19 November 2014 Last updated at 07:29
North Korea: UN moves closer to ICC human rights probe
A UN committee has called for the Security Council to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court over its human rights record.
The human rights committee passed a motion seeking a probe into alleged crimes against humanity committed by the Pyongyang regime.
The motion still needs to be voted on by the General Assembly itself.
A groundbreaking UN report released in February revealed ordinary North Koreans faced "unspeakable atrocities".
The UN Commission of Inquiry detailed wide-ranging abuses in North Korea after hearing evidence of torture, political repression and other crimes.
It led to Tuesday's non-binding vote, which was passed with 111 countries in favour and 19 against, with 55 abstentions.
Burma rules out changing law that bars Aung San Suu Kyi from being president
Veteran democracy campaigner cannot run for top post because of ban on candidates with a foreign spouse or children
Burma’s parliamentary speaker has ruled out pre-election changes to the junta-drafted constitution, which bars opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming president.
The comments by Shwe Mann came days after US president Barack Obama backed Suu Kyi’s attempts to change the charter during a visit to the country. Elections are due in November 2015.
The speaker said a referendum would be held next May on constitutional changes that are being thrashed out amid heated debate in the legislature.
Spirit of 1989 inspires voters and protesters in central Europe
Big rallies in Hungary and Czech Republic bemoan leaders’ soft stance on Russia
Daniel McLaughlin
Flanked by fellow heads of state from around central Europe, Czech leader Milos Zeman mounted a Prague stage to recall the revolutions that chased communists from power and reunited a divided continent 25 years earlier.
Zeman sought to invoke the spirit of 1989, but on Monday his crowd did it much better.
Thousands greeted their president with a volley of whistles, boos, eggs and tomatoes; held up an angry wall of red cards; and called for him to be ejected from power in the same way as Milos Jakes, Czechoslovakia’s last communist leader.
As bodyguards raised a phalanx of black umbrellas to shield Zeman from the projectiles, nothing could protect him from ringing chants of “Shame”, “Resign” and “Milose do kose!” (Put Milos in the bin!)
First Cuban doctor tests positive for Ebola in Sierra Leone
A Cuban doctor treating Ebola patients in West Africa is to be flown to Geneva after testing positive for the disease. The diagnosis comes after a seventh Sierra Leonean doctor died of the virus.
The doctor, identified by Cuban state media as Felix Baez, is part of the 165-member medical team Cuba sent to Sierra Leone in October to help fight Ebola. He is the first Cuban to contract the deadly virus.
Baez is undergoing treatment in Africa, and is expected to be transferred to a special unit in Geneva at the recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO), according to a statement from Cuba's Ministry of Public Health, cited by state media.
The internal medicine specialist came down with a fever on Sunday and was taken to the capital Freetown, where he was diagnosed with the virus the following day. He has not shown complications, and is being "tended to by a team of British professionals with experience in treating patients who have displayed the disease," the ministry's statement said. Cuban officials did not say how Baez caught the disease or release information about his whereabouts in Sierra Leone.
Hong Kong media baron Jimmy Lai says protesters should retreat, re-energise and return
November 19, 2014 - 12:04PMThe media icon and China-critic worries about protesters 'exhausting' the goodwill of the people.
Hong Kong: Media magnate Jimmy Lai's "office" is rudimentary. For seven weeks, under a blue-and-white tarpaulin, on a fold-up chair behind a jerry-rigged desk, the Hong Kong billionaire owner of the Apple Daily newspaper has been running his Next Media empire from a banner-festooned tent. The only logo on this emblem of resistance is a brolly, symbol of the so-called Umbrella Movement, whose mantra reads: "I want genuine universal suffrage."
We should retreat when the momentum is there, while our determination and will are strongJimmy Lai
Unrelenting China critic Lai has been a regular at one of Hong Kong's key Occupy protest sites: in Admiralty almost every day, returning nightly to his family in upscale Kowloon Tong. He remains despite having been attacked last week – by three men hurling bags of rotten offal – and regardless of a threatened clearance of the area by bailiffs and police. Vowing to continue his sit-in while the protest continues, he says that if officers turn up: "I will let them arrest me. I will not resist."
Will Tanzania sell Masai homelands to a Dubai corporation?
The Tanzanian government seems to be moving ahead with a deal to sell 600 square miles of land to a UAE luxury safari company, but that land is currently home to thousands of Masai pastoralists.
The land on which the Masai peoples' cows can graze is under threat of shrinking – again. And if the interested buyer succeeds in securing the land, there might not be an elsewhere for the well-known nomads to go.
A UAE-based luxury safari company's proposal for an extensive wildlife corridor that would border the Serengeti National Park, which was called off last year, appears to be under consideration by the Tanzanian government once more. Government officials have ordered that the pastoralists vacate the land by the end of the year.
The Tanzanian government is offering one billion shillings - a little more than half a million US dollars - to go towards socio-economic development projects as compensation, but the Masai are intent on keeping their land.
ISIS comes to Libya
The black flag of ISIS flies over government buildings. Police cars carry the group's insignia. The local football stadium is used for public executions. A town in Syria or Iraq? No. A city on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Libya.
Fighters loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are now in complete control of the city of Derna, population of about 100,000, not far from the Egyptian border and just about 200 miles from the southern shores of the European Union.
The fighters are taking advantage of political chaos to rapidly expand their presence westwards along the coast, Libyan sources tell CNN.
The sources say the Derna branch of ISIS counts 800 fighters and operates half a dozen camps on the outskirts of the town, as well as larger facilities in the nearby Green Mountains, where fighters from across North Africa are being trained.
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