17 January 2015 Last updated at 07:25
Europe on high alert over terrorist threat
Europe is on high alert following anti-terror raids and arrests of suspected Islamist militants.
More than 20 people have been arrested in Belgium, France and Germany and Belgium has joined France in deploying troops alongside police.
Security has been tightened in several countries after last week's attacks in Paris left 17 people dead.
There are increased concerns about the return of young Europeans who have gone to fight with Middle East militants.
In Belgium, five people were charged on Friday with "participating in the activities of a terrorist group" following a series of raids that began on Thursday evening and left two suspects dead.
Guns, munitions and explosives, as well as police uniforms and a large amount of money, were all seized by police overnight.
Guantánamo Diary: ‘The special agent locked the chain around my hands and we were thrown into a cattle truck’
Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Saturday 17 January 2015 08.00 GMT
In January 2000, Slahi flew from Canada to Senegal, where his brothers met him to take him to their home in Mauritania. As they left the airport, they were seized.
We headed toward the parking lot. I liked the warm night weather that embraced me as soon as I left the gate. We were talking, asking each other excitedly how things were going. As we crossed the road, I honestly cannot describe what happened to me. All I know is that in less than a second my hands were shackled behind my back and I was encircled by a bunch of ghosts who cut me off from the rest of my company. At first I thought it was an armed robbery, but as it turned out it was a robbery of another kind.
Dozens of suspected terrorists arrested in northern Europe
Arrests in Belgium, Germany and France follow Belgian raid in which two jihadists killed
Dozens of suspected terrorists were arrested by police across northern Europeyesterday as part of a crackdown on jihadism, as Belgian authorities said they had foiled an imminent attack on Belgian police forces.
Thirteen suspects were arrested by Belgian police, and a further two in France, following Thursday’s police raid in Verviers during which two suspected jihadists were killed. Five of the suspects were charged last night in Brussels. Germany detained two suspects in Berlin, having searched 11 premises, while 12 people – eight men and four women – were in police custody in France last night in connection with last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.
Belgium’s federal prosecutor Eric van der Sypt said that a “concrete plan” to kill members of the Belgian police force had been averted following 12 separate raids on residences in the wake of Thursday’s events in Verviers. The attack could have taken place within “hours, certainly no more than a day or two”, Mr van der Sypt said.
Opinion: Freedom of the press includes the freedom not to publish
Sweeping criticism of leading US media for not publishing Charlie Hebdo cartoons is understandable – and wrong. Journalists should support press freedom, but that does not mean indiscriminately publishing cartoons.
The impulse was clear and broadly shared. After the heinous massacre of Charlie Hebdo journalists in Paris last week, media organizations and professionals around the world rallied around their slain colleagues in support of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Many outlets, like DW, reacted to the carnage by taking pictures of staffers holding "Je suis Charlie" signs which quickly became a global symbol of solidarity with the victims. In turn, this journalistic display of solidarity and support for press freedom became itself part of the ongoing coverage and debate of the larger Charlie Hebdo story.
As Asia Bibi waits on death row, Pakistan's blasphemy laws in spotlight as deaths increase
Jason Koutsoukis
South Asia correspondent at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
Lahore: On the Sunday before the terrorist attacks at the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a handful of mourners gathered at Liberty Plaza in Lahore to mark the 2011 assassination of Salman Taseer.
The then governor of Punjab, Pakistan's eastern province, Taseer was shot dead in broad daylight by his bodyguard while eating lunch at an Islamabad cafe.
Taseer deserved his fate, his killer said afterwards, because he had had the effrontery to show sympathy for Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who remains in jail awaiting execution after being sentenced to death for blasphemy. Not only had Taseer called for Bibi's pardon, he criticised as a "black law" the criminal code that saw her convicted in the first place.
China battles virus that has killed two pandas and left third critical
(CNN) A deadly virus has claimed the lives of two of China's beloved giant pandas and left a third in critical condition.
Chinese state media reported this week that veterinarians are using antiviral therapy to treat five-year-old Feng Feng, after medical tests showed serious damage to the panda's heart, liver, kidney and lungs.
Two other pandas -- Chengcheng and Dabao -- have passed away from the canine distemper virus since early December, according to Han Xueli, spokesperson at the Shaanxi Province Rare Wildlife Rescue and Breeding Research Center.
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