Geneva, Switzerland - Attempts to finalise a landmark treaty combating plastic pollution descended into disarray on the penultimate day on Wednesday as dozens of countries rejected outright the latest draft text, leaving the talks in limbo. With some 30 hours left to seal a deal among the 184 countries gathered...

Geneva, Switzerland -- Nations must resolve the global plastics crisis, the head of UN talks told negotiators from 180 countries gathered in Geneva on Tuesday to forge a landmark treaty on eliminating the life-threatening waste. "We are facing a global crisis," Ecuadoran diplomat Luis Vayas Valdivieso said at the start...

Geneva, Switzerland -- A clutch of one-off and hitherto unseen ceramic plates and dishes by Pablo Picasso are going under the hammer in Geneva on June 19. Emblematic motifs from Picasso's artistic universe -- pigeons, fish, a goat, a bull, and a bird adorn the colorful plates and dishes. "It's...

Agentic AI, spatial intelligence and robotic advancements in manipulation and adaptive control are enabling autonomous systems to make intelligent decisions in complex environments, driving progress in automotive and smart manufacturing.

The US and China will Monday give details of "substantial progress" touted by Washington on trade talks aimed at ending a devastating tariff war launched by US President Donald Trump that has wiped billions off equities and brought chaos to international commerce.

WHO members on Saturday reached agreement over how to tackle future pandemics after three years of discussions, the co-chair of the negotiating body told AFP.

A survey of over 900 experts reveals state-based armed conflict as the most pressing global risk for 2025, driven by escalating geopolitical tensions and global fragmentation in cooperation and governance

That year, Tebboune became president after widely boycotted elections and mass pro-democracy protests from 2019 that died out under his tenure as policing ramped up and hundreds were put in jail. More than 24 million Algerians were registered to vote, but ANIE didn't say how many people in total had...

Held on the shores of Lake Maggiore, in the Italian-speaking Ticino region of southern Switzerland, films are screened in Locarno's central square -- a feature of Swiss national life depicted on the country's 20-franc banknotes. The open-air Piazza Grande holds up to 8,000 moviegoers.

Geneva, Switzerland - The United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) has identified 46,223 destroyed structures, 18,478 severely damaged structures, 55,954 moderately damaged structures, and 35,754 possibly damaged structures, totalling 156,409 structures in the Gaza Strip. The large-scale infrastructure damage is the result of continuous Israeli attacks on the Strip, which have...

Geneva, Switzerland -A Swiss court handed jail sentences to four members of Britain's richest family on Friday, branding them "selfish" for exploiting Indian staff at their Geneva mansion. The Hindujas were acquitted of human trafficking, but convicted on other charges in a stunning verdict for the family, whose fortune is estimated...

The UN Human Rights Council on Friday is set to consider a draft resolution calling for a cessation of arms sales to Israel, nearly six months into the war in Gaza. If the text is adopted, it would mark the first time that UN’s top rights body has taken a...

"From different doctors, particularly in the maternity hospitals, they're reporting that they're seeing a big rise in children born with low birth weight, and just not surviving the neonatal period because they're born too small," WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said at a briefing in Geneva.

"Around 9,000 patients urgently need to be evacuated abroad for lifesaving health services, including treatment for cancer, injuries from bombardments, kidney dialysis and other chronic conditions," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X. It is is up from 8,000 in the WHO's previous assessment at the beginning of...

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said this week there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel was "committing the crime of genocide against the Palestinians as a group in Gaza". She said she had received "nothing that so far I have considered...

Damascus, Syria -- Visiting United Nations special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen urged Damascus Sunday to rejoin talks to revise the country's constitution, warning that political dialogue was going "in the wrong direction". Syria's war, which began 13 years ago with the repression of pro-democracy protests, has killed more than 500,000...

Geneva, Switzerland - A major new study released by The Lancet Neurology shows that, in 2021, more than 3 billion people worldwide were living with a neurological condition. The World Health Organization (WHO) contributed to the analysis of the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factor Study (GBD) 2021 data. Neurological...

