24 July 2014 Last updated at 08:24
MH17: Netherlands in mourning as first bodies arrive home
'Apostasy' woman flies out of Sudan
A Sudanese woman who was spared a death sentence for renouncing Islam has flown to Italy after more than a month in the US embassy in Khartoum.
Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag and her family flew on an Italian government plane, accompanied by Italian minister Lapo Pistelli.
Her father is Muslim so according to Sudan's version of Islamic law she is also Muslim and cannot convert.
She was raised by her Christian mother and says she has never been Muslim.
MH17: Netherlands in mourning as first bodies arrive home
Dutch Safety Board to lead international inquiry into cause of tragedy
Things run as they should in the Netherlands. So at 3.45pm precisely church bells around the country began to ring, tolling solidly for five minutes until the military transport plane carrying the first of the 193 Dutch passengers killed on Flight MH17 began its final descent into Eindhoven.
The bells suddenly silent, it was as if there was a nationwide intake of breath as the wheels of the Royal Netherlands Air Force C-130 Hercules touched the runway, and Operation Bring Them Home – the establishment of an “air bridge” between Eindhoven and Kharkiv – was finally under way.
There were 16 bodies on this first flight; another 24 followed immediately on a Canadian C-17. Their symbolic importance could not have been clearer: after one of the most shocking human tragedies in its history, the Netherlands had acted decisively and reclaimed its dead in the face of adversity.
Opinion: Too patient with Nigeria?
100 days ago, the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls. Despite an emotional social media campaign, the search was unsuccessful. But that’s not the real scandal, says Jan-Phill Scholz.
Sometimes it's hard to put up with the cynics and pessimists, who knew all along that the whole emotional outcry would lead to nothing and that it was a lost cause on the crisis-ridden continent of Africa from the very beginning. But what is harder to put up with is the fact that they were right, or so it would appear at first glance. More than 200 schoolgirls have been held captive by Boko Haram, one of the world's most atrocious terrorist organizations, for a hundred days. The girls only crime was that they wanted to make something out of their lives.
The scenario of the girls' abduction was actually nothing new. It was familiar enough. After it happened, there was initially no response. It happened in a village, somewhere in rural northeast of the country, a region that has always been neglected and arouses little interest either inside or outside Nigeria. A few weeks later, the Islamist sect Boko Haram releases a horrifying video showing the girls, humiliated and scared. Boko Haram leader's Abubakar Shekau had already announced that they would be sold as slaves.
China detains five in fast-food scandal
July 24, 2014 - 3:35PM
Calum MacLeod
Beijing: Police in Shanghai have detained five people from a US-owned Chinese meat processor suspected of supplying expired beef and chicken to McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut and other multinational companies operating in China.
The scandal - exposed by a Chinese television station - is the latest in a string of food safety incidents that have long worried China's consumers and brought repeated promises of stiffer inspections from Beijing to curb widespread rule-breaking and adulteration of food products.
The Shanghai food and safety bureau said on Wednesday that investigators had seized 160 tons of raw material and 1100 tons of finished products from the Shanghai Husi Food Company, which is owned by the Illinois-based OSI Group. The national watchdog ordered a check on Tuesday of all of Husi's China-based facilities, spread across six provinces.
With no more World Cup distractions, other issues grab the spotlight in Brazil (+video)
From the inauguration of a politically charged favela cable car to the sacking of top newspaper O Globo's Rio editor, July was more than just soccer in Brazil.
Brazil has long been a relatively closed, inward-looking country, with not much travel nor the consumption of imported consumer goods — nor widespread knowledge of foreign languages. This began to change about a decade ago.Hosting the World Cup this summer added impetus. Even for those who didn’t mix with the 900,000-odd tourists (half of whom were foreign – about the same number that comes for Carnival) in Maracanã, the South Zone, or in favelas, the World Cup connected Brazilians with more information about the rest of the world via electronic and print media. This may be the event’s best legacy.
But while the world was focused on the international soccer tournament, a lot happened behind the scenes, from cultural exchanges to political jockying.
European court rules against Poland over secret CIA jail
WARSAW
(Reuters) - The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Thursday that Poland had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by allowing the CIA to detain two al Qaeda suspects on Polish territory.
The case was brought by two men, Saudi-born Abu Zubaydah, and Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who alleged they were flown in secret to a CIA-run jail in a Polish forest and subjected to treatment that amounted to torture.
The Strasbourg-based court ruled that Poland had violated articles of the convention on, among others, the prohibition of torture, the right to liberty, and to an effective investigation of their allegations.
It ordered Poland to pay al-Nashiri 100,000 euros in damages and to pay 130,000 euros to Zubaydah.
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