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United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today urged seismic engineers meeting in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to use their expertise to help reduce the human consequences of earthquakes and to raise public awareness about ways national, global and regional responses to natural disasters can be improved.

The United Nations regional health agency for Africa today declared tuberculosis (TB) an emergency and called on Member States to commit more resources to fight an epidemic that has more than quadrupled the annual number of new cases since 1990, continues to rise and kills more than half a million people every year.

The United Nations environmental agency today announced a multi-million dollar project to help some of the world’s poorest people better cope with drought and pest infestations, targeting 20 pilot areas for restoration of damaged forests, soils, water and other key life-support systems in southern Niger and northern Nigeria.

The United Nations refugee agency has begun relocating some of the thousands of refugees newly arrived in southern Chad from neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR) to the Amboko camp – the closest refugee settlement to the border – so that it can better provide for them.

Today’s inauguration of newly elected President Pierre Nkurunziza as the first post-transitional head of state in Burundi after years of ethnic conflict, shows the determination of the Central African country’s people to conclude the unprecedented transitional process successfully, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.

The head of the United Nations agency entrusted with curbing the spread of nuclear weapons today had a “constructive” meeting with a senior Iranian official on ways to resolve issues over the country’s nuclear programme.

With Somalia’s transitional authorities deadlocked over the government’s location and the deployment of foreign peacekeepers, a senior United Nations official will hold consultations this weekend with the heads of regional organizations aimed at healing a rift that has stalled the latest attempt to re-establish a central authority in the war-shattered Horn of Africa nation.

With up to 700 Afghan children under the age of five dying every day due to mostly preventable causes and 70 women losing their lives daily in pregnancy or childbirth, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has launched a new wide-ranging pre-election radio campaign to boost basic education and primary health care.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan today congratulated Chad, Central African Republic and host country Cameroon on holding a United Nations-supported meeting to work out ways of collaborating on strengthening border security.

With Zimbabwe facing a meltdown and life expectancy cut in half, the United Nations has not yet reached agreement with the country’s Government on an overall international aid appeal for a crisis which has been exacerbated by the authority’s mass urban eviction campaign, the UN chief humanitarian envoy said.