“We welcome the current ceasefire in Gaza and hope it will lead to a peaceful resolution. However, the UK government has not been able to clarify if the export licence criteria are being met. In light of that uncertainty we have taken the decision to suspend these existing export licences in the event of a resumption of significant hostilities.”

A petition for self-determination has been drawn up for two East Malaysian states, by a group of NGOs and politicians, reported the Borneo Post on Tuesday.

The petition, addressed to the UN Secretary General, seeks assistance from the UN to re-open the issue of self-determination of the two states, Sarawak and Sabah, which share the island of Borneo with Indonesia and Brunei.

“Whereas Brunei attained independence on 1st January 1984, Sarawak and Sabah have remained under ‘change of status’ stature without national independence up to today; documented as such in the United Nations Trusteeship Agreement listed by the General Assembly as Non-Self-Governing Territories,” the petition stated.

The killing of at least 1,150 unarmed protestors by security forces in Egypt last year was systematic and deliberate, and likely amounts to a crime against humanity, Human Rights Watch says in a new report released on Tuesday.

The demonstration by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood was broken up by the military, headed by, now-president, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.

HRW says that security forces “followed a plan” that envisioned several thousand deaths.

“In Rab'a Square, Egyptian security forces carried out one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Google and five other Asian firms are building a cable under the Pacific Ocean, delivering high-speed internet.

The $300mn cable, named ‘Faster’, will connect the US with Japan, according to the consortium.

State-owned Chinese companies China Mobile and China Telecom,Japan’s KDDI, Singapore’s SingTel and Malaysia’s Global Transit have teamed with Google, to lay the cable, which will be operational by 2016.

"Faster is one of a few hundred submarine telecommunications cables connecting various parts of the world," said Woohyong Choi, chairman of the consortium's executive committee.