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Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today said that by continuing to scale up the global fight against Ebola, there is hope the outbreak could be contained by mid-2015, but he emphasized that results to date are still uneven, and announced that the Organization’s top health officials will head to Mali, where the situation is still a cause of "deep concern.”

An upsurge in violent attacks this week between communities in a town near the Central African Republic’s border with South Sudan has left at least 10 people injured and thousands more displaced, marking the first major inter-community incident in the region since the country’s crisis began in 2012, the United Nations humanitarian relief office said today.

The next phase in reconstruction efforts for war-ravaged Gaza is slated to begin as early as next week following an updated “understanding” between Israeli and Palestinian stakeholders, the United Nations special envoy in the region has announced.

Key steps have been taken recently to deliver food vouchers to some 10,000 internally displaced people in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) reported today, while underscoring that ensuring access to food in the country’s crisis-gripped eastern region remains a “priority concern.”

Concluding a three-day mission to South Sudan, a senior United Nations relief official has called on all parties to the conflict there to respect their ceasefire commitments, while urging the international community to continue providing support to enable humanitarians to scale up and expand critical aid operations.

The technological advancement of the television medium – a critical tool for “informing, channelling, and affecting” public opinion – is necessary for the improvement of communication and globalization, the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) declared today, as it announced new measures aimed at heightening television viewing for millions of people around the world.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is stepping up its efforts in Iraq to deliver winter aid to people displaced by this year’s conflict including Thursday with the landing in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region the first in a series of flights carrying supplies aimed at mitigating the impact of the harsh months ahead.

Extreme weather conditions predicted for the Pacific Ocean pose a significant threat for island states' industry and infrastructure, warns a new advisory note from the United Nations, encouraging the establishment of a regional mechanism for better preparedness.

The humanitarian news service IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks), after nearly 20 years as part of the United Nations, announced today that it will spin off to become an independent, non-profit media venture, with the support of a major private donor.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he was shocked by the recent deadly attack on a synagogue in West Jerusalem and “at this delicate and dangerous juncture” both leaders must show the courage to do everything necessary to end the surging violence.