Calling for an end to speculation surrounding a shooting over the weekend in which two Kosovo Serb men were killed and another two were injured, the United Nations administrator in Kosovo today appealed to the political leaders there and in Serbia to give the police time to carry out a thorough investigation of the incident.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today urged seismic engineers meeting in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to use their expertise to help reduce the human consequences of earthquakes and to raise public awareness about ways national, global and regional responses to natural disasters can be improved.

With wildfires destroying more than 140,000 hectares of forest and farmland in Portugal since the beginning of the summer, the United Nations disaster reduction agency is calling on countries around the world to cooperate in enforcing basic measures to reduce the risks.

A United Nations human rights expert today called on the United Kingdom not to deport anybody under its new anti-terrorism law to a country where there is a risk of torture or ill-treatment, warning that the proposed assurances it would seek were not an adequate guarantee and circumvented its treaty obligations.