Fewer than half of the national targets set to protect the world’s plants, animals and ecosystems are on track, the UN warns in a new report, days before countries gather in Yerevan, Armenia, for the COP17 biodiversity conference.

Rapid transformations – from artificial intelligence and digital technologies to renewable energy and demographic shifts – are reshaping economies worldwide, creating new opportunities but also threatening to deepen socio-economic inequalities, a new UN report warned on Thursday.

Acute malnutrition and hunger in Afghanistan have reached the highest levels ever recorded, with 15.9 million people facing acute food insecurity and conditions set to worsen in the coming months, according to a global hunger monitor report released on Thursday.

Ongoing and deadly Russian attacks across Ukraine are causing serious healthcare disruption, with more than $1.5 million-worth of medicines and supplies destroyed in four separate strikes on warehouses used by the UN there since July. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to support Kenya’s efforts to contain Ebola after a second person tested positive for the Bundibugyo virus, the UN agency’s representative in the country said on Thursday. 

Amid a rise in lethal Israeli strikes, demolitions and violence in Gaza and the West Bank, the Security Council held an open debate on Thursday focusing on the current situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Countries must accelerate efforts to prevent lead exposure, which is estimated to cause more than 3.5 million deaths globally each year and affects hundreds of millions of children, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

Haiti is living through one of the world’s most acute security crises. Armed gangs control large parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and are pushing into rural areas, terrorising communities, killing people, committing rape and other sexual assaults, kidnapping for ransom and extorting individuals and businesses.

UN independent experts welcomed on Wednesday a recent landmark corporate accountability ruling involving the Ecopetrol oil company by Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace, calling for reparations for victims.