Geneva

Swiss-based South African explorer Mike Horn is set to attempt another Arctic first when he tries to reach the North Pole at night. Horn announced on Tuesday that he plans to start the 1 000km hike from Russia’s Cape Artichesky on about January 15, together with Norwegian friend Borge Ousland.

The head of the United Nations refugee agency said he was ”deeply shocked” that Egyptian riot police forcibly broke up a three-month protest outside UN offices in Cairo in which 10 Sudanese refugees were killed on Friday. ”I am deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic events early today in Cairo,” High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in Geneva.

The United Nations food aid agency said on Friday that it will be forced to halve rations for refugees in Zambia within days because of a funding shortfall. The World Food Programme (WFP) said it urgently needs ,5-million to feed about 82 000 Angolans and Congolese in the African country.

The Democratic Republic of Congo should benefit from an unprecedented -billion in relief aid next year in an attempt to shore up the outcome of elections in the country, the United Nations’s top aid official said on Monday. ”We aren’t taking this quantum leap in any other country,” said UN aid chief Jan Egeland.

United Nations human rights chief Louise Arbour warned on Thursday that Nepal faced the threat of a full-scale armed conflict, and called on authorities to join a ceasefire with Maoist rebels and allow free assembly. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights joined calls for Maoist rebels to extend a unilateral ceasefire which is due to end this week.

Europe’s illegal timber imports could speed up the disappearance of some forests within a decade, as well as increasing poverty in producer countries, the conservation organisation WWF warned on Tuesday. In a report, the WWF focused on trade between EU countries and timber regions in the Amazon Basin, the Congo Basin, East Africa, Indonesia and the Russian Federation.

Turkey could be banned from the 2010 World Cup after Fifa launched an investigation into the violence that followed their play-off with Switzerland in Istanbul on Wednesday. Switzerland lost a dramatic second leg 4-2 in Istanbul on Wednesday but advanced to the 2006 finals in Germany thanks to the away goals rule, having won the first game in Bern 2-0.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Wednesday urged donors to show the same kind of generosity towards earthquake-hit Pakistan as they did in the wake of last year’s Indian Ocean tsunami. Annan addressed a gathering of UN and other aid agencies, donor governments and Pakistani officials in Geneva.

This year’s seasonal ozone hole over Antarctica was the third largest on record, but forecasters are uncertain how it will behave in the future, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Tuesday. The hole peaked last month at almost 27-million square kilometres, and then began shrinking as usual, the WMO said in a statement.

About 220 Malians migrants marooned in Morocco after failing to reach Europe will be flown home on Thursday at their own request, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Thursday. The repatriation of the group of Malians, in and around the Moroccan city of Oujda, will be strictly voluntary, Jemini Pandya, a spokesperson for the Geneva-based IOM, said.

A current cholera epidemic spreading across West Africa is more serious than other recent outbreaks because of the fast spread of the disease in Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. ”Is it worse than in previous years? Yes, because of the big outbreaks it is worse,” said WHO’s cholera chief Claire-Lise Chaignat.

Between 400 and 500 people were killed in violence around elections in Togo in April, a United Nations report said on Monday, placing much of the blame on the West African state’s authorities. A culture of ethnically-tinged repression and military strength built up over four decades of iron-fisted rule by late president Gnassingbe Eyadema lay at the heart of violence, said a UN fact-finding mission.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday it is sending 100 000 malaria treatments to Niger, concerned that malnutrition in the sub-Saharan country could worsen the child death rate from the disease. ”Even under ordinary conditions in Niger, 50% of all deaths among children are from malaria,” the WHO said.

Residents of flood-stricken parts of Switzerland continued to suffer on Friday from the aftermath of a weeklong crisis that left at least six people dead or missing. About 400 inhabitants of the town of Brienz and a nearby village were evacuated overnight amid fears of a further landslide.

The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria said on Wednesday that it has frozen financing for Uganda after uncovering ”serious mismanagement” in the organisation overseeing its programmes there. The fund said the halt on its grants — which total -million — is temporary.

About 4 000 people have fled to Chad in the past eight days because of attacks by unidentified armed groups in the Central African Republic, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. The new arrivals told members of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that they were fleeing from violence in the northwestern Paoua region.

Increasing numbers of exiles are returning to Burundi, as confidence seems to be growing that peace has returned to their homeland, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. Last week alone, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees helped 4 200 Burundians go home from Tanzania and Rwanda.

About 5 000 displaced Sudanese have completed an epic 700km trek through dense forests and swamps, returning home after four years in exile, the aid agency that helped them said on Tuesday. The International Organisation for Migration said the group’s members were overjoyed to be back after their four-month journey.

A United Nations human rights expert on Monday sharply criticised major African leaders, saying their failure to condemn President Robert Mugabe’s housing demolition campaign in Zimbabwe is tantamount to a ”cover-up”. ”The silence of major governments in Africa continues to be shocking,” Miloon Kothari told journalists.

The aid agency Médécins sans Frontières (MSF) on Tuesday partly shut down operations in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because of ”limitless” violence, leaving more than 100 000 displaced people virtually without aid.

Two employees of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) kidnapped in Ituri in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo are in good health but are still being held hostage, the organisation said on Friday. MSF ”again appeals for the immediate and unconditional liberation of its co-workers and is concerned about this prolonged captivity”, it said in a statement.