Source: United States Department of Justice (video statements)
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s full remarks at the Port of Alaska yesterday to announce the $180 million settlement with the municipality of Anchorage, Alaska to resolve the port litigation that began in 2014.
"This is not just any port. This is by far the most important infrastructure in this great state of Alaska. It’s not just important to the Alaskans, which brings them food, brings them equipment, brings them everything they need to survive, but it’s also important to our military."
Read more about the settlement: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-pay-180-million-municipality-anchorage-alaska-resolve-long-running-port
Noon briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.
Highlights:
– Middle East
– Occupied Palestinian Territory
– Venezuela
– Ukraine
– Sudan
– South Sudan
– Central African Republic
– Democratic Republic of the Congo
– Afghanistan
– Security Council
– UNCOPS
– Cancer/Report
– Commemoration of Genocide in Srebrenica
MIDDLE EAST
The Secretary-General is alarmed by the renewed military confrontations in the Gulf. These incidents that we have seen in the last 24 hours risk derailing the diplomatic progress achieved between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States.
A return to full-scale hostilities would have catastrophic consequences for the peoples of the region, for international peace and security, and for the global economy as a whole. The Secretary-General calls on all parties to exercise maximum restraint, avoid further escalatory action and take immediate steps to de-escalate. He further recalls the obligation of all parties to fully comply with international law, including the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, and respect for navigational rights and freedoms.
The Secretary-General urges Iran and the United States to urgently resume negotiations and to address outstanding issues through diplomacy.
We remain committed to supporting all efforts to prevent a return to conflict, to restore stability and advance a comprehensive and durable resolution to this conflict.
OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORY
Turning to the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, earlier today, Tom Fletcher, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, who is in Venezuela, did also have a virtual meeting from Venezuela with the Prime Minister of Palestine, Mohammad Mustafa. They underscored the importance of close collaboration and accelerated efforts to improve living conditions in Gaza, particularly around safe water and waste management. Both agreed that the urgency of needs in Gaza is too great to wait for progress on broader political and security tracks. They both welcomed the encouraging milestone of 41,000 students in Gaza were able to sit for their high school exams this year. They also discussed the deteriorating situation in the West Bank, including increased settler violence, as well as, Palestinian displacement.
Also today, Humanitarian Coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov, who is also the Deputy Special Coordinator, started a two-day visit to the Gaza strip.
In Gaza City, he visited a UN Mine Action Service team, whose teams have been assessing and mitigating the risks of explosive hazards, which as you know, continue to be very big in this area.
Accompanied by the representative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Dr. Alakbarov visited the Firas market dumping site, also in Gaza city, to review solid waste management efforts.
Since 2023, that market had been used as an improvised dumping site, after municipal crews lost access to Gaza’s two landfills near the Strip’s eastern land perimeter.
Since April, thanks to a project supported by the Occupied Palestinian Territory Humanitarian Fund and implemented by UNDP, teams have transferred about 300,000 metric tonnes of solid waste from that improvised site to another location, farther away from where people are seeking shelter. But access to sanitary landfills, which are east of the so-called “Yellow Line,” remains banned.
Dr. Alakbarov then met with colleagues from UNICEF to discuss ongoing efforts to reduce infestations associated with rodents and parasites, something we have been telling you about regularly. And he also met with WHO and they discussed ongoing medical evacuations.
You might recall that the medical referral route to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, remains closed. That is of course undermining efforts to expand medical evacuations from Gaza. According to data from the WHO, a little more than 2,100 patients were able to be evacuated since the declaration of a ceasefire in October of last year. However, thousands more need medical services that are just not available today in the Gaza Strip.
Full Highlights: https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/noon-briefing-highlight?date=2026-07-08
Interviews with different UN agencies on how they are using AI to carry out their tasks during the Global Dialogues on AI Governance in Geneva on 6-7 July 2026.
“The High-Level Political Forum is the United Nations central platform for follow up and the review of the 2030 agenda,” said Lok Bahadur Thapa, President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), opening the 2026 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in New York.
The forum runs under the theme “Transformative, equitable, innovative and coordinated actions for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals for a sustainable future for all.”
“The world does not need another catalog of challenges. We know the challenges. What we need is greater coherence, stronger partnerships, more effective, and international cooperations, faster implementations, and most of all, better delivery and the impact on the ground,” Thapa said.
