BBC: "UN investigators in the Democratic Republic of Congo say they have found mass graves with about 30 bodies in an army camp in the east of the country.
The dead included women and children who appeared to have been murdered, a UN spokesman said. He believed they had disappeared in the last few months."
"The number of Iraqi civilians killed in October reached a new high of 3,709, the influence of armed militias is growing, and torture continues to be rampant despite the Government's commitment to address human rights abuses, according to the latest United Nations rights report on the strife-torn country." More
"The global HIV epidemic is growing, leaving an estimated 39.5 million people worldwide infected with the deadly virus, the United Nations said Tuesday. AIDS has claimed 2.9 million lives this year and another 4.3 million people became infected with HIV, according to the U.N.'s AIDS epidemic update report, published on Tuesday. Spread of the disease was most noticeable in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia." More
This morning, Presidential Special Envoy to Sudan Andrew Natsios and Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guehenno spoke at a Brookings Institution forum on the next steps for Darfur. Their remarks come at a critical time. Late last week, the Sudanese government and representatives of major international actors including the United Nations, the African Union, China, and the United States met in Addis Ababa to discuss the possibility of a hybrid UN-AU force for Darfur.
"The Sudanese government on Thursday agreed in principle to allow a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force into the war-stricken Darfur region, reversing its longstanding refusal to let United Nations troops in.
The agreement, reached after a day of talks with United Nations officials in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, raised hopes for a more effective peacekeeping effort in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed in brutal ethnic and tribal warfare since 2003. A small African Union peacekeeping force has been unable to quell the violence." More
"The head of the United Nations body mandated to protect press freedom today deplored the murder of yet one more Iraqi journalist, saying it was vital to bring an end to "the outrageous campaign of bloodshed" against media professionals in the violence-racked country." More