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UNITED NATIONS, Sep 06 (APP): Sri Lanka suffers from a continuing an accountability deficit – be it for war crime atrocities, recent human rights violations, corruption, or abuse of power – which must be addressed for the South Asian country to move forward, according to a UN Human Rights Office report published Wednesday.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations released $125 million from its emergency relief fund Tuesdat to boost underfunded humanitarian operations in 14 countries around the world, saying needs are skyrocketing.

Afghanistan and Yemen top the list of recipients, with each getting $20 million, followed by Burkina Faso and Myanmar at $9 million each and Mali, Haiti and Venezuela at $8 million each.

NEW YORK (AP) — The end of Labor Day weekend would typically mark the start of a furious sprint to the Iowa caucuses as candidates battle for their party’s presidential nomination. But as the 2024 campaign comes into greater focus, the usual frenzy is yielding to a sense of inevitability.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 04 (APP): The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and 64 humanitarian and national civil society organizations Monday appealed for $1 billion to provide essential aid and protection to more than 1.8 million people fleeing the ongoing conflict in Sudan, who are expected to arrive in five neighbouring countries by the end of 2023.

Since the crisis began when rival military groups clashed in mid-April, projections of growing numbers of people trying to escape fighting have sharply spiked upwards.

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- A wealth of underground water helped create America, its vast cities and bountiful farmland, but Americans are now squandering that inheritance, and overuse is draining and damaging aquifers nationwide, reported The New York Times in a headline story in its printed edition on Saturday.

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- China-U.S. cultural exchanges and tourism cooperation have seen rapid recovery and development this year, Chinese Consul General in New York Huang Ping said Friday.

Huang made the remarks during the Evening of Chinese Culture event held Friday in New York's Citi Field baseball park.

NEW YORK (AP) — The federal government will, for the first time, dictate staffing levels at nursing homes, the Biden administration said Friday, responding to systemic problems bared by mass COVID-19 deaths.

While such regulation has been sought for decades by allies of older adults and those with disabilities, the proposed threshold is far lower than many advocates had hoped. It also immediately drew ire from the nursing home industry, which said it amounted to a mandate that couldn’t be met.

30 August 2023; MEMO: The spokesperson for the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) yesterday criticised France’s decision to ban girls from wearing the abaya (black loose fitting dress) in schools.

On Sunday, French Education Minister Gabriel Attal told the local TF1 TV channel that wearing the abaya will no longer be allowed in schools.

31 August 2023; MEMO: The UN Security Council overwhelmingly voted, Thursday, to renew a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon for another year after a one-day delay in the vote.

The vote was initially to take place Wednesday but was pulled back to allow the French and US missions to negotiate language about peacekeepers’ freedom of movement. The Council voted 13-0 to reauthorise the mission, with permanent members Russia and China abstaining.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 31 (APP): Some of the world’s most iconic natural and cultural sites are also a haven for thousands of endangered species, the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the world body’s Paris-based agency, said Thursday.

Although properties protected under the World Heritage Convention make up less than one per cent of the Earth’s surface, they harbour more than 20 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity, new research by UNESCO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has revealed.