New York  - Major charity foundations, government leaders and politicians of all stripes joined forces on Thursday to push for progress in ending poverty, hunger and fighting diseases, and warned that a massive financial crisis could not detract from those efforts.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched the one-day session to review progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a series of ambitious UN targets on slashing extreme poverty, improving health and education across the developing world.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned Thursday that a financial crisis sweeping across advanced economies would actually have its greatest effect on the poor.

Ban, launching a one-day conference on development at UN headquarters in New York, said the financial turmoil was only adding to food and energy crises already affecting developing countries.

"The current financial crisis threatens the well-being of billions of people, none more so than the poorest of the poor," Ban told the UN General Assembly.

New York  - The government of Myanmar should release all political prisoners after deciding to set free several of them this week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday.

Among those released was U Win Tin, who spent 19 years in jail, and six members of the National League for Democracy, which is headed by Aung San Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi has been put under house arrest for more than 10 years by Myanmar's military government for challenging the military leaders to undertake democratic reforms. The UN has been calling for her release to no avail.

New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned Tuesday that a series of global crises were threatening the world at a time when the leadership to address the turmoil was lacking.

In a stark address before the General Assembly, he said: "We all recognize the perils of our current passage. We face a global financial crisis. A global energy crisis. A global food crisis."

But "we also face a crisis of a different sort ... a challenge of global leadership," Ban said.

New York - Not a single country in Africa is on track to meet the United Nations' poverty goals by 2015, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Monday while issuing a plea for more foreign aid.

Ban, opening a one-day conference on African development at UN headquarters, said about 72 billion dollars per year was needed for Africa to reach the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), a series of poverty-reduction targets first set up eight years ago.

New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-