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Commemorating World Health Day - marked each year on 7 April - United Nations officials are calling attention to the benefits of an active lifestyle in staving off disease and prolonging life.

As Angola's Government and the UNITA rebel group signed a ceasefire agreement today, a top United Nations envoy commended them for choosing to abandon "the path of death" and to explore instead the avenues of peace and reconciliation.

Voicing grave concern over the escalating conflict in the Middle East, two senior United Nations and World Bank officials in the region today called for the protection of civilians on both sides and urged Israel to lift the closure of the Palestinian territory, which they said had endangered the people's livelihoods and engendered a sense of hopelessness and desperation.

The global population of persons 60 years or older is growing by about 2 per cent each year, faster than the population as a whole, and will reach nearly 2 billion by the middle of this century, a new publication by the United Nations forecasts.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, today welcomed the statement by United States President George Bush earlier on Thursday calling for Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities.

Leaders from more than 60 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean have confirmed their participation in an upcoming United Nations summit on children's rights, but so far only seven heads of State from Western European and other industrialized nations are scheduled to attend the May forum, according to UN officials in New York.

Despite the rising tide of emergencies, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been instrumental in putting an end to major famines, the head of the United Nations agency said today in a farewell address to the Security Council, which met to discuss food aid in the context of conflict settlement.

Voting unanimously, the United Nations Security Council this evening, demanded the implementation "without delay" of its recent resolution 1402 on the Middle East and welcomed the mission by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region, as well as the peace efforts by a "quartet" of envoys representing the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN.

A well-known Rwandan composer and singer accused of performing songs that incited the Hutu militia to kill Tutsis during the country’s 1994 genocide appeared before the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) today and pleaded not guilty to five counts of war crimes.

A Geneva-based United Nations panel today paid out nearly $1 billion in damages arising from Iraq’s 1990 invasion – and subsequent occupation – of Kuwait.