No sooner had the Arab League annonced its decision to seek support from the UN Security Council to bring about a peaceful end to Assad's rule through a national unity government and elections held within 6 months, than the Assad regime declared it was rejecting it.

According to Syria's official news agency, SANA, the Assad regime has rejected the Arab League's proposals outright as a "conspiratorial scheme".

In a statement, broadcast on SANA, the regime said,

The European Union has imposed severe new sanctions on Iran due to its refusal to suspend its nuclear activities.

Sanctions include a ban on all new contracts to import Iranian oil to EU member states and the freezing of assets of Iran’s central bank in the EU.

Mali has agreed to open its prison to prisoners sentenced by the International Criminal Court, becoming the first African country to have done so.

The agreement was signed on Friday by ICC Vice-President Fatoumata Dembele Diarra and Malian Foreign Affairs Minister Soumeylou Boubeye, which allowed for ICC prisoners to serve their sentences in Malian jails.

Boubeye commented,

Anti-government protesters came out onto the streets of Sanaa to celebrate the departure of Yemen's ousted president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, on Sunday.

According the Yemeni government's spokesperson, Muhammad Albasha, Saleh was travelling to New York for medical treatment, with a possible detour via Oman.

US weapons will not be sold to Vietnam until the country reverses its "backward movement" on human rights, said US senators on Friday.

Following a recent visit to Vietnam, the US delegation "specifically stated to the Vietnamese that our security relationship will be directly impacted by the human rights issues", said John McCain, who was a member of the delegation.

McCain added,

An 89-year old Nazi war criminal who was convicted in 1947 of war crimes may finally be jailed, after Bavarian prosecutors filed a motion to see him serve his prison sentence.

Klaas Carel Faber, a Dutch native, was convicted for his role in 22 murders and aiding Nazi occupiers in World War II by a Dutch court. He was handed a death sentence which was later commuted to life imprisonment.

However, Faber fled to Germany in 1952, where he has avoided extradition attempts due to his German citizenship. European arrest warrants were rejected, as were attempts to put him on trial in Germany, which cited a lack of evidence.

A Chinese sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation, bought a 8.68pc stake in the UK's Thames Water, owned by Kemble Water.

The deal, believed to be worth around £500 million, was agreed, shortly after the British chancellor, George Osborne, paid a visit to China last week and urged the government to invest China's extensive foreign exchange reserves, estimated to be over $3.18 trillion, into UK investment projects.

Welcoming the news, Osborne said,

Australia is on the verge of making a historic constitutional reform, which would recognise the Aboriginal people as the original inhabitants of the country and remove racist clauses from the country’s constitution.

The proposals were presented, which called for a referendum to decide on the issue before the next general election in 2013, after a panel of 19 experts unanimously supported them.

Fighting between the government and the Kachin rebels, in northern Myanmar, intensified, despite the widely proclaimed reforms.

Over the past month, Burma's military his reported to have launched mortar rounds targeting the mountainous region in northern Myanmar, near its border with China.

Over the past few months, international human rights groups have expressed growing concern at the Burmese army's atrocities against the Kachin people, citing the looting and burning of homes, as well as the rape, torture and execution of Kachin civilians. As a result, over a thousand villagers have sought refuge in China, whilst tens of thousands more are believed to be at risk of displacement if the Burmese army's actions continue.

The increased conflict has taken place despite Myanmar's President Thein Sein, calling on the military to cease the fighting.

On the border with China, the Kachin region is partly controlled by the Kachin Independence Army. 

A proposed French law that would make denial of the killings of over 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 by Turkey as genocide a crime has been rejected by a French Senate panel as unconstitutional earlier Wednesday.

The Senate’s Commission of Laws decided that the bill would be unconstitutional marking the first legislative setback faced.