Geneva  - Hundreds of children remain soldiers in the service of rebel groups in the Central African Republic, and recent insecurity in the unstable country might harm efforts to ensure their release, UN children's charity UNICEF said Wednesday.

So far, the agency has managed to free about 100 child soldiers through negotiations.

Rebel groups and the government are set to meet in early December to continue peace talks.

The UN's Children Fund warned that two attacks last week could undermine progress which has been made over the last year.

Jerusalem - United Nations aid agencies asked international donors Wednesday for 462 million dollars to help fund their activities in the Gaza Strip and West Bank in 2009, saying most of the money was needed for emergency food and cash assistance to Palestinians.

Around 274 million dollars is meant for UNWRA, the UN agency which assists Palestinians living in the refugee camps throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

United Nations, Nov 26 : The United Nations has reportedly decided to confer its top human rights award on former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

The award will be announced on December 10, when the UN Human Rights Day is observed across the world. The occasion also marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Daily Times quoted UN sources as saying that UN General Assembly president Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann would officially communicate the decision to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari in the next few days about the conferment of the award.

Beijing  - China is already the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to some estimates, putting it at the centre of international debate on how to combat climate change.

An action plan last year reaffirmed China's commitment to reduce energy consumption compared to economic output by about 4 per cent annually, and emissions of major pollutants by 2 per cent a year to 2010.

Those targets looked ambitious, but the widening global financial crisis may benefit China's pollution control efforts by cutting industrial carbon emissions and by accelerating investment in projects designed to reduce emissions.

Warsaw  - As the European Union seeks to slash greenhouse gas emissions, Polish coal miners are worried - and defiant.

Coal provides 94 per cent of Poland's energy and some 117,000 jobs, a fact that's come into focus as the country prepares to host global talks on a new climate-saving pact.

"Everyone wants to live in healthy air. But you have to find some kind of balance, and you can't do that at the expense of the economy, industry and jobs," said Waclaw Czerkawski, deputy head of Poland's Trade Union of Miners.

Poland's government agrees. Together with other ex-communist EU nations and Italy, it has threatened to block plans to cut the bloc's carbon dioxide pollution to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Berlin  - Car-buyers are being tugged two ways in a German debate over carbon-dioxide emissions: should they buy cars for the fast lane, or downsize to smaller cars more suited to the slow lane of German autobahns?

The dilemma came to a head when Chancellor Angela Merkel's government debated an economic stimulus package in October.

With global talks on a new climate-saving pact due next week in Poland, the dispute underlined the conflict between ecology and the economy.

Germany initially wanted to grant two-year vehicle tax rebates to buyers of all cars with sophisticated technology to reduce and purify emissions, but an outcry from environmentalists halted the plan.