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Concerned by the potential for nuclear terrorism, more than 350 delegates from 80 States Parties to a United Nations-backed treaty on safeguarding nuclear material open a five-day conference in Vienna, Austria, on Monday aimed at adopting additional measures to avert smuggling or sabotage that could further such acts.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today congratulated South African President Thabo Mbeki for negotiating with Côte d'Ivoire's major parties a renewed commitment to their latest peace accord, named the Pretoria Agreement, and called on the Ivorians to move quickly on implementation.

Completing 12 years of its work processing the claims of those who suffered damages during Iraq's 1990 invasion and occupation of Kuwait, the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) today awarded nearly $367 million to successful claimants, bringing the total it has awarded to about $52.5 billion.

The governing board of the United Nations programme to tackle the HIV/AIDS pandemic agreed today on measures to streamline the work of multilateral anti-AIDS organizations and strengthen the public health response of national institutions in developing countries.

As the United Nations main development body continued the ministerial segment of its 2005 policy session, today's keynote speaker called for more equitable and sustainable globalization to achieve the goals in poverty alleviation and institutional reform that will be the focus of the upcoming UN World Summit in September.

Emphasizing that malaria kills more than 1 million people every year, the United Nations today hailed United States President George W. Bush's major new commitment of more than $1 billion to fund prevention and treatment in Africa as a great step forward in fighting a disease that casts a terrible shadow across the continent.

The Prosecutors of the United Nations-affiliated criminal tribunals have met in Sierra Leone to review what has been learned from the many ad hoc criminal tribunals, including how best to deal with immunity, amnesty, child soldiers and forced marriages.

The Security Council and the United Nations envoy for southern Lebanon today deplored the Hezbollah militia's attacks from Lebanon against Israel and Israel's forceful response, calling on the Lebanese Government to end all attacks from its territory and on Israel to refrain from violating Lebanon's air space.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called for serious efforts to build affordable and efficient health systems in the developing world, particularly in Africa, which will require 1 million new health workers to meet internationally agreed development targets for the 21st century.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today hailed China's continuing emergence as a multilateral aid donor with the departure of a Chinese ship carrying 270 tons of canned fish for Sri Lankan victims of last December's devastating tsunami.