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WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key Administration posts: James O’Brien – Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, Department of State Charles “Chip” Lyons – United States Representative, Executive Board of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Aaron Williams – United States Alternate Representative, Executive Board of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Esther Brimmer – Member, National Security Education Board Michael Guest – Member, National Security Education Board President Obama said, “These fine public servants bring a depth of experience and tremendous dedication to their important roles. I look...

(From Video Transcript:) The World Health Organization says Cuba has reached one of the greatest public health milestones possible. It has ended the mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. At a news conference in Havana, WHO representative Jose Luis di Fabio praised Cuba’s health system. […] UNICEF Representative Anna Lucia d’Emilio says Cuba’s achievement shows that ending the AIDS epidemic is possible. …

As proof of their bravery, rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are suspected of sabotaging a batch of measles vaccinations, leading to the deaths of up to 50 young children. If true, it's a new low in an especially discouraging chapter of modern history.LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Dozens of infants in the rebel-held cities of Jarjanaz and Sinjar in Idlib province fell ill and died after being given the drugs. The causes of death has not yet been established. Officials reportedly suspect the vaccines may have been tampered with while left unguarded in a storage facility in...

UNICEF has said that the Israeli occupation killed around 500 Palestinian children during the war on the Gaza Strip and wounded around 3,000 others. Chief of UNICEF's Gaza Field Office Pernille Ironside said that 469 children were killed. The number is expected to rise. She described the effects and damage of the Israeli war on the Palestinian children as "bad," noting that nine children were killed in the last 48 hours. The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced a higher number. They said that 560 children were killed and 11,000 wounded. Meanwhile, three children were killed on Thursday in Al-Nafaq Street...

UNICEF’s new campaign, “Poo2Loo,” targets India’s public defecation problem with a series of music videos, pranks and advertisements featuring a giant feces mascot. According to the campaign, 620 million Indians are defecating in public every day. “That’s half the population dumping over 65 million kilos of poo out there every day. If this poo continues to be let loose on us, there will be no escaping the stench of life threatening infections, diseases and epidemics,” the Poo2Loo website says, while asking visitors to sign a pledge to ending public defecation. YouTube videos for the campaign feature giant, walking, talking, dancing,...

UNICEF activists are campaigning to educate Somaliland communities about the harms of female genital mutilation. But the stigma of being ‘uncut’ is still so strong that many leaders say they will not stop practicing FGM.The 30 Somali teenagers - both boys and girls - all agreed: Female genital mutilation is harmful and the practice should be abandoned. But what they really meant, they revealed moments later, is that girls should have their genitalia cut - just not sewn shut. "It's our tradition and if the girls are not subjected to suna(cutting) she will not be accepted for marriage," said Asthma...

Just a few weeks ago, 11-month-old Shaista was pulling herself up, giggling as she took her first wobbly steps with the helping hand of her teenage mother. Then the polio virus struck and Shaista was no longer able to stand, her legs buckling beneath her weight. Today, her mother cries a lot and wonders what will become of her daughter in Pakistan’s male-dominated society, where a woman’s value is often measured by the quality of her husband. […] Fresh cases of polio—traced through genetic sequencing to the Pakistani strain of the disease—are showing up in countries that were previously polio-free,...

Vivienne Harr has already been garnering headlines for selling lemonade for 365 consecutive days – including on Day 173 at New York City’s Times Square – and raising exactly $101,320 that she donated to a nonprofit dedicated to ending child slavery. But now, the 9-year-old girl from Marin County’s Fairfax, a 40-minute drive from San Francisco, is stepping up her game, again, if that’s even possible. Last month, she began rolling out her mother’s recipe for organic, Fair Trade, “tunnel pasteurized” lemonade, bottled in Michigan and shipped to 70 mostly locally owned, organic shops in California and Oregon. On Friday,...

In the safe haven of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Jews and Israel are remembered fondly,if increasingly vaguely. "THEY CALL That lack of restraint?" the former Iraqi army officer exclaimed, while watching the BBC’s coverage of the Al-Aqsa Intifada on satellite TV last winter. "If this demonstration were held in Baghdad, there’d be 10,000 bodies in the street," said the Arab from Baghdad who now teaches in Iraqi Kurdistan. Almost 4 million people live in the safe haven of northern Iraq. A de facto autonomous region, it has been administered by the Kurds since 1991 when Saddam Hussein withdrew his administration in ...

I heard someone on a radio show the other day mention that back during the Vietnam War that the UN was busted funneling UNICEF funds to buy arms and ammunition for the Viet Cong. Anyone know of a source for such a story or is this merely a black helicopter induced flight of fancy?

