The initial phase of the United Nations intervention brigade arrived in eastern Congo today, following an United Nations Security Council resolution in March that called for a peacekeeping force.

A reporter with The New York Times was expelled from Pakistan by the country's Interior Ministry on Friday, said NYT.

According to the newspaper, without any detailed explanation, the reporter Declan Walsh was delivered a two sentence letter by police officers at 12:30 a.m. Thursday local time at his home.

A Bangladeshi Islamist was sentenced to death on Thursday, charged with orchestrating the killing of 120 farmers during the 1971 war of independence.

The war crimes tribunal found the 61-year-old Kamaruzzman guilty of genocide, torture, abduction, and crimes against humanity.

Judge Obaidul Hassan said: "He is be hanged by the neck till death,"

The Filipino foreign minister Albert del Rosario said that he wants to pull out its UN peacekeepers from the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, after four members of its forces were kidnapped by Syrian rebels.

"The people that abducted our peacekeepers were actually under siege and they are using our people to get themselves out of the situation they find themselves in. That thing is not for us,"

"We have sent a recommendation to the president and as soon as he says go, we will undertake to do that as soon as possible,'' del Rosario said.

Efraín Ríos Montt , the former Guatemalan dictator currently on trial facing charges of genocide and crimes against humanity has denied all charges in his closing statement.

In an hour long rebuttal, Montt stated,

"I declare myself innocent… I never had the intention, the aim to destroy any national ethnic group… I am not genocidal."

The Bank of China has closed down accounts belonging to North Korea's Foreign Trade Brank (FTB), reports The Times, in an effort to exert pressure on North Korea.

The US and South Korea have accused the FTB of being used by North Korea to illicitly trade in arms.

The British government has called on the EU to lift sanctions on the supply of weapons to the main Syrian opposition.

In a discussion paper circulated to other EU members, the UK proposed two options to change the sanctions, which are coming to an end at the end of the month.

The document says there was a strong argument in foavour of removing sanctions completely, but another option was to remove the words “non-lethal” from the list of items that fall under the exemptions, which would allow weapons to be sent to the Syrian National Council.

Spain’s Constitutional Court has declared that a sovereignty declaration passed by Catalan’s regional parliament earlier this year has been suspended, as pro-independence politicians vowed to push on.

The decision, made earlier this week, means that the Constitutional Court has suspended the declaration for the next five months, while they hear a central government appeal that claims it is illegal.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said the Turkish army of endangering the group's peaceful pullout accusing the army of ongoing military activity.

In a statement, the PKK said:

"The constant reconnaissance activity of unmanned aerial vehicles is delaying the withdrawal process,"

Prominent British scientist Professor Stephen Hawking has withdrawn from a major Israeli conference to support the academic boycott of the country.

A statement by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine , released with Professor Hawking’s approval, said it was his own decision.

"This is his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there."