Geneva - Swiss Re, the world's second largest re-insurer, said Thursday it would accept a 3 billion-Swiss-franc (2.58 billion dollars)-investment from US financier Warren Buffet, needed in light of losses suffered last year.

The investment, through Buffet's firm Berkshire Hathaway, would be "significant" the company said, and would help it maintain enough capital to keep an AA credit rating.

Last year the company was expected to have suffered losses about 1 billion francs.

The investment needs to be approved by Swiss Re shareholders.

Geneva  - Thousands of ethnic Tamils from all over Switzerland and beyond gathered outside the UN headquarters in Geneva Wednesday to protest the Colombo government's action in northern Sri Lanka and to demand help from the United Nations.

Organisers claimed some 15,000 were taking part in the angry demonstration, which prompted a major police presence.

The action came after Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa predicted the army would defeat separatist Tamil Tiger rebels within days, ending a civil war that has ravaged the country for nearly three decades.

Geneva  - The United Nations issued an appeal Tuesday for Afghanistan, asking donors to give 603 million dollars for aid as the humanitarian situation in the country continued to deteriorate.

Mounting insecurity along with natural disasters, specifically drought, have set the country back from gains made earlier this decade, the UN said.

"Poverty indicators, maternal mortality and infant mortality rates, are all very poor," said John Holmes, the under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs.

Geneva - The Swiss set a new record for themselves, exporting in 2008 some 17 billion francs' (14.7 billion dollars) billion francs) worth of watches, a report released Tuesday said.

While this was an increase of over 6 per cent compared to 2007, the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry warned that the final months of last year saw a 7.8 per cent decline in exports, as the financial crisis began to be felt across the real economy.

This year, the association said, will begin in the red, continuing the trend, though the highest end timepieces were holding steady through the initial phases of the crisis.

Geneva - Germany came before the United Nations' periodic country review Monday to say it had a strong regard for human rights but was still in the process of tackling some open issues, including racism and immigration related matters.

"Xenophobia and racism are serious concerns for us," Gernot Erler, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Germany, said before the Human Rights Council.

Since the introduction in 2007 of the UN's Universal Period Review program, set up the Human Rights Council, each country's rights record is supposed to be checked once every four years.

Geneva -The United Nations opened its fourth session of the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva on Monday, which will see 16 countries over the next two weeks have their rights records checked and critiqued.

The UN's Human Rights Council, established in 2006, set up a process so that each member state of the international organ will be reviewed once every four years on its human rights policies.

Governments, including of the country in question, the UN and non-governmental groups provide their take on each state's record, and then a body of the Council issues a report with its recommendations.