UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The world economic recovery from the 2008 financial crisis is losing steam, with growth, hit by austerity drives in rich countries, not enough to restore the 30 million lost jobs in the next two years, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

“The road to recovery from the Great Recession is proving to be long, winding and rocky,” said an annual U.N. survey, “World Economic Situation and Prospects 2011.”

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The world economic recovery from the 2008 financial crisis is losing steam, with growth, hit by austerity drives in rich countries, not enough to restore the 30 million lost jobs in the next two years, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

“The road to recovery from the Great Recession is proving to be long, winding and rocky,” said an annual U.N. survey, “World Economic Situation and Prospects 2011.”

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Haiti’s deadly cholera epidemic is spreading faster than originally estimated and is likely to result in hundreds of thousands of cases and last up to a year, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday.

Since the disease first appeared in mid-October it has killed 1,344 people as of Friday in the poverty-stricken and earthquake-ravaged Caribbean nation.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Western Sahara’s independence movement on Monday demanded a U.N. probe of recent clashes in the territory and threatened to reconsider its role in peace talks with Morocco unless they brought quick results.

The demands came in a letter from the Polisario Front’s U.N. representative to the Security Council after Moroccan security forces last week broke up a protest camp on the edge of Laayoune, main city in the Moroccan-controlled territory.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Lebanon has told the United Nations it has set up an inquiry into last week’s attack on U.N. investigators probing the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, diplomats said on Friday.

Two officials from the U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination were forced by a crowd of women on October 27 to leave a doctor’s clinic in southern Beirut, where they had made an appointment to review files.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Oil-rich Norway remains the best country in the world to live in, while Zimbabwe, afflicted by economic crisis and AIDS, is the least desirable, according to an annual U.N. rating released on Thursday.

The assessment came in a so-called human development index, a measure of well-being published by the U.N. Development Program for the past 20 years that combines individual economic prosperity with education levels and life expectancy.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States launched a diplomatic assault on Syria at the United Nations on Thursday, accusing it of joining forces with Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas to destabilize and undermine Lebanon.

The harsh comments from U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, who accused Syria of arming Hezbollah and flouting Lebanese sovereignty and independence, were immediately dismissed by her Syrian counterpart, who said Rice had her facts wrong.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to urge the United States to lift a 48-year-old economic embargo against Cuba, making a now ritual call despite some U.S. easing toward the communist-run island.

The assembly passed a nonbinding resolution — with 187 votes in favor, two against and three abstentions — for the 19th consecutive year, reflecting the world’s disapproval of Washington’s long-standing effort to isolate Havana.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A U.N. investigator called on the world body on Friday to set up a panel to study the ethics and legality of unmanned military weapons — an apparent reference to U.S. drones that strike suspected Islamist militants.

In a report to the U.N. General Assembly human rights committee, Christof Heyns said such systems raised “serious concerns that have been almost entirely unexamined by human rights or humanitarian actors.”

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A dramatic fall in life expectancy in southern Africa caused by AIDS in the 1990s appears to have bottomed out, with new treatments bringing a slight rise in recent years, a U.N. report said on Wednesday.

But the region remains the only one in the world where life expectancy is currently less than it was in the early 1990s — and in the case of women, much less, the report said.