300 million people are now directly affected by climate change, according to the first comprehensive study of its social impacts. Climate change claims 300,000 lives a year, and costs $125 billion, equivalent to the entire aid budget to the developing world.

Amidst ongoing Israeli bombings of Gaza, with the death toll of the bombardments up to 428 with another 2,100 people wounded, UN food agencies again warned that the people of Gaza are facing a heavy humanitarian crisis.

The U.N.'s top human rights official says the Israeli blockade of Gaza is depriving Palestinians of their most basic human rights.

Hunter College's Model UN team took home an Honorable Mention and a Verbal Accommodation this past weekend at the third annual Columbia Model UN Crisis Simulation.

The UN postal service announced on Wednesday that it would issue a set of six commemorative stamps designed by a South American artist to mark the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

There are 73 prisons in Kazakhstan, including 17 colony-settlements. Most of the places of detention are overcrowded. The total number of the convinced in the Republic of Kazakhstan exceeds 56.000. In 2007 only the number of sentenced increased for 4.300 (Regnum, March 19, 2008).

Experts estimate that $9 in productivity, health and other benefits are returned for every dollar invested installing toilets for people in countries that today are off-track in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sanitation.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nagorno Karabakh Republic comments on the resolution that Azerbaijan presented to UN and got adapted by the UN General Assembly.

The United Nations' top human rights official is quitting in few months. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that she will step down at the end of her current four-year term on June 30.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and foreign minister colleagues from France and Britain issued a statement Thursday urging global pressure on Burma's military government to end human rights abuses and return the country to civilian rule. The appeal was issued at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland after Rice's departure for Washington. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.

A senior U.S. official says a new U.N. sanctions resolution aimed at pressuring Iran to curb its sensitive nuclear activities will be "punitive," despite Russian remarks to the contrary.

In Kenya, the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) which said it won the December 27 elections, has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court in The Hague against President Mwai Kibaki and the government for crimes against humanity and state-sponsored terrorism. ODM secretary-general Peter Anyang Nyong’o said Kenyan police have killed more than 1,000 post-election protesters and wounded tens of thousands.