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Poultry consumption is likely to fall this year in many countries in Europe, Middle East, and Africa that have been hit by bird flu due to unfounded fears of disease transmission, with declining poultry prices threatening industry profitability worldwide, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today.

The joint mission to Central Africa by the heads of three United Nations humanitarian agencies is now in the eastern region of the war-shattered Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where they plan to meet refugees returning home by boat from neighbouring Tanzania.

In the latest grim episode of asylum-seekers and migrants dying while trying to cross the Gulf of Aden from Somalia to Yemen, the United Nations refugee agency reported today that smugglers forced 137 men, women and children into deep waters off the Yemeni coast, killing at least 33, with another 30 missing.

Some 73,000 South Sudanese refugees currently in Ethiopia can start going home thanks to an agreement signed by the United Nations refugee agency and the Governments of Ethiopia and Sudan.

After an earthquake rocked this Southern African nation last week and left at least four people dead, the Mozambique Government has asked the United Nations for technical support to better manage risks and disasters, the UN’s relief coordination unit said today.

With half the world’s 1.2 billion poor depending for their livelihoods on harvesting wild natural resources, ranging from cocoa and rubber to oils and spices, in a trade valued at $4.7 billion annually, the United Nations environmental agency today released a blueprint for a fair deal to lift them out of poverty.

Welcoming the decision of the European Union (EU) to provide emergency assistance to the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations top envoy for Middle East peace said today that the next choices that Hamas makes are the single most important variables in the future of the region.

A forum of key countries helping Burundi recover from years of civil war and violence met in Bujumbura, the capital today, and heard an appeal from United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to work actively for lasting development in the small Central African country.

Saying he was “appalled” by the kidnapping and murder of a three-person crew from Al Arabiya television in Iraq last week, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has called for a halt to attacks on journalists, terming them an essential element in establishing democracy.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and President Tassos Papadopoulos of Cyprus agreed in Paris today that demilitarization, de-mining and technical talks on a range of issues would greatly improve the atmosphere for talks on reuniting the island.