Switzerland

GENEVA, Aug 13 (NNN-Xinhua) — A total of 168 aid workers have been attacked so far this year, leading to 44 fatalities, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told a press briefing that according to data from the NGO Humanitarian Outcomes, a partner of OCHA, more than 140 aid workers were killed in the line of duty last year, the highest number of fatalities since 2013.

Last year, there were also 203 aid workers injured and 117 kidnapped, Laerke said.

GENEVA, Aug 13 (NNN-Xinhua) — The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced new names for variants of the monkeypox virus that are currently in circulation. This is to avoid causing any cultural or social offense, the WHO explained in a statement.

A group of global experts convened by the WHO decided on the new names.

GENEVA, Aug 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The UN rights chief voiced alarm at the number of Palestinian children killed and wounded this month and demanded those responsible be brought to account.

Last week saw three days of intense conflict between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants in the densely populated Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

“Inflicting hurt on any child during the course of conflict is deeply disturbing,” Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement.

GENEVA (AP) — Host nation Qatar is set to play in the opening game of its own World Cup tournament after all — and on a stand-alone day being added to the schedule barely 100 days before kickoff.

Soccer’s marquee tournament is now set start one day earlier than originally scheduled seven years ago in a move that would allow Qatar to play Ecuador on Nov. 20, a person familiar with the proposal told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the matter.

GENEVA (AP) — In the 134 years since league soccer started in England, the European game has never scheduled such a disrupted season.

FIFA’s decision to move the World Cup in Qatar from the normal offseason months to November and December in order to avoid the desert heat will slice into the European domestic season in a way not seen outside of international traumas like war or pandemic.

ZURICH, July 31 (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has not yet received permission to visit the site of Friday's attack that killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war, it said on Sunday, condemning the incident at the Olenivka facility.

"Families must receive urgent news of and answers on what happened to their loved ones. The parties must do everything in their power, including through impartial investigations, to help determine the facts behind the attack," it said in a statement.

SPIEZ, Switzerland, July 31 (Reuters) - The setting is straight from a spy thriller: Crystal waters below, snow-capped Swiss Alps above and in between, a super-secure facility researching the world's deadliest pathogens.

Spiez Laboratory, known for its detective work on chemical, biological and nuclear threats since World War Two, was tasked last year by the World Health Organization to be the first in a global network of high-security laboratories that will grow, store and share newly discovered microbes that could unleash the next pandemic.

30 July 2022; MEMO: Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced on Thursday that the comments of Miloon Kothari, a member of the United Nations (UN) Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli offensive on Gaza in 2021, "echo the darkest days of antisemitism".

The Times of Israel reported Lapid's spokesperson calling for the UN committee to be disbanded.

ZURICH, July 30 (Reuters) - The head of the Swiss agency that implements economic sanctions expects the neutral country to adopt any punitive measures the European Union launches against China if it invades Taiwan, she said in a newspaper interview.

China has been stepping up military activity around Taiwan seeking to pressure the democratically elected government there to accept Chinese sovereignty. Taiwan's government says only the island's 23 million people can decide their future, and while it wants peace, it will defend itself if attacked. 

GENEVA, July 29. /TASS/: A Swiss bank has blocked the personal account of Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations Office and Other International Organizations in Geneva Gennady Gatilov, the diplomatic mission of the Russian Federation said in a commentary released on Friday.