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The United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) and the African Development Bank said today that they will offer new support to women entrepreneurs who are playing an ever-increasing role in the economies of African countries despite limited access to land, credit and training.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today warned against culling wild birds in cities in countries affected by bird flu, saying this could distract attention from the campaign to contain the disease among poultry in the battle against the virus that could spark a potentially lethal human pandemic.

The first cold-related deaths have been reported among Pakistani earthquake survivors – two children who died of pneumonia and a man of hypothermia – and many more can be expected as temperatures drop below freezing point, especially at higher elevations, the United Nations refugee agency warned today.

With a $1.22 billion dollar budget for 2006 to assist some 19.1 million people worldwide, the United Nations refugee agency received firm funding pledges of $354.3 million from donors at its annual pledging conference in Geneva yesterday, a decrease of about 12 per cent from last year's pledges of $405.4 million.

The United Nations refugee agency is gearing up to assist Sudanese who wish to return to their villages after a January peace agreement in South Sudan ended 21 years of civil war that displaced four million people within the country and made refugees of another 500,000 in neighbouring countries.

With the one-year anniversary of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami approaching, former United States President Bill Clinton, United Nations Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, returned to Sri Lanka today, praising the recovery progress already made but warning that there was still more to do.

This year marks an ecological watershed in which a powerful alignment of legal, financial and investment interests is beginning to direct trillions of dollars into evolving markets linked to climate change, clean technologies and the sustainable use of natural resources, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.

Calls for action to protect the earth's vulnerable climate led off the first ever meeting of the 157 countries that have signed onto the United Nations-backed Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce the so-called "greenhouse gasses" that have been determined to cause global warming.

The senior United Nations envoy in Iraq has several times brought up the issue of human rights violations with Iraqi officials, including the need for "structural changes" in the security system, a UN spokesman said today.

Welcoming the beginning of the renewed Sudanese peace talks to end civil conflict in Darfur, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged representatives of the Government and the two rebel movements to stop the atrocities and bloodshed and to negotiate a just and all-inclusive accord.