Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

In the global push to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, the very poor are falling further behind, warns a report by United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF that was  released on Tuesday.

The Progress for Children' report says that addressing the needs of the poorest of the poor is the key to meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

 

Time is ripe for a reform in the UN Security Council, an American expert on UN affairs says, stressing that the organization is "ill-equipped" to solve global issues.

"There has to be a place where business is not as usual; where a small number of countries make decisions," Thomas G. Weiss told Press TV on Thursday.

The UN technology chief has said that the Canadian maker of the Blackberry should give governments around the world access to its customer data and should not ignore their legitimate security concerns.

Hamadoun Toure, the secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), said that officials fighting terrorism had the right to demand access to users' information from Research in Motion Ltd.

 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that many wealthy countries are amassing risky debt burdens, which could spark a market-wide panic.

In a three-paper report published on Wednesday, the IMF said a number of countries are running dangerously close to their "debt limit," a development that could prompt markets to massively raise interest rates on government debt.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has called for an end to racial violence in the streets of the United States after a Muslim taxi driver was stabbed in Manhattan.

"It is disgraceful. We should feel safe on our streets," Bloomberg said.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for more international commitment to the welfare of the indigenous people across the globe.

In a message on the International Day of the World's Indigenous People on August 9, the UN chief urged governments and civil societies to fulfill their commitment to advancing the status of indigenous peoples everywhere.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for more international commitment to the welfare of the indigenous, the UN Information Service says.

In a message on the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples on August 9, the UN chief urged governments and civil societies to fulfill their commitment to advancing the status of indigenous peoples everywhere.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged all nuclear-armed countries to completely eliminate their "indiscriminate weapons."

"The only way to ensure that such weapons will never again be used is to eliminate them all," he said during his visit to Nagasaki, one of two Japanese cities demolished by US atomic bombs.

The UN has established an online petition to tackle the world's hunger epidemic that updates signatories on their impact.

So far, over 280,000 people have signed the petition.

Head of the UN nuclear agency Yukiya Amano says positive signals from the Vienna Group have given rise to hopes about nuclear fuel swap talks with Iran.

"I am working on that. I have a positive reaction from member states ... and why not," the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief said when asked if he intended to push for the talks to start in September, Reuters reported.