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As schoolchildren in Mozambique spin and ride on a carousel in their schoolyard in the near future, they will be inadvertently pumping drinking water from boreholes into a tank for use by the school and surrounding communities, thanks to a new initiative unveiled today by two United Nations agencies and a Dutch company.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has invited heads of State and government attending the 2005 World Summit to take the opportunity to sign, ratify or accede to 32 key treaties ranging from human rights and refugees to terrorism and the Kyoto protocol to curb global warming gases.

With the world's urban population expected to almost double to more than 5 billion in the next 25 years, governments around the globe will need to build almost 100,000 new housing units a day, provide subsidies and support community loan programmes, or else compound the enormous slum conditions that exist now, according to a United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) report.

Gender equality and women’s empowerment are central to achieving major development goals as well as many of the commitments made at all major United Nations conferences and summits since the 1990s, UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette said in anticipation of this week’s World Summit in New York.

With only a few months left on the United Nations peacekeeping mission's timetable in Sierra Leone, the mission chief has called on the nation's security forces to respect the constitution by subjecting themselves to civilian authority and to build trust between themselves and the people of the West African country emerging from 12 years of civil war.

With less than two days left before the United Nations hosts the largest ever gathering of global leaders, and the Summit document still mired in discord, Secretary-General Kofi Annan today intensified his diplomatic efforts, postponing a news conference in a bid to secure a compromise of "give and take" from Member States.

With a cholera outbreak, along with floods and mudflows from heavy rains and thawing snow and ice devastating Tajikistan, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today said it has received just $700,000 out of the $4 million for which it has appealed urgently.

Over the past year, the United Nations agency charged with fighting crime and traffic in illicit drugs has become an important player in the struggle against terrorism, helping States to ratify international agreements and to create legislation on the issue, according to a new report by Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The head of the United Nations inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri arrived in Syria today to continue the probe he launched after an earlier mission found Lebanon's own investigation seriously flawed and Syria primarily responsible for the political tension preceding the murder.

The world's leading maternal, newborn and child health professionals formally joined forces for the first time today in a United Nations-backed initiative to tackle a crisis that each year sees more than 500,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth and nearly 11 million children succumb to mostly preventable diseases.