15 October 2013 Last updated at 06:28 GMT
US Senate leaders upbeat on debt deal
US Senate leaders have expressed optimism after a flurry of negotiations on raising the federal debt ceiling to avert a potentially disastrous default.
They were also nearing a deal to end a partial government shutdown, now in its third week, congressional sources said.
A budget bill would also need to pass the House of Representatives. House Republicans triggered the whole political deadlock two weeks ago.
The US must raise its $16.7tn (£10.5tn) borrowing limit by Thursday.
As he toured a soup kitchen for the poor in Washington DC on Monday, President Barack Obama warned that "defaulting would have a potentially devastating effect on our economy".
Lavish spending forces German bishop to seek audience with pope
Limburg renovation included a reported €15,000 spent on a bath
Derek Scally
Pope Francis took office in March urging the Catholic church to “be poor for the poor”. Now the Bishop of Rome’s new philosophy is to be tested in a very public way with the first prickly problem of his papacy: German bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst.
The 53-year-old is under pressure to resign after overseeing a renovation of his official residential complex in Limburg, near Frankfurt, in which costs jumped fivefold to about €31 million.
Now the future of the man dubbed the “luxury bishop of Limburg” hangs in the balance after Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops’ Conference, arrived in the Vatican yesterday to discuss the matter with the pope.
NUCLEAR
Iran P5+1 nuclear talks begin in Geneva
World powers have revived stalled talks with Iran over its controversial nuclear ambitions. The talks in Geneva are seen as the best chance in years to end a decades-old dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program.
A two-day meeting in Geneva kicked off Tuesday between Iran and the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany. The six nations are commonly referred to as the P5+1 because they group the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany.
Iran faces pressure to propose scaling back its nuclear program in order to win relief from crippling sanctions.
The June election of relative moderate President Hassan Rouhani and his pledges to smooth Tehran's international relations have raised hopes for a negotiated solution.
North Korea used chemical weapons on prisoners: report
October 15, 2013 - 12:18PM
Julian Ryall
Tokyo: North Korea is using political prisoners held in its extensive gulag network as subjects for chemical weapons tests, according to a report in the US.
The allegations have been made in the most recent report on Pyongyang's chemical weapons capabilities by 38 North, the respected website operated by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and are based on testimony from both prisoners and former guards who managed to defect.
One defector who served as a security official at Detention Camp 22 described tests in which healthy prisoners were placed inside glass chambers and technicians monitored the effects as gas was pumped into the chambers.
Hundreds dead in Nigeria detention, Amnesty says
Hundreds of people have died in detention facilities in north-east Nigeria as the army tries to crush an Islamist militant rebellion there, according to Amnesty International.
The human rights group said some detainees died from suffocation in overcrowded cells, others from starvation and extra-judicial killings.
It is calling for an urgent investigation into the deaths.
There has not yet been an official response to the report.
But the Nigerian army has rejected all previous accusations of human rights abuses.
A senior Nigerian army officer told Amnesty that at least 950 people had died in military custody during the first half of this year.
Christian churches in Borneo vow to continue using the word 'Allah'
October 15, 2013 -- Updated 0622 GMT
Churches in the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo have vowed to continue to use the word "Allah" in defiance of a Malaysian court ruling this week that ruled that the word could not be used by a Roman Catholic newspaper to refer to the Christian God.
Christians in Malaysia use the term interchangeably to refer to the Christian and Muslim God, but now a Christian newspaper published in the capital Kuala Lumpur has been told to stop doing so.
The Archbishop of the Anglican Church in South East Asia Datuk Bolly Lapok described the decision as "excessive, utterly irresponsible and grossly demeaning, to say the least.
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