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BRASILIA (Reuters) - Unless the international community agrees to cut carbon emissions by half over the next generation, climate change is likely to cause large-scale human and economic setbacks and irreversible ecological catastrophes, a U.N. report said on Tuesday. The U.N. Human Development Report issued one of the strongest warnings yet of the lasting impact of climate change on living standards and a strong call for urgent collective action. "We could be on the verge of seeing human development reverse for the first time in 30 years," Kevin Watkins, lead author of the report, told Reuters. The report, presented in...

In February 2006 Mark Malloch Brown, then the UN Secretary General’s chief of staff, was interviewed by Claudia Rosett at the UN, and found himself increasingly furious at the line of questioning about his housing arrangements in New York. Malloch Brown had caused controversy with his decision to live on the smart country estate of George Soros, the financier who forced Britain out of the ERM in 1992, and a major donor to left-wing causes. Finally, the UN mandarin barked that he was doing ‘God’s work’ before storming out of the interview. Malloch Brown might well consider himself to be...

U.N. agency may have hit back at N.Korea whistleblower By Patrick Worsnip Mon Aug 20, 7:45 PM ET The U.N. ethics office found evidence that the United Nations Development Program retaliated against an employee who tried to expose its alleged wrongdoing in North Korea, a letter leaked on Monday said. The letter sent on Friday by the office to UNDP chief Kemal Dervis is likely to lend fresh ammunition to the United States in a long-running dispute with UNDP over its North Korean operations, centering on claims of financial irregularities. The agency has denied that it fired Artjon Shkurtaj, a...

Why was the U.N. helping Pyongyang obtain militarily useful computers and GPS systems? Of all the evidence turned up by the U.S. concerning irregularities in the United Nations Development Program's operations in North Korea, some of the most disturbing concerns the transfer of dual-use technology. As reported last month, the U.S. has uncovered documents showing the UNDP procured and delivered to North Korea in May 2006 technology that could be used for military purposes: global positioning system (GPS) equipment, a portable high-end spectrometer and a large quantity of high-specification computer hardware. According to packing lists and confirmation receipts, the items...

The United Nations' Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal is now six months old, so it's a good time to assess progress, if that's the right word. The evidence of misdeeds at the U.N. Development Program in North Korea continues to mount, but there's still no "urgent" and "external" inquiry, as ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January. Now the U.S. has uncovered evidence that in addition to transferring millions of dollars in cash that may have gone to help prop up Kim's grotesque regime, the UNDP also transferred dual-use technology. It did so without bothering to secure a U.S....

US House cuts UNDP NKorea funding Thu Jun 21, 8:33 PM ET US lawmakers Thursday voted to cut 20 million dollars from US funding for the UN Development Program, over claims Stalinist North Korea plundered money from the organization. The move passed by the House of Representatives by unanimous voice vote as an amendment to a bill funding the State Department and US foreign operations. "Rather than cooperating with US officials in investigating these allegations, UNDP officials have circled the wagons and resorted to rhetorical denials in the press," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs committee....

U.S. cites nuke-related entity in N. Korea's UNDP fund diversion (Kyodo) _ The United States suspects North Korea has diverted funds provided by the U.N. Development Program to an entity affiliated with a North Korean bank believed involved in Pyongyang's nuclear development, according to copies of U.S. letters to the UNDP obtained Friday. Commenting on the reported U.S. letters, the UNDP said it is "deeply committed to addressing immediately all allegations," but noted that Washington has yet to provide any documents to prove the alleged fund diversion. The entity in question, Zang Lok, is affiliated with Tanchon Commercial Bank, a...

BERLIN - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday she led a congressional delegation to Greenland, where lawmakers saw "firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality," and she hoped the Bush administration would consider a new path on the issue. After meeting with German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Pelosi praised Berlin for its leadership on the issue. Her trip comes ahead of next week's Group of Eight summit and a climate change meeting next month involving the leading industrialized nations and during a time of increased debate over what should succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that caps...

With $20 billion per annum in public funding the modern earth cult can easily spend some nickels to attract cult members. I can well imagine that soon, on prime time TV, [or a gay sitcom], will be the tax-payer funded eco-cult recruitment, 'You must join us' advert. It will show a wide expanse of meadow populated by masses of automatons with arms outstretched resembling a fuehrer cult rally. Their laconic voices will repeat the intonation, 'save the earth goddess...save the earth goddess...' The camera will sweep in and out showing mindless, fixated faces with dilated pupils staring upwards, saliva seeping...

The United Nations Development Programme office in Pyongyang, North Korea, sits in a Soviet-style compound. Like clockwork, a North Korean official wearing a standard-issue dark windbreaker and slacks would come to the door each business day. He would take a manila envelope stuffed with cash--a healthy portion of the UN's disbursements for aid projects in the country--and leave without ever providing receipts. According to sources at the UN, this went on for years, resulting in the transfer of up to $150 million in hard foreign currency to the Kim Jong Il government at a time when the United States was...

