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Slovakia today became the first country to ratify and become party to a treaty for cooperation in staving off the horrifying possibility of terrorism involving the use of nuclear devices, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in April 2005.

United Nations relief officials are calling for stepped-up humanitarian and peacekeeping measures to confront hunger and “horrific atrocities” in Katanga in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where fighting between the army and Mai Mai rebels has driven over 150,000 people from their homes in the last six months.

Describing the Democratic Republic of Congo as being at a “critical stage” ahead of landmark 18 June elections, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today met officials in the east of the country, saying that he felt Congolese were excited at the prospect of electing their own leaders and ending the long, bloody civil conflict.

A senior United Nations envoy held separate talks today with the King of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority President, to discuss the political process in Lebanon and wider regional issues in the Middle East.

After briefing the Security Council on his preliminary talks with Lebanese officials, a top United Nations legal official said today he was ready to hold negotiations on a possible international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others.

The top United Nations envoy in Afghanistan today voiced “great concern” for an Afghan apparently charged in court for converting from Islam to Christianity in a case that could strain the war-torn country’s relations with the international community.

The United Nations marked World Water Day today with calls for more equitable distribution and efficient use of a scarce resource; a grim reminder that 6,000 people, mostly children, die every day from dirty water; and a message of hope for one of the planet’s poorest regions, Africa, springing from its rich potential for irrigation.

A far wider range of species, some of them rare and endangered, may be affected by highly virulent avian flu than has previously been supposed, ranging from big cats like leopards and tigers to other mammals like martens, weasels and badgers to 80 per cent of all bird species, the United Nations environmental agency warned today.

More children are likely to die during early childhood in Haiti than in any other country in the Western Hemisphere, with one in eight likely to succumb before the age of five, according to a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report released today.

With HIV and AIDS spreading at a faster rate in East Asia than almost anywhere else in the world, children must be at the centre of a dramatically scaled up response, a United Nations official told the opening session of the first high level regional meeting focusing on children and AIDS today.