This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.
UN weather agency seeks to confirm 48.8C ‘record’ heat reading on Sicily
UN weather experts said on Thursday that they’re “actively looking” into a possible record temperature for Continental Europe of 48.8 degrees Celsius, or 119.8 degrees Fahrenheit, in the town of Syracuse in Sicily.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that it could not yet confirm or deny the temperature reading, which was taken on Wednesday by an agricultural forecasting service on the island, not the official Italian weather service.
Only days ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report highlighting the “indisputable” impact of human activity on extreme weather events.
WMO said that a rapid-response team is now in contact with the Sicilian weather service in order to decide if this new temperature spike beats Europe’s existing high of 48 Celsius - 118.4 Fahrenheit - which happened in Athens on 10 July, 1977.
The development comes amid fresh heatwave alerts and concerns over wildfires in Algeria, where the national weather service forecast temperatures of at least 44 Celsius/111.2 Fahrenheit, with highs of perhaps 47 Celsius/116.6 Fahrenheit.
The extent of the massive forest blazes in the north African country was clearly visible from space and published on Tuesday by NASA.
One image, captured by the Aqua satellite, showed a vast plume of smoke over northern Algeria, where more than 62,000 hectares have burned so far this year, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.
Afghanistan seeks spike in people fleeing amid Taliban advance
Afghanistan has seen “a huge spike” in mass displacement since May and humanitarians are increasingly concerned about the country’s people as Taliban forces make fresh territorial gains, the UN has warned.
Some 390,000 people have been forced to flee conflict across the country since the start of the year, according to OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The agency noted too that between 1 July and 5 August, 5,800 internally displaced people had arrived in Kabul, with hundreds more now arriving each day, according to latest reports.
The most vulnerable have now received assistance including food, household items, water and sanitation support.
Although most of the new arrivals have been hosted by friends and family, a growing number are staying in the open, OCHA said.
To help them, aid assessment teams have been deployed and a temporary health clinic and mobile health teams are already up and running.
Despite the worsening security situation, humanitarian agencies continue to deliver assistance to those in need, reaching 7.8 million people in the first six months of the year.
Additional funds are urgently needed, however, as the $1.3 billion Humanitarian Response Plan for Afghanistan is only 38 per cent funded.
WHO announces three new drugs for latest COVID-19 ‘Solidarity’ trials
Three new candidate drugs are being tested in the latest phase of global trials to find effective treatments against COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced.
The therapies — artesunate, imatinib and infliximab — will be tested on hospitalized coronavirus patients in 52 countries under the Solidarity PLUS programme.
The drugs are already being used to treat other conditions.
There have been more than 203 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to WHO, which noted that the world hit the 200-million mark last week, just six months after infections passed 100 million.
Speaking in Geneva, agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus underscored the critical need to find more effective and accessible COVID-19 therapeutics.
He said that although oxygen, dexamethasone and IL-6 blockers were effective in treating patients, “we need more, for patients at all ends of the clinical spectrum, from mild to severe disease”. Tedros insisted that health workers needed to be trained to use these therapeutics too.
The three drugs were selected by an independent panel for their potential in reducing the risk of death in people hospitalized for COVID-19.
Katy Dartford, UN News.
