U.N. General Assembly opens with world in crisis — but only 1 of the 5 key world powers attending
CBSN
United Nations — "Drop by drop, the poison of war is infecting our world," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, opening the annual gathering of 193 nations at the U.N. General Assembly.
With the world facing its highest number of violent conflicts since 1945 — beset by the consequences of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the related spike in food prices, as well as record temperatures, climate disasters and unprecedented numbers of migrants and asylum seekers crossing borders to look for better lives — the agenda is daunting.
President Biden will speak there on Tuesday, but the leaders of four of the five veto-wielding, permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — Britain, France, Russia and China — will be conspicuously absent. So how much can the United Nations hope to achieve?
A French woman whose husband is accused of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged said at his trial Thursday that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes.
Johannesburg — Ugandan athletics officials said Thursday that the country's Olympic marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei had died in a hospital in neighboring Kenya where she was being treated for burns to 80% of her body after her boyfriend allegedly doused her with gasoline and set her alight. Cheptegei, 33, died Thursday morning of organ failure four days after police said she was attacked by her partner during a dispute over land.
United Nations officials on Wednesday hailed limited pauses in the fighting between Israel and Hamas to allow children's polio vaccinations as rare moments of hope in the nearly yearlong war in Gaza.
An American Navy sailor has been detained in Venezuela while visiting the country on personal travel, two U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News.
London - The public inquiry into the deadly 2017 fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower, a high-rise public housing apartment building in central London, published its final report Wednesday on the disaster that killed 72 people. The blaze — London's deadliest since World War II — was blamed on a litany of failures, from shoddy construction and materials to poor local management and inadequate fire safety standards.
An Indian state, shaken by weeks of protests demanding justice after the rape and murder of a doctor, passed a law on Tuesday that could lead to the execution of rapists.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will "not give in to pressure" to agree to a cease-fire with Hamas in the face of massive protests in his country as well as President Biden saying he's not doing enough to end the nearly 11-month war in Gaza and Britain's government restricting the sale of some weapons to Israel.
Kinshasa, Congo — An attempted jailbreak in Congo's main prison in the capital left at least 129 people dead, most of them in a stampede, authorities said Tuesday. A provisional assessment showed that 24 inmates were shot dead by "warning" gunshots as they tried to escape from the overcrowded Makala Central Prison in Kinshasa early Monday, Congolese Interior Minister Jacquemin Shabani said on the social platform X.
Two U.S. Marines from the USS Wasp were attacked Monday during a port visit in Izmir, Turkey, according to a Navy spokesperson.
Prosecutors in southwest Poland say a man has been arrested on allegations of imprisoning and physically and mentally abusing a woman for more than five years with "special cruelty."
The helicopter crash that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and seven other people in May was caused by challenging climatic and atmospheric conditions, Iranian state TV reported Sunday.