US ambassador Michele Sison accompanies US vice president Joe Biden in a state visit to Lebanon in 2009. (Keystone/AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

🎩IOM makes a high-level hire as thousands in the agency lose jobs. The appointment of Michele Sison, a former US diplomat and close ally of director general Amy Pope, drew outcry from staff, who have accused the UN migration agency's American leader of insensitivity and playing favourites.

🎭Trump pulls US out of Unesco in blow for UN culture and education agency. The White House cited the Paris-based UN agency's focus on "woke, divisive cultural and social causes" and the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as claims of anti-Israel bias, as reasons to cut ties with it for a second time.

💥WHO denounces attacks on Gaza staff residence in latest Israeli offensive. One WHO staff member remains detained after Israeli forces struck and raided the agency’s residence in Deir Al Balah as part of a new offensive in central Gaza. Male staff were reportedly stripped and detained, and women and children forced to walk to a distant humanitarian zone.

🩺WHO’s Tedros: US rejection of international rules on health threats is based on ‘inaccuracies’. US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and US secretary of state Marco Rubio claimed that the amendments, adopted last year, “significantly expand” the WHO's “authority over international public health responses” and will have "undue influence" on domestic policy.

🇨🇳Trump left a power vacuum at the UN. China saw an opportunity. Western diplomats say Beijing is expanding its influence at the UN by boosting national staff in Geneva, increasing financial contributions, and building voting blocs, while the US retreats.