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Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned “in the strongest terms” the murder of a United Nations worker in western Pakistan and joined the world body’s top refugee official in calling for the immediate release of another staff member apparently abducted in the same attack.

The Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Myanmar continued his visit to the South-East Asian nation today, meeting with Government officials and opposition and other political parties, including with detained pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

A measles outbreak in Germany has highlighted the need for vaccination reminders and better information for parents, after a study showed that at least 80 per cent of 614 cases in Duisburg in 2006 involved people who had not been vaccinated, according to research published today in the Bulletin of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO).

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to release all prisoners arrested over the past few months, following the agreement between the governing and opposition parties to form a government.

The top United Nations humanitarian official said today that the success of relief operations in Gaza – the site of Israel’s recent three-week military offensive – hinges on three factors: access for aid agencies, a durable ceasefire and no political interference from any party.

A United Nations humanitarian spokesman in Sri Lanka today voiced concern over the shelling of a hospital in the zone of fighting between the Government and rebel forces, emphasizing the ever-increasing threat to the lives of some 250,000 civilians trapped by the conflict.

The top United Nations man in Baghdad knows death and violence up close.

The renovation project designed to make United Nations Headquarters in New York more modern, safe and sustainable will result in a significant “greening” of the landmark complex that will reduce energy consumption and operating costs, as well as lower the world body’s carbon footprint, the official in charge of the overhaul said today.

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan is set to shrink this year, which could deal a major blow to the illicit drug industry, the top United Nations official to the war-torn country said today.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today urged newly elected President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed of Somalia to reach out to all people and parties in the strife-ridden country.