The US senate's finance committee voted to extend the trade sanctions for a further three years on Thursday, despite the attempts of the Burmese opposition leader to work on the removal of these sanctions.

The committee's chairman Max Baucaus said,

A 97-year-old man was taken into custody in Hungary on Wednesday, on suspicion of committing war crimes during the Holocaust.

The suspect, Laszlo Csatary, was questioned and charged with 'unlawful torture of human beings' - a war crime for which the maximum sentence is life in prison.

A South Sudanese long distance runner, Guor Marial, is seeking last minute permission to run as an independent athlete at the 2012 Olympics in London, as the new state of South Sudan is not yet able to send an official team to the games.

Syrian state TV has claimed three senior officials of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime have died in a suicide bomb during a meeting at the national security headquarters on Wednesday morning.

After visiting the Bashabsheh refugee camp in Jordan, currently hosting 140000 refugees that have escaped the Syrian conflict, British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has stated that there can be "no impunity" for people committing human rights abuses in Syria.

He emphasised that following orders did not excuse officials and others of responsibility for war crimes.

The wartime leader Mahmoud Jibril has won Libya's first national elections according to results published on Tuesday.

His party, the National Forces Alliance, won 39 out of 80 seats, and the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice and Construction Party took 17.

Two former officials of the Chilean military have been arrested for the killing of General Alberto Bachelet, the father of the former president, Michelle Bachelet.

Ramon Caceres and Edgar Ceballos, formerly members of the Chilean Air Force, are charged with torturing to death Gen Bachelet, who died in 1974, after a coup led by Gen Pinochet saw the imposition of military rule in Chile.

Meeting the head of the Egyptian military council (Scaf), Field Marshall Tantawi, on Sunday, the US Secretary of the State Hillary Clinton urged the military make way for a civilian-led democracy.

After the meeting, Clinton said,

The Syrian government further hampers UN efforts to meet the growing humanitarian needs in Syria, which has been categorised as a civil war by the Red Cross.

Speaking after chairing the humanitarian forum in Geneva, the U.N official for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, John Ging, said,

Three survivors of the Mau Mau insurgency against British occupation in Kenya have taken their case to the High Court in London.

The first case was won last year when the high court ruled that there was "ample evidence … that there may have been systematic torture of detainees during the [Mau Mau] emergency".

The Syrian government denied that heavy weapons and helicopters were used in clashes in Tremseh last week, reports Reuters.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has placed a new arrest warrant for the Congolees general, Bosco Ntaganda, on the basis of alleged war crimes, varying from murder, rape and sexual slavery. Ntaganda is already wanted by the Hague based court for using child fighters in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The International Cmmitte of the Red Cross has declared the Syrian conflict a civil war, meaning that combatants are now officialy bound by the Geneva Conventions, which will make them more liable for war crimes prosecutions.

The ICRC said the fighting has now spread beyond the three main areas of fighting around Idlib, Hama and Homs.

A humanitarian catastrophe is imminent in western Burma, aid workers say, as tens of thousands of displaced ethnic Muslim Rohingya are being isolated in camps.

Described by a worker as “open air prisons”, the Burmese government has made it clear that the camps for the Rohingya would remain in place for one year.