Tag: un

Top Official in Marxist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Administration Secretly Scheduled Meeting with Iran’s UN Ambassador – Trump State Department Forced to Shut It Down

A senior official in Communist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration tried to hold an official meeting with the Iranian regime’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Commissioner Ana María Archila, head of the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, had scheduled the meeting for July 7 at 11 a.m. at 2 United Nations Plaza with Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN.

Two other senior officials from the office were also set to attend, according to calendar invitation screenshots reviewed by City Journal and confirmed by multiple sources, including a State Department official.

The meeting was called off only after the U.S. State Department, which had not been informed in advance, stepped in and met with the Mamdani administration to “clarify acceptable conduct,” according to City Journal.

Archila reportedly did not even tell Mayor Mamdani she had arranged the sit-down. She was later reprimanded and ordered to cancel it.

A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs issued the predictable damage-control statement: “This meeting did not and will not take place.”

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Hamas dissolves Gaza ‘Emergency Committee’ ahead of power transfer to technocrats

The Hamas terrorist group has reportedly dissolved its “Emergency Committee,” which has governed the Gaza Strip, signaling that it is preparing to transfer authority to the United Nations-backed technocratic National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).

Officials added that Hamas has completed all administrative steps necessary to transition control to the technocratic committee under a framework heavily brokered in Cairo, Egypt, describing the decision as evidence of its commitment to Gaza’s redevelopment after years of wars and destruction.

“The head of the government’s emergency committee Mohammed al-Farra has officially submitted his resignation,” Ismail al-Thawabta, general director of the Hamas-run Government Media Office said at the news conference on Monday.

The move appears to mark a significant political shift within Hamas, which has run Gaza since it forcibly seized control from rival Palestinian movement Fatah in 2007.

Nonetheless, it is unclear whether the shift—which was announced by a lower-level official—would lead to any meaningful change over time.  

Al-Thawabta emphasized that “only technical and professional staff” would remain in their positions in an effort to manage the day-to-day functioning of the civilian population.

The general director referred to them as “public employees who are ready to work under the responsibility of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza.”

The NCAG, led by Palestinian technocrat Ali Shaath, was established under the framework of the Board of Peace, an international oversight body formed following the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel in early 2026.

A Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem called the development “a positive step forward on the path to implement the ceasefire deal.”

In a post on X, the Board of Peace said it had “taken note” of Hamas’s announcement saying that “ultimately, our assessment will be guided by actions, not promises, to meet the critical needs of the people of Gaza.”

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U.N. Drug Report Highlights How Ineffective Cannabis Prohibition Is

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recently released its World Drug Report 2026, finding that an estimated 256 million people have consumed cannabis within the last year, and that “cannabis remains the most widely used drug by far.” It is worth noting that alcohol and tobacco were not included in the analysis.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 2.3 billion people are alcohol consumers globally, more than 3 million people die annually due to alcohol, and “alcohol causes more than 5% of the global disease burden.” Additionally, WHO estimates that 1.2 billion people are tobacco consumers, and that tobacco use is “responsible for over 7 million deaths annually as well as disability and long-term suffering from tobacco-related diseases.” Both substances are legal and readily available across the globe, while cannabis commerce is still largely prohibited across the world.

“Cannabis production, trafficking and use are all evolving, likely in part due to the ongoing changes in perception towards the drug around the time when many jurisdictions, notably in North America, adopted legalization and/or decriminalization policies.” the UNODC wrote in a press release announcing the publication of its World Drug Report 2026. “The number of people using cannabis has grown by 40 per cent over the past decade, while the prevalence of its use increased from 3.8 per cent of the population aged 15-64 in 2014 to 4.8 per cent in 2024. Cannabis seizures also reached historically high levels in 2024.”

“Historically, most cannabis trafficking has been within regions, largely because cannabis can be grown virtually anywhere. Yet inter-regional trade, with supply coming from North America, is growing: over 2015–2024, 57 countries or territories outside North America identified it as a source region for cannabis seizures, up from just 11 in the preceding decade.” UNODC added.

If there is one major cannabis-focused takeaway from the World Drug Report, it is that cannabis prohibition does not work. Hundreds of millions of people around the world consume cannabis, whether it is legal or not. Cannabis prohibition does not eliminate use. Rather, it shifts the market profits toward organized crime and results in consumers and patients using untested cannabis products.

Furthermore, cannabis prohibition results in limited public resources being diverted away from more worthy efforts toward investigating, arresting, and incarcerating people for cannabis activity. Nearly every morning, people can read headlines about ‘major cannabis busts’ around the world involving large amounts of cannabis being seized. Every one of those headlines should serve as a reminder that there is a better, more sensible approach to cannabis commerce.

Thankfully, an increasing number of jurisdictions are modernizing their cannabis policies and regulations to permit medical and adult-use cannabis commerce. Those policy modernizations don’t just benefit people who consume cannabis; they also provide benefits to all members of society in direct and indirect ways.

