29 January 2014 Last updated at 04:53
Minister urges voters to turn out for 2 February election that protesters vow to disrupt in bid to topple Yingluck Shinawatra
State of the Union: Obama promises action on inequality
US President Barack Obama has promised to bypass a fractured Congress to tackle economic inequality in his annual State of the Union address.
He pledged to "take steps without legislation" wherever possible, announcing a rise in the minimum wage for new federal contract staff.
On Iran, he said he would veto any new sanctions that risked derailing talks.
The Democratic president is facing some of his lowest approval ratings since first taking office in 2009.
"Let's make this a year of action," Mr Obama said.
Noting that inequality has deepened and upward mobility stalled, he would offer "a set of concrete, practical proposals to speed up growth, strengthen the middle class, and build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class".
"America does not stand still - and neither will I," he said. "So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I'm going to do."
Thai police to deploy 10,000 officers in Bangkok for election
Minister urges voters to turn out for 2 February election that protesters vow to disrupt in bid to topple Yingluck Shinawatra
Thailand's government will deploy 10,000 police in the capital for Sunday's election, which protesters have promised to disrupt as part of their attempt to topple the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra.
The government decided on Tuesday to press ahead with the 2 February election, which the main opposition party plans to boycott and despite warnings that it could lead to more violence without resolving the country's increasingly bitter political divide.
"I ask Bangkok residents to come out and vote," the labour minister Chalerm Yoobamrung told reporters on Wednesday.
"The police will take care of security … Those who are thinking of going and shutting polling stations in the morning should think twice because the police will not allow them to."Iranian teacher who shaved his head in solidarity with an ill pupil who went bald becomes a national hero
Mladic refuses to testify at Karadzic war crimes trial
Former Bosnian Serb army leader dismisses Hague court as ‘satanic’
Peter Cluskey
It’s a long way down from being the most powerful military figure in Bosnia to standing in the dock of an international court admitting you can’t give evidence because you’ve left your dentures in your detention cell, but that’s where former general Ratko Mladic found himself yesterday.
And yet for all that – and despite the fact that this was the first time since the end of the Bosnian War that he and his former ally, Radovan Karadzic, had met face to face – Mladic was in no doubt as to who was the most important man in Courtroom 1. Accustomed throughout his military career to being the centre of attention and in charge, it was as if the 71-year-old general had decided that if you can’t hold their attention one way, you can do it another. So with military precision he went for the don’t-make -it-easy strategy . . .
IOM releases Mediterranean boat migrant count
Some 45,000 boat migrants, including thousands of children, made dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean to land in Italy and Malta in 2013, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Most were fleeing wars or abuses, said the intergovernmental organization on Tuesday. It listed 11,300 migrants fleeing Syria, 9,800 from Eritrea and 3,200 from Somalia. Among them were 8,300 minors; two-thirds of these were unaccompanied.
The IOM said its 2013 total was a sharp jump from the 13,000 recorded in 2012, but down on the 63,000 recorded in 2011 during armed sectarian conflict in Libya.
The IOM said the "real" tragedies had involved those migrants who had disappeared untraced at sea during capsizes of flimsy, overcrowded boats, which border authorities claim are often operated by smugglers.
South Sudan rebel leader should face treason charge: minister
JUBA
South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar and six others should be tried for treason for their role in weeks of bloodshed, the justice minister said on Tuesday, threatening to heighten tensions in already troubled peace talks.
Minister Paulino Wanawilla Unago cushioned the blow by saying seven other political figures, arrested after the violence erupted, would be released, partly meeting one of the rebels' demands at the negotiations.
Fighting broke out between rival groups in the presidential guard in the capital Juba in mid December and quickly spread to oil-producing areas, largely along ethnic lines.
President Salva Kiir accused Machar, the vice president he sacked in July, of launching a coup in the world's newest country.
Knights Templar cartel beware? Mexico strikes deal with vigilantes.
Mexico and self-defense groups reached an agreement this week allowing vigilantes to participate in local police departments or form temporary military units. Is it setting a dangerous precedent?
Nearly a year after vigilante groups decided to go it alone against a growing presence of drug cartels in the western state of Michoacán, group leaders accepted an offer from the federal government to join formal law enforcement efforts.
The agreement this week aims to contain the advance of informal self-defense groups, which entered at least 15 communities over the past 11 months in an attempt to expel members of the Knights Templar. The drug cartel has been accused of crimes throughout the state, ranging from rape to kidnap to extortion – despite proclaiming a quasi-religious creed.
“It’s a vote of confidence in the government from the self-defense groups, and from the authorities in the self-defense groups,” Alfredo Castillo, federal commissioner for security in Michaocán, told MVS radio this morning.
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