“Over the coming days we will review progress on SDG6, 7, 9, 11 and 17 and hear from 36 countries presenting voluntary national reviews,” Thapa said.
“The 2030 agenda remains our shared promise to people, to planet and to future generations, who in the years ahead will not ask whether the challenges were difficult,” he continued. “They will ask whether we were equal to them. Let this forum show that when we connect ideas with actions, when we connect finance with innovations, and when we connect national leadership with international solidarity, progress is still possible.”
Li Junhua, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, noted that the Forum’s opening coincided with the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026. “Building on updates to previous HLPFs, the Secretary General’s Progress Report is a both a testament to what is possible and an urgent call to do far more,” he said. “With less than five years to achieve the SDGs the report offers a clear-eyed measure of our collective progress.”
Briefing reporters on the report’s findings, Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed cautioned that global averages conceal wide disparities. “The report is revealing the global picture, but we must not forget what it does mask and that is outstanding progress on SDGs in some countries, but also serious gaps across regions and countries,” she said.
“Today, thanks to these findings, we can say two things with confidence: that the Sustainable Development Agenda, its 17 Goals work; they are delivering for people just not fast enough, not evenly and more inclusively,” Mohammed stated. “And there is a huge risk of reversals.”
She pointed to gains in human development since 2020, including a global unemployment rate that fell to a record low of 4.9 per cent in 2025, nearly one billion more people gaining access to drinking water over the past decade, and women’s representation in parliaments and local government nearing 27 per cent. Nine in ten people now have access to electricity, Mohammed added, while 34 countries have met the target of under-five mortality and AIDS-related deaths have dropped by a third.
At the same time, Mohammed warned that conflict in the Middle East has disrupted maritime traffic, energy, fertilizer and food corridors, driving up inflation, and that war has erased 77 years of human development gains in Gaza.
Recent summers have ranked among the hottest on record, she said, with the world fast approaching a temporary overshoot of the 1.5-degree limit.
Military spending reached 2.9 trillion dollars in the same year that development assistance suffered its steepest fall on record, she noted, leaving an annual SDG financing gap of four trillion dollars.
“The overall picture is very clear,” Mohammed said. “We yield a real progress already in a number of areas, in a number of fronts, and also in a number of the regions and the countries. But at the same time, those progress does not achieve it at the hour expected the space and the scale. So the way forward is clear, as highlighted by the Under-Secretary-General. We need a political determination, political goodwill and also global partnership.”
Shantanu Mukherjee, Acting Director of the Statistics Division at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), said, “Cities are finally being built more efficiently, but slums continue to grow with 1.16 billion living in them,” he said. “Public services are improving but not keeping pace. As cities bring several SDGs together in practice offering a chance to improving billions of lives, we should capitalize on this opportunity.”
The Forum, convened under the auspices of ECOSOC, runs from 7 to 15 July and brings together governments, business leaders, civil society representatives, mayors, scientists, policymakers and international organizations to assess progress and accelerate action on the SDGs. This year’s session will review in depth Goals 6, 7, 9, 11 and 17, covering water and sanitation, energy, industry and infrastructure, sustainable cities, and partnerships for the Goals.
Source: World Trade Organization – WTO (video statements)
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala welcomed the President of Georgia, Mikheil Kavelashvili, to the WTO on 8 July to discuss Georgia’s economic and trade performance, its engagement in the multilateral trading system, and current developments in the global trading environment.
Download this video from the WTO website:
https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/webcas_e/webcas_e.htm
Europe’s livestock sector is facing new challenges from climate change to market pressures. The EU’s Livestock Strategy sets out actions to support farmers, improve sustainability, strengthen resilience and protect Europe’s food security.
Despite a reduction in violence, the situation in southern Lebanon remains fragile as displaced families return to damaged homes lacking even basic services. UNIFIL peacekeepers continue monitoring the situation despite ongoing challenges, spokesperson Kandice Ardiel says.
Source: Republic of South Africa (video statements)
His Excellency President Ramaphosa and His Excellency President Tshisekedi tour the National Institute for Biomedical Research during an African Union solidarity visit in Kinshasa.
Advanced AI models can help us innovate, but they can also be misused to find vulnerabilities, automate attacks and amplify cyber threats.
To address these new challenges, the European Commission has launched an Action Plan to strengthen Europe’s cybersecurity, bringing together Member States, industry and EU organisations to build a safer digital future.
