With chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes responsible for 60 per cent of all annual deaths worldwide, tackling the global burden of such non-communicable diseases had become one of the major challenges for development in the twenty-first century, a senior World Health Organization official said today.

Improving resource mobilization, international cooperation, and national ownership were the main priorities of the upcoming five-year review of the Peacebuilding Commission, its Chairman said this afternoon.

Following extraordinary intergovernmental cooperation in containing the human and animal influenza threats of the past several years, the focus was now on maintaining momentum even as such threats dropped from the news, the Senior United Nations System Influenza Coordinator said today.

The Secretary-General is announcing today the development of a Joint Action Plan for accelerating progress on maternal and newborn health. The Plan will bring together Governments, foundations, the corporate sector, civil society and UN agencies in a targeted effort to improve the health of women and children.

An intensive focus on maternal health could boost the achievement of all international development goals, a panel of high Government and United Nations officials said as they kicked off a new global initiative this afternoon.

Urging reporters in New York to “keep the focus on Haiti”, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro today said that “although commendable progress has been made, the situation remains dire” three months after the massive earthquake that killed nearly 250,000 people, left 1 million others homeless and levelled the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Barbados today announced the nomination of Senator and former Energy and Environment Minister Elizabeth Thompson as its candidate for Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, bringing to five the number of countries that have so far nominated candidates for the same position: Costa Rica; South Africa; India; and Indonesia.

The Commission of Inquiry that was formed to determine the facts in the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto will formally present the report on its work to the Secretary-General at 4:30 p.m. The Secretary-General will then transmit it to the Government of Pakistan, and he will also share it, for information purposes, with the members of the Security Council.

The December 2007 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, which could have been prevented by adequate security, was followed by a severely flawed investigation, according to the report of the United Nations independent investigation released to correspondents at Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

The Secretary-General addressed the Security Council’s open debate on post-conflict peacebuilding this morning. He said that we must seize the crucial opportunity after the end of a major conflict. We must respond early and robustly, he said, adding that we must then stay engaged over the long term. Peacebuilding was a complex and multifaceted undertaking -- requiring significant amounts of human, financial and institutional resources, he said.