11 April 2013 Last updated at 08:01 GMT
While officials say safety of diplomats in Pyongyang cannot be guaranteed, visitors describe calm atmosphere
Public lashings. Religious extremists seizing power. A gay blogger with his throat slashed. Few of the million annual visitors to the Maldives will recognise the hellish side of these heavenly islands
Korea and Syria high on agenda at London G8 talks
The Korean and Syrian crises will be high on the agenda when foreign ministers from the G8 group of nations hold talks in London on Thursday.
Correspondents say Japan, present at the talks, is looking for a strong statement of solidarity over Korea.
North Korea has been making bellicose threats against South Korea, Japan and US bases in the region.
Foreign ministers will also debate the Syrian crisis, after meeting opposition figures on Wednesday.
The ministers have arrived at Lancaster House in London ahead of the morning session.
North Korea: Pyongyang's bellicose rhetoric at odds with calm atmosphere
While officials say safety of diplomats in Pyongyang cannot be guaranteed, visitors describe calm atmosphere
The shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang seems to presage impending war on the Korean peninsula – but there are rollerbladers in the heart of the city, soldiers at work on construction sites and preparations underway for an upcoming marathon.
While North Korean officials have warned diplomats that they cannot guarantee their safety in the capital from Wednesday, visitors this week have described a calm atmosphere.
Residents are apparently preparing not for bitter military conflict, but Monday's anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birth, the country's most important holiday; the grandfather of current leader, Kim Jong-un, is revered as the nation's founder. Associated Press described women attending a dance rehearsal for celebrations, and noted that residents said there had been no civil air raid drills recently.
Trouble in paradise: The darker side of the Maldives
Public lashings. Religious extremists seizing power. A gay blogger with his throat slashed. Few of the million annual visitors to the Maldives will recognise the hellish side of these heavenly islands
Hilath Rasheed, the first openly gay and secular blogger in the Maldives, was about to walk through his front door one afternoon last year when he felt the box-cutter slice through his neck.
It took a moment to notice the blood pouring down his shirt. As his attackers sauntered off, Hilath staggered to the main road, clutching the loose skin over his throat with one hand. He managed to hitch a lift to hospital from a horrified motorcyclist. When a doctor in the emergency room asked him to move his hand away, a policeman and nurse fainted.
Following a miraculous recovery – doctors told him there was less than a 1 per cent chance of surviving such an attack – Hilath, 35, now lives in exile in Sri Lanka. He misses home, but a country where it is illegal to be non-Muslim and violent forms of religious fundamentalism are on the rise is no place for a homosexual secularist, he says.
German restarts hunt for nuclear waste dump
New facility for 28,000 tonnes of nuclear material to open by 2040
After 36 years of political feuds and citizen protests, Germany has gone back to the drawing board in its hunt for somewhere to store its nuclear waste.
A contentious 1977 decision to deposit high-risk nuclear waste in a salt mine in the state of Hesse will be rescinded after government and opposition lawmakers in Berlin agreed to start the search for a new site.
Federal environment minister Peter Altmaier said agreement to find a new site “resolves amicably the last controversial topic in the atomic age”.
The preliminary agreement, likely to approved by the Bundestag in July, empowers a committee of experts to identify a shortlist of sites by 2015. A final decision is to be taken by 2031 and the facility has to be built by 2040.
SYRIA
HRW: Syrian regime 'deliberately' targeting civilians with airstrikes
An NGO has accused the Syrian regime of killing thousands of civilians in "indiscriminate" airstrikes. Human Rights Watch has issued its lates report as the Syrian civil war enters its third year.
Some 4,300 Syrian civilians have been killed in air force bombings since July, according to a report published Thursday by the New York-based group. It claims that military fighter jets and helicopters have targeted areas under the control of opposition groups, who have want to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
'The Fatwa Show': Moroccan journalist tells clerics to just have some fun
'The Fatwa Show' satirizes Islamic legal opinions, and is one of the most popular features on the new Arab world news and commentary website Free Arabs.
A woman places her foot on the table and Sheikh Muslim Jiddan gingerly lifts the hem of her robe – then drops it again in shock at an impossibly hairy calf.
In Tunis, a roomful of young bloggers bursts into laughter as the scene unfolds via a laptop and wall projector.
The fictional sheikh appears on Free Arabs, a new secular-minded website that includes skits poking fun at Islamic legal opinions by dramatizing them far beyond their logical conclusions. (This one advises women not to shave their legs.)
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