The United States is preparing a new UN sanctions list for South Sudan after a ceasefire failed to take hold under a new peace accord aimed at ending the 20-month war.

Anonymous diplomats said that the US Ambassador Samantha Power had told the Security Council during a closed door session that two or more individuals could be hit by UN sanctions due to their role in continued fighting.

The Australian government announced that “advocacy of genocide” would now be criminalised, under a series of new anti-terrorism legislation to be passed later this year.

Announcing the legislation, Australia’s attorney general George Brandis said:

“Free speech has no greater advocate than I… But advocating extremism or ­violence to achieve political change, or to hurt, threaten, or vilify others, is not a legitimate use of free speech and has no place in our society.”

The move was particularly aimed at groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir said Mr Brandis, adding,

Swedish prosecutors have charged a man over his alleged role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The 60 year old suspect has not yet been named, but reportedly held a low level leadership role during the killings. If he is convicted, he would be the second person in Sweden to be found guilty of genocide, after another man was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 for his role in the Rwandan genocide.

Chief Prosecutor Tora Holst said in a statement on Friday:

The Indian government has cancelled a licence which allows Greenpeace India to receive donations from abroad, according to the organisation which campaigns for the environment.

"It is yet another attempt to silence campaigns for a more sustainable future and transparency in public processes," Greenpeace India said in a statement released late on Thursday.

Notorious Congolese rebel leader General Bosco Ntaganda, known as 'The Terminator', has told the International Criminal Court that he never attacked civilians, during his trial at The Hague.

"I have been described as 'The Terminator', as an infamous killer, but that is not me,'' Gen Ntaganda said on the second day of his trial, the Associated Press news agency reports. 

"I have never attacked civilians,'' he claimed during a nine-minute speech to the court. "I have always protected them.''

Sarah Pellet, a lawyer representing 297 former child soldiers, said young girls were gang-raped and forced to become the 'wives' of senior commanders.

Two British journalists with Vice News were released from Turkish custody on Thursday, however Iraqi journalist Mohammed Ismael Rasool remains in custody.

Jake Hanrahan and cameraman Philip Pendlebury were arrested in the Kurdish region near Diyarbakir last week and charged with "working on behalf of a terrorist organisation".

Turkey’s envoy to the European Union stated that the killing of over a million Armenians more than a century ago by the Ottoman Empire was a genocide.

Ali Haydar Konca, a parliamentarian with the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said:

“The fact that genocide happened is explicit and clear and everybody accepts that. Right now, the issue is what it should be called. We will make a decision in our party about that.”

The former Congolese rebel leader Bosco ‘The Terminator’ Ntaganda has pleaded not guilty on the first day of his trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Mr Ntaganda faces 18 charges, 13 on war crimes and 5 on crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, sexual slavery of civilians, displacement of civilians, forcible transfer of population, and the enlistment and conscription of child soldiers under the age of fifteen years and using them to participate actively in hostilities.