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THE United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth�s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting. Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire. She is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before - and that means the UN must be ready...

In the first ever self-assessment of America’s human rights record, the Obama administration has informed the United Nations that it remains committed to closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and to “fixing our broken immigration system.” A report delivered to the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva on Friday and released by the State Department on Monday describes the “great strides” the U.S. has made towards ensuring equality of the law for all Americans. The report also acknowledges that work remains to be done. The report – which now goes to the U.N. for review -- was drawn...

NEW YORK (AFP) – The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts said Monday. "If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists in New York. A Green Economy report due later this year by UNEP and outside experts argues this disaster can be avoided if subsidies to fishing fleets are slashed and fish are given protected...

The project of a community center /mosque is being proposed by two organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) and their sister organization, the Cordoba Initiative. This past Wednesday night they made their presentation to the Community Board of lower Manhattan (CB1). Twelve people sit on the board and would you like to guess what the final vote was? Get ready to grab a barf bag … the 12 members voted unanimously to support the project. Yes, it's not a typo, it was unanimous, all were in favor and, to give you an idea of how excited the board...

Leaked documents reveal draft text of secret global copyright deal ) OTTAWA — As negotiators from 37 countries prepare to meet in New Zealand on Monday to discuss a top-secret trade agreement, a draft text of the document has found its way onto the Internet. While bits and pieces of the agreement, called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), have been leaked in the past, this is the first time a full draft is available to the public. The agreement, negotiated privately for the better part of two years, aims to create a global organization to oversee worldwide copyright and intellectual...

The US is considering abstaining from a possible UN Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement expansion in East Jerusalem, the BBC has learned. The US usually blocks Security Council resolutions criticising Israel. But relations between the allies have been severely strained by the announcement of plans to build 1,600 homes in an East Jerusalem settlement during a recent visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe Biden.

12:35 Mr Gaddafi has just wrapped up his unscripted 94-minute rant, having thrown the General Assembly session into confusion. He got absolutely no applause. Delegates just sat stunned. ... 12:21 Mr Gaddafi has thrown the UN session into disarray. He has now been speaking for 100-odd minutes and seems just to be warming up. He was supposed to speak only 15 minutes. Some UN journalists are now betting he will run on for a Fidel Castro-like seven hours. Of course, the General Assembly president has not got the heart to stop him. Perhaps because the General Assembly president is Ali...

UNITED NATIONS -- Canada will boycott Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at the United Nations on Wednesday, saying his outbursts about the Holocaust and Israel are "shameful." Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon will be at the world body to attend the opening of the UN General Assembly's annual debate, but officials signal he and other members of the Canadian delegation will vacate the Canadian seats when the Islamic republic's President approaches the podium. Walking out of the chamber is seen as a strong diplomatic show of disgust at the UN -- and since the chamber is generally packed on the first...

It has the makings of the opening sequence in an apocalyptic thriller. A ship enters the Gulf, carrying a secret, illicit cargo of munitions, bound for Iran from North Korea. The ship is seized by the United Arab Emirates, where authorities discover that instead of the oil boring equipment listed on the manifest, the cargo includes some 10 containers filled with rocket launchers, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and detonators. The UAE seizes the cargo and notifies the United Nations Security Council. But for weeks, the public is told nothing about it – not by the UN, and not by Washington. The...

Residents Say They're Terrorized By Pit Bulls Posted: 6:16 pm EDT May 1, 2009Updated: 6:33 pm EDT May 1, 2009 SANFORD, Fla. -- Some Sanford homeowners say they're being terrorized by their neighbor's pit bulls. One of the dogs has already attacked a neighbor near Lily Court in Sanford. Eyewitness News has learned the dogs' owners are not keeping their fence secure. Some of the breaks in the fence are big enough for an adult to easily climb through. After many calls to animal control, neighbors say they want the fence fixed once and for all. "Chasing children, attacking children....

