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International Affairs: Now the United Nations is sounding alarms about problems in the world's food supply. Typical. These people always need a crisis to justify the expansion of their powers.Jacques Diouf, head of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, worries there is "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food." The International Herald Tribune reports that FAO's "food price index rose by more than 40% this year, compared with 9% the year before" — a rate, according to Diouf, "that was already unacceptable." The prices of wheat and oilseeds have reached record highs. On the...

NEW YORK — Did the United Nations Development Program use an American charitable organization to secretly funnel nearly $2 million, and perhaps much more, to North Korea — over and above the millions in hard currency it is already known to have given the Kim Jong-il regime in violation of its own rules?UNDP documents seen by FOX News raise those questions, and others about the relationship between UNDP and the humanitarian group Mercy Corps, also known as Mercy Corps International. The documents show millions of dollars allocated to Mercy Corps International for North Korea seem to have escaped normal UNDP...

BALI, Indonesia - World powers meeting at a UN climate change conference in Indonesia this week won't be able to craft a meaningful plan to address global warming without co-operation from the United States, the top emitter of greenhouse gases, the UN's climate chief said Sunday. The United States refused to sign the last major international treaty on reducing greenhouse gases, undermining its effectiveness. Delegates from 190 countries will gather on the resort island of Bali on Monday for one of the largest global warming conferences ever, bringing together about 10,000 people including Hollywood luminaries, former vice-president Al Gore, fishermen...

WASHINGTON -- Now that we are stuffed like turkeys, consider that Thanksgiving is celebrated as an official national holiday in only two countries -- the United States and Canada. In both nations, it is uniquely mandated as a day for offering thanks and praise to God. Interestingly, there is no mention of God or thanksgiving in the U.N. Charter. Nonetheless, United Nations officials apparently take full advantage of the holiday as a respite from the grueling work of international diplomacy. Calls to the secretary-general's office (212-963-7162) on Thursday, Nov. 22, were unanswered. One can only wonder whether the striped pants...

Recent U.S. policies and behavior have “greatly diminished” the nation’s standing in the world, United Nations advocate Gillian Sorensen said Wednesday. The U.N., she said, provides an opportunity to restore a spirit of international cooperation with the accompanying benefit of burden-sharing. “It’s time for us to join the rest of the world,” Sorensen told a University of Nebraska College of Law audience. Sorensen is senior adviser and national advocate for the United Nations Foundation and former assistant U.N. secretary general. She is the wife of Ted Sorensen, the former aide and adviser to President John F. Kennedy and a UNL...

Anne Bayefsky, editor of website Eye on the UN, writing in The Wall Street Journal on the hopeless United Nations WHAT is it about standing up for human rights that the UN finds so difficult? A year ago, then secretary-general Kofi Annan dissolved the UN Commission on Human Rights under pressure after the commission discredited itself repeatedly, even electing a Libyan chairman. Now its successor, the UN Human Rights Council, is proving itself to be worse than what it replaced. This week the council marked its first anniversary in Geneva by adopting an agenda that is an affront to the...

UNITED NATIONS May 31 (UPI) -- The United Nations called for an indoor smoking ban on World No Tobacco Day while not enforcing a ban on smoking at its own headquarters. The World Health Organization said Thursday it wants an end to workplace smoking to protect people from secondhand smoke, while U.N. staffers are regularly exposed to smoke at U.N. World Headquarters in New York. In New York City, smoking is banned in all workplaces. The U.N. building is exempt from local laws because of its international designation. There is a General Assembly resolution banning smoking in the building, but...

Climate Panel Recommends Global Temperature Ceiling, Carbon Tax By Peter Heinlein United Nations 28 February 2007 A panel of scientists has presented the United Nations a detailed plan for combating climate change. VOA's correspondent at the U.N. Peter Heinlein reports the strategy involves reaching a global agreement on a temperature ceiling. A group of 18 scientists from 11 countries is calling on the international community to act quickly to prevent catastrophic climate change. In a report requested by the United Nations and partially paid for by the privately funded U.N. Foundation, the panel warns that any delay could lead to...