For starters, legalized cannabis commerce creates jobs, generates taxes and fees, and boosts local economies. Also, cannabis legalization results in direct savings to national and local governments when they no longer waste money enforcing failed cannabis prohibition. For example, France spends an estimated €570m annually on cannabis prohibition enforcement. That money could either be returned to taxpayers or spent on other things that benefit society as a whole.

Another major benefit of modernized cannabis laws and regulations is affording patients and consumers the ability to acquire and use tested cannabis products. That, in turn, boosts public health outcomes. Allowing legalized cannabis commerce to boost public health outcomes is a major premise behind recent adult-use policy modernizations in Europe. Legalization works, and prohibition does not. Anyone who claims otherwise is likely benefiting in some way from prohibition, including politically and/or economically.

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UN Fires Whopping 70 Gaza Staffers in Wake of Israeli Claims Aid Workers Were Terrorists, as Tel Aviv Provides Evidence of Claims

While refusing to acknowledge that it is riddled with loyalists to Hamas, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency has fired 70 workers in Gaza.

The agency, which has seen funding dry up in the aftermath of documented concerns from Israel, insisted its workers were untainted, according to The Times of Israel.

A statement announcing the cuts said “the dismissal of the staff is not part of a disciplinary process and does not constitute in any way a validation of the claims made against them.”

The cuts “were taken further to an assessment of the safety and security of UNRWA operations in Gaza,” the statement said.

The agency insisted that despite past Israeli claims, complete with evidence of UNRWA workers joining Hamas in terrorist activity, the claims from Israel remain unproven.

“UNRWA has repeatedly asked the Israeli authorities to provide information and evidence to substantiate allegations against individual UNRWA staff members in Gaza, but has received no response to date,” the statement claimed.

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Protester Sets Himself on Fire Outside UN Headquarters in New York City

A protester set himself ablaze outside the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan on Thursday evening.

The man planted a Tibetan flag on the sidewalk near East 42nd Street and First Avenue before igniting himself in full view of UN surveillance cameras.

Authorities recovered signs and papers at the scene reading “China Out of Tibet.”

An NYPD officer was photographed holding one of the signs as emergency crews rushed to the scene.

The protester was transported to Bellevue Hospital with severe burns and was later pronounced dead.

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Israel continues to commit genocide by targeting children in Gaza, UN inquiry finds

Israel continues to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, an ⁠independent UN inquiry has found.

The report by the UN independent international commission of inquiry examined violations against Palestinian children since the start of the war in Gaza, and said about 30% of the people killed by Israeli forces have been children.

A previous report by the commission in September found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and that Israeli officials, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, incited these acts. Netanyahu is separately wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for war crimes.

The Israeli mission in Geneva said Israel rejected the commission’s “libellous sham”. Israel has fought hard against allegations of genocide, while receiving critical diplomatic support from its allies, including the US and the UK.

A significant body of research by legal and rights experts has concluded that Israel is intent on destroying Palestinians, including analyses by UN investigators, rights bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars worldwide.

Genocide, which became a crime after the second world war and the Holocaust, is considered the most serious international crime.

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Michelle Bachelet, Who Helped Cover Up Uyghur Genocide, Visits China to Campaign for U.N. Chief

Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Vice President Han Zheng on Wednesday, touring the country amid her campaign to become the next U.N. Secretary General.

Bachelet, a radical leftist, served as president of Chile before completing her term and taking over the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). She served two terms as president in the country, from 2006 to 2010 and, later, from 2014 to 2018. Her time leading the OHCHR spanned from 2018, shortly after the end of her time as president, through 2022, when she chose not to run for a second term amid global disgust and calls for her resignation for her poor handling of the Chinese genocide of Uyghurs and other Turkic people in the country.

Bachelet notably visited China in 2022 shortly before stepping down and, far from condemning the ongoing genocide, praised China’s human rights record and claimed that the concentration camps the Chinese Communist Party had been caught using to imprison as many as 3 million people were no longer functional.

Bachelet is one of five official candidates running to replace Antonio Guterres as the secretary-general of the United Nations. The other candidates are former General Assembly leader María Fernanda Espinosa, former Costa Rican Vice President Rebeca Grynspan, former Senegalese President Macky Sall, and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi. Bachelet initially enjoyed the endorsement of her country under leftist former President Gabriel Boric, but Chile withdrew its support after the inauguration of conservative current President José Antonio Kast.

Campaigning for the position is often less overt than a traditional political role, involving private meetings with the most powerful actors at the United Nations. Bachelet appears to have traveled to Beijing seeking support from China, though Chinese state media reports did not overtly describe her visit as a formal campaign stop.

Chinese government television networks published images of Bachelet receiving a warm welcome from Wang, the nation’s top diplomat.

