United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said journalists were deeply concerned about the tensions between the United States and Russia in responding to the questions at the UN Headquarters, saying that the situation was similar to that of the cold war period.

Guterres, who has been evaluating Russia and US relations after the agent crisis between England and Russia, said, "I think we are coming to a situation that is similar, to a large extent, to what we lived during the Cold War." Guterres said he was "very concerned" about the lack of mechanisms to defuse tensions, such as special channels for information-sharing between Washington and Moscow, which were dismantled with the end of the Cold War."

Guterres called climate change "the most systemic threat to humankind" and urged world leaders to curb their countries' greenhouse gas emissions. He said floods in South Asia had affected 41 million people and that drought had driven 900,000 people from their homes in Africa. "I am beginning to wonder how many more alarm bells must go off before the world rises to the challenge," he added. (ILKHA)