15 November 2013 Last updated at 08:23 GMT
Typhoon Haiyan: Plight of survivors 'bleak' despite aid effort
Aid workers struggling to help survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines have described the situation as bleak, one week after the storm tore into the country.
A spokesman for Medecins Sans Frontieres said the logistical issues of distributing aid were enormous.
However, correspondents in the ruined city of Tacloban say US military aircraft are beginning to bring in aid.
Philippine officials say the death toll has now risen to 3,621.
Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said this figure was as of Thursday and the actual number was likely to be higher.
The Philippine's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said that there were a total of 2,360 confirmed deaths, while other reports from the ground put the figure higher than Mr Roxas' tally.
Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian general idolised for deposing former President Mohamed Morsi
Could we ever have imagined, two-and-a-half years ago, that we would witness the idolisation of General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi?
Perhaps Egypt does something to generals. We were always reminded by former President Hosni Mubarak’s cronies that he was an air force hero in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war; you’d think that his bombing raid was the only one staged by the Egyptian air force. Sadat loved uniforms, when he was president – blue, with far too many ribbons – and of course there was Colonel Nasser and his millions of admirers.
But the mass worship of Sisi has surely gone too far. Journalists adore him, people eat sweets made in his portrait. And now, Egyptians are passing around hundred dollar bills with his coloured portrait Photoshopped over the engraving of Benjamin Franklin. Sisi is in full colour and dress uniform, staring unsmiling at the holder of this weird currency. On the reverse side, over the White House, there he is again, this time seated on a kind of throne, in camouflage fatigues, baseball cap on his head, arm raised to his chin, thinking, no doubt, of Egypt’s glorious future.
Secret report warns France on verge of revolt on tax issue
Usually careful corps of prefects warns of ‘a possible social explosion’
Lara Marlowe
A secret document leaked to Le Figaro newspaper explains why President François Hollande caves in to the slightest sign of street protest.
“Throughout [French] territory . . . society is in the grip of tension, exasperation and anger,” says the ministry of the interior’s monthly summary of reports from 101 prefects, dated October 25th.
The corps of prefects was established by Napoleon in 1800 to be the central government’s eyes and ears in the provinces. The prefects are graduates of the elite École Nationale d’Administration and are considered neutral public servants.
A Pacifist at War: An Unlikely Leader's Success in Congo
In the embattled region of eastern Congo, the United Nations is deploying a real combat brigade for the first time. It's being led by a German pacifist who believes peacekeeping sometimes requires the use of military force. His approach appears to be working.
On a Monday morning in late October, Martin Kobler is sitting in an armored personnel carrier, bumping along National Road No. 2 from Kiwanja to Rutshuru, which is more of a path than a main road. It leads through the eastern part of Congo, a country the size of Western Europe. In recent years, more people have been murdered, tortured and raped in Congo than anywhere else in the world. And now Kobler, a German, has come here to bring about peace by armed force.
He waves to children by the roadside and gazes with satisfaction at the first refugees returning to their abandoned villages, carrying mattresses and water cans on their backs.
Why does the PlayStation 4 cost $1,850 in Brazil?
The PlayStation 4, which goes on sale in Latin America on Nov. 29, runs only $399 in the US – but for the average Brazilian, it will cost two months' salary.
It’s not easy being a gamer in Brazil. Not only do you have to wait an extra two weeks for the release of the new PlayStation 4, which goes on sale tomorrow in the US, but it will cost you 4.5 times the price.
It’s cheaper to buy a roundtrip plane ticket from Rio de Janeiro to Miami or New York City, plus the PlayStation 4, rather than purchase the console new in Brazil.
Taxes are the main reason, in a sign of how Brazil’s astronomically high import fees and mind-numbing tax codes have created a market that encourages rule-breakers, discourages equal market access, and sends Brazilians shopping abroad. Brazilians spent a record $2.1 billion on foreign trips in September, according to the Central Bank.
15 November 2013 Last updated at 01:13 GMT
Lethal injection: Secretive US states resort to untested drugs
As American states have found it harder to source drugs for lethal injections, they stand accused of using improvised and possibly painful methods - and buying drugs furtively from unregulated pharmacies.
Joseph Franklin was sentenced to death for shooting and killing a man outside a synagogue in 1977.
He was convicted or blamed for a series of other racially motivated murders, and confessed to being the sniper who shot porn publisher Larry Flynt in 1978, leaving him partially paralysed.
He is due to be executed by lethal injection in Missouri on 20 November, if no last-minute legal appeal is granted.
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