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Wrapping up a visit to Sudan aimed at reviving the stalled peace process for the strife-torn Darfur region, envoys from the United Nations and the African Union held talks with the country's president, who indicated that he would support dialogue with different factions.

The senior United Nations official in Kosovo, which the world body has administered since NATO forces responded to ethnic strife there in 1999, today stressed the broad international support enjoyed by a UN status proposal, saying it comes “at an ideal moment in history.”

The United Nations system has moved swiftly and vigorously to implement the landmark Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy adopted last year by the General Assembly, from improving the international response to a potential attack to finding ways to combat the financing of such crimes to factoring counter-terrorism ideas into conflict prevention planning, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

Policy measures to generate productive jobs in a world where lack of employment poses a serious risk to millions have been put forward by the United Nations Commission for Social Development, which concluded its annual session in New York today.

At least 107 bodies have so far been found along a remote stretch of the Yemen coastline after a boat smuggling migrants from Somalia capsized on Monday in one of the deadliest single incidents in a perilous exodus that has brought more than 27,000 people across the Gulf Aden in the past year, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

A United Nations human rights expert today called on the Government of Myanmar to unconditionally release all top opposition leaders after the authorities extended the house arrest of one of them by another year.

The United Nation’s Children’s Fund is struggling to prevent outbreaks of deadly diseases like diarrhoea and cholera in Burundi, where hunger and flooding have already killed some youngsters, made more homeless and are keeping others out of school.

The first-hand account of a Sierra Leonean child soldier’s odyssey from three years of vicious fighting, via a United Nations-supported rehabilitation centre, to a prestigious United States university has joined the arsenal of weapons the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is mustering to fight a scourge that at present entraps some 250,000 youngsters.

The United Nations health agency today reported “encouraging progress” in producing a vaccine against human bird flu, which in a worst case scenario could cause a deadly pandemic that could kill millions, but warned that the world still lacks the manufacturing capacity to meet potential global demand.

A four-month drive to officially register Afghan refugees residing in Pakistan ended yesterday with more than 2 million of them – three out of five being women and children under five years of age – registering with the Pakistani Government, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).