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The top United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland today called for a major upgrade in the world body’s humanitarian assistance program, and urged public and private cooperation in the fight against the root causes of disaster, conflict and injustice.

In presenting his final report on the Iraq Oil-for-Food Programme to the United Nations Security Council today, Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) Chairman Paul Volcker criticized the Secretariat, spread blame widely among Member States and the Council and stressed the urgency of restoring the credibility of a unique organization.

Five investigators have been appointed to the Group of Experts for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to monitor the Security Council arms embargo against that country’s militias under a mandate expiring next January, the United Nations spokesman said today.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has recommended that the Security Council extend the mandate of the peacekeeping mission stationed between Ethiopia and Eritrea until mid-March and has called on the international community to intensify its effort to bring the two Governments together after their border war.

The United Nations health agency today called on countries to adopt monitoring measures to ensure that new life-saving malaria medicines do not lose their effectiveness through misuse, producing resistant strains of a disease that causes more than 300 million acute illnesses and 1 million deaths annually.

The United Nations refugee agency said today that it was "appalled" that yet another group of at least 45 Somalis and Ethiopians died last week at sea while crossing the Gulf of Aden in an attempt to reach Yemen aboard smugglers' boats from Somalia.

The United Nations administrator for Kosovo has called on all citizens of the ethnically divided province to continue their efforts towards building a peaceful, stable, and multi-ethnic society following the announcement that President Ibrahim Rugova has lung cancer.

The United Nations refugee agency is urgently seeking a new site for Central African Republic (CAR) refugees in southern Chad because the main camp is reaching its 27,000-person capacity and another 2,000 refugees fleeing continued fighting have crossed the border in the past two weeks.

The public must be alerted when lifestyles harm the environment, but what if there is little or no public money to mount a campaign to promote changes? And what is a Government to do when the public wants both high spending and low taxes? The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is offering some answers.

The United Nations has mobilized three inter-agency teams to aid the United State's recovery from Hurricane Katrina and further deployments may occur within the next few days, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today.