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The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has reported the highest weekly number of Ebola cases in Guinea so far this year and noted that while transmission was confined to a narrow geographically contiguous arc straddling the capitals of Guinea and Sierra Leone, the population is highly mobile, thus creating a challenge “to prevent the seeding of new outbreaks.”

An independent United Nations human rights expert has warned of the “seriously deteriorating situation” regarding the independence of the justice system in the Maldives in the wake of the sentencing of former President Mohammed Nasheed, calling his trial a “mockery” of the country’s Constitution.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture today praised the Government of Georgia for its positive advances in the treatment of prisoners since the October 2012 parliamentary election but cautioned that “there is still room for improvement and a need for anchoring.”

Women, children and the elderly are disproportionately bearing the devastating impact of the protracted conflict in Ukraine, which has left five million people in need of humanitarian assistance, senior United Nations officials said today, as they stressed the “grave and urgent need” to scale up international relief efforts.

Amid ongoing fighting between Government forces and Boko Haram insurgents, the effects of the crisis in north-eastern Nigeria are increasingly reverberating across the region, two senior United Nations humanitarian officials said today, as they urged international donors to ramp up financial support for relief efforts.

Three telecoms giants from China and the United States led international patent filings in 2014 in a fifth consecutive record-breaking year that “underscores the increasing importance of intellectual property as it moves from the periphery to the centre of the global economic system,” the United Nations reported today.

The Security Council voiced its concern at the 10-month stalemate in the election of a president in Lebanon, saying it undermined the country’s ability to address the security, economic and social challenges it faces.

A revamped United Nations website was launched this week after a year of design, consultation and testing, making it easier for users to view the gateway to the world body on mobile internet devices.

The United Nations has expressed deep concern today at the increasing number of executions in Pakistan since December 2014, and at the Government’s recent announcement that it has now withdrawn its moratorium on the death penalty for all cases, not only those related to terrorism.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is unified with a “clear, shared and celebrated” identity, the top United Nations envoy there told the Security Council today, as he briefed on the latest developments in the vast African nation.