Swiss News

Der russische NHL-Star Alexander Owetschkin darf nicht nach Lettland einreisen. Die Regierung in Riga setzte den Hockeyspieler auf die Liste unerwünschter Personen. Grund ist seine Nähe zu Wladimir Putin und ein Auftritt in einem Wahlspot der Kreml-Partei.

Bei Kloten fällt ein weiterer Ausländer aus, bei den ZSC Lions gibt es nicht nur ernst gemeinte Prognosen. Und beim SCB stellt sich die Frage, ob ein neuer Verteidiger vorzeitig kommt. Hier kommt das Liga-Inside.

Daniel-André Tande hat allen Grund zur Freude. Der einstige Skisprung-Star ist erstmals Vater geworden. Seine Karriere beendete er vor zwei Jahren wegen mentalen Problemen nach einem Horrrorsturz.

China fordert den Iran auf, die Huthi-Angriffe im Jemen zu stoppen. Die Eskalation in der strategisch wichtigen Meerenge Bab al-Mandab gefährdet internationale Handelsrouten und treibt Ölpreise in die Höhe. Dies trieb Peking offenbar dazu, zu reagieren.

Bei einem öffentlichen Auftritt in Berlin übt DFB-Vizepräsident Hans-Joachim Watzke heftige Kritik an Gianni Infantino – und nennt dafür drei Gründe. Sein Präsident hat zuvor ein Ende des «Systems Infantino» gefordert.

Jetzt ist der Transfer fix: Kylian Mbappé kehrt nach 19 Jahren dem Sportartikel-Riesen Nike den Rücken – und wechselt zur Zürcher Marke On. Diese will nun also auch im Fussball-Business gross mitmischen.

Der Bundesrat lehnt die Grenzschutz-Initiative der SVP ab. Sie führe zu höheren Kosten, warnt er.

Bei Union Saint-Gilloise ist Marc Giger nicht mehr zum Einsatz gekommen. Nun wechselt der Zürcher nach Ungarn.

Die Bieler Fans dürfen in dieser Saison Ex-NHL-Star Jeff Skinner in ihrem Klub begrüssen. Für Raphi Walser und Dino Kessler ist klar, dass genau dieser nach seinem ersten Spiel direkt zum Publikumsliebling erkoren wird.

Die Rad-WM startet am Sonntag. Blick stellt die sieben entscheidenden Fragen und sagt, warum die Titelspiele für die Schweiz mit Gold beginnen und mit Zoff enden könnten.

Eurogroup President, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, gave a speech at the Eurofi Financial Forum, Dublin, on importance of completing the Banking Union and mobilising savings to power growth and investment.

European Council President, António Costa, had a meeting with Ireland's Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, on 17 September 2026, in Dublin, Ireland. The meeting is part of President Costa's annual "Tour des Capitales".

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

Kyriakos Pierrakakis, President of the Eurogroup, is travelling to Dublin for the Eurogroup meeting as well as bilateral talks.

Press briefing ahead of the upcoming General Affairs Council will take place on Friday, 18 September 2026 at 15.00

Today the Council set its position on a revised law to increase, from 2026 to 2030, free carbon allowances for the sectors falling under heat and fuel ETS benchmarks.

WHO team visits the pediatric oncology ward at the King Hussein Cancer Centre in Amman, Jordan. November 2025. Credit: WHO

By Shreya Komar
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 18 2026 (IPS)

When a child is diagnosed with cancer, their chances of survival should not depend on where they live, yet according to the WHO, more than 80 percent of children with cancer in high-income countries are cured, compared with fewer than 30 percent in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

The key gap lies in access to available medicines. In East Africa, hospitals report frequent stockouts of essential chemotherapy agents, with shortages affecting 32–49 percent of critical medicines such as methotrexate and etoposide. Survival therefore depends less on the discovery of new therapies and more on whether children are able to access and complete uninterrupted treatment.

“No child should be denied a chance of survival because the medicines they need are unavailable, unaffordable, or out of reach,” affirmed Dr Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, Executive Vice President of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

In efforts to combat this issue and in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its collaborators at the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines published a new strategy report with a roadmap to strengthen the global market and improve the circulation of childhood cancer medicines in many LMICs.

