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The United Nations General Assembly has postponed by a year any decision about an international convention on reproductive human cloning, while it has also adopted 41 resolutions and two decisions on subjects ranging from decolonization to outer space.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked the Security Council to extend the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Golan Heights, which has monitored the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces in the area since 1974, for another six months.

The governing conference of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has approved a 2-year budget of $749 million, a cut of $51 million in real terms due to inflation and changes in currency exchange rates.

Natural disasters, the lion's share of them weather-related catastrophes, cost the world over $60 billion in 2003, up from around $55 billion the year before, and are part of a worrying trend that is being linked with climate change, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.

Using the original computer on which the Internet was created, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today sent an electronic message to young people around the world urging them to keep communicating with each other to build bridges of understanding between cultures and societies.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission monitoring the Israeli-Lebanese border has called for all parties in the area to exercise caution after Israel’s Defence Force reported to the mission that it shot and killed two armed men who were approaching the technical fence along the border.

Warning of an urgent need for real progress in dealing with the causes and consequences of climate change, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on governments to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and to do much more besides.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan hosted a luncheon today for the heads of state and government participating in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, one of many official engagements on his program today.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today named veteran relief coordinator Ross Mountain as his acting Special Representative for Iraq to replace Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was among those killed in the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August.

Local community access to information technologies is essential if the digital divide between rich and poor is to be bridged, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said today in a message to mark the launch of 150 community multimedia centres (CMCs) in Africa.