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Secretary-General Kofi Annan is set to receive today the report of an expert team investigating what went wrong with United Nations security procedures prior to the deadly terrorist attack last August against the UN office in Baghdad.

While Bosnia and Herzegovina has made real achievements in defence, intelligence reform, customs and indirect tax, the growing number of challenges to the United Nations-led police certification process requires attention, the Security Council was told today.

A United Nations airlift of emergency supplies arrived today in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, as the city resumed some of its normal activities despite pockets of insecurity.

With a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative to provide anti-retroviral treatment for 3 million people with HIV/AIDS by 2005 running into a roadblock for lack of funding, a senior United Nations official appealed today, especially to the 30 richest countries, for the $200 million needed for this year and next.

Human rights monitors are travelling around Liberia documenting crimes of sexual violence during the country's 14-year civil war in a project backed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

With disease outbreaks such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and bird flu affecting about a third of global meat exports, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today of losses of up to $10 billion in the $33-billion-a-year meat and live animal trade if import bans extend throughout 2004.

Most of Haiti's hospitals and health centres ceased full operations over the weekend following the uprising which led to the resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and many medical emergencies have not been dealt with, according to United Nations health officials in the Caribbean nation.

With some 400,000 Somalis still in exile, the United Nations refugee agency has began a repatriation operation from neighbouring Djibouti with the aim of bringing 35,000 people home to their war-torn East African country this year.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Equatorial Guinea have launched a scheme to train enough teachers so that every child in the African country can finish primary school by 2010.

Condemning today’s terrorist attacks in Iraq and Pakistan that have left scores dead or injured, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he is particularly appalled they took place around Muslim shrines during the holy occasion of Ashura.