North Korea continued developing its nuclear and ballistic missile programs during the first half of 2021 in violation of international sanctions and despite the country’s worsening economic situation, according to an excerpt of a confidential United Nations report seen by Reuters on Friday. 

Representatives from 195 countries yesterday approved a critical UN science report that will provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date assessment yet of the state of Earth’s climate. 

Millions more Mexicans have fallen into poverty because of the coronavirus pandemic, with people living in one of the country’s top tourist destinations hit particularly hard, official data showed Thursday.

Russia has formally banned organisations established by jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny as the opposition says the authorities are trying to stifle dissent ahead of parliamentary elections.

The United Nations yesterday said it urgently needed funds to feed people in Myanmar amid fears that up to 6.2 million could be plunged into hunger by October. 

Thousands of people fled their homes on the outskirts of Athens on Friday as emergency crews struggled to stop wildfires from spreading to more towns while scorching winds fuelled blazes across Greece for the fourth day.

The European Union yesterday condemned the Taliban’s latest deadly attacks in Afghanistan and demanded “an urgent, comprehensive and permanent ceasefire”. 

1914 - Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia, and Serbia declared war on Germany in WWI.

Mexico said it filed a lawsuit against major US gunmakers in a Boston court on Wednesday over illegal cross-border arms flows that it blamed for fueling rampant drug-related violence.

With nearly 200 million people known to have had Covid-19, the WHO said it was deeply concerned by the unknown numbers who may still be suffering with Long Covid. 

Australia will provide one-off cash payments of US$60,000 to many Indigenous Australians who were forcibly removed from their families as children, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced yesterday, to redress what he described as a “shameful” period in the nation’s history.

Bosnia’s new top international envoy Christian Schmidt said Wednesday he would use the tools at his disposal to make the ethnically-divided country more functional, even as Bosnian Serb leaders rejected his legitimacy.

Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya decided to defect as she was being driven to a Tokyo airport because her grandmother told her that it was not safe to return home to Belarus.

The WHO yesterday called for a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccine booster shots until at least the end of September to address the drastic inequity in dose distribution between rich and poor nations.

Fully vaccinated people in England were one-third as likely to test positive for Covid-19, according to an ongoing survey of the population released yesterday.

Three people died and eight were seriously injured on Wednesday when a Munich-to-Prague express train ran through a stop signal and collided with a local commuter train in the Czech Republic, Czech authorities said.

An estimated 4.7 million fewer girls are expected to be born globally in the next 10 years because of sex-selective practices in countries with a cultural preference for male offspring, a trend that could undermine social cohesion in the long term, research showed yesterday.  

A missing Belarusian activist has been found hanged in a park in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, police said on Tuesday, adding they had opened a murder probe. Shishov headed the Belarusian House in Ukraine, an NGO helping his compatriots flee repression in Belarus.

1914 - WWI: Britain declares war on Germany.

We will seek to lift the tyrannical sanctions imposed by America. But we will not tie the ... economy to the will of foreigners.” Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s incoming president