Free Republic

United Nations and its dysfunctional Human Rights Council, which counts some of the world’s worst human rights abusers as its members, should butt out of domestic affairs of oldest continuously functioning constitutional democracy in the world Just when you thought the United Nations could not sink any lower, a UN panel has issued a report recommending that the United States pay “reparations” to African-Americans for its “legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality.” The report accuses the United States of maintaining “institutional and structural racial discrimination and racism against people of African descent.”...

PARIS (Reuters) - The U.N. climate panel agreed on Thursday it was "very likely" that human activities were the main cause of global warming in the past 50 years, stepping up certainty from a 2001 report, delegates said. The wording "very likely" means at least 90 percent probability by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is meeting in Paris this week and will publish a new report on Friday. The last study, in 2001, said that there was only a "likely" link, or a 66 percent probability, that human activities were the main cause of warming in the past...

UNITED NATIONS - Iran's U.N. ambassador on Thursday denounced Israel's election as a vice-chair of the U.N. Disarmament Commission, calling the Jewish state a threat to peace in the Middle East. Ambassador Javad Zarif accused Israel of "violating every single Security Council resolution that has been adopted about the Middle East." He also lashed out at Israeli criticism of Iran's own election as a vice-chair of the commission, noting the Jewish state has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty but "has the audacity to talk about another country having a seat." "That's absolutely ridiculous," he told a group of...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker is the leading candidate to head an independent panel to investigate allegations of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program, U.N. diplomats said Wednesday. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday he hoped to make an announcement "in the course of the week" on the panel members. "We are going to investigate these allegations very seriously and with a very thorough independent investigation," he said. Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States pressed to have an American lead the panel and backed Volcker. Many U.S. lawmakers, who are conducting...