Who could possibly be such Grinches as to put out an attack ad maligning Santa Claus? The answer: our wannabe global rulers at the odious United Nations, who denounce Jolly Old Saint Nick as a One Percenter who doesn’t “do poor countries.”

MADRID, September 22, 2011 – An American is thwarted by UNICEF as she attempts to bring her developmentally challenged daughter home. UNICEF’s response to a desperate grandmother, looking for help in bringing her grandchild Krystina home, confirms what many have long believed -- that UNICEF does not support inter-country adoption.

In a tumultuous world riven by wars, revolutions, famine, pestilence, and natural disasters, millions of people take comfort and hope in the knowledge that UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, is on the scene, rendering assistance to the planet's unfortunates. When the television news cameras bring horrendous scenes of multitudes of starving waifs in Ethiopia and Somalia, and images of hordes of pathetic refugee children suffering from disease and exposure, the heart is overwhelmed. For decades, Americans have opened wide their wallets to help UNICEF provide medicines and immunizations, food, shelter, and development assistance to les miserables of the earth....

LONDON – The eye-popping hat worn by Princess Beatrice at Britain's royal wedding is to be auctioned to raise money for charity, Buckingham Palace said Thursday. The famous creation — which some said looked like antlers_ will be sold on eBay with the proceeds to go to the charities UNICEF and Children in Crisis. The hat was the handiwork of Britain's leading milliner, Philip Treacy, who designed many of the ladies' hats worn at the April 29 nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton, now known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Bishops advise against charitable gifts to groups they say support abortion, stem cell research or contraception The two Roman Catholic bishops in North Dakota issued guidelines last week naming several well-known, and in some cases, church-related, organizations they say Catholics should not support, with money or volunteer workThe two Roman Catholic bishops in North Dakota issued guidelines last week naming several well-known, and in some cases, church-related, organizations they say Catholics should not support, with money or volunteer work. Bishop Samuel Aquila of the Fargo Diocese and Bishop Paul Zipfel of the Bismarck Diocese released a joint document “Guidelines on...

Catholics and Catholic organizations should not endorse organizations with “morally objectionable” missions, North Dakota’s bishops said, citing Amnesty International, the March of Dimes and Susan G. Komen for the Cure because of their links to abortion or unethical research. Bishops Paul A. Zipfel of Bismarck and Samuel J. Aquila of Fargo in a March 10 statement called upon pastors, clergy and the lay faithful to be prudent and just in making their charitable decisions, particularly on issues related to human life and marriage.  “All human life is sacred and must be protected,” the bishops said. “This is why we should...

Critics of U.S. spending on the United Nations got a huge boost—and supporters of that spending, especially the Obama Administration, took a body blow—from an unlikely source this week: the British government, long one of the U.N.’s staunchest supporters. In a sweeping and hard-nosed reorganization of priorities for its $10.6 billion multilateral foreign aid program, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron has pulled the financial plug entirely on four U.N. agencies at the end of next year, put three others judged merely “adequate” on notice that they could face the same fate unless they improve their...

Top 10 Reasons I Hate the UN10. UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural OrganizationMay 28, 2009:I’d think that seriously advocating book burning at any time would disqualify you, since presumably there are equally qualified candidates for the UN’s cultural heritage agency who’ve never advocated destroying cultural heritage. But Israeli society is toxic anyway – especially compared to the glory that is the contemporary Egyptian public sphere – so no loss:Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, a candidate for the top job at the United Nations culture agency UNESCO, apologised on Wednesday for calling for Israeli books to be burnt… Hosni...

It's believed up to 77 million people have been exposed to toxic levels of arsenic from contaminated drinking water in Bangladesh. The Lancet medical journal reports the high arsenic exposure is the tragic result of a community development project in the 1970's that went terribly wrong. The UN's World Health Organisation is describing Bangladesh's arsenic crisis as "the largest mass poisoning of a population in history." Presenter: Matt Abud Speakers: Dr Dipankar Chakraborti, head of School of Environmental Studies, Calcutta's Jadaypur University; Arif Ahamed, project team leader, World Bank . ABUD: Over twenty percent of all deaths in the study...

Paul Thompson reads the media accounts describing the journey of him and nine other jailed Baptist volunteers in Haiti who are all now free, and scratches his head. He was there. What he reads is not what he experienced. Thompson, pastor of Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho, was one of those 10 Baptist volunteers who went to Haiti in late January with the goal of taking orphans out of the earthquake-ravaged country and into an orphanage being started in the Dominican Republican. That trip took a disastrous turn Jan. 30 when the 10 were shocked to learn they...