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As elections for regional councils in Iraq seemed to have passed peacefully today, the top United Nations envoy to the country warned of tough challenges ahead, including the need to heal ethnic divisions and for national reconciliation, that could jeopardize recent progress.

After a long night of voting the newly expanded Somali parliament elected opposition leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as the new president of the Horn of Africa nation, as the United Nations envoy to the country applauded the “open and transparent” nature of the voting.

The top United Nations official to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) stressed today that the world body is only involved in planning and coordinating the joint DRC/Rwanda military offensive targeting ethnic Rwandan Hutu militias.

The top United Nations envoy to Iraq today strongly condemned the murder of three candidates who were killed while campaigning for the provincial council elections slated for Saturday.

Greenhouse gases are putting the world’s oceans at risk of becoming too acidic to support coral reefs and marine life, warned over 150 scientists who today called on governments to take immediate action to sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions in a declaration drafted as a result of a United Nations conference.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today paid tribute to the late Lucille Mathurin Mair, a distinguished Jamaican diplomat and leading women’s rights advocate, who was also the first woman to be appointed as an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The military operation by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda against ethnic Rwandan Hutu militias is heightening tensions in South Kivu province, driving at least 5,000 people from their homes and threatening to impede the repatriation of Congolese refugees from neighbouring Tanzania, the United Nations reported today.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the agreement reached between the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Morgan Tsvangirai, and President Robert Mugabe''s ruling Zanu-PF to form a government of national unity in Zimbabwe.

More than 4,500 refugees from the northern Central African Republic (CAR), fearing attacks from armed groups and fighting between Government forces and rebels, have recently arrived in south-eastern Chad, the United Nations refugee agency said today.

The United Nations refugee agency said today there are signs that, for the first time in two years, Somalis displaced by fighting in Mogadishu are beginning to return to their devastated neighbourhoods, but warned that the situation in the capital remains very volatile.