The UN refugee agency says persecution and conflict in places like Syria and Afghanistan raised the number of refugees and internally displaced people worldwide to a record 65.3 million at the end of last year.

Ukrainian forces and separatist rebels fought fierce street battles for control of the strategic railway hub of Debaltseve, impeding implementation of a peace plan.

More than 300 people probably died this week after attempting to reach Italy from Libya on four separate boats in stormy weather, the UN refugee agency said after speaking to a handful of survivors.

Syrian government airstrikes killed at least 14 people in the northern province of Raqqa less than a week after rebels seized the area’s provincial capital, activists said today.

Rockets and mortar rounds struck a refugee camp for Iranian exiles next to Baghdad’s international airport today, killing six people and wounding about 40, police and UN officials said.

The UN said today that entire families were shot in their homes during a massacre in Syria last week that killed more than 100 people, including children.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay arrived in Zimbabwe on the first mission to the troubled southern African nation by the world rights chief.

An Irish ship has dropped out of the pro-Palestinian flotilla planning to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, citing sabotage, and a US ship declared it may set sail from a Greek port for Gaza without permission, activists said.

SYRIANS fearful of reprisals poured out of a northern town at the centre of anti-government protests as pressure on President Bashar al-Assad grew at the UN Security Council.

RIOTING has killed several hundred people in the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan, the Red Cross said yesterday, as new reports strengthened suspicions that the violence was deliberately ignited to undermine the interim government.

Several hundred people have been killed in rioting in Kyrgyzstan, the Red Cross said today, as new reports strengthened suspicions that the violence was deliberately ignited to undermine the Central Asian nation’s interim government.

Germany has evacuated 89 westerners, including 31 Americans and 40 Europeans, from the violence-torn city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan.

The UN said today that more than 5,900 Afghan children were smuggled into Europe last year.

The US plans to allow 7,000 Iraqi refugees to settle in the United States over the next year, a huge expansion at a time of mounting international pressure to help those who have fled the war.

Hundreds more survivors of Pakistan’s huge earthquake sought treatment today for weather-related ailments following a cold snap, hospital officials said.

THE Government must significantly increase its contribution to programmes for development aid in third world countries, the chairman of the Catholic aid agency Trocaire said yesterday.

The UN Human Rights Commission today elected a Libyan diplomat as this year’s president, despite objections from the US and other Western countries.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, is set to reverse her decision to resign from her Geneva-based job when her term ends in September.