Islam may potentially be dropped as Bangladesh’s official religion in the wake of a number of attacks against the country’s communities of other faith.

The nation’s Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments in favour of removing Islam as the official religion of Bangladesh, reports the Independent.

Commemorations of the centenary of the Easter Rising began in Dublin on Friday, with thousands marching to remember the leaders of the uprising against the British empire, who were executed after the rebellion failed.

The procession, which began at the site of the executions of 14 rebels in 1916, was attended by Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuiness.

Speaking to the crowds at Arbour Hill cemetery, where the rebels were buried, Mr Adams paid tribute to those executed, saying "a few hundred poorly equipped Irish men and women took on the might of the largest empire the world had ever seen".

Mr Adams, a former IRA commander, said the 1916 proclamation of independence "remains the mission statement for Irish republicans today".

US President Barack Obama visited a memorial commemorating victims of Argentina's military dictatorship, during his visit to the country.

The US is widely believed to have been involved in the coup which led to the dictatorship, under which an estimated 30,000 people were killed by the state.

Promising that the US would release more secret files to reveal its role in the 1976 coup, Mr Obama said the US was "too slow to stand up for human rights" in Argentina.

 Ukraine extended its sanctions lust against Russia to include people and institutions involved in the detention of Ukrainian citizens.

The Ukrainian Security and Defence Council announcement came after Russia sentenced Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko to 22 years in prison on Friday.

The International Criminal Court has convicted Congolese politician Jean-Pierre Bemba of war crimes and crimes against humanity this week. The court held him responsible for a devastating campaign of rape, murder and torture in the Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003. 

The three-judge panel convicted Mr Bemba of murder and pillaging, and defined the large-scale rape by his soldiers as a crime against humanity and as a war crime.

An inquiry to investigate human rights abuses in South Sudan has been set up by the UN Human Rights Council during its 31st sitting in Geneva this month.

The three-member commission, the proposal of which was initiated by the US and Albania, will have a renewable one-year mandate.

South Sudan said it would cooperate with the commission, which will look at gang rapes and attacks on civilians, which may constitute war crimes.

The declaration of a federal region in northern Syria by Kurdish groups “could offer a model for decentralized governance in a federated Syria,” said the New York Times this week.

In an editorial entitled ‘The Kurds’ Push for Self-Rule in Syria’, it said “the Kurds are an ethnic group of perhaps 35 million in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey, and they have long argued that they are the world’s largest ethnic group without a state”.

“They have suffered persecution and had their aspirations for self-governance crushed,” continued the New York Times, noting that “the American invasion of Iraq created an opportunity for Kurds living there to establish a semiautonomous region in northern Iraq, which has been reasonably successful”.

The editorial went on to conclude:

“The Syrian Kurds say they are not seeking total independence, only a democratic region in which they, Arabs and other ethnic groups can live together. This may be an idea worth building on as part of a political solution to end the war and the slaughter of civilians.”