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Erratic weather patterns in southern Africa, from searing droughts to raging floods, have devastated harvest prospects for millions of people and could spell yet another year of widespread food shortages, the severely under-funded United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today.

The United Nations refugee agency is working with the Bangladeshi government, donors and partners to find more permanent housing for some 6,000 Muslim refugees from Myanmar whose riverbed settlement is threatened by a crackdown on illegal structures.

While developing economies in Asia and the Pacific are projected to grow by an impressive 7.3 per cent this year, such growth is driven by high consumption of resources and cannot be sustained long-term, the head of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) warned today, as he called on all countries to adopt sustainable development strategies.

The Board of Governors of the United Nations atomic watchdog agency today suspended 22 technical aid projects in Iran in conformity with sanctions imposed by the Security Council over a programme that Tehran says is for producing energy but which critics maintain is for making nuclear weapons.

The United Nations envoy for the status of Kosovo has submitted revised plans after reporting that Serbia and the ethnic Albanian-led government remain diametrically opposed over the future of the Albanian-majority Serbian province, which the world body has run since Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid ethnic fighting.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences called for entries for the 2007 International Children’s Day of Broadcasting (ICDB) award honoring broadcasters for programming best reflecting the theme Unite for Children. Unite Against AIDS.

The United Nations Democracy Fund, an initiative which supports projects to strengthen new and restored democracies, received a $10 million contribution from Japan, and the country now joins the ranks of the United States, India and Qatar as the Fund’s largest donators.

As the rest of the world marked International Women’s Day today, girls at a United Nations refugee camp tucked away in a north-eastern corner of Kenya celebrated one small step for a woman, one giant leap for Somalia’s womankind with a special volleyball tournament.

Hundreds of Arab militia in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region recently surrounded a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) after abducting two civilians from inside the camp, forcing the temporary suspension of humanitarian work there, the United Nations mission to the impoverished country said today.

In a further effort to resolve differences that have stalled the long-awaited trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders, accused of mass killings and other horrific crimes during the 1970s in Cambodia, a judicial review committee is again meeting this week and next in the capital Phnom Penh, a United Nations spokesperson said today.