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The security situation in some areas of Sudan's South Darfur state is tense, the United Nations mission to the country reported today, after two attacks by unidentified armed militiamen earlier this week left at least one person dead.

With African children now making up 85 per cent of the world's poliomyelitis cases after groups in Nigeria forced suspension of an inoculation campaign, African health ministers from eight countries pledged today to plan massive immunization campaigns against the paralyzing disease and to increase surveillance, the United Nations health agency said today.

With the number of malnourished people rising and Western donor countries reducing food aid, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is holding a two-day meeting in Rome, starting today, to appeal to the 10 new members of the European Union (EU) for help.

The top United Nations emergency official said today he believed the relief effort could now avoid the feared "second wave of death" from the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami - the toll taken by epidemic diseases - and he hoped Indonesia would revise its March deadline for the use of foreign military in the operation.

One civilian police officer from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has been injured by stone-throwers as he tried to rescue an alleged thief from a lynch mob and two other officers escaped to safety a day later after their vehicle came under fire.

In a multitasking race against time to confront the impact of last month’s devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, United Nations agencies are moving on numerous fronts, from the palliative to the preventive, from finding injured survivors in need of urgent treatment to saving coral reefs before irreparable damage takes its toll.

England’s soccer captain David Beckham, whose famed cross-shots have made him a byword for football to affluent European fans and undernourished children in African refugee camps alike, will be shooting for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to raise money for young victims of the devastating of Indian Ocean tsunami.

The major goal for small island developing States is to maintain an international spotlight on their solutions for the problems of remoteness, small economic infrastructures and difficult adjustments to global climate change long after their conference in the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius is over, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.

Personnel shuffling within the ranks of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) continued today with the announcement of a new commander for the UN peacekeeping force in the West African country.

Fresh from the "signal success" of a donors' meeting that funded more than three quarters of its flash appeal for the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, the United Nations today sought clarification from Indonesia that new security restrictions would not hamper its operations in the most ravaged of all the dozen affected nations.