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United Nations peacekeeping forces in Côte d'Ivoire today entered the town of Agboville, 70 kilometres north of Abidjan, the strife-torn West African country's major city, after being blocked for 48 hours in their efforts to help restore calm following attacks by unidentified assailants.

The United Nations World Tourism Organization (WTO) has offered Egypt its full support in helping the country to surmount the negative impact on its flourishing tourism industry from Saturday’s terrorist bombings at its Sharm el-Sheikh resort.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has paid tribute to British epidemiologist Richard Doll, whose pioneering research established a link between tobacco use and major diseases that kill millions of people each year, particularly lung cancer and other smoking-related illnesses.

Despite progress in the World Bank's Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, many African countries are unlikely to manage their debt situations or achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at fighting a host of socio-economic ills, according to a report discussed at a United Nations conference today.

Pushing ahead with Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s call for global early-warning systems covering all countries and all hazards, the United Nations today announced the convening of a new conference next year to reinforce lessons learned from last December Indian Ocean tsunami with fresh initiatives in high priority countries.

Real success in the global response to the AIDS epidemic can only be achieved if a long-term perspective is fully integrated into planning and action, the head of the United Nations AIDS programme said at a conference taking place in Rio de Janeiro this week.

After more than doubling food production by integrated teams of refugees and their hosts in Zambia’s Western province, the United Nations refugee agency said today that it is expanding the integration programme to the North-Western province of the landlocked southern African country.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan today welcomed the prospective return of Iraq's Sunni Arab representatives to the committee drafting the strife-torn country's new constitution following their withdrawal last week after two of their members were assassinated, and pledged continued United Nations support for the political transition.

Acting on a range of measures recommended by the top United Nations human rights body, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has approved guidelines on victims’ rights to a remedy and reparation for gross human rights violations, as well as the creation of a working group to probe the use of mercenaries to derail human rights.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan warmly welcomed the resumption of the six-party talks in Beijing on the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea's (DPRK) nuclear weapons programme and said he would continue to work closely with the parties on this challenging set of issues.