Diplomacy & Crisis News

Incumbent Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) José Graziano da Silva was today re-elected to a second term in the agency&#39s top post with the highest number of votes ever in the history of the FAO.

Washington says China is behind the biggest hack of U.S. government servers in history. Proving the case will be much harder.

The best stories from around the world.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new antiretroviral formulation that can be mixed with food, making it easier for children living with HIV to take their life-saving medicines, the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AID (UNAIDS) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced today.

Amid surging violence in Aleppo, the United Nations Security Council today expressed “outrage” at all attacks against civilians in Syria, as well as indiscriminate attacks.

Tariq Aziz predicted he would die in prison, and he was right. Weeks after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the top diplomat in Saddam Hussein’s regime surrendered to U.S. forces and spent the rest of his life behind bars. He died Friday in a southern Iraqi hospital, where he was rushed after suffering a heart ...

An armed group opened fire on a convoy transporting Eritrean asylum-seekers in eastern Sudan and kidnapped 14 of them, including six boys and one girl, the United Nations refugee agency reported today and urged the Sudanese Government to spare no effort in apprehending those responsible and bringing them to account.

On the margins of the Oslo Freedom Forum, Tunisian activist Amira Yahyaoui offers a sharp critique of the professional human rights community.

In Turkey’s Kurdish heartland, the rhetoric is getting nasty before a high-stakes election — and many believe it’s spurring a wave of violence.

The Government of Pakistan must halt the execution of a man convicted of a crime committed as a child and reinstate the country’s moratorium on the death penalty, three United Nations human rights experts have urged.

The World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that in light of the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, resulting in four deaths in the Republic of Korea, it will send a team to Seoul to conduct a joint mission to look into the situation and assess public health response efforts.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has begun distributing the first batches of 700,000 teaching and learning kits to thousands of schools across Liberia, where last year’s Ebola outbreak disrupted the education of over one million children.

Volunteers are playing a vital role in making governments worldwide more accountable and responsive to their citizens, but their potential is seriously under-valued, a new report from the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme finds.

Outgoing FIFA President Sepp Blatter (Photo: sbo9 via Flickr).

The Agency
The New York Times
By Adrien Chen

In this long read, an army of internet trolls based in St. Petersburg, Russia are blamed for overwhelming internet activity that wreaks havoc all around the world, with the results appearing in reality.

The inside story of how the Clintons built a $2 billion global empire
The Washington Post
By David A. Fahrenthold, Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman

The Washington Post goes in-depth on the quick rise of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s philanthropic organization, The Clinton Foundation, and the shady foreign donors that have supported it.

Exclusive: Detainee alleges CIA sexual abuse, torture beyond Senate findings
Reuters
By David Rohde

The account Majid Khan, an al-Qaeda operative held at a CIA “black site” from 2003 to 2006, claims a wider array of sexual abuse, torture and other forms of “enhanced interrogation techniques” were used on him during his captivity.

Rand Paul’s Struggling Presidential Campaign
The Atlantic
By Molly Ball

Of the GOP presidential candidates, Rand Paul made it clear the earliest of his intentions for office. As the field is shaping out now, though, his campaign appears to be faltering as he fails to widen his support.

How a curmudgeonly old reporter expose the FIFA scandal that toppled Sepp Blatter
The Washington Post
By Michael E. Miller

Andrew Jennings wrote about FIFA’s corruption way before the May 27 raid in Zurich, Switzerland that arrested several of the organization’s top officials.

Blogs:
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100,000 Strong: The State Department’s Public-Private Partnerships by Jeremy Taylor
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No Shangri-La in South China Sea by Gary Sands
Geopolitical Showdown in the Horn by Abuka Arman

After years of kickbacks and backroom deals with drug traffickers, Mexicans are finally talking about corruption.

Why the current U.S. plan to win back Iraq only guarantees the Islamic State won’t be defeated.

A German press report alleges widespread corruption in securing the 2006 tournament.

The United Nations refugee agency today announced that it is seeking $13 million to help with the needs of new boat arrivals to countries in Southeast Asia, where thousands of refugees and migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh have been risking their lives by crossing the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

The tremendous human cost of the Ukraine conflict must be first addressed through mutual respect of the Minsk ceasefire agreement and the fulfilment of its political, economic, social and humanitarian provisions, the top United Nations political official affirmed today as he briefed the Security Council on the situation in the conflict-torn Eastern European country.

Nothing in Piera Zuccherin’s comfortable upbringing foretold her lifelong involvement as a volunteer. But today, she is one of the more than one billion people who volunteer globally.