The UN Security Council and US government have given the go-ahead for M23 rebels to be involved in peace talks with the Democratic Republic of Congo government despite placing sanctions against some of the rebel leaders.

The DRC's Minster of Defence and chief facilitator of the talks, Dr Crispus Kiyonga, confirmed the continuation of peace talks with the leaders, stating:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an international investigation into human rights abuses in North Korea, labelling the situation as “deplorable”.

In a statement released earlier on Monday, Pillay said,

“There were some initial hopes that the advent of a new leader might bring about some positive change in the human rights situation in DPRK. But a year after Kim Jong Un became the country’s new supreme leader, we see almost no sign of improvement.”

The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has questioned French President Francois Hollande as to why he had met one of the assassinated Kurdish activists.

Sakine Cansiz was a founder member of the PKK and was shot by unknown assailants in Paris, along with two fellow activists.

Erdogan has called on Hollande to explain himself, after the French president said he met one of the murdered Kurds regularly.

Israeli police evicted Palestinian activists protesting against a planned Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

Hundreds of police together with bulldozers surrounded the protest camp, named Bab al-Shams after a Palestinian village that had existed near it previously, and evicted around 200 activists.

In a statement, protest organisers from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, said:

The British government has deployed Royal Air Force planes to assist France in their effort against rebels in Northern Mali.

Britain has sent the first of two RAF C17 cargo planes into Paris, where it will be loaded with military equipment before making its way to Mali. Downing Street stressed however that UK troops would not be involved in combat operations

British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed "deep concern" over the situation in the West African state, saying,

Britain will spend some of its budget training an Ethiopian paramilitary security force, which stands accused of numerous human rights abuses, according to an internal document of the Department For International Development (DFID).

Described as a 'peace-building mission', the document states that the funding is to be provided for the Ethiopian government’s counter insurgency campaign in Ogaden, in order to train security forces in the Somali region of Ogaden, despite noting the “reputational risks of working alongside actors frequently cited in human rights violation allegations.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda have backed a United Nations proposal to deploy unmanned surveillance drones along Congo’s eastern border.

The head of the UN peacekeeping mission, Herve Ladsous, said he had asked for the drones after thousands of U.N peacekeepers failed to prevent rebels from capturing the strategic Congolese city of Goma.

Congo’s information Minister Lamber Mende, welcomed the proposition, suggesting,

The Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan asserted that the killing of three PKK members in France this week could be due to an "internal feud", rather than a political assassination as has been widely reported.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Erdogan said:

A former Serbian police officer has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, after being found guilty by a Bosnian war crimes court.

Judge Jasmina Kosovic said that Bozidar Kuvelja "participated in the expulsion of the Srebrenica population, detention of men and execution of detainees", stating,

Twenty-nine police officers were injured on Saturday during the 40th day of protests over the removal of Union flag at the City Hall.

Loyalists and nationalists started rioting at the sectarian interface by Short Strand, in East Belfast.

After the rioting subsided in the evening, it erupted again after 9pm with loyalists attacking police with bricks, stones and missiles by Castlereagh Street.

Police used water cannon to push rioters away from interface.