Approximately 7.8 million inhabitants of Niger, accounting for half of the country’s population, were in a very vulnerable situation, Khardiata Lo N’Diaye, newly appointed Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Niger, said at a Headquarters press conference today.

A new report on the impact of supermarket policies in Europe appeared to reveal that better communication was needed between large chains and their consumers before everyday people could begin leading truly sustainable lifestyles, experts in consumption patterns suggested at Headquarters today.

The Secretary-General accepted an urgent request by the President of Pakistan to delay the presentation of the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the facts and circumstances of the assassination of the former Pakistani Prime Minister, Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, until 15 April 2010.

The European Union would pledge some $1.6 billion for Haiti’s reconstruction at today’s “International Donors’ Conference towards a New Future for Haiti” at United Nations Headquarters, top officials of the Union told correspondents today.

The Secretary-General, opening the Donors’ Conference on Haiti this morning, which he is co-hosting with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, highlighted the recovery and reconstruction plan being presented by the Haitian Government, which would establish a new Interim Haiti Recovery Commission to channel $3.9 billion into specific programmes and projects during the next 18 months.

With senior political figures gathered at United Nations Headquarters in New York today for an international conference on rebuilding earthquake-shattered Haiti, the Japanese Government announced that it would provide an additional $30 million to the effort and dispatch a team of disaster-prevention experts to the country, according to Kazuo Kodama, Press Secretary in Japan’s Foreign Ministry.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a Headquarters press conference today at the conclusion of the one-day International Donors’ Conference for Haiti aimed at securing financial resources for the earthquake-stricken country’s recovery that the friends of Haiti had acted far beyond expectations.

The Secretary-General and the other co-chairs of the Donors’ Conference on Haiti spoke to the press yesterday afternoon, and the Secretary-General announced that donors had pledged $5.3 billion for the next two years and $9.9 billion, in total, for the next three years and beyond.

A panel of officials from the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) today hailed the success of the recently-concluded fifth session of the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where nearly 14,000 participants had gathered to weigh the effects of urbanization and consider actions to curb social inequalities, and boost access to shelter, infrastructure, income and basic services for the world’s city-dwellers.

The Secretary-General arrived in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, earlier today on the latest leg of his week-long visit to Central Asia. He has been holding talks with President Rahmon and other Tajik officials on topics including Afghanistan, human rights, climate change and the question of tensions over water resources in Central Asia.