COP26 opens with a foreboding announcement from the UN secretary-general; peacekeepers shot by the presidential guard in the Central African Republic; Mexico’s agenda on the Security Council.

You are reading This Week @UN, summarizing the most pressing issues facing the organization. The information is gathered from UN press briefings, PassBlue reporting and other sources. This week, the world’s nations and hundreds of others tackle runaway climate change; warfare escalates in Yemen; Secretary of State Blinken tries to “reverse the morale slide” in the United States State Department.

Our annual NewsMatch fund-raising campaign is off to a raring start, so we thank all the kind individuals and the kind Pinkerton Foundation who have donated to the vital cause of public-service journalism. The fund-raising campaign, which matches donations up to $1,000 each, lasts until Dec. 31, but please don’t wait till the last minute to donate to PassBlue, an independent, nonprofit media company. Your gift is appreciated each and every day of the year.

More good news, more facts: The UN Correspondents Association, of which PassBlue is a member, has awarded two of our regular reporters for their stellar work: Stéphanie Fillion, for an article on climate change, published by PassBlue with Geneva Solutions; and Maurizio Guerrero, for a report on the pandemic, published in Equal Times and In These Times.

Rumor mill: The US envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, may be traveling to Israel and Palestine soon. But a spokesperson for the ambassador told PassBlue there was nothing to announce “on that front.” (Thomas-Greenfield’s extensive remarks about her job and her personal history, as told to the Council on Foreign Relations, Nov. 4)