Thailand's explosive ordnance removal team works at a site where anti-personnel landmines planted by Cambodian troops were found during an international inspection at a battle site near the Thai-Cambodian border in Phanom Dong Rak district, Surin province, Thailand, 20 August 2025. (Keystone/EPA/Narong Sangnak)

💣Landmine casualties hit four-year high, driven by conflicts in Syria, Myanmar. Over 60,000 deaths and injuries were caused by landmines last year, according to an annual monitoring report released as parties to the Ottawa convention that bans the explosives meet in Geneva. Almost 90 per cent of civilians were civilians, nearly half of whom were children.

📑Experts work on UN climate report amid US pushback. Roughly 600 scientists are gathering this week in a Paris suburb to begin drafting the UN panel on climate change's next flagship report, amid increasing hostility from the Trump administration towards climate research and action and efforts from oil exporters to delay the report expected in 2028 for one year.

⛓UN panel hears evidence Israel operating 'de facto policy of torture'. The UN Committee on Torture, in charge of overseeing compliance with the global treaty banning such treatment, issued a report as part of a routine evaluation detailing evidence received of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons in dire conditions, including being deprived of food and water and enduring beatings, electrocutions, dog attacks and waterboarding, accusations which Israeli ambassador Daniel Meron called "disinformation".

💉WHO issues recommendations for weight-loss drugs to treat obesity. The UN health body backed the use of GLP-1 drugs, typically used to treat diabetes and found in weight-loss treatments like Ozempic, as part of long-term treatment to tackle obesity in adults, marking a shift in the way it has framed the chronic disease associated with 3.7 million deaths in 2024.