Climate-induced disasters in Asia and the Pacific have become increasingly frequent and severe, resulting in loss of lives and livelihoods, hampering the post-pandemic recovery and potentially derailing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The effects of devastating floods, severe droughts and rising sea levels are not confined within national borders; they have international implications too, including for trade, communal tensions and forced migration. Climate change is only making things worse.  

Against this backdrop, Vibhu Mishra from UN News spoke to Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), who outlined how countries can reduce disaster risk, and strengthen climate action. 

• Yemen: UN starts high-risk operation to prevent catastrophic oil spill from decaying tanker
• IAEA: Anti-personnel mines found in Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine
• UN warns of looming disaster emergency in Asia-Pacific region

Artificial Intelligence may be the buzzword of the day, but before we know it, two new concepts may soon steal the limelight: Disruptive-tech and Artificial General Intelligence. 

That’s according to Janet Adams, chief operating officer of AI experts SingularityNet, who maintains that these up-and-coming technologies have massive potential to combat inequality, in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda. 

To find out more, UN News's Elma Okic caught up with Ms. Adams at the AI For Good Summit in Geneva earlier this month.

• UN chief lends support to tackle global hunger.
• Sudan: At least 435 children killed and 2025 injured says UNICEF
• WHO: 20,000 deaths a year from drowning are ‘entirely preventable’ in Europe

• UN expert demands end to mass detention and child separation in northeast Syria 
• WHO warns of Dengue increase amidst changing climate patterns
• WFP warns of ripple effects of Sudan across West and Central Africa

Nelson Mandela was a giant of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the country’s first democratically elected President, but he also had a wonderful sense of humour.

That is just one of the recollections of American politician and activist Andrew Young, a former US Ambassador to the UN and friend of the man who was affectionately known as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name.

Mr. Young was US Ambassador in the late 1970s, when Mr. Mandela was still serving out a lifetime sentence for treason before being released in 1990 after 27 years in prison.

Mr. Young, 91, was back at the UN on Thursday for the official commemoration of Nelson Mandela International Day.  He spoke to UN News’s Dianne Penn. 

The artificial sweetener aspartame that’s widely used in fizzy drinks has just been classified as “possibly” cancer-causing by UN scientists - but there’s no cause for alarm.

That’s the key message from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), whose assessment of aspartame was carried out on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO), by an expert panel of nutritional epidemiology and nutritional toxicology scientists.

With more details on what these findings mean for all of us, UN News’s Daniel Johnson spoke to IARC’s Mary Schubauer-Berigan, who’s head of the agency’s Monographs Programme.

• UN condemns attacks on Odesa Port
• UNHCR: Rohingya refugees face more hunger as aid cuts bite
• UNODC partners with Royal Foundation to combat illegal wildlife crime

• UN Secretary-General urges regulation of AI at inaugural security council meeting
• Unitaid: Close to one million deaths by 2035 if TB prevention is not implemented.
• UN Women team up with FIFA to promote gender equality

• Health risks on the rise as heatwave intensifies across Europe: WMO

• Child vaccination makes unequal post-COVID recovery across regions: WHO, UNICEF

• More than 90 per cent of world’s women live in countries with large gender gap: UNDP, UN Women