28 August 2014 Last updated at 08:28
Ukraine crisis: 'Thousands of Russians' fighting in east
A pro-Russian rebel leader in eastern Ukraine has said 3-4,000 Russian citizens are fighting in their ranks.
Alexander Zakharchenko said many of the Russians were former servicepeople or current personnel on leave.
He was speaking as the rebels threatened to take the key port of Mariupol, after opening a new front in the south-east.
Reports say they have captured the town of Novoazovsk and are advancing on the port.
Ukraine says Russian forces have crossed the border and are supporting the rebel attack, but Moscow has repeatedly denied arming or covertly supporting the rebels.
GSK to begin testing its Ebola vaccine on humans
Clinical safety trials could begin next week after US health watchdog the FDA gives green light, say reports
GlaxoSmithKline's experimental Ebola vaccine could be tested on patients in clinical safety trials in the US as soon as next week, as the death toll from the deadly virus continues to rise in west Africa.
Britain's largest drug-maker is developing the vaccine with the Vaccine Research Centre of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US. Phase-I trials have received the green light from the US health watchdog, the Food and Drug Administration, Bloomberg reported. This is the first test in humans to assess safety and efficacy – whether the drug works in a similar way to how it does in animals.
The Ebola outbreak has killed more than 1,400 people.
Michael Kurilla, director of the Office of Biodefence, Research Resources and Translational Research, told Bloomberg that health authorities are debating whether to give the vaccine to people in west Africa at risk of catching the virus, for which there is no cure.
Thuringia goes beyond Bratwurst to create high employment
The new division Germany faces is no longer east-west, but urban-rural
To understand Germany, you need to understand the sausage. And to understand the sausage, you have to go to Thuringia, Thüringen in German. This central state is the home of the Bratwurst, the roast sausage beloved of Germans and now familiar to Irish shoppers at Aldi and Lidl.
The oldest Bratwurst recipe, dating from a Thuringian convent in 1404, was rediscovered here in 2002. Two years later the EU designated the sausage a protected food product in the EU, meaning anything calling itself a “Thüringer Bratwurst” has to be produced here. Some 40,000 tonnes are produced annually.
Sitting in his kitchen in Erfurt, Thuringia’s pretty capital city, Bratwurst master Andreas Bräuer says the state became synonymous with sausages because of the proliferation of wild oregano.
The fight for Iraq's Baiji refinery
Iraq's largest refinery has been contested for weeks. "Islamic State" fighters are going after police officers and soldiers near the Baiji facility. Residents who have fled describe the situation in the embattled city.
Ahmed looks completely defeated. He's sitting in worn-out track suit on the floor of an apartment in Kirkuk that doesn't belong to him and is just serving as a temporary home. His wife and three children are scattered among relatives in Iraqi Kurdistan.
"We've lost everything," the 35-year-old Iraqi said. "They bombed our house in Baiji, and nothing is left of it." The family managed to escape only with their lives.
Many other residents of the oil-rich city, however, were killed as part of the "Islamic State" fighters' advance. Ahmed said it initially seemed as if the "IS" wanted to do no harm to Baiji locals. After the terror militia's siege on Tikrit on June 12, the jihadists headed to Baiji, located 45 kilometers (28 miles) away, and warmly greeted residents.
Hong Kong activists prepare for mass action as Beijing election curbs loom
August 28, 2014 - 5:08PM
Philip Wen
China correspondent for Fairfax Media
Beijing: Hong Kong pro-democracy activists say they will escalate plans to blockade the city's central business district in opposition to an imminent move from Beijing to limit elections for its leader in 2017.
Chinese lawmakers meeting in Beijing this week have agreed on a draft resolution which will cap the number of chief executive candidates to two or three, with each requiring at least 50 per cent support of a 1200-strong nomination committee, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post and RTHK radio reported.
If, as expected, the resolution is announced after a plenary session in Beijing on Sunday, Occupy Central co-founder Benny Tai said the pro-democracy group will start its planned protest activities and elevate into a "full-scale, wave after wave" campaign, beginning with a demonstration outside the offices of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying on Sunday night.
Social workers channel Indiana Jones to deliver welfare checks to Brazil's Amazon
Many Brazilians are still in dire need of state assistance, and teams of social workers – equipped with chainsaws, but no maps – are traveling to remote corners to find the poorest of the poor.
NOVO AIRÃO AND RIO PRETO DA EVA, BRAZIL — The orange boat racing up the Amazon River tributary is loaded with the essentials for fighting poverty in the jungle: a chainsaw and a dozen social workers.
The river has swollen some 60 feet with the rainy season, and the captain looks out for logs and branches that might rip into the hull. He's also looking for signs of human life in this dense jungle, one of the poorest regions in Brazil's vast territory.
The boat turns down an inlet nearly invisible through the dense green overgrowth, and the team spots an elderly man casting a fishing net. It’s apparent he’s blind as he feels his way to shore, his right thumb missing from a past piranha attack.
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