SEOUL (AFP) - The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has suspended operations in North Korea following US claims that its funds were being diverted to prop up the communist regime. In January the US delegate to the UN Mark Wallace charged that North Korea had, since 1998 and with the complicity of UNDP, "systematically perverted" the aid programme "for the benefit of the Kim Jong Il regime, rather than the people of North Korea." The UNDP said in a statement seen Monday on its website: "As of March 1, 2007, UNDP has no choice but to suspend its operations in...

The first clue that the U.N. Development Program in Pyongyang needs to be looked at came from someone in the American intelligence community, which is more interested in this dangerous weapons-proliferating corner of the "axis of evil" than in other far-flung countries where the United Nations's "good offices" operate, a source has told me. On Friday, UNDP officials reacted with their typical defense: shooting in all directions. As a former American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, told me yesterday, "They always blame an American first." American-controlled agencies do it, too, UNDP officials said. Their board of directors, which...

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 19 (Reuters) - The U.N. Development Program, under U.S. pressure, is changing the way it funds its programs in North Korea to make sure Pyongyang doesn't siphon off funds for its own use, UNDP officials said on Friday. The United States said North Korea's demands on the program, including payments in hard currency and hiring of local officials, may have led to millions of dollars being used to benefit North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, according to a letter obtained by Reuters. The UNDP also plans to conduct a full outside audit of its activities in North Korea,...

Excerpt - UNITED NATIONS (AP)--The U.S. accused the U.N. development agency of funneling millions of dollars in hard currency to North Korea with little assurance that leader Kim Jong Il used the money to help his people instead of diverting it to other activities including nuclear weapons, according to U.S. officials and letters obtained Friday. U.S. deputy ambassador Mark Wallace charged that the agency's program in North Korea operated "in blatant violation of U.N. rules" for years. He demanded an immediate external audit of the program going back to at least 1998 that would focus on U.S. concerns that Pyongyang...

A new report from the United Nations Development Programme has demanded a big increase in spending to provide clean water. The UNDP wants another $4bn (£2bn) a year spent, and says that water has not received the attention it deserves. Water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea kill far more people than HIV/Aids and malaria combined, it said. And the difference is particularly stark for children: water-borne diseases kill five times as many children as HIV/Aids. The report says that water is a key part of human development - and warns that, in particular, sub-Saharan Africa is lagging behind the rest of...

The United Nations says it can end poverty, stop global warming, and end the threat of contagious disease while also unlocking $7 trillion of hidden wealth from developing nations in the process. If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. In a new book launched with great fanfare at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) claims to offer “innovative financial mechanisms that could dramatically reduce the cost of managing global risks can now be implemented by governments across the world.”...

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, the United Nations Development Program promoted its plan to rule the world through a global socialist economic system. The plan is detailed in a book entitled "The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges", published by Oxford University Press. The U.N. plan identifies seven trillion dollars – that's $7,000,000,000,000 – to be taken from developed nations for use by the U.N. to solve all the world's problems. At the heart of the program is a global pollution-permit trading scheme that would produce $3.64 trillion, according to the U.N. This is...

Norway ranked as world’s #1 country by UN. The United Nations Development Programme – UNDP – is releasing today the Human Development Report – HDR – for the year 2005 . In it the Human Development Index – HDI – ranks the world’s countries. The Human Development Index ranks countries by three variables, GDP per capita, knowledge level (school enrolment and adult literacy) and life expectancy. In the HDI for 2005 the country of Norway is ranked as the #1 country, making this year Norway’s fifth consecutive year on the top. Business magazine Farmann criticizes the report: ”While we appreciate...

HDI Rank Country GDP per capita (US$) 2003 1 Norway 48,412 2 Iceland 36,377 3 Australia 26,275 4 Luxembourg 59,143 5 Canada 27,079 6 Sweden 33,676 7 Switzerland 43,553 8 Ireland 38,487 9 Belgium 29,096 10 United States 37,648 11 Japan 33,713 12 Netherlands 31,532 13 Finland 31,058 14 Denmark 39,332 15 United Kingdom 30,253

The Gaza Strip (search) is one of the poorest, most overpopulated areas in the world with 1.4 million Palestinians crammed into a 100-square-mile area. With 50 percent unemployment, the vast majority of Gazans live below a poverty line of $2 a day. It's exactly the kind of situation that the United Nations Development Program was set up to deal with, and the U.N. is spending millions of dollars there every year. But FOX News has discovered that not all that cash is going to alleviate poverty. Instead, some of it is funding a Palestinian political campaign under the slogan, "Today...