Un | featured news

A last-ditch American effort to head off a Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations faltered. President Obama tried to qualify his own call, just a year ago, for a Palestinian state.

Seeking to defuse a major diplomatic confrontation, President Obama said the only way to achieve the goal was for the Palestinians and Israelis to resume direct negotiations.

The United States pressed ahead Monday with intensive talks aimed at averting a showdown over Palestinian statehood at the United Nations this week, asking key Muslim ally Turkey not to allow its rift with Israel to grow wider and hoping to coax cooperation from a noncommittal Russia....

The U.N. General Assembly voted Friday to give Libya's seat in the world body to the former rebels' National Transitional Council which led the rebellion that ousted Muammar Qaddafi. The vote means that a senior council official will be able to join world leaders and speak for Libya at next week's ministerial session of the General Assembly and also participate in meetings.

The Palestinian president said Friday that he will ask the U.N. Security Council next week to endorse his statehood bid, a step that would risk a threatened U.S. veto in the council.

At least 2,600 people have died in the six months of unrest that has swept Syria, the U.N.'s top human rights official said Monday, as a panel was named to investigate abuses in the Arab country....

The death toll from a suicide car-bomb attack at the U.N.'s Nigeria headquarters has risen to 23, a U.N. spokesman said Sunday, making Friday's attack one of the deadliest attacks on the U.N. in a decade.

The European Union's foreign policy chief says the 27-nation bloc is preparing to unfreeze Libyan assets quickly once the United Nations gives its approval. Catherine Ashton said Tuesday that Libya's transitional administration will ...

United Nations officials say outbreaks of measles in Ethiopia and Kenya have killed dozens of children and sickened thousands of others.

Austerity measures being adopted by many industrialized world governments in the wake of the 2008-09 financial crisis are undermining economic recovery, a United Nations report said on Wednesday.