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UNITED NATIONS, Mar 29 (APP): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for ‘decisive action’ to provide debt relief to developing countries that have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic as he said the steps taken so far to prevent debt crises across the world have not been sufficient to restore economic stability.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 28 (APP): Cities all over the world switched the lights off Saturday to mark “Earth Hour,” a global movement designed to focus on nature conservation and climate change.

During the World Wildlife Fund organized event, individuals and businesses were encouraged to turn off non-esential lights for an hour.

This year’s event also highlighted the link between the destruction of nature and the increasing incidence of diseases like coronavirus.

NEW YORK, March 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. equities posted mixed results in the volatile week as investors sifted through Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's remarks and a slew of economic data.

For the week ending Friday, the Dow and the S&P 500 increased 1.4 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively, while the Nasdaq fell 0.6 percent.

The S&P U.S. Listed China 50 index, which is designed to track the performance of the 50 largest Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges by total market cap, logged a weekly loss of 11.2 percent.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 27 (APP): Pakistan has called for enhancing the capabilities of United Nations (UN) peacekeepers deployed in hotspots around the world to enable them counter the threat posed by improvised explosive devises (IEDs) as they work to maintain global peace and security amid a recent spike in casualties among ‘blue-helmets.’

UN, March 27. /TASS/: The UN Security Council will meet on Tuesday, March 30, for an extraordinary closed consultation over Pyongyang's missile launches, a diplomatic source in the Security Council told TASS on Friday.

According to the source, the discussion was requested by France on behalf of the European members of the Council (France, Great Britain, Estonia, Ireland, Norway). It is expected that it will be held on Tuesday in a closed format, the source said.

UNITED NATIONS, March 26 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday announced the appointment of Annadif Khatir Mahamat Saleh of Chad as his new Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS).

Mahamat Saleh succeeds Mohamed Ibn Chambas of Ghana, to whom the secretary-general is grateful for his dedicated service and effective leadership at the helm of UNOWAS, according to a press note from the UN chief's office.

United Nations, Mar 27 (PTI) India has supplied more COVID-19 vaccines globally than vaccinated its own people, the country has told the UN General Assembly and cautioned that vaccine inequity will defeat the collective global resolve to contain the coronavirus as the disparity in the accessibility of vaccines will affect the poorest nations the most.

India was one of the initiators of the Political Declaration on Equitable Global Access to COVID-19 Vaccines' that garnered the support of more than 180 UN member states.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 26 (APP): US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced Thursday that Washington will send $15 million in coronavirus-related humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The package will be the first such funds transferred under the Biden administration, which has vowed to restore financial assistance to the Palestinians that was cutoff almost entirely by former president Donald Trump.

UNITED NATIONS, March 26 (NNN-Xinhua) — Washington will “re-open diplomatic channels of communication” with Palestine that has been cut off under the previous Donald Trump administration, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council.

“Since January, our diplomatic engagement has been guided by the premise that sustainable progress toward peace must be based on active consultations with both sides,” Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council video-conference briefing on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

NEW YORK (Reuters) -More than 500 rape cases have been reported to five clinics in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the United Nations said on Thursday, warning that the actual numbers were likely to be much higher due to stigma and a lack of health services.

“Women say they have been raped by armed actors, they also told stories of gang rape, rape in front of family members and men being forced to rape their own family members under the threat of violence,” Wafaa Said, deputy U.N. aid coordinator in Ethiopia, said in a briefing to U.N. member states in New York.