31 August 2013 Last updated at 06:03 GMT
UN inspectors leave Syria as US weighs 'limited act'
UN inspectors investigating the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria have left Damascus.
They crossed into neighbouring Lebanon just hours after President Barack Obama said the US was considering a "limited narrow act" against Syria.
Citing a US intelligence assessment, Secretary of State John Kerry accused Syria of using chemical weapons to kill 1,429 people, including 426 children.
Syria said the US claim was "full of lies", blaming rebels for the attacks.
The UN inspectors - investigating what happened in the Damascus suburbs on 21 August - left their hotel in the Syrian capital in a convoy of vehicles on Saturday morning and later arrived in Lebanon.
During their visit, they carried out four days of inspections.
It could be two weeks before their final report is ready, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has told diplomats.
Sri Lanka turning authoritarian, says UN human rights chief Navi Pillay
The United Nations rights chief has chastised the Sri Lankan government, saying it is showing signs of heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction despite the end of a civil war four years ago.
In a hard-hitting statement ending a weeklong visit to assess the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said she was "deeply concerned that Sri Lanka, despite the opportunity provided by the end of the war to construct a new vibrant all-embracing state, is showing signs of heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction."
During her stay, Pillay met government officials, politicians, rights activists and people affected by the war. She is to report her findings to the UN Human Rights Council next month.
During her stay, Pillay met government officials, politicians, rights activists and people affected by the war. She is to report her findings to the UN Human Rights Council next month.
Colombia protests show dark side of economic boom
While economic data shows that Colombia is enjoying healthy and steady growth, the country's protesting rural poor feel like they have been not been invited to the party.
By Joseph BAMAT
President Juan Manuel Santos ordered Colombia’s army to secure the streets of the capital on Friday, after growing protests in support of striking farmers left two people dead.
The strike that began more than a week ago took a worrying turn on Thursday with masked youths clashing with riot police in the capital.Citing the casualties and looting, Santos said on national TV that 50,000 soldiers would patrol the country’s major cities and highways, and ensure that deliveries reach city markets. Meanwhile, negotiations between government ministers and farmers were put on hold and officials were called back to Bogota, according to Colombian weekly Semana
The perfect storm: Australia's extreme weather thrill-seekers
August 31, 2013Susan Chenery
The risks are monstrous, yet for tornado-chasing Australians, the beauty of midwest America's twisters just "blows you away".
It started as a small heap of fluffy white clouds on a blue summer day. But as the afternoon wore on, the sky above the flat green plains of Oklahoma darkened and grew malevolent. Crackling, roaring and rotating, the thunderstorm touched down as a tornado at 6.03pm, 13 kilometres south-west of the town of El Reno, unleashing a sudden and terrible power. In less than a minute, the tornado blew up from about 1.6 kilometres wide to 4.2 kilometres, the widest ever measured, with wind speeds close to 480 kilometres per hour, matching the fastest on record. Revolving around the immense parent tornado were smaller satellite tornadoes. One picked up a car containing three storm researchers, who'd been laying down probes to measure the system, and tossed it into the air, killing all three.
"You just saw the very left edge of the tornado but you couldn't see the right edge, it was so wide," says storm chaser Daniel Schummy, a 22-year-old graphic artist and video editor from Jimboomba, Queensland. On May 31 this year, Schummy was directly in the tornado's path, stuck in a traffic jam with three other storm chasers from Australia: Justin Noonan, Brendan Strauch and Rosemarie Steiner. The local TV news station's chief meteorologist had been telling people to get in their cars and flee south.
Children are exposed to a minefield of labour, mercury for the sake of gold
Thousands of children are working in small-scale Tanzanian gold mines, with many using or being exposed to mercury, a new report says.
Human Rights Watch has called on the government of Tanzania, along with donor organisations and gold companies, to take urgent action to curb the high rates of child labour and regulate the use of mercury.
In a 96-page report published this week the United States-based lobby group paints a grim picture of artisanal gold mining in the East Africa country, which, in 2011, was the continent’s fourth-largest gold producer.
Children, many of whom are orphans, are involved in every stage of artisanal mining, from digging with picks to carrying heavy rocks, mixing gold ore with mercury and burning the amalgam to extract gold, which they also sometimes sell directly to dealers. The work is backbreaking and dangerous and can involve being underground for between six and 24 hours. Of the 80 children interviewed on 11 mining sites, some had been injured by rudimentary machinery and others were trapped underground when shafts collapsed.
North Korea in grip of drugs epidemic, report claims
By Peter Shadbolt, CNN
North Korea's sanction-hit regime has long been accused of drug trafficking as a source of hard currency, but a new report claims drug producers are finding a ready market closer to home and that as many as two-thirds of North Koreans have used methamphetamines.
According to a report in the Spring 2013 edition of the journal North Korean Review, stricter China border controls have forced methamphetamine producers in the north to seek a local market for "ice" (known locally as "bingdu").
The report's co-author, Professor Kim Seok Hyang, of South Korea's Ewha Woman's University, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that interviews with North Korean defectors suggested that the country is in the grip of an "ice" plague.
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