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United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called today for sustained political and financial commitment to disaster reduction, stressing that all human societies are vulnerable to natural disasters as last year's Asian tsunami and the recent tragedy that befell the United States Gulf Coast have demonstrated.

Three Latin American physicians have been awarded this year's Pan American Health awards in the fields of medicine, health care and bioethics, the United Nations regional health agency for the Americas said today.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on all sides in the Northern Ireland dispute to seize the “unique opportunity” offered by the decommissioning of weapons by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to advance the 1998 Good Friday agreement laying out a framework for a peaceful and democratic settlement.

From meeting burgeoning energy needs through innovative technologies to boosting cancer treatment in developing countries, nuclear physics and the United Nations atomic energy agency have a key role to play on the road to sustainable development, an international scientific forum was told today.

From Madeira to Vladivostok and Latvia to Argentina, festivals, exhibitions and concerts marked United Nations World Tourism Day (WTD) today with a tip of the hat to the great French visionary and writer Jules Verne and the whimsical prospect of space as humankind’s final tourist frontier.

Noting that the security situation in much of Iraq has shown no improvement and has actually deteriorated in many places compared to the same period a year ago, the United Nations refugee agency today urged countries hosting Iraqi émigrés to keep processing asylum cases and not promote returns.

Over six hundred out of some 1,500 Chadian refugees who have spent the past two decades in exile in the Central African Republic (CAR) after fleeing civil war in their country have been returned home in an operation that began last week, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

Despite a falling number of asylum applications, restrictive legislation being adopted by Switzerland could make access by genuine refugees to the country exceedingly difficult, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement today.

There will be another influenza pandemic and failure to prepare for it appropriately will have “catastrophic consequences,” the head of the United Nations health agency warned today, calling for national control plans worldwide and massive international collaboration to prevent the potential deaths of millions of people.

The top United Nations envoy in Afghanistan today condemned the killing of a candidate in the parliamentary elections held on 18 September and called on the authorities to swiftly bring the perpetrators to justice.