United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday called on China, whose rapid industrial growth has turned it into one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, to do more to tackle climate change. ”China is one of the biggest emitters and should take part … in common efforts to address these climate-change issues,” Ban told journalists.
The opening match and final of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa will take place at the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg. Fifa’s executive committee said on Wednesday the decision was made on Tuesday by the bureau of the World Cup Organising Committee.
Assets held by the world’s richest people rose by 11,4% last year, a study showed, but a slowing world economy might put a brake on the lavish expansion rate in coming years. Soaring commodity prices and equity markets and rapidly expanding emerging economies caused the global pool of wealth to expand to ,2-trillion at the end of 2006.
Recent floods in Asia and Britain and heatwaves in southern Europe show the world must be better prepared to cope with the impact of climate change, the United Nations’s top disaster-prevention official said on Wednesday. ”We cannot wait to be taken by surprise,” said Salvano Briceno, director of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
The United Nations health agency and the international Red Cross warned on Friday that hospitals in the Gaza Strip were being drawn into the fighting there and were fast becoming overwhelmed by the number of wounded. ”Shots were fired inside or around four hospitals in Gaza,” World Health Organisation spokesperson Fadela Chaib said.
South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu called on Wednesday on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to ensure that violations of human rights and humanitarian law in their region were punished. In a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, he also called for an international investigation of the Israeli shelling of the town of Beit Hanoun in Gaza last November.
Up to 400 child soldiers who had fought with the Islamic Courts Union have been discovered in Mogadishu by government forces, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said on Friday. They were found during an operation in the trouble-torn capital where the government and African Union forces are struggling to quell the remnants of an Islamic group.
Sepp Blatter was given a third term as president of world soccer’s governing body by acclamation after standing as the only candidate at Thursday’s Fifa congress. ”I accept this mandate and I thank you for your continuing trust in me,” he told delegates from Fifa’s 208 member associations who gave him a four-year term until 2011.
Fifa has banned international games from being played more than 2 500m above sea level. Fifa president Sepp Blatter said the decision was taken on Sunday after a review by the medical team for world soccer’s governing body. Blatter also reiterated his full support in South Africa’s ability to hold the 2010 World Cup.
A group of United Nations human rights experts on Wednesday began examining the situation in the strife-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, under the terms of a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council, a UN source said. The group is due to meet Sudanese government representatives on Thursday.
The United Nations Children’s Fund urged Western donors on Tuesday to put aside politics and back its health, nutrition and education projects in Zimbabwe, where nearly one in three children is stunted by malnutrition. Only ,6-million has been received towards an appeal of ,8-million launched six months ago, the agency said.
The United Nations human rights office on Friday accused Sudanese security forces of killing more than 100 people in indiscriminate machine-gun attacks on villages in South Darfur over a three-month period. At least 200Â 000 people have been killed and more than two million displaced since 2003 in an ethnic and political conflict.
The United Nations human rights chief on Friday said recent air raids by Sudanese forces on at least five Darfur villages appeared to be ”indiscriminate and disproportionate”, and violated international law. The attacks between April 19 and 29 have already been condemned by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, although Khartoum says they never took place.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter said on Wednesday that he had no doubts that the 2010 Soccer World Cup will take place in South Africa short of a natural disaster. ”I have no doubts, not one single doubt,” Blatter said, adding that he would publicly proclaim the world governing body’s confidence in South Africa’s ability to organise the event at Fifa’s congress from May 29.
International aid agencies reported scenes of chaos in Somalia on Tuesday as columns of people fled fierce fighting in the capital, Mogadishu, swelling the ranks of the 321 000 displaced since February. A United Nations refugee agency staffer reported a ”growing scene of chaos” on a main road out of Mogadishu.
A humanitarian catastrophe is looming in Somalia unless heavy fighting subsides and access for relief aid is opened up, a United Nations official said on Thursday. ”Unless something is done, the humanitarian crisis is going to turn into a catastrophe very soon,” Eric Laroche, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Somalia, told journalists.
