In his latest Sports Illustrated column Rick Reilly reports on his trip to Nigeria to distribute the first round of anti-malaria bed nets, bought from money raised by the Nothing But Nets campaign.
"Ban Ki-moon, who will fill Kofi Annan's shoes at the helm of the United Nations, has been described in the media as "uncharismatic" and a "career diplomat". But a former colleague believes such criticism could not be further from the truth." More
"United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday during a speech at Princeton University that there is an urgent need to confront the danger of nuclear weapons, and both disarmament and nonproliferation must be pursued simultaneously to achieve progress on either front.
"We are asleep at the controls of a fast-moving aircraft. Unless we wake up and take control, the outcome is all too predictable," Annan said. "We cannot choose between nonproliferation and disarmament. We must tackle both tasks with the urgency they demand." More
In the course of a two and a half hour press conference, Sudanese President Omar al Bashir rejected UN command of a hybrid AU-UN force for Darfur, saying he would only accept African Troops under African leadership. Bashir also gave an impossibly low mortality estimate - 9,000 - as the number of people who have died as a result of the conflict in Darfur. These comments could be a serious setback to the quick deployment of an effective peacekeeping force to Darfur.
"United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the mutual ceasefire reached in the Gaza Strip at the weekend, but expressed deep concern that Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets towards civilian targets inside Israel.
In a statement released by his spokesman, Mr. Annan said "such attacks underscore the destructive power that militants have to derail the crucial efforts under way to de-escalate tensions." More
In the Pittsburgh Tribune Review an interview with anti-UN activist Nathan Tabor quickly descends into bizarre conspiracy mongering. Tabor, who authored a book called The Beast on the East River: The U.N. Threat to America's Sovereignty and Security, tells the Tribune Review that the United Nations has effectively taken control of American National Parks.
BBC: "UN investigators in the Democratic Republic of Congo say they have found mass graves with about 30 bodies in an army camp in the east of the country.
The dead included women and children who appeared to have been murdered, a UN spokesman said. He believed they had disappeared in the last few months."