GENEVA/DUBAI (Reuters) – World Health Organization (WHO) experts and local officials will visit a Saudi hospital where the SARS-like coronavirus has spread, killing seven people, the U.N. agency said on Wednesday.

France reported its first case on Wednesday in a 65-year-old Frenchman who had recently returned from Dubai with the virus that has emerged from the Gulf and has also spread to Britain and Germany as well as Jordan, Qatar and United Arab Emirates.

GENEVA, May 7 (Reuters) – Bureaucratic hurdles still hamper
delivery of aid in Syria where nearly one in three people need
help, half of them children, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Aid requirements have risen dramatically in the past year as
the civil war has escalated, with some 6.8 million deemed in
need now compared with 1 million in March 2012, the U.N. Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

GENEVA, May 7 (Reuters) – Bureaucratic hurdles still hamper
delivery of aid in Syria where nearly one in three people need
help, half of them children, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Aid requirements have risen dramatically in the past year as
the civil war has escalated, with some 6.8 million deemed in
need now compared with 1 million in March 2012, the U.N. Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations on Tuesday named a team of three human rights investigators who will look into allegations of torture and labor camps in North Korea that are believed to hold at least 200,000 people.

Pyongyang denies the existence of such camps and is not expected to cooperate with the investigation, having denounced it during a U.N. Human Rights Council debate, activists said.

GENEVA (Reuters) – U.N. war crimes investigators have reached no conclusions on whether any side in the Syrian war has used chemical weapons, the inquiry commission said on Monday, playing down a suggestion from one of the team that rebel forces had done so.

Investigator Carla Del Ponte caught U.N. officials by surprise on Sunday when she said the commission had gathered testimony from casualties and medical staff indicating that rebel forces had used the banned nerve agent sarin.

GENEVA (Reuters) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) urged both sides in Syria’s civil war on Monday to allow swift evacuation of the dead and wounded, many of them civilians, who often lie abandoned for days or months in intense urban fighting.

The ICRC reminded the government and the rebels that international humanitarian law requires bodies to be removed promptly and respectfully, and the injured to be evacuated for treatment.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Cuba said on Friday it would consider letting in U.N. human rights investigators to examine allegations of torture and repression and allowing Red Cross officials access its prisons after a gap of nearly 25 years.

Dissidents say security forces round up opponents of the Communist country for short-term detention and some are mistreated. Cuban officials deny allegations of arbitrary detention or torture.

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States said on Friday that Iran and North Korea were trying to obtain high-tech materials linked to their nuclear programs in violation of U.N. sanctions.

Iran was also sending weapons and ammunition to Syrian government forces despite a ban, said Thomas Countryman, Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation.

GENEVA (Reuters) – A thriving underground social media network is challenging the Communist government’s grip on power and information in Cuba and beginning to bring change, a leading dissident said on Thursday.

But blogger Yoani Sanchez, who has been able to travel abroad due to an easing of exit restrictions, said authorities were still trying to silence critics through detentions.

GENEVA (Reuters) – The Castro government’s easing of foreign travel restrictions on Cubans has not led to greater freedoms on the island, a leading dissident said on Wednesday.

Elizardo Sanchez said 19 opposition activists had been allowed to leave since a new exit policy was introduced on January 14. Dozens more would go in the next few weeks, he said.