21 January 2014 Last updated at 08:07 GMT
Get ready, Sochi: The Jamaicans are coming, and they're bringing their bobsled. Again.
Syria accused of torture and 11,000 executions
There is clear evidence that Syria has systematically tortured and executed about 11,000 detainees since the start of the uprising, a report by three former war crimes prosecutors says.
The investigators examined thousands of images of dead prisoners reportedly smuggled out of Syria by a defector.
One of the authors told the BBC there was evidence of government involvement. Damascus has denied claims of abuse.
The report comes a day before peace talks are due to begin in Switzerland.
The Guardian newspaper in the UK - which along with CNN first unveiled the report - says the release appears timed to coincide with the conference, opening in the resort town of Montreux, and continuing in Geneva two days later.
The talks are being seen as the biggest diplomatic effort to end the three-year conflict which has left more than 100,000 dead and millions displaced.Japanese airline ANA pulls 'racist' advert from TV after complaints it stereotyped foreigners as having big noses and blonde hair
Duisburg’s post-industrial zone lures Roma it struggles to support
Squalid buildings in an area to be razed serve as crammed homes for migrants in the western German city
Derek Scally
The streetscape looks like the set of a war movie. Apartment blocks are either sooty and boarded-up or jagged, half-demolished ruins. Exposed gable walls are multicoloured grids of vanished rooms; empty sites are filling up with blue rubbish bags and bits of sofas.
This is what is left of Bruckhausen, a former workers’ quarter in the western German city of Duisburg. With an autobahn on one side and the ThyssenKrupp steel plant on the other, Bruckhausen is disappearing one building at a time to make way for a city green belt.
Until the demolition crews arrive, enterprising local landlords have rented vacated apartments to Roma families who have arrived here in the last six years. It’s easy to spot the Roma houses: boarded-up doors hang ajar, mailboxes are covered in scrawled and scratched-out Romanian names.Rights group fights Malawi's anti-gay laws
A rights group is seeking a review of the three gay men's jail sentences and plans to challenge laws that criminalise homosexuality in Malawi.
A Malawi high court on Monday began hearing a petition by a leading rights group seeking to obtain the review of jail sentences of three gays and to overturn laws that criminalise homosexuality.
"We want the court to declare the laws that criminalise homosexuality in Malawi unconstitutional," Gift Trapence, director of a rights group, the Centre for Development of People (Cedep), said.
"We are also seeking a review of sentences passed by the courts to three men who are serving long jail terms for homosexual acts," said Trapence.
In 2011, a magistrate court sentenced Amon Champyuni, Mathew Bello and Mussa Chiwisi to between six years and 12 years in jail with hard labour for unnatural acts and buggery offences.
"As long as same-sex relationships are consensual and done in private, no one has business to get bothered," said Trapence, a leading activist for minority rights.
Jamaican bobsled team: It's true, Jamaicans are heading to Sochi!
The Jamaican bobsled team said Monday they are accepting an invitation to compete in next month's Sochi Olympics. Jamaican Olympic officials and the Sochi Organizing Committee will cover travel costs for the team.
Get ready, Sochi: The Jamaicans are coming, and they're bringing their bobsled. Again.
Jamaican bobsled pilot Winston Watts and the nation's Olympic Committee said Monday they are accepting an invitation to compete in next month's Sochi Olympics.
It's the first time the Jamaican bobsled team will compete in the games since 2002. The invitation comes after Watts accumulated enough points in lower-tier races in North America to qualify.
"Oh, man, it's really overwhelming," Watts said in a telephone interview Monday. "I'm really happy. I have the whole entire world behind us. TheJamaica bobsled team is very popular, but when I see and hear that the whole entire world, even the Middle East — I mean, really, there's a place in the Middle East that calls me and I don't even know its name — we have fans from so far away. For a little tiny island, it's so emotional."
China's urban explosion: 'Sim City' on steroids
January 21, 2014 -- Updated 0636 GMT
Imagine China's urbanization drive asSimCity on steroids.
The core objective of the video game is to build a metropolis while staying on budget and keeping residents happy.
China has done it on a massive scale over the last three decades, but with disappointing results.
For starters, inefficient spending has spawned China's empty mega malls and "ghost cities" of headline lore.
And in those urban areas problems abound. China's city dwellers are forced to live in a severe concrete landscape of polluted skies and chronic gridlock.
"You've got 500 million people that have moved to the cities since 1980," says James McGregor, Beijing-based author and chairman of the consultancy APCO Worldwide.
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