United Nations

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - The Palestinians plan to go to the U.N. Security Council in an effort to secure international support for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, officials said on Sunday. Full Story »

ROME - Iran's first lady made rare public appearance and even more rare, a speech, at a Rome forum on the eve of a U.N. summit to fight hunger beginning Monday. Full Story »

RAMALLAH , West Bank (AFP) - The Palestinians intend to ask the UN Security Council to recognise their independence, a senior official said on Sunday amid mounting frustration with the stalled peace process. Full Story »

AHERO, Kenya - Joram Abiero remembers it was not too long ago that his neighbors went to bed hungry. Full Story »

ROME - The U.N. food chief said Saturday he was chilly but otherwise slept OK after his first night on a hunger strike to draw attention to the plight of the world's hungry before next week's U.N. food summit. Full Story »

GENEVA (Reuters) - Six aid groups have suspended operations in eastern Chad following the killing of one worker, the kidnapping of another and a spate of banditry, the United Nations said on Friday. Full Story »

DOHA (AFP) - Conference delegates meeting in the Qatari capital on Friday backed a tightening of the United Nations anti-corruption programme but lobby groups immediately slammed the deal as a lost opportunity. Full Story »

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is planning to join a 24-hour fast to spotlight the plight of the more than one billion people around the world who go to bed hungry every night. Full Story »

GENEVA (Reuters) - Some 240 villages in Saudi Arabia have been evacuated and scores of schools closed due to fighting which has now spilled over from Yemen, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday, citing local contacts. Full Story »

GENEVA - Significant progress has been made in removing land mines around the world, but the hidden devices killed more than 1,260 people last year, the International Campaign to Ban Land mines said Thursday. Full Story »

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia brought what it called threats of war from neighboring Venezuela to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday after Hugo Chavez, leader of the neighboring country, told his army to get ready to fight. Full Story »

MEXICO CITY - Business groups in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez said Wednesday they are calling for United Nations peacekeepers to quell the drug-related violence that has given their city one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Full Story »

NEW YORK - In a Nov. 9 story about envelopes containing suspicious powder that were mailed in Manhattan, The Associated Press, relying on information from New York City police, erroneously described the recipients. The envelopes were sent to the French, Austrian and Uzbekistan permanent missions to the United Nations, not those nations' consulates. Full Story »

ROME - The head of a U.N. food agency called on people around the world Wednesday to join him in a day of fasting to highlight the plight of undernourished people, whose ranks have surged past 1 billion in the global economic crisis. Full Story »

NEW YORK - A fifth foreign mission to the United Nations has received an envelope with a suspicious white powder inside, police say. Full Story »

UNITED NATIONS - The United States accused Iran Tuesday of violating a U.N. arms embargo by secretly sending weapons to Syria in a cargo ship seized by Israel, a U.S. official said. Full Story »

GENEVA - The World Health Organization says it expects GlaxoSmithKline to complete shipping donations of swine flu vaccine to poor countries by May 2010. Full Story »