Each year, an estimated 400,000 children develop cancer. Unlike many adult cancers, childhood cancer is generally not preventable. As a result, the most effective strategy for improving outcomes is to ensure that children receive a prompt and accurate diagnosis, followed by effective, evidence-based treatment and tailored supportive care.

The report highlighted many key barriers LMICs face when implementing this strategy. First, the supply of essential childhood cancer medicines is unreliable and depends on a small number of manufacturers, especially for medicines that meet international quality standards.

Secondly, LMICs often buy small amounts of cancer medicines, making supply less reliable and prices higher due to perceived low demand. Limited government funding and poor planning can also lead to shortages. Cancer medicines may take years to become available in LMICs because of slow approval processes. There is little investment in medicines designed specifically for children, especially for low-resource settings. This is partly because childhood cancer affects fewer people, making it a smaller market for companies.

“Persistent market challenges continue to affect access for children, and it is critical that we continue to work together to enhance the reliability and affordability of childhood cancer medicines,” said Dr. Kennedy Lishimpi, Permanent Secretary for Technical Services, Ministry of Health, Zambia.

Most types of childhood cancer can be cured with widely available generic medicines and other forms of treatment, including surgery and radiotherapy. Yet children in LMICs often face significant barriers to accessing these lifesaving interventions. Lower survival rates are driven by delays in diagnosis, difficulties obtaining an accurate diagnosis, limited access to appropriate therapy, treatment abandonment, death from treatment-related toxicity, and avoidable relapse.

Improving access to childhood cancer care, including essential medicines and technologies, has the potential to improve survival across all income settings.

The report also mentions how cost of treatment was another big barrier to care. In some cases, More than 70 percent of children being treated for leukaemia stop or do not complete their cancer treatment due to financial reasons.

The Global Platform prioritized a set of ten interventions in the report that will be implemented over 2026-2030. These included working more closely with medicine companies, increasing the number of reliable suppliers, speeding up medicine approval, improving planning and purchasing, and strengthening access to affordable, quality-assured childhood cancer medicines. The interventions also focused on supporting research, improving price information, including these medicines in national health coverage, and encouraging the development of new treatments.

“Rather than focusing only on individual products or prices, market shaping interventions aim to strengthen overall market health by improving the conditions required for sustainable access,” the report states.

In practice, this could look like integrating childhood cancer medications into national health benefit packages. For example, in 2024, Nepal declared free treatment for children with cancer at public health facilities.

“Where the price is more friendly, there are plenty of suppliers; that’s sort of the goal we’re trying to reach,” said Rongrong Liu, program manager from St. Jude’s global operations.

Additionally, the report also mentions that voluntary licensing could play an important role in improving access to new childhood cancer medicines in LMICs by allowing other quality-assured manufacturers to produce medicines that are still protected by patents. This could increase the number of suppliers, improve competition, lower prices, and help medicines reach LMICs sooner, reducing delays caused by high costs or dependence on a single manufacturer. The Global Platform plans to work with companies that own these medicines to negotiate licensing agreements for priority medicines. These agreements would allow selected manufacturers to produce and supply the medicines in LMICs under agreed conditions.

“At the beginning, we have focused only on clinical forecast, but in reality there are a lot of logistical parameters that we need to consider,” said Alessio Mola, pharmacist at WHO, emphasizing the importance of the proposed market strategies.

The newly launched roadmap provides good guidance on strengthening child cancer medicine markets and supply systems and is an essential step toward closing the survival gap and ensuring that where a child is born does not determine whether they survive cancer.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

Without the resources to educate, train and economically include refugees, displacement will continue to drive onward migration

By Linda Latsko Lockhart
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 18 2026 (IPS)

For the young women I met through Global Give Back Circle’s HER Lab in Kenya, displacement was not the end of ambition. It had interrupted school, separated families from stability, and narrowed the choices available to them. But it had not erased their hopes. What they wanted was not pity. They wanted skills, work, confidence and the chance to rebuild their lives with dignity.

Linda Latsko Lockhart

Kevine Muhimpundu, a Technology Skills participant at HER Lab Kajiado, told me how displacement and the cost of education had paused her ambitions. Monica Abul, a Fashion Design participant at HER Lab West Pokot, captured the point powerfully: “I am learning to focus not on what I have lost, but on what I can still build.”

