The AI Divide: From Warning to Action - Goals Lounge | United Nations

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a defining driver of economic growth, innovation, and social development. Yet access to AI capabilities remains deeply uneven across countries and populations, creating a growing AI divide. AI offers unprecedented opportunities to accelerate progress, but, without urgent action, disparities in connectivity, compute infrastructure, digital skills, and local innovation ecosystems could leave too many behind. This Goals Lounge discussion explores how governments, international organizations, and the private sector can work together to ensure AI becomes a force for inclusive and sustainable development. Our intention is to move beyond warning and into action, exploring concrete steps to bridge the rapidly growing divide.


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DRC: Conflict Widens, 26.6 Million Face Hunger Amid Rising Violence - Briefing | United Nations

“The conflict is expanding beyond North and South Kivu into Tshopo Province, which lies far from the epicentre of the conflict,” said Vivian van de Perre, interim head of MONUSCO briefing on the situation in the DRC. Van de Perre, the UN stabilization mission's deputy special representative, told the Council the security situation in South Kivu remained tense despite an AFC/M23 withdrawal from Uvira in January. “The renewed hostilities have expanded and shifted the frontlines, including toward Burundi's border, increasing the risk of a regional conflagration,” she said. She said recent fighting had been marked by growing use of offensive drones and jamming of GPS signals in urban areas, including incidents affecting Bangoka Airport in Kisangani and Goma. “The use of such capabilities in urban settings raises serious concerns about the risks posed to civilians and civilian infrastructure,” she added. Van de Perre said 173 cases of conflict-related sexual violence had been confirmed since December 2025, affecting 111 victims, mostly women and girls, adding that figure was “only the tip of the iceberg.” She said access restrictions continued to hamper MONUSCO's ability to monitor and report on violations, while human rights defenders and journalists in AFC/M23-controlled areas faced intimidation and arbitrary detention. On the humanitarian front, van de Perre said food insecurity in 2026 was expected to affect 26.6 million people, “representing approximately a quarter of the population of the Congo.” DRC Ambassador Zénon Ngay Mukongo told the Council that M23 offensives were continuing with support from Rwanda's Defense Forces, calling it “a grave violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of his country. “Hundreds of civilians have been killed, including women and children,” he said. “Millions of peoples have been displaced and serious violations of human rights have been documented.” Rwanda's Ambassador Martin Ngoga said the conflict was “not of Rwanda's making.” He said Rwanda's core concern remained the FDLR, which he described as “a genocidal force” whose ideology was spreading in public discourse. “After 31 years of discussion in this chamber on the origins and intentions of FDLR, there should be no ambiguity,” Ngoga said. “This is a group whose intent is to exterminate a people.” U.S. Senior Advisor Massad Boulos said Washington would remain engaged in the region. “The United States will remain a committed partner in advancing peace, security and prosperity for the DRC, Rwanda and the entire Great Lakes region,” he said.


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Slavery: "We must turn memory into progress & remembrance into responsibility" - UN Chief

Remarks by António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the 75th plenary meeting of the 80th session of the General Assembly on the International Day of Remembrance of Victims of Slavery and Transatlantic Slave Trade. ---- Secretary-General António Guterres for his part said “today is more than a time of remembrance. It's a moment to confront the lasting legacies of inequality and racism. We will never forget the victims of slavery, and you must never forget the malevolent system that sustained it for so long.” Guterres said, “this was not simply forced labour. It was a machinery of mass exploitation and deliberate dehumanisation of men, women and children.” He said, “the transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity that struck at the core of personhood, broke up families and devastated communities.” The Secretary-General welcomed “steps some countries are taking to apologise for their role in the evil of slavery, and to join an honest dialogue about its lasting consequences, but far bolder actions and many more states are needed, and this includes commitments to respect African countries ownership of their own natural resources, and steps to ensure their equal participation and influence in the global financial architecture and the UN Security Council.” Full remarks: https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statements/2026-03-25/secretary-generals-remarks-the-international-day-of-remembrance-of-the-victims-of-slavery-and-the-transatlantic-slave-trade


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Druski is facing backlash for dropping an Erika Kirk skit

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Essential medical supplies arrive in #lebanon

Essential medical supplies have arrived in Lebanon, where escalating violence has driven some 1.2 million people from their homes. The shipment, a collaboration between Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, the World Health Organization and UNICEF, will contribute to trauma care and disease management.


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Hypocrisy? Trump casts a mail ballot again in Florida even as he calls the method 'cheating'

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Georgia woman charged with murder for taking abortion pills gets a $1 bond

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Middle East: Fighting is triggering a chain reaction - UN Chief's Stakeout | United Nations

Informal comments to the media by UN Secretary-General António Guterres on the situation in the Middle East.


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Middle East: Israeli Settlement Expansion and Escalation - Briefing | United Nations

Security Council briefing by Ramiz Alakbarov, Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question. The United Nations Security Council met to receive briefings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with a senior UN official reporting that Israeli planning authorities had advanced or approved over 6,000 housing units in occupied Palestinian territory during the reporting period. “Security Council resolution 2334 (2016) calls on Israel to ‘immediately and completely cease all settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,’” Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN's Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process said to the Security Council. “Settlement activity has, nevertheless, continued at high levels,” he added. Alakbarov told the Council that Israeli authorities had demolished, seized or forced people to demolish 429 structures in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing 575 persons, including 290 children and 150 women. He said 28 of the structures were donor funded. He added that on Jan 4, Israeli police forcibly evicted two Palestinian families from their apartments in the Batn Al Hawa area of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem, displacing eight people. Alakbarov also said Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad had continued to praise terror attacks and call for additional violence against Israelis, while Israeli ministers and members of the Knesset had continued to call for re-establishment of settlements in Gaza, annexation of the West Bank and the “emigration” of Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territory.


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Dayton Webber is the man accused of shooting 27yo Bradrick Wells

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Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime Against Humanity - Press Conference | United Nations

Press briefing by AU / Africa Group, led by Ghana, on the proposed resolution to be tabled and considered in the GA on Wednesday, 25th March during the GA commemorative event marking the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.


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