citizens to go green and help their cities by ditching gas-powered vehicles.
UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, has learned that the United States Government will deny future funding to the organization, cutting essential support for millions of people living in humanitarian crises and for midwives preventing mothers from dying in childbirth.
The amendment states that no US funds may be made available to any organization that supports or participates in the management of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.
Multiple evaluations by the US Government itself and others have found no evidence that UNFPA engages in coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in China.
The US had become one of UNFPA’s most critical partners, providing $180 million in funding on average a year.
The workers we don’t pay or see are grandmothers, mothers, daughters — the women who take care of children, look after ill family members and give dignity to the elderly.
To do this vital care work, they give up formal employment with pay cheques.
“Our system is designed as if women didn’t do care work, and that forces us to choose between raising children or working,”said Meredith Cortés Bravo, a founder of a grassroots organization in Chile that supports these women.
(UN News)* — Major cuts to aid budgets have already left people fleeing wars in Sudan and beyond without the assistance and protection they need, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on .
Globally, $1.4 billion of the agency’s programmes are being shuttered or put on hold, UNHCR said in a new report.
“We can’t stop water, you can’t stop sanitation, but we’re having to take decisions when it comes, for example, to shelter,” said UNHCR Director of External Relations Dominique Hyde.
PORTLAND, USA, Jul 16 2025 (IPS)* –To be, or not to be, an undocumented migrant, that is the question for millions of men, women and children in many less developed countries.
The chance of dying during the first year of life in the least developed countries is ten times higher than in the more developed countries. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS
“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them” for a better life as an undocumented migrant in a foreign land.
GENEVA –Following major cuts to humanitarian budgets, up to 11.6 million refugees and others forced to flee risk losing access this year to direct humanitarian assistance from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, according to a report published on 18 July 2025.
In January this year, a nuclear trafficking case made the international news headlines. The United States Department of Justice announced that Takeshi Ebisawa, an alleged Japanese gangster, had pleaded guilty to charges of major narcotics trafficking as well as conspiring to traffic nuclear materials.
World’s nuclear arsenals being enlarged and upgraded
(Stockholm) The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on 16 June 2025 launched its annual assessment of the state of armaments, disarmament and international security.
SIPRI Yearbook 2025. Photo: SIPRI.
Key findings of SIPRI Yearbook 2025 are that a dangerous new nuclear arms race is emerging at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened.
Nearly all of the nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—continued intensive nuclear modernization programmes in 2024, upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions.
10 July 2025 — In 2017, extreme violence erupted in northern Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, and spread to other areas. The conflict, along with two major cyclones in two years, has driven hundreds of thousands of people away from their homes.
“I came from Chiure with my husband and three children in March 2024 because of the conflict. I don’t plan to stay here forever, but I can’t go back home either,” says Virivir, 64. Photo: Karl Schembri/NRC
Amsterdam – Responding to a rapid study by scientists at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine that found that the number of heat-related deaths across 12 European cities tripled due to the climate crisis in the 10 day period between 23 June and 2 July, as well as to preliminary data published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service that June 2025 was the hottest ever June for Western Europe and the third-warmest June globally.[1][2]
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 
In January this year, a nuclear trafficking case made the international news headlines. The United States Department of Justice announced that Takeshi Ebisawa, an alleged Japanese gangster, had pleaded guilty to charges of major narcotics trafficking as well as conspiring to traffic nuclear materials.