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The United Nations Security Council mission to Central Africa has returned home heartened by the progress made in efforts to bring peace to the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Burundi, but fully aware of the considerable difficulties on the road ahead, its leader said today.

The Security Council today established a Trust Fund for donations to finance a protection force for the United Nations presence in Iraq.

A high-level panel appointed last year by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is poised to officially release its report on threats to international peace and security in the twenty-first century and recommendations on how to deal with them, including two proposals for expanding the membership of the Security Council.

As preparations for Wednesday's observance of World AIDS Day gather steam, a United Nations official today stressed that HIV-prevention programmes targeting peacekeepers can help stop the epidemic's spread in areas where the UN is operating.

The period between now and the end of February is crucial for a well coordinated locust control campaign to protect crops in North Africa and reduce the risk of swarms reinvading sub-Saharan countries next summer in the worst upsurge of the scourge in 15 years, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today.

The United Nations health agency is reinstating two generic AIDS antiretroviral drugs it de-listed earlier this year after the Indian manufacturer carried out new studies to confirm that the medicines, widely used in developing countries, are as effective as their brand-name counterparts.

Nearly 3,000 Iranian Kurds in a camp in central Iraq, cut off for the past two weeks from outside help because of fighting in the region, are facing bleak conditions with no water or electricity although food has reached them, the United Nations refugee agency said today.

Brazilian goal-scoring soccer star Kaká, whose astonishing performance at the age of 22 helped AC Milan win Italy’s national championship last season, will now take aim at an even more difficult goal as the United Nations World Food Programme’s (WFP) youngest Ambassador Against Hunger.

The United Nations and its partners in Sudan today appealed for $1.5 billion in urgent aid for 2005, more than double this year’s amount, including $600 million for life-saving and sustaining activities in the strife-torn western Darfur region, which the international organization has called the world’s current worst humanitarian crisis.

The targeting of humanitarian organizations in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by armed militias, including violent attacks and looting, could cause serious disruption of relief operations, according to the latest update by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).