The tinpot dictators who dominate the so-called UN Human Rights Council are at it again -- squawking about "defamation of religion" in a seedy attempt to undermine freedom of expression. If this band of political bandits has its way, criticism of religious dogma would be virtually banned as an affront to human dignity. Curiously, only Islam is specifically mentioned in the draft resolution, released by UN Watch last week. Could this have anything to do with the fact that there are so many Muslim countries on the Human Rights Council? Want a laugh? The resolution includes the usual remarks about...

Put the case of a war between a genocidal, terrorist dictatorship, with its origins in Nazism, that attacks a neighbor that is a democracy, that has been seeking peace, and that is an island of human rights in a region dominated by tyrants. Then ask yourself who the world will be rooting for? You would think the answer would be the democracy fighting in self-defense for its survival against a genocidal, terrorist aggressor. But you would be wrong. Most of the world, almost all of the media, and the United Nations are supporting the genocidal, terrorist, dictatorship. Where Does The...

Today Israel fired a on a UN School in Gaza killing 40, including some children. According to the IDF early reports suggest that there were mortars fired upon them from the school. Hamas has a history of using this school as a launching point for mortars, and the students as human shields. The video below shows Hamas using the school to fire mortars in October 2007:

Evidence of serious flaws in the multi-billion dollar global market for carbon credits has been uncovered by a BBC World Service investigation. The credits are generated by a United Nations-run scheme called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The mechanism gives firms in developing countries financial incentives to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But in some cases, carbon credits are paid to projects that would have been realised without external funding. The findings reinforce doubts that the CDM is leading to real emission cuts, which is not good news for the effort to combat climate change. And in one case a company...

UN food chief roasts 'overfed' West 3/06/2008 9:51:00 PM. UN food agency chief Jacques Diouf said today that billions of dollars are being wasted on feeding obese people in the West while millions starve around the world. "No one understands... how over-consumption by obese people in the world costs $20 billion each year," the head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation told an international summit on the food price crisis. On top of this, he added, there are "$100 billion in indirect costs resulting from premature deaths and associated diseases." Diouf also highlighted how an estimated $1.2 trillion was spent...

John McCain has proposed that the US should sponsor the creation of a new multilateral organization that includes the world’s legitimate democracies. This League of Democracies would act in the interest of freedom and liberty and would act when the UN gets bogged down in its impotence, especially on Iran and Darfur. Initially rejected, the idea has lately begun to appeal to other democracies, as the AP reports: Gaining ground this political season is a proposed League of Democracies designed to strengthen support for the next president’s overseas agenda and ensure a global leadership role for the United States. John...

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...

Former U.S./U.N. ambassador John Bolton returned to U.N. headquarters in NYC on Friday to launch his new book "Surrender Is Not An Option" (Threshold Editions- Simon & Schuster - 486 pgs.) The controversial U.S. diplomat quit his U.N. post in November 2006 when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stalled a vote on his nomination. For the preceding 18 mos. Bolton served as UN ambassador under a temporary Congressional recess appointment that was to expire on January 1, 2007. With a Democratic Congress taking office and a rejected nomination likely, Bolton asked President Bush to withdraw his name rather than face...

Last week, La Presse reported quite breathlessly that the federal government, which owns the Port of Montreal and much of the land along its waterfront, has been lobbying the United Nations to move its headquarters from New York to Montreal. The rationale, apparently, is that the UN’s current headquarters, housed in an iconic complex built in 1949 along the East River, needs nearly $2 billion worth of renovations over the next couple of decades. It would cost a lot less to simply pack up and move to Montreal, where a state-of-the-art new headquarters would be waiting on the site of...

The secret’s out: on August 24th, 2007, UN weapons inspectors found 6 to 8 vials of chemical weapons sitting in an office at the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) headquarters in NYC. They found the vials when archiving files due to the fact that UNMOVIC is closing down its mission. They placed the vials in a sealed package and put them in a safe located in a secured room. Subsequently, on August 29, 2007, UNMOVIC employees discovered the inventory list which listed the content of the vials. The vials contained the chemical phosgene, which according to the...