UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Serbia called on Tuesday on the U.N. Security Council to set up an independent inquiry into charges that Kosovo’s prime minister and his associates were behind organ trafficking and other crimes a decade ago.

But Western envoys rejected the demand, saying the European Union police and justice mission in Kosovo, which has already begun a preliminary investigation into the allegations, could handle the matter, something Belgrade disputes.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of protesters have thronged public squares; slogans have been chanted, banners waved and security forces cowed into inaction; the reviled despot has stepped down or fled abroad.

Now what?

It’s a question not just for Egyptians who toppled President Hosni Mubarak on Friday. It has confronted those behind people’s revolutions that have overthrown tyrannical regimes in dozens of countries in recent decades.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of protesters have thronged public squares; slogans have been chanted, banners waved and security forces cowed into inaction; the reviled despot has stepped down or fled abroad.

Now what?

It’s a question not just for Egyptians who toppled President Hosni Mubarak on Friday. It has confronted those behind people’s revolutions that have overthrown tyrannical regimes in dozens of countries in recent decades.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Autocrats who are seen by their citizens as beholden to foreign powers stand more risk of being swept away by popular protests than equally repressive ones who pursue more independent policies.

Commentators looking at the people’s uprisings that have shaken Tunisia and Egypt in recent weeks have also focused heavily on the loyalty of security forces as pivotal in what happens to rulers.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Autocrats who are seen by their citizens as beholden to foreign powers stand more risk of being swept away by popular protests than equally repressive ones who pursue more independent policies.

Commentators looking at the people’s uprisings that have shaken Tunisia and Egypt in recent weeks have also focused heavily on the loyalty of security forces as pivotal in what happens to rulers.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A U.N. envoy proposed on Tuesday special courts be set up rapidly in the Somali enclaves of Somaliland and Puntland, and in Tanzania, to try captured pirates who are costing the world billions of dollars.

Pirates based in Somalia have turned the busy shipping lanes off the coast of the lawless Horn of Africa nation into some of the most dangerous waters on earth.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Senior U.S. government
officials told foreign diplomats on Thursday they were trying
to help resolve a banking impasse after several major U.S.
banks said they would end services for diplomatic missions.

The decision has caused headaches for many foreign
countries, whose diplomats said they were shopping around for
other banks to handle their missions’ accounts but were having
little immediate success. Some diplomats said payments into the
U.N. budget could be affected.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Sudan last week flew a man indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court to a peace meeting in the flashpoint Abyei region, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.

The mission, known as UNMIS, transported Ahmed Haroun, a Sudanese provincial governor, to Abyei last Friday for a meeting to try to reconcile feuding tribes, officials said.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday authorized a boost in the African Union’s peacekeeping force in Somalia from 8,000 to 12,000 troops to shore up the country’s government against Islamist insurgents.

The force, known as AMISOM, currently consists of soldiers from Uganda and Burundi. Uganda is expected to provide the extra 4,000 troops.