The logo of the Global Fund on a bag, during a press conference at the Global Health Campus in Geneva, 10 September 2025. (Keystone/Salvatore Di Nolfi)

🗳️Exclusive: Three candidates vying for Global Fund leadership in contentious race. Former Global Fund executive director Mark Dybul, former Trump appointee William Steiger and a former NYC public health official, Ashwin Vasan – all American citizens – have been shortlisted to lead the organisation working on malaraia, TB and Aids.

⚔️Exclusive: Turf battle stalls UN merger mania. The UN wants to combine its two top development agencies, the UN Development Programme and the UN Office for Programme Services, but its leaders have clashing visions for the future entity, with UNOPS’s executive director, Jorge Moreira da Silva, denouncing an attempt at a hostile takeover by the UNDP's head, Alexander De Croo.

🇨🇭Former UN spokesperson: ‘Switzerland must fight harder to preserve international Geneva’. After 20 years at the UN, Marie Heuzé traces her journey in a book, analysing the crisis facing global institutions. She urges Switzerland to pull its act together.

🌡️Europe's heatwave linked to 1,300 deaths, WHO says, as Germany hits record 41.7C 20 hours ago. The UN health chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote in a post on X: “Heat stress is often called the ‘silent killer’ – and European homes, workplaces and schools were not built for these temperatures.”

🇧🇾Ex-prisoner questions easing Belarus sanctions as repression persists. Katsiaryna Andreyeva, a journalist, was in Geneva to attend the Human Rights Council, where she warned that the West's approach of trading sanctions relief for prisoner releases would lead to "replacing one prisoner (with) another" as arrests continue.

🚨ICYMI: Aid groups urge swift action to avert ‘atrocities’ in Sudan’s el-Obeid. In an open letter published on Friday, 38 NGOs called for an urgent debate at the Human Rights Council as fears rise that the Rapid Support Forces are about to attack the city in North Kordofan, echoing the events that led to the massacre in El Fasher.