People hike close to the Schneeferner Glacier below Germany's highest mountain, Zugspitze, near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, 27 August 2026. Current forecasts predict that all glaciers in Germany will disappear within the next decades. (Keystone/EPA/Anna Szilagy)

🌡️UN urges action to reverse 1.5°C overshoot. A report published yesterday by the UN Environment Programme warns global warming will reach at least 1.8°C under even the most optimistic future. It says the best hope to limit damage is to adopt an “overshoot, peak and decline” pathway.

😷WHO boss says Ebola response must be scaled up to tackle Congo outbreak. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters ​in Geneva that the epidemic would continue to pose a threat to the region as a whole until every chains of transmission is found and broken, as the virus continues to spread in the Democratic Republic of Congo and claim thousands of lives.

🗣️Opinion: Paying tribute to the UN human rights special rapporteurs. After comments by António Guterres in a Financial Times interview last week seemed to distance his secretariat from the special rapporteurs, international lawyer Mona Ali Khalil argues that their mandates should be defended and courage in the pursuit of human rights applauded.

🛳️UN experts condemn deadly US strikes on suspected drug boats. A group of experts, including UN special rapporteurs, yesterday called on the United States to stop military strikes against vessels suspected of carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, warning that the operations amount to unlawful killings rather than legitimate acts of war or self-defence.

📐Diplomatic design 101: The UN’s new Geneva visitor centre is a study in architectural monotony. Minimalist in its design, the authors of this article argue that architects behind the Portail des Nations (Portal of Nations), which opened to the public in June, missed an opportunity to challenge our collective understanding of diplomatic design.