UNITED NATIONS - South Korea's Ban Ki-moon laid out an ambitious agenda as the next U.N. secretary-general, promising to become personally engaged in efforts to bring peace to the Mideast and Darfur and to clean up the world body. The 62-year-old career diplomat, who was sworn in Thursday to a five-year term that begins Jan. 1, also said he plans "concerted action" to achieve U.N. development goals that include cutting extreme poverty by half and universal education by 2015. Calling himself "a harmonizer and a bridge-builder," Ban said he also wants to repair relations between the U.N.'s rich and poor...

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 18 (UPI)-Israel's ambassador walked out on the United Nations session that resulted in a strong call to Israel to end its military operations in the Gaza Strip.The 192-member General Assembly voted Friday night 156-7, with six abstentions, in favor of the non-binding resolution in an emergency special session.(Snip)Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman conducted a news conference nearby and blasted the session as a "farce" and a "circus," Ha'aretz reported Saturday.

UNITED NATIONS (AP)-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called President Bush "the devil" in a speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, making the sign of the cross in a dramatic getsure and accusing him of "talking as if he owned the world."

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Sunday afternoon following a meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Iranian leader had expressed willingness to cooperate with the international community to reach a solution to the escalating crisis around Iran's nuclear enrichment program. However, Annan stressed, Iran remained steadfast in its refusal to cease enrichment ahead of talks.

What's going on behind the ever-shifting scenes in the Mideast? The only thing clear at this confused point is that it's awfully crowded back there. At the United Nations, diplomats try to hammer out a cease-fire that would end this war without leading to another. It's been nearly two years now since U.N. Resolution 1559 was passed declaring that all militias in Lebanon, including Hezbollah's, would be disbanded. The current resolution in the works will also prove meaningless if it's not enforced. Every time John Bolton appears before the cameras, some of us do feel more hopeful. Our man at...

Crisis management experts are calling for the creation of a "United Nations army"-an international rapid reaction force that could be deployed within 48 hours to intervene in emergency situations around the globe.Composed of up to 15,000 military, police and civilian staff, including medics, the proposed force would be recruited from professionals hired by the U.N. from many countries, and based at designated U.N. sites.

The United States demanded Wednesday that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan repudiate a speech in which his No. 2 official broke with tradition and accused the United States of undermining the United Nations. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton called the speech by Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown a "very, very grave mistake" that could undermine Annan's own efforts to push through an ambitious agenda of reform at the world body. "I spoke to the secretary-general this morning. I said 'I've known you since 1989 and I'm telling you this is the worst mistake by a senior U.N. official that I have seen...

<p>Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader who orchestrated the Balkan wars of the 1990s and was on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his prison cell at the U.N. detention center near The Hague, the U.N. tribunal said Saturday. He was 65.</p>

ADLAI STEVENSON once argued that a politician is a statesman who “approaches every question with an open mouth”. If the performance of Jan Egeland, of the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, is an indication, the same is true of those paid by the United Nations. A week ago, despite just one day having passed since the Asian tsunami, with the reported death toll one tenth of what it is now believed to be, and ignoring the fact that public holidays are never the easiest times to start organising an aid effort, Mr Egeland saw fit to dismiss...

UNITED NATIONS, (AFP) - The United Nations turns 60 in 2005 after a bruising year that has seen the organisation battered and demoralised by a string of scandals that have damaged the UN's image. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is hoping to clinch an ambitious reform package next year that would be the UN's most radical overhaul since its creation out of the devastation of World War II. But Annan's legacy, which could shine if he succeeds in pushing through the reforms, could also be marred by a difficult 2004 that has brought questions about his leadership into the international...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In wine, the experts say, vintage is everything. If that's the case, 2004 has turned out to be a very bad year for the United Nations. But the United Nations' vinegar may yet prove to be a very good thing for the rest of us -- particularly if the decision is made to break open the casks, pour out the putrid contents and start over. For adherents of "internationalism" and "collective security" at the United Nations, 2004 has been a tough year. The "Oil-for-Food" scandal, a story that first broke on Fox News, now has "legs" of...

LONDON (AFP) - United Nations (news - web sites) Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), under fire for his part in the controversial Iraqi oil-for-food programme, said in an interview with the Financial Times that he did not intend to resign. "I think resignation is comparatively easy," Annan told the journalist who asked him if he considered resigning. "It is much more difficult to stay on and continue to do the job you are elected to do, and focus on the important agenda of the organisation and the membership." Annan has been under mounting pressure in the United...