The United Nations has received assurances from the US government that its communications networks “are not and will not be monitored” by American intelligence agencies, it said.

The United Nations is to contact the United States about reports that America’s National Security Agency hacked the world body’s internal communications.

The Philippines government shipped more than 400 coffins today to two flood-stricken cities in the south where the death toll neared 1,000 as President Benigno Aquino III declared a state of national calamity and relief agencies rushed to help.

A car laden with explosives rammed through two gates and blew up at the United Nations’ offices in Nigeria’s capital Abuja today, killing at least 16 people and shattering part of the concrete structure.

At least 16 people have died in a car bomb attack on the United Nations’ offices in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja.

At least seven people are dead after a car bomb attack wrecked the United Nations’ main office in Nigeria’s capital, a rescue official said today.

More than 80 people were killed when rebels attacked cattle herders in Southern Sudan, while hundreds marched in the southern capital to protest at the unresolved status of a volatile border hotspot.

Military officials loyal to Ivory Coast’s entrenched leader have called on their forces to resist rebels who are trying to depose him as he refuses to cede power.

Ivory Coast state television disappeared from the airwaves outside the nation's largest city, in a blow to the incumbent president's attempts to cling to power in the bloody aftermath of an election most of the world says he lost.

THE most senior Chinese diplomat at the United Nations delivered a drunken rant last week against his boss, secretary general Ban Ki-moon, and Americans at a retreat in Austria, a report said yesterday.

An accomplished former US prosecutor is taking United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon to a tribunal, accusing him of blocking his appointment to the world body’s top investigative post.

Israel's prime minister said today he believed direct talks with the Palestinians would begin very soon and he predicted they would be "very, very tough".

UN officials said today they have started relocating some of their 300 foreign staff in Afghanistan to other locations because of worries about rising violence.

One of Africa’s most brutal rebel movements relies on a vast international network of supporters in at least 25 countries including in United States and Europe, a United Nations report said.

The United Nations has declared the Pakistani capital Islamabad unsafe for the children of its international staff and ordered them out, putting the once tranquil city on a par with Kabul and Somalia.

Saudi Arabia plans to increase its oil production by 200,000 barrels a day next month, the kingdom's oil minister told United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon.

Security was stepped up at the United Nations headquarters in New York today as a precaution following a bomb threat, a spokesman said.

THE new UN secretary general has expressed support for New York City’s goal of recouping nearly $18 million (€14 million) in traffic fines owed by UN diplomats and members of the consular community.

ETHIOPIAN Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said more than 1,000 people have been killed in fighting between his troops, backing Somali government forces, and Somalia’s Islamist movement.

Roadblocks were set around the Afghanistan capital of Kabul today to search for a Northern Irish UN worker who was kidnapped with two colleagues.

A UN team sent to Iraq to study whether elections can be held before the handover of power to Iraqis by June 30 arrived safely in Baghdad today, the secretary-general announced.

Israeli troops today pulled out of a Gaza Strip town after shooting dead a Palestinian and demolishing the homes of three Islamic militants killed in attacks on Israelis dating back to 1996.

A 16-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed today in the Gaza Strip and another one was wounded as they neared a border fence on the way home from school, witnesses and hospital officials said.