Geneva - The United Nations' Human Rights Council announced Wednesday it is to hold a special session Friday on the situation in the eastern section of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Humanitarian aid organizations and other groups working in Congo have accused fighters in the Kivu region of having committed severe rights abuses, including sexual violence against women.

Washington, Nov 26 : A new research has determined that the Sun is fading above major cities around the world as thick clouds of pollution prevent its rays from reaching the ground.

According to ENN (Environmental News Network), the research is part of a report known as the ‘Atmospheric Brown Clouds’ (ABC) report, by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The report indicates that the dirty brown haze, sometimes three-kilometers thick, stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to China and the western Pacific Ocean.

The clouds have blocked up to 25 percent of sunlight in many cities, with Guangzhou, in southern China, among several cities to record more than 20 percent reduction in sunlight since the 1970s.

Vienna - The international Association of Space Explorers (ASE) on Tuesday called on the United Nations to develop strategies against asteroids threatening to hit earth, in a report presented at the United Nations in Vienna.

Among the known 5,600 so-called near-earth objects, and the 500,000 additional ones expected to be discovered in the next 15 years, "several dozen will pose an uncomfortably high risk of striking Earth and inflicting local or regional devastation," the astronauts said in their report.

Geneva - Global concentrations of greenhouse gases continued to increase in 2007, a report issued Tuesday said, with carbon dioxide rates reaching the highest level ever recorded.

The major cause of the gas emissions was human activities like burning fossil fuels and agriculture, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported, adding that methane gas emissions had their greatest increase since 1998.

Brussels - An internal European Union report on the state of Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria raises the pressure on the bloc to take in more of them ahead of a key ministerial meeting Thursday.

The report, seen by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, concludes that "there is a clear need for resettlement" of Iraqi refugees from the two countries, and that an "increased engagement on the part of the EU countries on resettlement could send a positive signal to the governments of the hosting countries."

Vienna- The price for crude oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries