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Actors, rappers and environmentalists are scaling Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to spotlight the global clean water crisis, which affects more than 1 billion people worldwide, and to raise funds for the United Nations refugee agency and other humanitarian organizations.

Despite the difficult operating environment in Somalia, marked by threats and violence against aid workers, the United Nations has no intention of abandoning its assistance to the country, a humanitarian official with the world body affirmed today.

Presidential and legislative elections are the major challenge facing Haiti in 2010 and the United Nations will provide the necessary security and logistical support to further their success, the world body’s top official in the crisis-prone country told his first news conference of the new year.

The United Nations is mobilizing the fashion and cosmetics industries in an “eco-fashion” battle to curb the unprecedented loss of the world’s biodiversity, from the over-harvesting of wild species for their skins or natural fibres to the pollution caused by manufacturing processes.

The head of the United Nations agency mandated with protecting press freedom today condemned the killing of Bobi Tsankov, a journalist who had taken on organized crime in Bulgaria, and called on authorities to bring the perpetrators – who committed the act in the centre of the capital in broad daylight – to justice.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today pledged to continue his efforts to advance the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world, noting that a number of events over the next few months offer an opportunity to build on the “encouraging” developments of last year.

Some 75 local civil servants from eastern Chad have wrapped up a one-month United Nations-backed training programme aimed at boosting the number of professional magistrates in the strife-torn region, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) announced today.

Actress and Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman is set to help break ground today on a new centre located in San Francisco to combat violence against women, part of an initiative between the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and Family Violence Prevention Fund.

The United Nations envoy for children and armed conflict today welcomed the beginning of the discharge of nearly 3,000 young people from the Maoist cantonments in Nepal.

Hollywood actor Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith are raising funds to help the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) tackle hunger in Haiti by auctioning a special artwork signed by music artists who performed at the Nobel Peace Prize concert they co-hosted in Oslo last month.