A group of 46 Indian nurses trapped in Iraq are to be freed, one of them told AFP Friday, in a rare piece of positive news in a crisis threatening "Syria-like chaos".
Caribbean coral reefs could disappear within 20 years as overfishing has all but wiped out the fish that feast on coral-smothering algae, the UN and an international conservation watchdog warned.
The UN Security Council decided to slap sanctions on Ugandan rebels Allied Democratic Forces, who are active in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, diplomats said.
The ISIL jihadists whose sweeping Sunni militant offensive has captured swathes of Iraq have declared an "Islamic caliphate" in their territory as Iraqi forces battle to retake Saddam Hussein's hometown Tikrit.
Sixty-three Palestinian prisoners have suspended the hunger strike which they have observed in Israeli jails since late April, one of their lawyers said.
The last of Syria's declared chemical agents have been shipped from the war-torn country after months of delays and are en route for destruction at sea, the world's chemical watchdog said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai intervened for the first time in the country's growing election crisis, backing a call for the United Nations to help solve a standoff over alleged fraud.
Lawyers for more than 1,500 victims of Haiti's deadly cholera epidemic said they had served UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with a personal summons to appear in US court.
The number of people driven from their homes by conflict and crisis has topped 50 million for the first time since World War II, with Syria hardest hit, the UN refugee agency said.
Australia called a decision by UNESCO to defer listing the Great Barrier Reef as in danger "a win for logic", but environmentalists said it was a final warning.
A 36-year-old Japanese man arrested for vandalising library copies of Anne Frank's "The Diary of a Young Girl" will not be charged after he was found to be mentally incompetent, a report said.
Former Norwegian premier Gro Harlem Brundtland was named Wednesday as the first recipient of the Tang Prize, touted as Asia's version of the Nobels, for her work as the "godmother" of sustainable development.
Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark has hinted that she wants to become United Nations secretary general when Ban Ki-moon steps down, saying it is time for a woman to fill the role.
The UN General Assembly Monday approved the nomination of Jordan's Prince Zeid al-Hussein as the next human rights chief, making him the first Muslim and Arab to hold the post.
Japan has slaughtered 30 minke whales off its northeast coast, in the first hunt since the UN's top court ordered Tokyo to stop killing the animals in the Antarctic, the government said.
A summit of G77 leaders plus China wrapped up Sunday with a call for an end to poverty by 2030, after a demand by Bolivia's President Evo Morales to eliminate the UN Security Council.