Switzerland

GENEVA (Reuters) - At least 15 people have been killed in a massive fire that ripped through a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, while 400 remain missing, the U.N. refugee agency said on Tuesday.

“It is massive, it is devastating,” said the UNHCR’s Johannes van der Klaauw, who joined a Geneva briefing virtually from Dhaka, Bangladesh. “We still have 400 people unaccounted for, maybe somewhere in the rubble,” he said.

He added that the UNHCR has reports of 560 people injured and 45,000 people displaced.

GENEVA, March 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — More than 513,000 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus infection were registered worldwide in the past day, with the overall number of such cases exceeding 122.52 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its daily bulletin on Sunday.

As of March 21, as many as 122,524,424 novel coronavirus cases and 2,703,620 coronavirus-associated deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 513,797 in the past 24 hours and the number of fatalities increased by 9,984.

ZURICH (Reuters) - Austria’s OMV supports the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany despite the threat of U.S. sanctions, CEO Rainer Seele said.

“This project is of great importance for the security of supply of the European gas market, it is therefore Europe’s responsibility to decide,” Seele told Austrian newspaper Wiener Zeitung.

“We have had a deep transatlantic friendship with the USA for decades. And friends shouldn’t threaten each other,” he said in an interview published on Saturday.

GENEVA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) urged countries on Friday to continue using the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19, as its benefits outweigh risks with tremendous potential to prevent infections and deaths from the pandemic.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States has appealed against a World Trade Organization recommendation that Washington revise a series of duties imposed on South Korea under then President Barack Obama, a WTO official said on Friday.

The appeal pushes the case into legal limbo along with some 18 others, several of them involving the United States, because the WTO lacks a functioning appellate body.

GENEVA, March 16 (Xinhua) -- A senior Chinese diplomat on Monday urged some Western countries to immediately stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs under the pretext of human rights, and work truly for the protection of human rights.

"The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and some EU countries, abusing the platform of the Human Rights Council, spread misinformation and made groundless accusations against China," said Ambassador Chen Xu, head of the Chinese Mission to the United Nations Office at Geneva.

13 Mar 2021; MEMO: Western countries today called on Egypt to end the prosecution of activists, journalists and perceived political opponents under counter-terrorism laws and to unconditionally release them, Reuters reported.

The United States, which has observer status at the UN Human Rights Council, was among 31 signatories of the joint statement on Egypt, the first since 2014, which called on the government to lift curbs on freedoms of expression and assembly.

GENEVA, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Cuba on Friday delivered a joint statement on behalf of 64 countries at the ongoing 46th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), calling on some forces to stop making unfounded allegations against China out of political motivations.

All sides should promote and protect human rights through constructive dialogue and cooperation, and firmly oppose politicization of human rights and double standards, said the joint statement.

GENEVA, March 12. /TASS/: As of March 9, over 268 mln people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 globally, and currently, no deaths from the vaccines have been confirmed, the World Health Organization (WHO) told TASS, commenting on Denmark, Iceland, Italy and Norway suspending the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine after reports of thrombosis among those vaccinated.

GENEVA, March 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — United Nations human rights experts said they were looking into allegations that Venezuelan police forces had killed 200 people this year and investigators raised concerns about possible summary executions.

UN investigators said that authorities have failed to release death certificates, charged fees for autopsies, and delivered bodies in a closed casket “with the instruction that it not be opened”.