United Nations

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said April 21 that his government will continue with UN-mediated peace negotiations in Geneva until they "reach a solution", despite an opposition walk-out.
 
He was speaking in the Czech capital Prague during the first visit by a high-ranking Syrian official to an EU member since the beginning of the five-year conflict.

The head of UNESCO, Bulgaria's Irina Bokova, has told AFP that recent reports of alleged mismanagement in UNESCO were "false" and aimed  to undermine her bid to become the next United Nations Secretary General.

Up to 300,000 bicycles will be distributed this year to children and teenagers in order to encourage regular physical activity, Turkish Health Ministry announced on April 21. The bicycles will also be given to the municipalities in order to encourage them to construct bicycle roads. 

Dow Turkey announced in a press release on April 21 that it had received the Low Carbon Hero award at the Istanbul Carbon Summit, which was organized for the third time by the Sustainable Production and Consumption Association (SPCA). 

The United Nations began evacuating hundreds of people from besieged Syrian towns in a rare sign of humanitarian progress, as the U.S. Air Force for the first time deployed a B-52 bomber against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
 

An influential Iraqi Shiite cleric on April 21 called on the United Nations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to help find a solution to the country's simmering political crisis "even through holding early elections."
     

Turkey freezes assets of Yemeni ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, while the U.N.-backed peace talks to solve the armed clashes in Yemen, which were scheduled to start on April 21 after an initial postponement, was postponed once again. 

Turkey has frozen the assets of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in line with a decision by the UN Security Council, the government said in its Official Gazette on April 21. 

All of Saleh's assets in Turkish banks and other financial institutions, including safes, were frozen, it said. 

ZAGREB - Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic has written to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to express deep disappointment and concern over the first-instance acquittal of Vojislav Seselj before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), noting that it will have a negative effect on peace, reconciliation and good-neighbourly relations in the wider southeast E

The U.N. refugee agency said on April 20 that it feared around 500 migrants from Africa had drowned in the Mediterranean after witnesses said their overcrowded boat sank.