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Added on the 19/08/2018 18:02:16 - Copyright : Wochit
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken uses a UN Security Council session attended by his Russian counterpart to accuse Moscow of crimes against humanity in Ukraine. "Russia is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine on a daily basis," Blinken tells the session earlier addressed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. SOUNDBITE
The EU parliament holds a moment of silence to remember Czech-French writer Milan Kundera, author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", who has died aged 94, according to the Milan Kundera Library. IMAGES
UN rights chief Volker Turk says Russia's war in Ukraine is "tugging us away from the work of building solutions, the work of ensuring our survival." Speaking before the United Nations Human Rights Council, Turk denounced horrific abuses carried out since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago. SOUNDBITE
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivers an urgent call for the world to modify and safeguard water resources to avert conflict and ensure future global prosperity. "All of humanity's hopes for the future depend, in some way, on charting a new science-based course to bring the water action agenda to life," Guterres says at the closing of the UN Water Conference. SOUNDBITE
Humanity has "broken the water cycle, destroyed ecosystems and contaminated groundwater," the UN secretary-general says at the opening of the first major UN meeting on water resources in nearly half a century. "We are draining humanity's lifeblood through vampiric overconsumption and unsustainable use, and evaporating it through global heating," Antonio Guterres says, describing water as "a human right." SOUNDBITE
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres slams multinational corporations for turning the world's ecosystems into "playthings of profit" and warns failure to change course would lead to catastrophic results."With our bottomless appetite for unchecked and unequal economic growth, humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction," he says, in a speech ahead of biodiversity talks in Montreal. SOUNDBITE