Patrick Worsnip

The UN Security Council has announced it will lift sanctions on Libya's central bank and the Libyan Foreign Bank to economically uplift the country.

In its first substantive action on Syria's five-month-old uprising, the UN Security Council on Wednesday condemned Damascus' crackdown on civilians.

The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday backed Alassane Ouattara as the winner of Côte d'Ivoire's disputed November 28 presidential election.

United States President Barack Obama called on Wednesday for new ways to tackle global poverty.

More than 2 000 people around the world are dying from armed violence each day, on average, advocacy groups said on Tuesday.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Wednesday he was giving the US Obama administration time to lift sanctions.

The UN Security Council called early on Sunday for an immediate end to all violence in Gaza after the death toll climbed past 270.

The UN Security Council considered on Monday a plan to disband its peacekeeping mission to the volatile border between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Accusing Sudan's ''entire state apparatus'' of involvement in crimes in Darfur, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor said on Thursday he would seek new indictments next month against senior Khartoum officials.

In an apparent breakthrough for delivering help to millions of Burma's cyclone survivors, the military government agreed to allow in ''all'' aid workers, United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon said on Friday. The UN Secretary General met junta supremo Than Shwe in his remote new capital of Naypyidaw for more than two hours to ask him to permit more foreign expertise.

With an impassive handshake, BUrma junta supremo Than Shwe greeted Ban Ki-moon in his remote new capital on Friday at the apex of a high-stakes aid mission by the United Nations chief for the victims of Cyclone Nargis. The 75-year-old Senior General's stony-faced silence gave no clues as to whether he would overcome his deep suspicions of the outside world.

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon flew to Burma on Thursday to press the ruling generals to allow a full-blown international aid effort for 2,4-million people left destitute by Cyclone Nargis. The government's official toll is 77 738 people killed and 55 917 missing, and it also estimates the damage to the economy at -billion.