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U.N. Atomic Energy Chief Rafael Grossi Blasts Agency for Irrelevance: ‘Absent’ from World Conflicts

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, lamented in remarks on Thursday that the United Nations, of which the IAEA is part, has been “absent” from the world’s greatest conflicts.

Grossi made the remarks during an event in London, within the context of his candidate to run the United Nations. The term of current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expiring this year, prompting the somewhat convoluted and backdoor process of various successor candidates making their pitches to the body. First, the Security Council, the most powerful body of the U.N., nominates a candidate, whom the General Assembly then confirms. The United Nations has officially approved five candidates for secretary-general this year. Grossi’s closest competition is believed to be Michelle Bachelet, the socialist former president of Chile and apologist for the Uyghur genocide in China, along with Maria Fernanda Espinosa, the former president of the General Assembly.

Grossi has been on the front lines of two of the most high-profile conflicts in the world today: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where the IAEA has advocated for the protection of various nuclear sites in the war theater; and the conflict between Iran and America. The IAEA, under Grossi’s leadership, condemned Iran for violating international law in 2025 for the first time in two decades, which led to the U.S. military taking action against three of Iran’s largest nuclear sites last year. Iran and America continue in conflict today under an ongoing ceasefire, and are reported to be negotiating a peace agreement that Washington insists must result in the long-term dissolution of any Iranian illicit nuclear development.

In his remarks on Thursday, Grossi mentioned these two conflicts, as well as ongoing civil war in Sudan and Israel’s conflicts with neighboring parties.

“Interstate war has returned after many years here in Europe but also in Africa and many other places,” he noted, according to the Emirati newspaper The National. “The UN is absent from the management or resolution of any of the conflicts I have just mentioned. It needn’t be so.”

“It’s not going to happen unless we do something differently,” he continued. “It is only going to happen when there is a conviction in leaders, in belligerent nations, that the participation of the U.N., and in particular the SG, is going to facilitate a better outcome than what they are having.”

Grossi added that he believed it was “possible” for the United Nations to be a relevant party in these conflicts because of his personal experience running the IAEA. He also reported lay the blame of the U.N.’s inability to act in a timely and impactful manner on the size of its bureaucracy, outsourcing jobs he said should belong to the secretary-general to a host of “special rapporteurs” and other officials. He suggested that he would shut down several special rapporteur offices if he was chosen to run the United Nations.

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Iran Appointed to UN Program for Women’s Rights, Disarmament, and Terrorism Prevention

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been nominated to the U.N. Committee for Program and Coordination, which shapes policy on women’s rights, human rights, disarmament, and terrorism prevention. The nomination was backed by ECOSOC members, including the UK, Spain, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, Austria, and Finland.

This is part of a broader pattern. In February 2026, an Iranian regime official took her seat as a full member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee, contributing to discussions on gender perspectives and gender-based violence, while Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister addressed the council’s high-level opening session.

Iran was previously removed from a comparable body in 2022, when ECOSOC voted 29 to 8 to remove it from the Commission on the Status of Women following its violent crackdown on protesters after the death of Mahsa Amini. It is now being nominated back onto similar bodies.

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Associated Press runs paid PR ads for Chinese telecom Huawei as CCP seeks to influence UN agency

The Associated Press is running paid public relations advertisements on X and on the wire service’s own website on behalf of Huawei as the blacklisted Chinese telecom behemoth and the CCP seek influence over a key United Nations tech agency.

The U.S. government has long pointed to the national security threat posed by Huawei and has sought to limit the firm’s spread inside the United States and around the world. At the same time, the AP took cash from the Chinese company to promote Huawei’s efforts to burnish its image as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to influence the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and increase the penetration of Chinese telecoms and networks worldwide.

The paid tweet by the AP — sent on Mar. 12 and now boasting more than 75 million views — highlighted Huawei’s links to ITU and its efforts on the world stage, and a paid article from Huawei published by the AP promoted Huawei’s efforts in AI. The tweets are clearly marked as “Paid advertisement.”

“National Champion” firms

The U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence stated in 2021 that “national champion” firms such as Huawei help “lead development of AI technologies at home” and “advance state-directed priorities that feed military and security programs.”

“China is the most capable competitor in the AI space, and aims to displace the U.S. as the global AI leader by 2030,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessed in March. “China is driving AI adoption at scale — both domestically and internationally — by using its sizable talent pool, extensive datasets, government funding, and burgeoning global partnerships.”

Michael Sobolik, a China expert and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Just the News that “the Associated Press claims to provide ‘news without an agenda,’ and says that its mission is ‘journalism, not profit margins.’ It’s hard to square those praise-worthy goals with taking money from a CCP-controlled company to boost its propaganda.”

“The AP isn’t alone in doing this either. It’s the latest in a number of American reporting outlets that willingly become propaganda conduits for Beijing,” Sobolik added. “There’s no First Amendment in China, but CCP-controlled companies can push their message in America for the right price.”

Neither Huawei nor the Associated Press responded to a request for comment from Just the News.

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