A former American astronaut whose year-long journey in space captivated people worldwide will now help the United Nations to promote space as a tool for achieving sustainable development. Scott Kelly, who has retired from the US space agency, NASA, was on Sunday appointed United Nations Champion for Space by the UN Office for Outer Space [...]

  Killing of 32 civilians in Afghanistan condemned by UN The killing of 32 civilians at a mosque in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has been condemned by the UN mission in the country, UNAMA. A suicide attacker detonated an explosive vest at the Baqer-ul Ulom mosque on Monday where Shia Muslims had gathered to observe [...]

Listen to a bulletin of news and features from United Nations Radio, with Jocelyne Sambira and Daniel Dickinson. Today: The UN calls for "robust" funding to end violence against women, girls. And … Change STEM education to benefit women: NASA official.  

Changing the way science and mathematics are taught could help increase the number of women employed in the aerospace industry, according to a senior adviser with the United States space agency, NASA. NASA Deputy Chief Scientist Gale Allen said studies show that traditional methods of teaching the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) do [...]

"Robust" funding is critical to ending violence against women and girls, the UN agency for gender equality & women’s empowerment, UN Women, has urged. On Monday, the agency launched a global campaign led by civil society organizations under the name "Orange the World". For the next 16 days until 10 December, a host of public [...]

The “intense air assault” that has killed and maimed scores of Syrian civilians over the last several days has been condemned by the UN chief. Ban Ki-moon denounced the indiscriminate shelling that has been reported in Aleppo, including strikes on schools said to have killed a number of children. The airstrikes have also left eastern [...]

A new generation of mobile network technology can be employed to help deal with many of the challenges facing the human race. That's the view of a senior executive at the mobile technology company, Nokia, speaking recently at ITU Telecom World, an annual UN telecommunications conference, held this year in Bangkok, Thailand. The technology under [...]

Change is needed "at all levels" of society to advance gender equality in the workplace according to a senior United Nations official. Experts from around the world are gathering in Panama on Monday at the UN-backed Third Business Forum on Gender Equality and will focus on how the private sector can advance parity and build [...]

Young people are more prone to fall victim to road accidents than adults according to the World Health Organization (WHO). UN figures show that nearly 1.3 million people are killed on the world's roads each year, a number which the WHO aims to reduce by promoting improved road safety. On the World Day of Remembrance [...]

Astronauts, heads of space agencies and representatives of the international space community are meeting in Dubai this week to explore ways to support global development. The first United Nations/United Arab Emirates High Level Forum on Space as a Driver for Socio-Economic Development has been organized by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) [...]