Steel and coal from the Titanic have been transformed into a new line of luxury wristwatches that claim to capture the essence of the legendary ocean liner which sank in 1912. Watchmaker Romain Jerome SA billed its Titanic-DNA collection as among the most exclusive pieces showcased this week at the Baselworld trade fair.
Kenya’s football federation is once again facing the threat of suspension by world governing body Fifa over renewed allegations of political interference by the country’s government. Kenya was banned from all international competitions last October for breaching international agreements and for protracted problems in its troubled federation.
Global trade growth will slow slightly in 2007 to 6% as risks in financial and property markets and large commercial imbalances weigh on the global economy, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said on Thursday. In their first forecast for 2007, WTO economists said that the outlook for trade was based on expectations that the world economy would expand about 3% this year.
Up to 400 people, far more than previously feared, were killed in Chad during a cross-border attack by Sudanese Janjaweed militia about 10 days ago, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. The estimated toll followed a visit to the remote area on Sunday by a group of United Nations agencies which described the scene there as ”apocalyptic”.
The United Nations human rights chief, Louise Arbour, called on Friday for the Sudanese government to fully investigate rapes reportedly carried out by soldiers in several villages in Darfur in December. The victims were as young as 13 years old and at least two pregnant women were targeted in the violence.
The Central African Republic faces a mounting humanitarian disaster, with the lives of a quarter of its people disrupted by civil and regional warfare, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Wednesday. It said the north of the country is engulfed in a growing conflict between government forces and various rebel groups.
The Central African Republic faces a mounting humanitarian disaster, with the lives of a quarter of its people disrupted by civil and regional warfare, the United Nations children agency said on Wednesday. Unicef said the north of the country is engulfed in a growing conflict between government forces and rebel groups.
A new -million prize for good leadership could spur African heads of state to govern better, said former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, who will head the committee making the award. The Mo Ibrahim Prize would make African rulers more conscious of their records on human rights and democracy, said Annan.
The United Nations’s top human rights body on Friday kept up the pressure on Sudan over Darfur, but stopped short of explicitly blaming Khartoum for widespread killings and rape in the vast western region. The Human Rights Council asked a group of six of its special investigators on human rights violations to work with Sudan on implementingrecommendations.
A record 204 countries have entered the qualifying competition for the 2010 Soccer World Cup finals, Fifa said in a statement on Friday. The number beats the previous record of 199 teams that entered for the 2002 World Cup finals and only Bhutan, Brunei, Laos and the Philippines have not registered to take part.
At least 29 people were killed and 71 reported missing after knife-wielding smugglers forced about 450 Somali and Ethiopian migrants into the sea off Yemen, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said on Monday. The incident occurred last Thursday along a remote stretch of coastline.
World football’s governing body Fifa on Friday gave the thumbs up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, saying its doubts about security and logistics for the event have been dispelled. ”South Africa, we trust you,” Fifa President Sepp Blatter announced after a meeting of governing-body chiefs.
European Union states called on Wednesday for closer international surveillance of human rights in Darfur after a United Nations-commissioned report largely blamed the Sudanese government for continuing war crimes there. In a proposal to the UN Human Rights Council, they said a team of experts should be formed to keep pressure on Khartoum.
Meningitis has killed about 1 670 people this year in a string of African countries despite an extensive vaccination campaign, the World Health Organisation said on Friday. The deaths amount to more than a tenth of the 15 595 cases reported in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Uganda.
Africa’s leading cotton-producing countries — Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad — are upset over Washington’s continued failure to implement the commitments it undertook at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Hong Kong ministerial meeting in 2005 to address the distortions caused by the United States subsidies in the global cotton trade.
Sudan on Tuesday rejected as invalid the findings of a United Nations human rights mission that accused Khartoum of orchestrating and taking part in gross violations in Darfur. Sudan’s Justice Minister Mohamed Ali Elmardi also told the UN’s Human Rights Council, which had dispatched the mission, that the humanitarian situation in Sudan’s vast western region was ”much more stable now”.