16 August 2014 Last updated at 08:46
Ebola may leave one million in need of food aid in three West African countries
Iraq crisis: Yazidi villagers 'massacred' by IS
Militants in northern Iraq have massacred at least 80 men from the Yazidi faith in a village and abducted women and children, reports say.
Senior Kurdish official Hoshyar Zebari said the men were killed in two groups after a column of Islamic State (IS) vehicles arrived in Kawju on Friday.
A US drone strike later destroyed two vehicles from the convoy near another village, he said.
The fighters reportedly told men to convert to Islam or die.
The group's atrocities against non-Sunni Muslims have shocked the international community into action.
In New York, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on IS members.
Chinese human rights lawyer starved in solitary confinement, his wife says
Gao Zhisheng was released last week, but his wife says he can barely talk or eat because his teeth are wrecked
The Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng was kept in isolation for two and a half years and starved before his release from prison a week ago, his wife says.
Gao lost about 50 pounds (22.6kg) while in prison and now can barely eat or talk, Geng He said by telephone from San Francisco on Saturday. In 2006, Gao was convicted of subversion and released several times only to be disappeared again by security agents.
HIs wife said he could eat only soft baby food because he had lost several teeth and others were loose.
She said he could hardly speak on the phone from her sister’s house in Urumqi, in far western Xinjiang province. State security agents were watching him inside the sister’s house, she said.ISIL's tentacles creep into Indonesia
Michael Bachelard, Indonesia Correspondent
The high security island jail called Nusakambangan is described as Indonesia’s Alcatraz — there is no stricter prison and perhaps no more secure environment on the entire archipelago.
Yet in mid-July, Nusakambangan’s most hated inmate, the man who inspired the Bali bombers, Abu Bakar Bashir, was able to organise a room and invite 22 prisoners to a meeting. There, under the shadow of a sinister black flag, they pledged their allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as ISIS.
Bashir’s real influence is now debated in Indonesia, but he’s still one of the most charismatic jihadists in the country.
His bai’iat — or oath of allegiance — to ISIL confirms to Australia and the West in general that the threat of terrorist violence against them in Indonesia is once again very much on the table.
Ebola may leave one million in need of food aid in three West African countries
The worst-ever outbreak of Ebola that has killed more than 1,000 in West Africa, is increasingly impacting the food supply in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The UN World Food Program is preparing a regional emergency operation to bring food by convoy to the needy.
CONAKRY, GUINEA — The deadly Ebola virus that has killed more than 1,000 in West Africa is disrupting the flow of goods, forcing the United Nations to plan food convoys for up to a million people as hunger threatens the largely impoverished area.
Amid roadblocks manned by troops and pervasive fear among the population of the dreaded disease, the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola is increasingly impacting the food supply in three countries.
The impacts are evident in Guinea's capital of Conakry, where fruit and vegetables no longer arrive from the country's breadbasket. In Sierra Leone and Liberia, several markets have been shut down. The price of rice and other staples is soaring in areas under Ebola quarantine.
Republican Impeachment Embarrassment
President Obama is in the middle of his sixth year in the White House and is not exactly surfing a huge wave of popular support. With less than three months to go before the midterm election, Obama's poll numbers are stuck in the low 40s. His party is poised to lose a few seats in the House of Representatives in November and may even lose control of the Senate. It is, however, more likely that they will hold onto a very narrow lead in the upper chamber of the legislature. Obama has always had many critics on the right who were never going to be happy with the president. In addition, many progressive are disappointed with the president's inability to live up to their extremely high hopes.
In most regards, none of this is unusual. Second terms are often difficult for presidents. Presidential administrations often seem to run out of energy or ideas as they enter their sixth, seventh and eighth year, while second-term presidents rarely enjoy as much support from the legislature as they did during their first term. Similarly, leaders from the president's own party often seek to distance themselves from the president in anticipation of their own presidential campaigns. We are seeing all of this occur now. Opposition from Republicans in Congress, efforts by likely Democratic nominee in 2016 Hillary Clinton to separate herself from the Obama record or simply the absence of exciting new proposals coming from the White House are hardly without precedent.
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