GENEVA/BEIJING, April 17 (Reuters) – The World Health
Organization said on Wednesday that a number of people who have
tested positive for a new strain of bird flu in China have had
no history of contact with poultry, adding to the mystery about
a virus that has killed 16 people to date.

Chinese authorities have slaughtered thousands of birds and
closed some live poultry markets to try and stem the rate of
human infection, but many questions remain unsolved, including
whether the H7N9 strain is being transmitted between people.

GENEVA, April 16 (Reuters) – Switzerland faces a challenge
as it tries to halt a lending boom that could easily turn to a
crash, Swiss National Bank Vice Chairman Jean-Pierre Danthine
said on Tuesday.

“The critical question is: Could such a reversal happen
smoothly, or in other words, is a soft landing possible?
International experience suggests this is a significant
challenge,” he said, according to a prepared text of a speech to
the Graduate Institute of Geneva.

GENEVA (Reuters) – An international team of flu experts will go to China this week to help with investigations into the deadly H7N9 virus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Chinese authorities said eight more people were infected with the new strain of avian flu that has killed 14 people among 71 confirmed cases, state news agency Xinhua said. The new cases were in the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, it said.

GENEVA, April 12 (Reuters) – Child deaths from pneumonia and
severe diarrhoea, mainly among the poor in Africa and South
Asia, could be virtually eliminated by 2025 under an
“integrated” strategy that includes better sanitation and newer
vaccines, U.N. agencies said on Friday.

The 10-year action plan, estimated to cost $6.0 billion,
aims to stop 2 million children under the age of five dying each
year from the killer diseases, they said.

GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. human rights chief called on the United States on Friday to close down the Guantanamo prison camp, saying the indefinite imprisonment of many detainees without charge or trial violated international law.

Navi Pillay said the hunger strike being staged by some inmates at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in southeastern Cuba was a “desperate act” but “scarcely surprising”.

GENEVA, April 5 (Reuters) – The World Health Organization
said on Friday there was no sign of sustained spread of a deadly
new strain of bird flu among people in China, but it could not
rule out that it was transmitted in a limited way similar to the
H5N1 strain.

It was important to check on the health of 400 people who
had been in close contact with the 14 confirmed cases of the
H7N9 virus, and to nail down the source of infection in the
animal or environmental world, the United Nations agency said.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Former U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to Syria says it is too late for military intervention there and that arming President Bashar al-Assad’s foes will not end the two-year-old crisis.

Annan, who resigned in August blaming “finger-pointing” at the United Nations Security Council for the impasse in his mediation, called for a political solution based on an agreement reached by world powers in Geneva in June.

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations gave its investigators another year to gather evidence of war crimes in Syria on Friday, saying they had already found horrifying first-hand accounts of murder, torture and rape.

The U.N. Human Rights Council condemned “gross violations” by Syrian government forces and allied militia, including shelling of populated areas and massacres during the two-year-old conflict.

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations launched an investigation on Thursday into what it said were widespread and systematic human rights violations in North Korea, some of which “may amount to crimes against humanity”.

The U.N. Human Rights Council unanimously passed a resolution brought by the European Union and Japan, and backed by the United States, condemning alleged North Korean torture, food deprivation and labor camps for political prisoners.

GENEVA, March 21 (Reuters) – The United Nations launched an
investigation on Thursday into what it said were widespread and
systematic human rights violations in North Korea, some of which
“may amount to crimes against humanity”.

The U.N. Human Rights Council unanimously passed a
resolution brought by the European Union and Japan, and backed
by the United States, condemning alleged North Korean torture,
food deprivation and labour camps for political prisoners.