Hot off the presses, ten embassies in Colombo issue a joint statement on the protests that forced the UN to close it's offices in Sri Lanka.
STATEMENT BY HEADS OF MISSION OF GERMANY, UK, US, FRANCE, ITALY, SWITZERLAND, THE NETHERLANDS, ROMANIA, NORWAY AND THE EU DELEGATION
We are deeply dismayed by the blockade of the UN-compound this week in Colombo and the role played in it by a Government minister.
This is bad news. The United Nations is shuttering its offices in Sri Lanka amid days of protests against UN attempts to take preliminary steps to investigate alleged atrocities committed last year during the waning days of Sri Lanka's civil war.
UN Foundation President (disclosure) and former Colorado Senator Timothy Wirth will address the annual conference of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association at approximately 11a.m. MDT today. The theme of the conference is the “Global Dawn of the Unconventional Natural Gas Age.” Sen.
Check this out. UNICEF erects a giant inflatable television screen in a remote village in Zambia to broadcast the World Cup.
At the Daily Beast, Congolese activist Annie Rashidi-Mulumba laments that the United Nations has not played a more constructive role in resolving Congo's civil war. She also seems to welcome the forthcoming exit of UN peacekeeping troops, engineered by Congolese president Joseph Kabilla. She writes:
UPDATE: The UN just released some footage from both the Queen's 1957 speech and her visit to the United Nations yesterday. Kinda cool, I think.
There is a stunning anti-UN protest underway in Columbo, Sri Lanka. Nationalist protesters led by a government official have blockaded scores of UN employees inside a UN compound. Outside, protestors have burned Ban Ki Moon in effigy.
For the past several months there has been an on going effort at the UN to combine four disparate UN agencies that deal with womens' and gender issues under the leadership of one single under-secretary general. Inside UN circles, this is clumsily referred to as the "Gender Entity" process. And at 3:30 this afternoon, the General Assembly unanimously voted to bring this effort to life.