Geneva, Switzerland – The number of children who died before their fifth birthday has reached a historic low, dropping to 4.9 million in 2022, according to the latest estimates released today by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME). “Behind these numbers lie the stories of...

Geneva, Switzerland - The war in Gaza has "ruptured any sense of a shared humanity," the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Saturday. ICRC head Mirjana Spoljaric called for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza, saying Israel and Hamas must respect international law and protect civilians caught...

"The 2023 death toll represents a tragic increase of 20 percent compared to 2022, highlighting the urgent need for action to prevent further loss of life," the IOM said in a statement. Last year's total surpassed the previous record reached in 2016, when 8,084 people died during migration.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Scientists will work to channel the huge emerging power of quantum computers for the common good at a new institute opening in Geneva on Tuesday, its founders said. The Open Quantum Institute is calling on researchers from around the world to pinpoint the most promising future applications for...

Geneva, Switzerland - The pernicious "'great replacement' conspiracy theories" spreading in many countries are "delusional" and racist and are directly spurring violence, the United Nations rights chief warned on Monday. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk also took aim at the "war on woke", which he stressed was...

The UN and other humanitarian actors have not yet declared a state of famine in Gaza, despite worsening conditions in the Palestinian territory. However, "once a famine is declared, it is too late for too many people", said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.

More than 750 others were injured after Israeli soldiers opened fire on civilians gathered at an aid distribution point in the Palestinian territory. The death toll from the "massacre" in Gaza City "rose to 104 martyrs and 760 injuries due to the bullets of the occupation forces that targeted a...

The set of rules will streamline authorization requirements and ease procedural hurdles faced by businesses, according to a press release. It will help reduce the costs of global services trade by more than $119 billion every year, it added.

Renault unveiled a new electric vehicle and its Scenic model won the Car of the Year award at the first Geneva auto show since 2019, giving a boost to the French automaker's electrification plans. The Renault Scenic, an electric SUV, won the coveted Car of the Year prize, the French...

The World Trade Organization's 13th ministerial conference (MC13), scheduled to run until Thursday in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is the first in two years. The WTO is hoping for progress, particularly on fishing, agriculture and electronic commerce.

Geneva, Switzerland - The World Health Organization voiced alarm on Tuesday at the rapid spread of measles, with more than 306,000 cases reported worldwide last year -- a 79-percent increase from 2022. "We in the measles world are extremely concerned," said Natasha Crowcroft, a WHO technical adviser on measles and rubella....

Geneva, Switzerland - The World Health Organization said on Tuesday it had transferred 32 patients out of the besieged Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza but feared for the patients and medics still inside. WHO staff said the scenes around the hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis were "indescribable", while...

Geneva, Switzerland - Israel is waging a concerted campaign aimed at destroying UNRWA, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said in an interview published on Saturday. Philippe Lazzarini said calls for his resignation were part of the Israeli government's push. "Right now we are dealing with an expanded,...

In a telephone call that saw Macron toughen his tone, the French leader expressed France's "firm opposition" to an Israeli offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, saying it "could only lead to a humanitarian disaster of a new magnitude" and create a new risk of regional escalation, according...

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Acting WHO Representative in Sudan Peter Graaff has said that the humanitarian and health crisis in the African country is alarming. The conflict that started 10 months ago has spread to new areas, resulting in widespread displacement of civilians, some of whom have been forced to move...

Geneva, Switzerland - The number of new cancer cases will rise to more than 35 million in 2050 -- 77 percent higher than the figure in 2022, the World Health Organization's cancer agency warned Thursday. The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cited tobacco, alcohol, obesity and air pollution...

Geneva, Switzerland - The World Health Organization said on Monday that nearly half the world's population was now covered by solid rules limiting trans fat in foods and urged lagging countries to catch up. The WHO appealed in 2018 for industrially produced fatty acids in foods to be eliminated worldwide by...

