Switzerland

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization said Friday that its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is running unopposed for a second five-year term.

Tedros, the first African to head the U.N. health agency, has overseen its complex response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has overshadowed his tenure. Trained in biology and infectious diseases with a doctorate in community health, he is also the first WHO chief who is not a medical doctor.

GENEVA, Oct 28 (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) and other aid groups on Thursday appealed to leaders of the world's 20 biggest economies to fund a $23.4 billion plan to bring COVID-19 vaccines, tests and drugs to poorer countries in the next 12 months.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Group of 20, whose leaders are meeting in Rome at the weekend, had the political and financial power needed to end the pandemic by funding the plan, which he said could save five million lives.

GENEVA (AP) — The World Meteorological Organization reported Monday that greenhouse gas concentrations hit a new record high last year and increased at a faster rate than the annual average for the last decade despite a temporary reduction during pandemic-related lockdowns.

23 Oct 2021; MEMO: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Friday renewed its call to end the crisis of the Palestinian hunger strikers inside Israeli jails, as their health conditions seriously deteriorate.

GENEVA, Oct 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The World Health Organization’s chief promised a “profound transformation” of the global body following allegations of rape and other sexual abuse by its staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
 
  An independent commission of enquiry released a devastating report on Sept 28 that found that 21 of the WHO’s employees at the time committed abuses against dozens of people in the DRC during the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak.
 
  Since then, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has apologised to the victims.
 

GENEVA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Ten thousand Yemeni children have been killed or maimed since a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened in March 2015 after the Iran-aligned Houthi group ousted the government, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF said on Tuesday.

"The Yemen conflict has just hit another shameful milestone. We now have 10,000 children who have been killed or maimed since ... March 2015," UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told a U.N. briefing in Geneva after returning from a visit to Yemen.

GENEVA, Oct 18 (NNN-TELESUR) — Director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reported that the number of deaths per week in the world due to COVID-19 continues to fall and stands at 50,000, the lowest figure recorded in almost a year.

However, the head of the WHO warned that the figure remains unacceptable. He stressed that the real figure may be higher, as in several countries there are deaths from the virus that escape the counts of health authorities.

GENEVA, Oct 18 (NNN-SANA) – The latest round of Syrian constitutional talks, participated by members of the Syrian Constitutional Committee’s Small Body, will kick off in Geneva today, a United Nations envoy said, yesterday.

UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir O. Pedersen, told a press conference here that, the parties have agreed to prepare and start drafting for constitutional reform, and “the new thing this week is that, we will actually be starting a drafting process for constitutional reform in Syria.”

GENEVA, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Washington is concerned about hypersonic missile technology and its potential military applications by China and Russia, a U.S. arms control official said on Monday, after a media report that Beijing had tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide weapon.

Hypersonic weapons are usually defined as missiles that fly more than five times the speed of sound, and a race is under way for the next generation of long-range weapons that are harder to detect and intercept.

ZURICH, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Austrians have turned on the conservative Austrian People's Party (OVP), the senior partner in their coalition government, after party leader Sebastian Kurz quit as chancellor over corruption allegations, according to a poll published on Sunday.

Support for the conservative OVP has crashed from 34% to 26% in the wake of the affair, according to the survey published by newspaper Kurier on Sunday.