Oil tops $100 as Middle East conflict intensifies

 

Global oil prices have surpassed $100 per barrel as escalating fighting between the US and Iran, and Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure, raised fears of further supply disruptions. Brent crude broke the threshold for the first time in nearly two months.

Save the Children report says over half the world's children at risk

More than half the world's children are threatened by conflict, poverty or sexual discrimination, according to a new Save the Children report.

UN Agencies: Global Hunger Rises for First Time in Decade

Global hunger levels have risen for the first time in more than a decade, now affecting 11 percent of the world’s population, as conflict, climate change and economic woes bite, UN agencies said.

Insidious New Threat Could Lay Waste to the Prosperous Persian Gulf States

It appears that people living in the Persian Gulf states may be facing a threat far more sinister and realistic than sectarian violence or even nuclear war.

Arctic Frontiers conference kicks off in Norway's Tromso

The week-long Arctic Frontiers conference kicked off on Sunday as about 1,300 delegates from around the world gathered in the northern Norwegian city of Tromso to discuss the balance between industrial and environmental interests in the Arctic.

Climate change intensifies conflicts, John Kerry says

Negative effects of climate change such as extreme drought are linked to deadly violence in countries such as Syria and Nigeria, and those still denying there's a problem are putting the entire planet at risk, the US secretary of state said.

Oil Up on Yemen Fighting, Weak Dollar

Oil settled up about three percent on Wednesday as a weak dollar, fighting in Yemen and speculative buying boosted crude prices despite record-high US inventories.

Benchmark Brent oil for May delivery edged up 3.17 percent at $58.27 per barrel.

Arctic should not be arena of conflicting interests (Russian lawmaker)

“The Arctic is a unique region, so, whatever happens on the continent, we must be able to reach compromises,” Vladimir Torlopov said...

The Arctic should be saved from being an arena of conflicting interests of rival countries, Vladimir Torlopov, a members of the international committee of Russia’s Federation Council upper parliament house, told Itar-Tass on Wednesday after a meeting of the Standing Committee of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region.

Ban calls on world for more resources to end conflicts, spur development, counter climate change

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10 January 2014 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on the international community to provide “more political attention, more resources, more support” for the United Nations as it faces “an overflowing inbox of conflicts and disasters of growing severity, frequency and complexity.”
“The situations in Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic have gone from bad to worse,” he said in his first news conference of the new year, highlighting not only the immediate need to end the fighting in those countries but also the larger imperatives of 2014 in the run-up to reaching the UN’s anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and achieving a global accord to counter climate change.