Their stories point to what migration debates often miss: displacement is not only about movement, but also about whether people can rebuild their lives in safety and dignity. If work and opportunity do not exist locally, the question is not only how to manage migration. It is how to create opportunity in their host country.

Kevine and Monica’s experiences reflected a wider reality. UNHCR recorded 117.8 million people forcibly displaced worldwide in 2025. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported 83.4 million people living in internal displacement across 117 countries and territories in 2024.

This is where Africa’s local experience matters, not as a continent people are simply leaving, but as one already hosting many of its own displaced people. African migration remains predominantly regional. The African Union and the International Organisation for Migration reported that 20.8 million people had moved between African countries. They also found that 86% of refugees and asylum seekers from African countries were hosted within Africa, compared with 9.6% in Europe.

This should reset the debate. Most African refugees and displaced people are already hosted within the continent. The challenge is not simply whether Europe or the United States should receive more people, but whether African host countries have the systems, resources and investment to help refugees rebuild locally. When opportunity exists, onward migration becomes less about desperation and more about choice.

This is not an argument against migration or the right to seek asylum. Migration can benefit individuals, communities and economies. But forced movement should not be the only route to dignity. Refugees need recognised skills, training, routes into work and confidence that their futures are not on hold. That means investing in education, accredited training, entrepreneurship, financial inclusion and community acceptance, so refugees can contribute to host economies.

The kind of local capacity needed is not abstract. In Kenya, Global Give Back Circle’s HER Lab, delivered in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, shows what this can look like in practice. Across Kajiado and West Pokot counties, HER Lab supports 32 young refugee women: 19 in Kajiado from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 13 in West Pokot from South Sudan, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are receiving training in fields ranging from coding and electrical installation to fashion, food production, cosmetology and agriculture. The HER Lab model combines market-aligned skills, mentorship, confidence-building, financial inclusion and pathways into employment or enterprise.

HER Lab reflects a broader shift. Through its $300 million partnership with UNHCR, the Mastercard Foundation is supporting half a million young refugees and displaced people across Africa to complete their education and enter dignified work.

In Dadaab, Dadaab Refugee Voices is applying the ILO’s Rural Employment Services model to connect refugees and host communities with job registration, guidance, matching, skills support and digital training. Already, 6,189 jobseekers have registered and received support, showing how local systems can move people towards work and self-reliance.

During and after the 12-month HER Lab programme, young women are building businesses in poultry, beauty, beadwork, retail and regenerative farming, while others are gaining skills in plumbing, agribusiness, digital literacy and electrical work. Through the HER Financial Freedom Programme, hundreds of previously unbanked rural women have gained access to savings and credit in addition to membership in a women-operated tea production cooperative. These are local routes to dignity, income and self-reliance.

That is why local capacity is central to the future of migration policy. Without the resources to educate, train and economically include refugees, displacement will continue to drive onward migration. With support for local initiatives and building inclusive systems, host countries can address some of the pressures that force people to move.

The policy response is clear. Governments, donors, development finance institutions, philanthropies and the private sector should back efforts that are locally rooted, measurable and designed for scale. Western governments, in particular, have a role beyond deterrence or crisis response. Investing in African countries and locally led initiatives can expand education, skills, livelihoods and financial inclusion for refugees and host populations alike. It can also turn migration partnerships into a shared effort to reduce forced movement.

The strongest migration policy is not one that pretends movement can simply be stopped. It is one that gives people real choices before movement becomes unavoidable. Africa is showing what inclusion can look like when opportunity is built locally.

The world should not look away. It should invest in helping that approach scale.

Linda Latsko Lockhart is the Founder and CEO of Global Give Back Circle, a serial social entrepreneur focused on the empowerment of women and girls in Africa and beyond. Named to Forbes “50 Over 50: Impact List”, she brings over 25 years of global leadership designing scalable, gender-based financial independence models. Through her organisation, Lockhart helps marginalised women and girls gain education, financial tools, and lasting economic resilience.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

Without the resources to educate, train and economically include refugees, displacement will continue to drive onward migration

Eurogroup President, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, gave a speech at the Eurofi Financial Forum, Dublin, on importance of completing the Banking Union and mobilising savings to power growth and investment.

European Council President, António Costa, had a meeting with Ireland's Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, on 17 September 2026, in Dublin, Ireland. The meeting is part of President Costa's annual "Tour des Capitales".