Extracts from niqash.org (see the full text here):

"At the beginning of this month the Iraqi parliament voted to recognize what had been done to the Fayli Kurds under former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as genocide. From 1980 onwards, the ethnic minority was horribly persecuted by Hussein’s regime.

Nokia Siemens Networks, one of the biggest telecommunications companies in the world, is to expand its manufacturing facility in Chennai, making it the firm’s biggest in Asia.

NSN’s head of operations, Herbert Merz, said the factory in China is currently the company's largest in Asia, but the Chennai facility could overtake it in a year.

United States President Obama announced last week the creation of a new body which will coordinate a government approach to genocide and other mass atrocities.

The Atrocities Prevention Board – whose exact authority, mandate, and structure will be under interagency review over the next months – will begin functioning within 120 days, according to the presidential directive announcing its creation.

Brazil, India and South Africa, which have blocked United Nations pressure on Syria’s government to end repression of protesters, will send envoys to Damascus to seek an end to the violence.

See the report by Bloomberg here.

India will assume the presidency of the Security Council for August and use the opportunity to demonstrate it has the “not only has the credentials but the political maturity” to be a permanent member, Delhi’s UN envoy Hardeep Singh Puri says.

See report by IANS and UNI here.

US car-maker Ford, which has a major vehicle plant in Tamil Nadu, has announced it will invest $1 billion in Gujarat to build two new plants.

However, the decision does not seem to have upset or surprised the Tamil Nadu government which had courted the company to set up the new plants there, IANS reports.

"We have been told that the company would save sizeably on freight costs if it has a plant in Gujarat as it can cater to the northern markets," a state government official said.

Britain has recognised the Libyan rebel council as that country’s "sole governmental authority" and has expelled the Gaddafi-regime’s diplomats, the BBC reports.

Instead the UK will ask the rebel National Transitional Council to appoint a new diplomatic envoy.

The British move follows those of the US and France. The UK had previously said it recognised "countries not governments", but Foreign Secretary William Hague said this was a "unique situation."

Mr Hague said:

Ivory Coast is to set up a commission of inquiry into crimes committed during the country's post-election violence, a council of ministers said last week.

See Al-Jazeera’s report here

The commission would "help understand how and why people were able to conceive, plan and execute such grave violations of human rights," the ministers said.

At least eighty people were killed on a Norwegian island Friday by a lone gunman dressed in police uniform who attacked a summer camp of the ruling Labour party’s youth wing, shortly after a bomb ripped through the political district of the capital, Oslo.

Serbian authorities have arrested Goran Hadzic, the last remaining fugitive war crimes suspect sought by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the BBC reports.

He faces 14 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including persecution, extermination, and torture, and is expected to be transferred to The Hague in the coming days.