"WHO refutes Israel's accusation at the executive board meeting yesterday that WHO is in 'collusion' with Hamas and is 'turning a blind eye' to the suffering of hostages being held in Gaza," WHO chief Tedros said on X. "Such false claims are harmful and can endanger our staff who are...

Thousands of Gazan men may have been detained by Israeli forces since war erupted on October 7, often facing conditions that could amount to torture, the UN's human rights representative in the Palestinian territories said. Some of those released have reported being blindfolded, beaten and ultimately freed wearing only diapers,...

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has been targeted with a criminal complaint during a visit to Switzerland, Swiss prosecutors said, amid allegations of crimes against humanity over the war in Gaza. The Federal Prosecutor's Office (BA) confirmed that it had received a criminal complaint against the Israeli president, who was in...

Geneva, Switzerland - Generative artificial intelligence could transform healthcare through things like drug development and more rapid diagnoses, but the World Health Organization stressed on Thursday more attention should be paid to the risks. The WHO has been examining the potential dangers and benefits posed by AI large multi-modal models (LMMs),...

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND -  The head of the World Trade Organization's fisheries talks voiced optimism  on Tuesday about striking an agreement on limiting subsidies blamed for overcapacity and overfishing. The 164 WTO members kicked off a month of negotiations this week at the global trade body's headquarters in Geneva. Iceland's ambassador Einar...

"Remember Ukraine?" UN aid chief Martin Griffiths asked as he launched the plan in Geneva. "Please do not forget Ukraine while there are many other places in the world which grab our attention." "As we go into 2024, the competition for funding is going to be more," he acknowledged, citing...

"Delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza continues to face nearly insurmountable challenges," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference. "Intense bombardment, restrictions on movement, fuel shortages, and interrupted communications make it impossible for WHO and our partners to reach those in need."

Geneva, Switzerland - The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024 is set to gather over 2,800 global leaders in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, from January 15-19, with the overarching theme of "Rebuilding Trust." Against a backdrop of increasing division and uncertainty worldwide, the forum aims to foster dialogue, enhance collaboration, and forge...

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released data for November 2023 global air cargo markets indicating the strongest year-on-year growth in roughly two years. This is partly due to weakness in November 2022, but also reflects a fourth consecutive month of strengthening demand for air cargo. Global...

A report released Thursday demanded an immediate end to the use of military weapons and means during law enforcement operations, an end to arbitrary detention and ill-treatment of Palestinians, and the lifting of discriminatory movement restrictions. "The use of military tactics and weapons in law enforcement contexts, the use of...

Geneva, Switzerland - The head of the WHO said on Tuesday the world needs to properly prepare for future pandemics after finally ending three years of Covid "crisis, pain and loss." In his end-of-year message, World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 2023 had marked a turning point in fighting...

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor documented, in a preliminary file submitted to UN special rapporteurs and the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, dozens of field executions cases carried out by the Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip. It also called for immediate investigation to hold the...

Geneva, Switzerland - Gaza is "the most dangerous place in the world" for a child, the UN children's agency spokesperson said Tuesday, expressing his rage at the situation there after returning from the Palestinian territory. "I'm furious that those with power shrug at the humanitarian nightmares unleashed on a million children,"...

Filippo Grandi, head of the UN refugee agency, warned Wednesday that pushing Gazans across the frontier would be "extremely destabilizing for Egypt". "It's very important to insist that this evacuation of people beyond (the border) must not be promoted, must not be advanced, forced," the UNHCR chief told journalists in...

Tehran, Iran-- Saudi Arabia and Iran's foreign ministers have stressed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and sending humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave. Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and his Saudi counterpart Faisal bin Farhan discussed bilateral relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the latest developments...

The chief of WHO said the convoy was stopped twice at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint on the way to northern Gaza and on the way back, adding that some Palestinian Red Crescent staff were detained both times and questioned for several hours.