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Capping off days of intensive negotiations, the General Assembly has adopted a two-year budget of $4.17 billion for the United Nations, with the United States casting the lone negative vote.

The United Nations and the Netherlands today signed an agreement to base in The Hague the court to judge recent assassinations in Lebanon, including that of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

Faced with threats of unwarranted taxes and harassment by an armed rebel group in Burundi, United Nations humanitarian officials are seeking better access to the province around Bujumbura, capital of the small Central African country that is emerging from decades of ethnic conflict.

The continued looming threat of a flu pandemic, outbreaks of Ebola, Marburg and other infectious diseases, and high female mortality rates during pregnancy and childbirth in developing countries are among the issues that mark 2007, according to the United Nations health agency.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today painted a bleak picture of the situation of children in Iraq, where an estimated 2 million boys and girls continue suffer from poor nutrition, disease and interrupted education.

United Nations relief agencies are providing food and hygiene items in the Dominican Republic, where more than 60,000 people remain displaced following Tropical Storm Olga, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported today.

An additional 10,000 people have reportedly fled Somalia’s capital Mogadishu due to ongoing fighting which has claimed the lives of at least six people and injured some 50 others this week alone, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Poland has witnessed a sharp rise in the number of asylum seekers in the latter part of this year, particularly Chechens and Ingush from Russia, owing to fears that the country’s accession to the European border-free zone today will lead to stricter controls, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

A United Nations expert on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) today praised Mongolia’s treatment of asylum seekers from that country and its cooperation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the issue.

The Security Council today extended for a final period of nine months the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Office in Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL), during which the operation would take steps to progressively reduce its strength with a view to completing its mandate by next September.