This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Guterres 'deeply shocked and saddened' over ‘heinous’ school shooting in Texas

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned Tuesday’s mass shooting at a primary school in Texas as a “heinous” crime and expressed his heartfelt sympathies to all those affected.

A statement from Mr Guterres’s spokesperson said that the Secretary-General had been “deeply shocked and saddened” by the killings in the town of Uvalde, and it

was “particularly heart-wrenching” that most victims were children.

This latest shooting in the US comes only a week since a gunman killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York State, which the UN chief called a “vile act of racist violent extremism”.

UN rights chief Bachelet meets China President Xi

On day three of her official mission to China, the UN’s top rights official, Michelle Bachelet, has described holding “valuable” meetings with President Xi Jinping and other senior officials - the first such visit by a UN rights chief since 2005.

In a tweet on Wednesday by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Bachelet indicated that she had been able to “discuss directly human rights issues and concerns” in China and around the world, with the country’s premier, via video link.

“I have been committed to undertaking this visit – the first visit by a UN Human Rights High Commissioner to China in 17 years – because for me, it is a priority to engage with the Government of China directly, on human rights issues, domestic, regional and global,” Ms. Bachelet said.

The development came as the High Commissioner prepared to visit the western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on Wednesday, where UN-appointed independent rights experts have raised serious concerns about the alleged detention and forced labour of Muslim Uyghurs.

China has denied the allegations over its treatment of the Uyghur minority, hundreds of thousands of whom who have been reportedly held in so-called re-education” facilities or forcibly transferred to factories in Xinjian or other Chinese provinces.

Only Sudanese themselves can resolve political crisis, warns UN envoy

To Sudan finally, where time is short for the country to reach a solution to its protracted political crisis, the UN Special Representative there has insisted.

Addressing the UN Security Council six months since a military coup, Volker Perthes said that “the crisis facing Sudan is entirely homegrown and can only be resolved by the Sudanese”.

Mr. Perthes, who is also Head of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), told Council members on Tuesday that if the impasse is not urgently overcome, the consequences will be felt beyond national borders, and impact a whole generation.

Since March, the Sudanese authorities have released 86 detainees across the country, and security force violence against protesters also appears to have decreased overall, the UN official maintained.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.