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An international disaster reduction conference set to open next week in Japan should serve to forge agreement on a tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.

The Indian Ocean tsunami may have made no distinction between men and women in the grim death toll it reaped with its waves but it has produced some very gender-specific after-shocks, ranging from women’s traditional role in caring for the sick to increased cases of rape and abuse, a United Nations agency reported today.

Warning that democracy is under fire with the continued murder of journalists, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has condemned the assassination of a Colombian radio reporter who frequently denounced corruption and the influence of drug traffickers on local politics.

With a fourth new human case of potentially deadly bird flu confirmed in Viet Nam, the United Nations health agency has called for ensuring that infected poultry is kept out of the food chain, including emergency food relief supplies for the region devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami.

The United Nations administrator for Kosovo today called for a resumption of direct talks between Serbia and the province to resolve the issue of more than 3,000 people still missing five years after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) drove out Yugoslav troops amid ethnic fighting between Albanians and Serbs.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU), a United Nations specialized agency that is the world’s second-oldest international organization, got a new Director General today dedicated to keeping letters and parcels flowing smoothly around the globe even as the digital age is in full flight.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today condemned the Palestinian terror attack Thursday night that caused the death of six Israeli civilians and injury to four others.

Thousands of Congolese refugees have poured into neighbouring Uganda, saying that they were fleeing fighting between two major ethnic groups in the eastern Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the United Nations refugee agency said today.

With barely two weeks left before Iraq holds elections for a provisional national assembly which will appoint a new government and write a constitution, top United Nations officials today called for the poll to be as inclusive as possible despite the violence in the war-wracked country.

The United Nations meeting on small island developing States concluded today with unanimous agreement that such countries were suffering already from the consequences of climate change, with some seeing a threatening rise in sea levels, and a call to promote the use of renewable energy sources and cleaner fossil fuel technologies as a top priority.