Secretary-General: "Michèle Montas was my first appointment, as you may recall. I wanted someone I could trust, and someone who believed in the United Nations as much as I do. Someone who embodied the highest standards of personal integrity and journalistic credibility. I found that Michèle Montas has all the qualities one could hope for in a Spokesperson."

During a press conference today to update reporters on the upcoming multi-year renovation of United Nation Headquarters in New York City, Assistant Secretary-General Michael Adlerstein said about 3,300 people had been moved out of the Secretariat Building and that the temporary North Lawn building would be ready for occupancy by the end of December.

Today is World AIDS Day. In a message, the Secretary-General says that more must be done, on an urgent basis, to uphold the commitment to reach universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010.

The project “CO2 CUBES –- Visualize a Tonne of Change”, to be launched at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on 7 December, was introduced today at a United Nations Headquarters press conference.

Burkina Faso, December’s President of the Security Council, had organized an open debate on “drug trafficking as a threat to international security” on 8 December, that country’s Permanent Representative Michel Kafando said today at Headquarters.

Poised to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary on 18 December, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was today lauded by women’s rights advocates for enabling human rights defenders over the last thirty years to successfully demand change in laws that discriminated against women.

The world economy will rebound and grow by 2.4 per cent next year, officials from the United Nations said today in a report launched at Headquarters, while warning that the recovery was brittle and depended on continued stimulus measures.

Gender violence and gender inequality were the principal drivers behind the spread of AIDS throughout the Pacific region, according to a report launched today at United Nations Headquarters by the independent Commission on AIDS in the Pacific.

The Secretary-General welcomes the new United States plan for Afghanistan announced by President Barack Obama yesterday evening.

The theme of the annual school award presented by the Spanish non-governmental organization Peace and Cooperation will be “Take care of your planet”, that organization’s president Joaquín Antuña announced at Headquarters today, four days before the United Nations Climate Change Conference opens in Copenhagen.