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With Asia being the world’s most vulnerable place for natural disasters, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed the need for boosting efforts across the continent to prepare for catastrophes before they occur.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has teamed up with a Jordanian-based business services company to promote information and communication technology (ICT) to support education, science and culture in the Arab region.

With 118 days left until the start of the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, where nations are aiming to conclude a new pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today warned that the rise in the release of gases must be reversed in less than 10 years to avert a global catastrophe.

The time has come for countries in Asia and the Pacific to translate their growing economic clout into positive political influence to help set the global AIDS agenda and the response to the epidemic, the head of the United Nations agency dealing with the disease has stated.

International businesses based in the West Bank are set to benefit from a state of the art web-based system for tracking goods coming in and out of the area, launched today by Palestinian customs in partnership with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

While tensions in Africa’s Great Lakes region have eased in the past year, there are still serious issues to be dealt with, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, calling on leaders there to move quickly to carry out existing peace agreements.

A 140-year-old shipyard that became one of the United States’ most polluted sites, a wasteland contaminated by heavy metals and radiation, is to be reborn as a green technology complex housing a climate change think tank, under a United Nations-backed project scheduled for completion in 2012.

Proposed media laws in Venezuela could be used as a tool for political intimidation and would seriously curtail press freedom and potentially criminalize legitimate dissent, an independent United Nations human rights expert warned today.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the power-sharing agreement reached in Madagascar and urged all sides to work together to ensure that a new government of national unity is quickly installed and a process leading to credible elections can be established.

Out of the more than 2 million people uprooted by clashes between Government forces and militants in north-western Pakistan, some 765,000 have now returned to their homes, but continued fighting is causing a fresh round of displacement, the United Nations humanitarian arm said today.