27 October 2013 Last updated at 06:01 GMT
China newspaper apologises over Chen Yongzhou reports
A Chinese newspaper, which made front-page appeals for the release of one its journalists, has issued an apology.
The Guangdong-based New Express said a preliminary police investigation found that Chen Yongzhou had accepted money to publish numerous false reports.
He was arrested over claims he defamed a partly state-owned firm in articles exposing alleged corruption.
The paper's front-page apology came after the journalist confessed to wrongdoing on state TV.
"I'm willing to admit my guilt and to show repentance," Mr Chen said in a statement broadcast on Saturday.
Roma – the unwanted Europeans
Suspicion of people who are poor and homeless is fuelled by rumours of stolen children and French bungling over the expulsion of a Roma family
Samuel lives in the derelict changing rooms of a disused university football pitch with his mother, father and eight brothers and sisters. He is one month old.
To visit Samuel, you pass through a jagged hole in a concrete wall. There is no electricity and no running water. Heating is provided by a wood stove made from an oil drum.
Four families, including eight adults and 20 children, live in, or around, the derelict changing cabin beside the weed-strewn pitch. Norica, aged 10, with blue eyes and light brown hair, proudly shows off her family's home: a hut the size of a small hen house constructed by her father from scavenged wood.
Fears of killer polio outbreak in Syria
October 27, 2013Rick Gladstone
United Nations officials are mobilising to vaccinate 2.5 million young children in Syria and more than 8 million others in the region to combat what they fear could be an outbreak of polio, the incurable viral disease that cripples and kills, which has reappeared in the war-ravaged country for the first time in more than a dozen years.
The officials said the discovery a few weeks ago of a cluster of paralysed young children in Deir al-Zour, a heavily contested city in eastern Syria, had prompted their alarm, and that tests conducted by both the government and rebel sides strongly suggested the children had been afflicted with polio.
There is a real risk of this exploding into an outbreak with hundreds of cases.
Ethiopia opens Africa's largest wind farm to boost power production
Africa's biggest wind farm began production in Ethiopia on Saturday, aiding efforts to diversify electricity generation from hydropower plants and help the country become a major regional exporter of energy.
The Horn of Africa country - plagued by frequent blackouts - plans to boost generating capacity from 2 000 MW to 10 000 MW within the next three to five years, much of it coming from the 6,000 MW Grand Renaissance Dam under construction on the Nile.
The plan also consists of raising wind power generation to more than 800 MW and geothermal capacity to less than 100 MW.
The 210 million euro ($289.68 million) Ashegoda Wind Farm was built by French firm Vergnet SA with concessional loans from BNP Paribas and the French Development Agency (AFD). The Ethiopian government covered 9 percent of the cost.
Mexico's soda companies fear junk-food tax
By , E-mail the writer
OAXACA, Mexico — Sweet tangerine sodas and strawberry kiddy drinks have been good for the Guzman family.
Over 60 years and three generations, their Gugar soda company has offered them hard-won prosperity in one of the poorest states in Mexico. It’s allowed the youngest to study at the University of California at Berkeley and vacation in Las Vegas, and enshrined the eldest in a bronze bust with a nameplate that reads: “Creator of entrepreneurs.”
But for Mexico, the vast appetite for sodas, chips, snacks, sweets — all manner of what they call here “comida chatarra,” or junk food — has helped inflate an overweight nation to obesity levels rivaled only by those lumpen gringos to the north.Saudi women drive in protest with little problem
By ,
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — More than 60 women across Saudi Arabia claimed they drove cars Saturday in defiance of a ban keeping them from getting behind the wheel, but they faced little protest from police in their push to ease restrictions on women in the kingdom.
The campaign’s message is that driving should be a woman’s choice. The struggle is rooted in the kingdom’s hard-line interpretation of Islam, known as Wahabbism, with critics warning that allowing women to drive could unravel the fabric of Saudi society.
Though no laws ban women from driving in Saudi Arabia, authorities do not issue them licenses. Women who drove Saturday had driver’s licenses from abroad, activists said.
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