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Despite “great achievements” in Nepal's peace process, controversies between the two former combatant forces, the Nepalese and Maoist armies, and other problems may be indicative of the difficulties that lie ahead, the top United Nations official in the country warned the Security Council today.

With the number of undernourished around the world rising to almost 1 billion in 2008, threatening one of the United Nations’ prime goals of halving global hunger by 2015, heads of State and other top leaders will gather in Madrid later this month to draw up plans to boost global food production.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today he believed the elements for an end to the violence in Gaza, which has claimed over 1,000 lives and is now in its 20th day, are in place, even as he expressed “outrage” over the latest shelling of United Nations premises in the Strip.

Having a child remains one of the biggest health risks for women worldwide, and this is especially true for women in least developed countries who are 300 times more likely to die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications than women in developed countries, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a new report released today.

Thanks largely to a multi-million dollar donation from the Iraqi Government, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is able to complete its operation feeding hundreds of thousands of people uprooted by the violence in the strife-ridden country.

A large cluster of astronomers have been sighted in Paris today at the official launch of the International Year of Astronomy, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said.

After the second time in a week that rockets were fired from Lebanese territory towards Israel yesterday, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and Lebanese armed forces found a launching site and disarmed other rockets that were about to fire, a UN spokesperson said.

Zimbabwe’s cholera outbreak, which has claimed more than 2,200 lives, is still spreading out of control, while humanitarian agencies are boosting their activity in response, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today.

Stressing that homophobia has no place in the response to the AIDS epidemic, the United Nations today deplored the jailing of nine gay men who were members of a group working to provide condoms and HIV treatment in Senegal, and said it is working with a coalition of partners to ensure their release.

Tensions between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda are beginning to thaw as on-going peace talks, aimed at ending fighting in the east of the DRC between the Government and the main rebel militia in the region, are making slow progress, the United Nations envoy facilitating negotiations told the Security Council today.