20 December 2014 Last updated at 01:59
Beirut: The timing of the arrests could not have been more pointed, punishing segments of Turkey's media for exposing a bruising government corruption scandal and attempting to silence any further revelations.
Sony 'will not drop' North Korea film The Interview
Sony Pictures says it is looking at different ways to release the film satire the Interview, after scrapping its opening following a cyber-attack blamed on North Korea.
It said it had only cancelled the film's Christmas Day release after cinemas pulled out.
The company said it was "surveying alternatives to enable us to release the movie on a different platform".
US President Barack Obama said it "made a mistake" cancelling the release.
"We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship in the United States," he said.
He also vowed to "respond" to the cyber-attack in a "manner that we choose".
The FBI has said that North Korea was responsible for the hack, but Pyongyang denies this. The Interview depicts the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Greek MP alleges he was offered bribe for vote
€3m offered for support of government presidential candidate, says opposition MP
The party of the Greek prime minister has said it is the target of a “staged provocation” following fresh allegations from an opposition MP who claims he was offered up to €3 million to back the government’s candidate in the country’s presidential race.
The new bribery claims were made on Thursday by Pavlos Haikalis, a deputy with the nationalist anti-bailout Independent Greeks party.
Mr Haikalis told a breakfast television news programme that he was offered €700,000 in cash and a settlement of his bank loan as well as contracts with advertising firms if he broke his party’s whip and voted with the government in the presidential election.
On Wednesday, the first of three possible attempts to elect a new Greek president failed when the coalition government only garnered the support of 160 of the 180 MPs it will need by the third and final round of voting, on December 29th.
China's Xi warns against pro-democracy protests on visit to Macau
Chinese President Xi Jinping has reminded Macau and Hong Kong that they are part of "one China." He made the comment on a two-day visit to Macau.
Xi made the comment in a speech delivered towards the end of a two-day visit to Macau to mark the 15th anniversary of the territory's handover to China from Portugal.
Security was tight amid fears activists could attempt to stage protests during Xi's Macau visit.
Pro-democracy campaigners in both semi-autonomous territories are demanding free and fair leadership elections.
Protest sites in Hong Kong were recently cleared by police in a crackdown on activists who were demanding that Beijing step back from vetting candidates for the 2017 leadership election.
Symbol of pro-democracy movement banned
Reporters waiting for the Chinese president's arrival on Friday were banned from holding umbrellas, which had become the symbol of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.
Turkey media arrests pure 'political vengeance'
December 20, 2014 - 12:01PM
Ruth Pollard
Middle East Correspondent
- Turkish police in 'shameful' raids on media
- Erdogan's Republic: Turkish media keep their bags packed for prison or exile
- Paul McGeough on Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen, allies who became rivals
Beirut: The timing of the arrests could not have been more pointed, punishing segments of Turkey's media for exposing a bruising government corruption scandal and attempting to silence any further revelations.
Just days before the first anniversary of the December 17 bribery and fraud investigation that rocked the Erdogan government, at least 23 journalists, scriptwriters, directors and police officers were publicly rounded up and detained, accused of being members of a terrorist organisation conspiring against Turkey.
It was, says the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an act of pure "political vengeance".
Others described it as "another Turkish witch-hunt" in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan exacted revenge on his political opponents.
Rosemary Nyirumbe runs a school for young women fleeing slavery
St. Monica Girls’ Tailoring Center in Uganda teaches skills that allow women to earn a living for themselves – and often for the children they bore as slave 'wives.'
Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe sits with a cluster of young women from St. Monica Girls’ Tailoring Center in Gulu, Uganda, and teaches them how to crochet purses to be sold in the United States.
Inspecting one of the handbags, she uses a seam ripper to loosen imperfect stitches while affectionately chiding the student who made it.
“You are holding the needle like a man,” teases Nyirumbe, the school’s director. “You are supposed to hold it like this.”
The women laugh out loud, something they did not dare do while living in the bush as captives of warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army.
Vietnam 'Rat King' helps rice farmers fight costly vermin
Grinning widely, Tran Quang Thieu brandishes the day's haul: 10 kilos of rats caught in rice paddies near Hanoi. A menace to Vietnam's rice crop, the vermin are regularly trapped -- and sometimes eaten.
In his village of Van Binh, on the outskirts of Hanoi, Thieu and his team work night and day in the area's rice paddies. They estimate 20 percent of the annual grain crop is lost to hungry rats.
Rice is an essential part of the Vietnamese economy -- the communist country is the world's second largest exporter of the staple grain.
"We used to have to accept the loss of large chunks of our paddies -- the rats destroyed it. It made us wonder why we bothered working so hard," explains 46-year-old farmer Hoang Thi Tuyet.
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