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The United Nations atomic watchdog agency has completed its annual inspection of remaining nuclear materials in Iraq to ensure that they conform to the country's safeguard obligations against the spread of weapons under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has found no diversion of material.

The international cooperative movement – providing more than 100 million jobs and affecting half the world’s people through ethical and socially inclusive enterprises – is a major force in reaching the development goals that were the focus of the World Summit, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has joined forces with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to promote partnership and dialogue between hundreds of thousands of school children in Africa and Britain.

Encouraging countries to deploy their peacekeeping troops in a timely manner to the strengthen peace agreements in the Sudan, the Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations mission in that country (UNMIS) for six months, until March 2006.

Even given the successful unilateral Israeli disengagement from Gaza, the only way forward to a comprehensive Middle East peace is for Israelis and Palestinians to take the mutually reinforcing steps outlined by the diplomatic Quartet, a senior United Nations envoy told the Security Council today.

Noting the shared commitment of the United Nations and the United States Congressional Black Caucus to championing Africa's rights, Secretary-General Kofi Annan today asked the group to redouble its efforts to secure fair terms of trade for the continent by focusing on the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in December.

A Mongolian Government official was named 2005 laureate of the prestigious United Nations Sasakawa award for his groundbreaking work on dzud, or "white death," the combination of extreme winter conditions that have killed more than 8.5 million livestock over four years by starving or isolating them, the UN agency for disaster reduction said today.

Just one day after reiterating his call to all sides in Iraq to give greater priority to improving the safety of journalists, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today condemned the killing of yet one more reporter in the war-torn country, the third in four days.

A month after noting an alarming increase in cholera outbreaks in West Africa, the United Nations health agency reported today that the incidence had almost doubled to nearly 45,000 cases and fatalities rose sharply to more than 720, spurred on by particularly heavy rains and increased population movement.

With eleven crucial States still not aboard the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, signatories to it agreed at United Nations Headquarters today to spare no effort and use all avenues to get those countries to sign and ratify the treaty, allowing it to come into force.