North Korea slapped with UN sanctions after nuclear test
The United Nations has imposed a fresh round of sanctions on North Korea after its sixth and largest nuclear test.
The measures restrict oil imports and ban textile exports - an attempt to starve the North of fuel and income for its weapons programmes.
The US had originally proposed harsher sanctions including a total ban on oil imports.
The vote was only passed unanimously after Pyongyang allies Russia and China agreed to the reduced measures.
The sanctions, which were passed at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, were met with anger by North Korea.
A statement on state news agency KNCA warned that if the US did eventually push through harsher sanctions, North Korea would "absolutely make sure that the US pays due price".
America’s secret role in the Rwandan genocide
The violence that shocked the world in 1994 did not come from nowhere. While the CIA looked on, its allies in the Ugandan government helped to spread terror and fuel ethnic hatred
Between April and July 1994, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were murdered in the most rapid genocide ever recorded. The killers used simple tools – machetes, clubs and other blunt objects, or herded people into buildings and set them aflame with kerosene. Most of the victims were of minority Tutsi ethnicity; most of the killers belonged to the majority Hutus.
The Rwanda genocide has been compared to the Nazi Holocaust in its surreal brutality. But there is a fundamental difference between these two atrocities. No Jewish army posed a threat to Germany. Hitler targeted the Jews and other weak groups solely because of his own demented beliefs and the prevailing prejudices of the time. The Rwandan Hutu génocidaires, as the people who killed during the genocide were known, were also motivated by irrational beliefs and prejudices, but the powder keg contained another important ingredient: terror. Three and a half years before the genocide, a rebel army of mainly Rwandan Tutsi exiles known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front, or RPF, had invaded Rwanda and set up camps in the northern mountains. They had been armed and trained by neighbouring Uganda, which continued to supply them throughout the ensuing civil war, in violation of the UN charter, Organisation of African Unity rules, various Rwandan ceasefire and peace agreements, and the repeated promises of the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni.
What it's like in Barbuda, the island ripped apart by Irma and forgotten by the world
Today, the islands are counting the cost of the damage, with the expense of rebuilding houses alone expected to top £50m
Barbuda’s once charming surrounds are today ghostly quiet, the devastated ruins of its colourful homes and the absence of its 1,800 residents a galling testimony to the wrath of Hurricane Irma.
The monster category 5 hurricane which swept through here last Wednesday has transformed the idyllic isle – a former haunt of the late Princess Diana – into a ghastly, apocalyptic scene.
The only remaining inhabitants are the abandoned dogs and livestock left behind as islanders fled to escape the path of Hurricane Jose still making its way through the Caribbean.
From the pummelled remains of houses, shops and schools, to government offices, the police station and the Barbuda Anglican Church, Irma was ruthless in its destruction.
Child marriage in Iran forces girls into a life of oppression
Girls in rural Iran are often forced into marriage at a young age. Protected under Iranian law, the practice is leading to broken families and a generation of children lacking prospects or perspective.
Leyla was 17 years old when she was married off by her parents in exchange for goats. She can still remember how she had been beaten up by her father before she was taken to the wedding ceremony.
Leyla comes from a village near Esfarayen in the northeast of Iran, and her story is not uncommon for poor young girls from rural and tribal areas in the Islamic Republic. There have also been reports of girls as young as 10 years old being forced into marriage.
Estimates from the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, in 2016 indicate that 17 percent of girls in Iran were married before the age of 18. And according to statistics from the Iranian National Organization for Civil Registration quoted in 2015 by the Center for Human Rights in Iran, over 40,000 girls under the age of 15 had registered their marriages during the previous one year.
Burmese govt fake images to frame Rohingya for violence
Photos showing a group of men and women setting light to a house in Burma have been circulating online since September 6. According to the authorities, they show how the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority in the country, are deliberately setting fire to their own houses to receive international sympathy. However, the Burmese government posed the photos itself as part of an anti-Muslim propaganda campaign.
Activists for the Rohingya and Jonathan Head, a correspondent for the BBC, revealed that the photos are not quite what they seem. Head was part of a group of local and foreign journalists that were invited on a government-organised trip to Maungdaw, a town in Buddhist-majority Rakhine state in the west of the country. Government officials distributed these photos to the journalists, saying that they showed the Rohingya burning their own homes in order to frame the Burmese government. But the photos were posed, as was soon discovered by Head and other journalists.
Activists for the Rohingya and Jonathan Head, a correspondent for the BBC, revealed that the photos are not quite what they seem. Head was part of a group of local and foreign journalists that were invited on a government-organised trip to Maungdaw, a town in Buddhist-majority Rakhine state in the west of the country. Government officials distributed these photos to the journalists, saying that they showed the Rohingya burning their own homes in order to frame the Burmese government. But the photos were posed, as was soon discovered by Head and other journalists.
An ex-Guantanamo detainee rebuilds his life in France
Thirteen years after Mourad left Guantanamo and returned to his native France, a shadow of suspicion still follows him.
by
Allison Griner
Allison Griner is a freelance foreign correspondent from Jacksonville, Florida.
Lyon, France - For days, the rain had battered the sides of the prison, pattering incessantly on its sheet metal walls. A hurricane was on its way - that much Mourad Benchellali had gathered. But no one had come to get him, and from what he could tell, it seemed unlikely that he or any of his fellow prisoners would be moved.
Staring out from a steel-mesh door, Benchellali struggled to contain his frustration. The number of guards he counted patrolling his cellblock had grown fewer and fewer, and those who remained were wearing survival gear. He remembers hearing rumours that the sea might rise and crash into the prison, as the storm tore closer.
One of the guards left on duty was someone he ordinarily enjoyed talking to: a religious man, well-versed in the Bible. Benchellali himself was the son of an imam, and usually, he appreciated the guard's gentle presence, his willingness to stop and chat.
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