Former Myanmar military ruler Than Shwe 'supports new leader'
Myanmar's former military ruler sees erstwhile foe Aung San Suu Kyi as the country's "future leader" and has pledged support for her in a secret meeting, the general's grandson said.
Details of Friday's meeting between the two was revealed by General Than Shwe's grandson, who acted as intermediary.
He said in a Facebook post the meeting had lasted two-and-a-half hours.
Ms Suu Kyi led her National League for Democracy (NLD) party to a landslide election victory in October.
The election was the first openly contested general election in Myanmar (also known as Burma) in 25 years.
The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Myanmar says 80-year-old General Than Shwe, who headed the country's military junta until he stepped down in 2011, still wields enormous influence.
Where Uruguay leads, the rest of the world struggles to keep up
South America’s second smallest country seems to be reinventing itself as a beacon of innovation and progress
Sunday 6 December 2015 00.05 GMT
As the world’s most powerful nations squabbled in Paris over the cost of small cuts to their fossil fuel use, Uruguay grabbed international headlines by announcing that 95% of its electricity already came fromrenewable energy resources. It had taken less than a decade to make the shift, and prices had fallen in real terms, said the head of climate change policy – a job that doesn’t even exist in many countries.
This announcement came on top of a string of other transformations. In 2012 a landmark abortion law made it only the second country in Latin America, after Cuba, to give women access to safe abortions. The following year, gay marriage was approved, and then-president José Mujica shepherded a bill to legalise marijuana through parliament, insisting it was the only way to limit the influence of drug cartels.
What’s more, the country cracked down so strongly on cigarette advertising, in a successful bid to cut smoking rates, that it is now being sued by tobacco giant Philip Morris.
Syria civil war: UN taking control of country 'could provide solution to conflict
Former international relief adviser makes call for a new international consensus on the war-torn country
A solution to the seemingly intractable conflict in Syria could be for the United Nations to take control of the country as a “mandate territory”, according to one of Britain’s most respected diplomatic advisers.
The call for a new international consensus on Syria, involving the temporary transfer of legal control to the UN, is made in the Independent On Sunday by Gilbert Greenall, a former international relief adviser with decades of experience in Africa and the Middle East.
He warns that Syria’s situation is “simply unsustainable” and that “a return to a UN mandate territory”, similar to the League of Nations structure that governed the country from 1923 to 1945, should be considered urgently.
The idea of an accelerated role for the UN is understood to have been mooted in Whitehall.
Munich Olympic Terrorist Attacks: German Ex-Interior Minister Disputes Torture Claims
By Einat Keinan and Klaus Wiegrefe
Were the victims of the terrorist attacks on the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich tortured? Their relatives claim they were, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Then-German Interior Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher disputes the reports.
The attack on the Israeli team at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich took place over 40 years ago, but Wolfgang Eisenmenger still has precise memories of the day after. Eisenmenger was 28-years-old at the time and though he would go on to become a renowned expert in his field, he had only just joined the Forensic Institute at the University of Munich.
That day, he was together with around a dozen others -- colleagues, a judge, a prosecutor and several police officers -- in the autopsy room. The mood was dour as Eisenmenger and the other doctors worked silently at the autopsy tables. Their task was that of examining 16 bodies, but their first priority was the Israeli victims because Tel Aviv was insisting that their remains be rapidly repatriated. Later, the coroners performed autopsies on the Palestinian hostage-takers and that of the Munich police officer who had been killed in the firefight.
Occupational injury: How Pakistan is failing its 56 million labourers
JAHANZEB EFFENDI
A serious physical injury could put an enormous financial burden on a labourer and his family — which is exacerbated if he is the sole breadwinner of his household.
This damage has a three-fold effect; it translates into financial losses for a corporation, undermines a family's capacity to earn their bread and butter, and negatively impacts a nation’s gross productivity levels.
Pakistan has seen some of the most horrific industrial disasters in recent history.
The tragic factory collapse in Lahore that killed more than 45 workers is proof that occupational safety and health is not a top priority in Pakistan.
A fire that consumed a factory in Baldia Town, Karachi, in September 2012, resulted in the death of over 260 workers. It also generated international awareness about the distressing working conditions in Pakistan.
Thousands of South Koreans march in protest against nation's president
Many were wearing masks after South Korean president Park Geun-hye compared masked protesters to terrorists.
Thousands of South Koreans, many wearing masks, marched in Seoul on Saturday against conservative President Park Geun-hye, who had compared masked protesters to terrorists after clashes with police broke out at a rally last month.
The march Saturday was organized by labor, farmer and civic groups to protest what they say are setbacks in labor conditions and personal and political freedoms under Park's government. About 14,000 people turned out for the demonstration, police said.
Police had initially placed a ban on the march for public safety reasons. But after reviewing a complaint submitted by organizers, a court threw out the ban on Thursday, saying it was an infringement on the protesters' rights to assemble.
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