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The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor today named a Sudanese minister and a militia commander as the first suspects he wants tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s conflict-wracked Darfur region.

An independent United Nations rights expert today denounced a campaign by Filipino milk companies to promote breast-milk substitutes for manipulating UN data to protect their huge profits regardless of the interest of a country where 16,000 children under 5 died in 2003 from improper feeding practices including infant formula.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on the international community to increase its economic cooperation with the new Government of Guinea following President Lansana Conté’s appointment of a consensus prime minister, ending weeks of strikes and deadly clashes with labour unions.

When she stepped off a ferry last Friday in the eastern port of Baraka in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Elizabeth Ibengo became the 25,000th refugee to be repatriated from Tanzania since the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began a return programme in October 2005.

The United Nations refugee agency is distributing emergency items and food rations to more than 300 people who fled into Ecuador from Colombia in the latest spasm of over four decades of conflict between Government forces, leftist guerrillas, rightist paramilitaries and criminal gangs that has driven 3 million Colombians from their homes.

United Nations health agency officials are monitoring an area of Laos following the first human case of bird flu to be reported in the South-East Asian country, bringing to one dozen the total number of States with human infections.

The United Nations atomic watchdog agency, better known around the world for its efforts to curb nuclear proliferation and stop weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists, is helping an Austrian museum assess damage and identify ways to preserve a stolen Renaissance sculptural masterpiece that was recently recovered.

In the face of “enormous” challenges – such as Israeli military operations and Palestinian suicide attacks targeting Israeli civilians – the Middle East peace process must persevere in order for Israelis and Palestinians to exist peacefully as neighbours, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

Amid increasing insecurity and violence in eastern Chad, partly driven by killings in the neighbouring Sudanese region of Darfur, the United Nations refugee agency today launched a $6.2 million supplementary appeal to cope with up to 150,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) expected to be made homeless this year.

Improved transportation systems, tighter building codes and financing for energy-efficiency investments are among the measures recommended in a new scientific report on coping with climate change that was prepared at the request of the United Nations.