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The head of the United Nations weather agency has called for greater participation by and aid for developing countries in addressing the effect of the oceans on climate and weather variability and with regard to maritime safety and meteorological services.

United Nations Member States have made progress in the push for institutional reform, but a threat to withhold some of the United States’ dues if benchmarks are not met by certain deadlines could provoke a backlash from other Member States on such important issues as a clear definition of terrorism, a senior UN official said today.

As the electoral process proceeds in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for more troops for the peacekeeping mission there and a one-year extension of its mandate until October 2006, after the installation of a newly elected Government.

The United Nations envoy seeking an end to foreign interference in Lebanon met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo today and is due to confer with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak tomorrow.

The top United Nations official in Kosovo this evening condemned the attempted assassination of the police commander for the Gjilan/Gnjilane region of the province, according to a statement released by the UN mission there.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – providing everything from food and water to legal assistance and health care – are a crucial element in dealing with the magnitude of the protracted refugee crisis worldwide, representatives of those organizations were told today as they gathered in Geneva to meet with the United Nations refugee agency.

More than 242,000 people were killed last year mostly in December's Indian Ocean tsunami and 158 million people were injured by natural disasters, whose toll could have been mitigated through better planning, risk reduction and response, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a new report. Economic damage from natural disasters last year totalled $94 billion, the report also says.

The United Nations has sent two experts to Cameroon to help assess a lake's natural dam which is threatening to collapse, with the potentially disastrous consequences of not only flooding the homes of tens of thousands of people but also of releasing its second cloud of deadly gas in nearly two decades.

Continuing its bid to pre-empt nuclear and radiological terrorism, the United Nations atomic watchdog agency today reported a substantial increase in illicit trafficking and unauthorized activities with nuclear and other radioactive materials in 2003-2004, including one case involving weapons-grade material.

The United Nations refugee agency is upgrading computer registration and training public officials hired by the South African Government to tackle a backlog of asylum-seekers from parts of Africa and Asia that has risen to more than 115,000, as a flood of new refugees pours in.