26 April 2013 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today marked the 27th anniversary of the worst nuclear power plant accident in history by stressing that the impact of the Chernobyl disaster must never be forgotten and calling for continued international assistance for the people and regions affected.

03/24/2013 16:32 GMT

KIEV, March 24, 2013 (AFP) - Ukraine has told its public sector workers in Kiev to stay home on Monday as exceptionally heavy snowstorms blanketed the capital and other parts of the country over the weekend, forcing authorities to declare a state of emergency.

Kiev's private sector has been urged to follow suit, officials said Sunday.

The equivalent of a month's snowfall has covered Ukraine in the last two days, stopping traffic and leaving many vehicles buried under snowdrifts.

More than 600 towns and villages suffered power cuts.

This year, the message marking the commemoration of the World AIDS Day is unequivocal: Zero New Infections, Zero Discrimination and Zero AIDS-related deaths. Violence against women has been increasingly recognized as both a cause and a consequence of HIV. The twin pandemics are each rooted in gender discrimination, women’s subordination, disregard for women’s human rights and the power imbalances between women and men that exist in societies all over the world.

BACKGROUND PRESS RELEASE

16 October 2012

The fourteenth session of the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Working Group will be held in Geneva from 22 October to 5 November during which the next group of 14 States will have their human rights records examined under this mechanism.

Figures “reassuring” but vigilance needed – FAO DG

6 September 2012, Rome - The FAO Food Price Index averaged 213 points in August 2012, unchanged from July.

Presenting the Index at a press conference at FAO headquarters in Rome, Director-General José Graziano da Silva said “This is reassuring. Although we should remain vigilant, current prices do not justify talk of a world food crisis. But the international community can and should move to calm markets further,” he added.

Published: 26 April 2012 20:44 CET

by Giovanni Zambello

On 26 April 1986, an unprecedented nuclear explosion happened near Chernobyl, northern Ukraine. Large quantities of radioactive material was blasted into the atmosphere and affected over 8 million people across Ukraine, Belarus and parts of Russia.

GENEVA, 21 February 2012 - The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, UNISDR, today said the European Flood Alert System could soon be put to its greatest test since widespread flooding ten years ago led to its creation by the European Commission.

The UN Secretary General's Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, said she was particularly concerned about the consequences for those countries bordering the Danube where the ice is now starting to break up in the first signs of a spring thaw.

BUDAPEST, February 10, 2012 (AFP) - Hungary closed the Danube to river traffic Friday due to thick ice, bringing shipping to a near standstill on Europe's busiest waterway, as the continent's cold snap death toll passed 540.

"Shipping was ordered stopped overnight Thursday to Friday because of conditions created by icing along the Hungarian part of the river," Istvan Lang, who heads the national technical supervisory body OMIT said.

"All ships still underway must immediately head for the closest harbour," Lang, quoted by MTI news agency, said.

by Katarina Subasic

BELGRADE, February 9, 2012 (AFP) - Thick ice closed vast swathes of the Danube on Thursday, crippling shipping on Europe's busiest waterway, as the death toll from bitter cold across the continent rose to at least 460.

As it has every day for nearly two weeks, the brutal cold claimed lives in several countries and killed dozens more in weather-related accidents.