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The United Nations-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is drastically increasing the number of insecticide-treated bed nets for families at risk from malaria, a key tool to preventing the mosquito-borne disease which kills two people and infects 1,000 others every minute, mostly in developing countries.

The Carpathian region of Europe, a vast area of forests, streams and mountains that is home to brown bears, wolves, bison, lynx, imperial eagles and other globally threatened birds, received further protection at a United Nations-backed conference today with the adoption of immediate steps to promote environment-friendly tourism and conservation there.

The United Nations war crimes tribunal for Rwanda today sentenced a former Roman Catholic priest who encouraged and directed the demolition of a church where about 2,000 Tutsis had tried to take shelter during the 1994 genocide – killing all those inside – to 15 years’ jail.

The United Nations Human Rights Council today agreed to dispatch a five-member high-level mission to Darfur to assess the situation in the war-torn Sudanese region, the scene of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, mass rape, massive forced displacement and other abuses during the past three years.

Two children die every hour from easily preventable pneumococcal diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean, and there are more than 1.6 million cases of the illnesses that include pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis as well as severe ear infections, sinusitis and bronchitis, according to a United Nations-backed report released today.

After two days of the General Assembly’s annual debate on reforming the 15-member Security Council, the Assembly President has outlined three possible options on how to proceed, noting that while consensus appears to exist on the need to expand its membership, a “divergence of views” continues on how best to do this.

The United Nations country team in Manila has requested $2.6 million for rapid response projects from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) after several typhoons wreaked havoc on the Philippines in recent weeks.

The top United Nations envoy for Somalia today appealed to the warring parties to settle their differences peacefully as the impoverished African country, already torn apart by 16 years of factional fighting, faced the additional challenge of devastating floods that have uprooted hundreds of thousands of people.

Welcoming the recent progress on identifying and recovering the remains of Kuwaitis and other nationals missing since the 1990 Gulf War, the Security Council today expressed concern over the fate of nearly 400 others whose whereabouts remain unknown.

Resolving Kosovo’s future status as soon as possible would bring benefits to the entire Balkan region, while any further delays would only raise tensions and help the cause of extremists, the senior United Nations envoy to the province told the Security Council today.