"Iran has vowed that it would refuse to comply with any UN Security Council demand to halt its disputed nuclear programme and warned the crisis was leading the two sides towards a "confrontation".
Asked how Iran would respond if the Council adopted a tough resolution drafted by Britain and France, foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Sunday that Iran "will certainly reject it and cannot carry it out."
"With renewed carnage in Sudan's Darfur region spilling into Chad and displacing hundreds thousands more in the past few months, the United Nations top relief official today warned that humanitarian disaster there was imminent if the world did not take quick strong action to get aid in, protect the population and secure a political settlement that stopped the violence once and for all.
"If we are to avoid an imminent, massive loss of life, we need immediate action - from the government of Sudan, the rebels, U.N. Security Council members and donor governments," Jan Egeland the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator wrote in an editorial published in The Wall Street Journal on the eve of his first visit to the strife-torn region since being blocked from visiting by the Government during his trip to Africa last month." [Read more]
UPDATE: The largest rebel group in Sudan's Darfur region has agreed to sign a peace deal with the government. BBC
"Poor nutrition contributes to the deaths of some 5.6 million children every year, and the world has fallen far short in efforts to reduce hunger by half before 2015, the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Tuesday. In its report, UNICEF said one of every four children under age 5, including 146 million children in the developing world, is underweight.
The most troublesome area in the world is South Asia, where 46 percent of children are underweight. India, Bangladesh and Pakistan account for half of the world's underweight children even though they have only 30 percent of the world's population of children under 5." [Read more]
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Americablog: "Sudan peace deal closer, but not quite there - All parties have agreed to the peace deal except for the rebels who are pressing for more time. What is especially significant here and what should be recognized as an extremely positive move is that the African Union has been the key player during these negotiations. For too many years, the AU stood by and did nothing while Africa drifted into chaos and genocide. It would be nice to see the AU take a stand against thugs like Mugabe but like they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. With oil money in play, pulling together a serious consensus in the UN is going to be difficult so the AU's role here is critical."
" Iran asked the United Nations on Monday to take a stand against American threats that it said included possible nuclear strikes on its territory and that were "in total contempt of international law."
In a letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan, Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, pointed to recent comments by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on ways to halt Iran's nuclear program and to news reports of Pentagon planning for possible nuclear attacks on nuclear facilities in Iran." [Full story]
"The real issue is absenteeism, which the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts could climb above 40% and last for weeks. Boeing is trying to determine if it can operate with 30% of its 160,000 employees out.
"We usually don't share specifics, because it's a security issue," says Boeing spokeswoman Kelly Donaghy. "Can you plan for everything? Absolutely not. We're going to be prepared the best we can. Shame on us if we don't at least think about it ahead of time." [Read more]
UN News: "Arriving today in Kenya, where 3.5 million people need emergency assistance, a United Nations Special Humanitarian Envoy warned that the crisis could deepen as families exhaust their remaining resources.
Kjell Magne Bondevik made his comments in Nairobi as he continued his tour of drought-affected countries in the Horn of Africa.
Food insecurity in Kenya remains severe in pastoral areas where the majority of those most affected are living, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In Mandera district in the north, acute malnutrition in children has been recorded and high losses of livestock reported."
"Thousands of people joined celebrities and legislators at a rally Sunday urging the Bush administration and Congress to help end genocide in Sudan's Darfur region.... The organizers' permit anticipated 10,000 to 15,000 people would rally, one of several in U.S. cities this weekend against what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian disaster.
"It is the socially responsible, good conscience thing to do," said Ron Fisher, who took a pre-dawn bus from Cleveland with his 15-year-old daughter Jordyn. "It's an opportunity to show my daughter what people do when they care about something." [More]