Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of UNCTAD, speaks to the media during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, 13 October 2025. (Keystone/Salvatore Di Nolfi)

🥇Rebeca Grynspan to step down from Unctad to run for UN top job. The Costa Rican announced Monday that she will temporarily leave her post as head of the UN’s trade development agency to focus on her campaign to succeed António Guterres next year.

🦠WHO warns of surging antibiotic resistance. The misuse and overuse of antibiotics to control infections in humans, animals and plants is accelerating pathogen resistance to antibiotics, causing more than one million deaths annually, a report by the health body warns.

🚛Humanitarian aid enters Gaza, but UN warns it’s still not enough: ‘What Israel needs to do is very simple.’ Some 400 Egyptian Red Crescent trucks and an unspecified number of vehicles from other humanitarian organisations entered Gaza on Sunday but obstacles still remain.

⚖️The UN and democracy – how do they interact? As the US pulls out of multilateral institutions and other countries fill the void, academic observers warn that, under new circumstances, multilateralism could become a force for democratic decline.

💰Opinion: Foreign aid is mostly gone. It's being replaced with something better. Rockefeller Foundation president Rajiv Shah argues that leaders in Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere are taking ownership of their own development, figuring out ways to leverage new technology and encouraging private investment.