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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today strongly condemned the appalling and “cold-blooded crime” committed by terrorists who attacked the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which news reports indicate killed 10 media workers and two police officers.

Progress in the political process in Mali over the last three months has been “fairly modest”, with fighting continuing despite talks in Algiers that marked the first occasion when armed groups and the Government engaged in direct conversations, the head of United Nations peacekeeping operations said in a briefing to the Security Council today.

The new Head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, arrived in Liberia today as part of his first tour of the countries in West Africa most affected by the outbreak of the virus.

A joint operation by United Nations troops and the Congolese army (FARDC) took control of the main bases used by an armed group actively threatening security and stability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s long-troubled eastern region.

The Joint United Nations and African Union Mission in Darfur has reported that its peacekeepers came under two separate attacks today while on patrol, both times by unidentified gunmen.

Despite reports of Ebola cases in Mosul in several Iraqi media sources last week, the Iraqi Ministry of Health and the United Nations health agency have confirmed today that no cases of the disease have so far been found in the country.

Recent school closures in Raqqa and Deir-ez-Zour governorates and parts of rural Aleppo in Syria have disrupted the education of some 670,000 children of primary and lower-high school age, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported today.

The Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Sport for Development and Peace, Wilfried Lemke, stressed that he would continue striving to raise awareness and promote the use of sport as a tool for development and peace as his appointment to the position was extended for another year today.

With the deadline for the unconditional surrender of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) having passed on 2 January, and no significant additional surrenders of FDLR combatants registered since June, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) is working to address the situation, a UN spokesperson said today.

The United Nations stabilization mission in Mali (MINUSMA) has condemned the attack that wounded eight peacekeepers – three seriously – yesterday, in the Gao region.