New York - World leaders meeting at the United Nations General Assembly starting Tuesday will most likely look to a humble Roman Catholic priest from Nicaragua for direction in solving their earthly problems.

That priest is Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a leftist clergyman and former foreign minister under the Sandinist government in Managua in the 1990s. Pope John Paul II had publicly scorned him for his leftist leanings when he visited Central America.

Elected president of the 63rd session of the 192-nation assembly in New York, d'Escoto Brockmann bluntly said he has not changed from the time he was a Sandinist. He still does not like the policies of the United States, he added.

New York  - US stocks posted significant gains on Thursday, the latest swing in a topsy-turvy week on Wall Street amid a burgeoning financial crisis and massive government interventions aimed at preventing wider economic fallout.

The markets appeared to be buoyed by talk of a more permanent solution to the financial turmoil after US legislators indicated a willingness to create a new government agency that would take on the bad loans of struggling banking firms.

New York  - The next Israeli government should end the expansion of Jewish settlement in occupied Palestinian territories, a UN official said Thursday.

The statement came a day after Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni won leadership of the Kadima Party and before she begins negotiations to form a new coalition government.

Robert Serry, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a meeting of the UN Security Council that decisive progress should be made in settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as negotiations are at a crossroad.

New York  - Despite government pledges to uphold gender equality, men still outnumber women in top decision-making positions in governments as well as in the private sector, the UN Development Fund for Women said Thursday.

Measures are needed to track progress that governments and multilateral organizations have made in implementing their commitments to enhancing women's rights, the fund said in a report released before the start of the UN General Assembly next week.

New York  - Morgan Stanley, one of just two remaining independent investment banks on Wall Street, was reportedly seeking protection from the financial turmoil on US markets by entering talks with Wachovia Corp and the Chinese state investment fund on Thursday.

Morgan Stanley was in talks with China Investment Corporation (CIC) to sell it a 49-per-cent stake in the firm, Bloomberg financial news reported Thursday citing insiders familiar with the talks. CIC already controls 10 per cent of Morgan Stanley's stock.

New York  - The US arts scene is famously dependent on private philanthropy for its survival. Very little federal, state or city government money comes it way.

That's why museum, theatre and opera directors are watching nervously as Wall Street's financial turmoil shaved nearly 8 per cent off the Dow Jones blue chip stock index this week and two big companies collapsed.

"It's a very challenging time for not-for-profits," Jeffry Peek, a key player in the New York cultural world, told the New York Sun newspaper.