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Land degradation and desertification are among the central issues facing the international community as it aims to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, including stemming the loss of biodiversity and achieving a healthier and more stable world, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said today in Nairobi.

A Jordanian peacekeeper serving with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has become the latest blue helmet to lose his life for the cause of peace after dying today of a gunshot wound sustained at the weekend during an operation to seize a stolen vehicle and find a kidnapped woman.

Each minute of every day a child somewhere in the world dies because of AIDS, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said today on the eve of launching a major push to address the plight of the disease's youngest victims.

Both sides of the United Nations Secretariat building in New York are illuminated through Monday with the words “UN 60” in commemoration of the world body’s six decades of existence.

Blue helmets serving with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) have apprehended seven suspected bandits who were turned over to the UN and national police.

The absence of an all-inclusive process of democratization and national reconciliation in Myanmar is exacerbating the suffering of the country’s people, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a new report which calls on the authorities to take steps to rectify the situation.

"Converging evidence" points at both Lebanese and Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, according to a report by a United Nations investigating panel, which concluded that the "terror" attack on 14 February had been carried out by a group with an extensive organization and considerable resources.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has written to Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, calling on him to lift Eritrea's ban on helicopter flights by the United Nations peacekeeping mission over its sector of the troubled frontier with Ethiopia.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi will meet late next week to discuss how to handle the foreign armed forces operating in the eastern region of the DRC, the peacekeeping United Nations Operation Mission (MONUC) there has said.

Calling the next few weeks critical for millions of survivors of Pakistan's devastating earthquake, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent a letter today to the leaders of all 191 Member States urging "an immediate and exceptional escalation" of the global relief effort.