North Korea nuclear test: South would reduce Pyongyang 'to ashes'
South Korea has a plan to annihilate the North Korean capital if it shows any signs of mounting a nuclear attack, according to reports from Seoul.
A military source told the Yonhap news agency every part of Pyongyang "will be completely destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosives shells".
Yonhap has close ties to South Korea's government and is publicly funded.
On Friday North Korea carried out what it said was its fifth, and largest, nuclear test.
The international community is considering its response.
The US says it is considering its own sanctions, in addition to any imposed by the UN Security Council, Japan and South Korea.
Pyongyang responded on Sunday by calling the threats of "meaningless sanctions... highly laughable".
'A constitutional crisis': the CIA turns on the Senate
Tensions flare between the CIA and the Senate in the fight to release the report on torture – leading the agency to spy on its own legislative overseers
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It was 11pm, in the chill of January, but Daniel Jones needed a run around the Capitol.
During the winter of early 2014 Jones’s only chance for serenity was these late hours. The CIA was demanding his boss, Senate intelligence committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, fire him. Feinstein’s Republican colleagues, once supportive of Jones, were demanding he testify.
Testimony was treacherous. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island senator and former federal prosecutor, warned Jones that asserting his rights against self-incrimination or seeking a lawyer’s counsel could give committee Republicans a political lever against his highly controversial work. The CIA would soon formally insist that the US justice department actually prosecute Jones, the Senate staffer who had devoted over six years of his life to investigating the CIA’s infamous post-9/11 torture program.
Colombia's FARC starts demobilization of child soldiers
Colombia's FARC rebel group has handed over eight child soldiers to an international humanitarian body as part of a peace deal reached with the government last month. Further demobilizations are expected.
The child soldiers were the first to be demobilized since last month's historic peace deal between Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government to end a half century of fighting.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the minors underwent a health check and were transferred to the supervision of UNICEF, the UN children's fund.
"ICRC medical personnel who are part of the humanitarian mission verified that the minors were healthy enough to be transferred," the Red Cross said.
FARC has used child soldiers in its ranks for decades. According to Colombia's top prosecutor, between 1975 and 2014 some 12,000 minors are estimated to have joined the group.
Solar backpacks help kids do homework in the Ivory Coast
OBSERVERS
The lack of electricity in rural parts of the Ivory Coast sometimes makes it hard for children to study after dark. Our Observer found an answer to this problem. He created a backpack covered with solar panels, which power a lamp that can provide students with enough light to do their homework.
An estimated 700 million Africans still don’t have regular access to electricity. Most of the people with the least access to electricity live in remote areas.
Our Observer, Evariste Akoumian, decided to tackle this problem by building a school bag adorned with a small solar panel hooked up to a lamp. When the child carries his or her backpack to school, the sun charges the battery. Later, if the child is at home and wants to study after dark, they can just plug the lamp into the battery using a USB cable.
The Maritime Silk RoadChina's High Seas Ambitions
With its Maritime Silk Road, China is tapping the world's oceans for its own strategic purposes. It's a bold plan that is causing unease in India and the United States -- and also has implications for Europe.
By Bernhard Zand
The powerful Yangtze River winds its way for more than 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) through China, from the barren highlands of Tibet to the densely populated plains on the east coast where, shortly before it flows into the Pacific, a large waterway forks off. It is the Huangpu, Shanghai's river.
Ships carrying ore, cement and coal, freighters loaded with containers and loose cargo toil their way up the Huangpu until, at its tightest turn, one of China's most spectacular vistas opens up before them: to the left, the skyscrapers of the Pudong financial district; to the right, the palatial buildings and towers along the Bund, the historic Shanghai waterfront promenade.
Mecca takes on massive construction to accommodate pilgrims
The Muslim holy city's need for additional space became tragically clear to the world after hundreds of pilgrims were killed in a stampede last year.
In order to accommodate the growing number of people making the pilgrimage to Mecca, required at least once of all Muslims who can afford it, Saudi Arabia is in the midst of enormous expansion projects in the holy city.
Most projects, from a new railway to a metro system, are expected to be completed by 2020, though a new King Abdulaziz International Airport and expansion of the Grand Mosque should be finished within the next two years, Mecca’s mayor told Reuters Friday.
"All of these projects are being developed to serve our guests and accommodate more of them," said Mecca’s mayor, Osama bin Fadl Al-Bar, according to Reuters.
Philippines: Inside Duterte's killer drug war
More than 2,500 people have been killed during President Duterte's war, but can he win?
Manila, Philippines - Eric Sison was still alive after he fell three storeys from the roof opposite Maria's* house, snagged his shorts on her neighbours' awning, and, in his underwear, crawled underneath her bed.
When the police drew back the yellow curtain that partitions her shanty home from Pasay City's F Munoz street, Maria faced their gun barrels. "I shouted, 'Have mercy on us, don't fire, we don't know who this guy is,'" she told Al Jazeera through an interpreter.
The police told Maria and her family to leave their house. She heard Sison plead for his life. And then she heard the gunshots.
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