The United States have cut funding to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation as Palestine was awarded a seat in the 194 member body.

A vote at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris saw 107 member states supporting the resolution admitting Palestine to the organisation, despite strong protest by the US and Israel.

In an apparent reaction to Palestine gaining a seat at UNESCO, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the construction of 2,000 new housing units for Israelis, in occupied areas of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

1,650 new units, which are deemed illegal under international law, would be built in East Jerusalem, an area the Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.

In addition, Israel has decided to withhold the transfer of tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and a decision is pending on whether this will become permanent.

A Korean court sentenced an US soldier for 10 years in jail for the rape of an 18 year old girl.

Kevin Lee Flippin, from the US Army’s 2nd Infantry Division was found guilty of breaking into the house of his 18 year old victim and raping her repeatedly, in September this year.

The US Arm’s 2nd Infantry Division has issued an apology to the victim and her family and has confirmed its cooperation with the Korean police in regards to this case.

The United states extended sanctions on Sudan for another year on Tuesday, stating that Khartoum's policies on human rights and relations with South Sudan, had not improved enough to warrant the lifting of sanctions.

Sanctions on trade, investment and the holding of assets by Sudanese government officials, were introduce in 1997.

The US offered the lifting of sanction if Sudan cooporated with the referendum and independence of South Sudan earlier this year.

From the BBC:

For 14 years Elouise Cobell fought a legal battle to recover billions of dollars that had been systematically plundered from Native Americans by the US government. During the action it emerged that the government's Bureau of Indian Affairs had, over the previous 100 years, sold off Indian land to farmers and prospectors but failed to pass the money on.

Bosnian war crimes court charged two Bosnian Serb military commanders with involvement in the Srebrenica genocide on Monday.

Judge Ljubomir Kitic, found the two commanders from the first battalion of the Zvornik brigade, Slavko Peric and Momir Pelemis, guilty of involvement in the detention and the systematic killing of at least 1000 Bosnian Muslim men in the region of Srebrenica.

Kitic remarked,

Staff Sgt Calvin Gibbs, an American soldier accused of committing war crimes in Afghanistan, has admitted taking fingers off bodies as war trophies, as his trial began on Monday.

Gibbs is facing 16 criminal charges, including premeditated murder, before a court martial, all of which he has pleaded not guilty to.

It is alleged that he led a rogue unit of the US Army the 5th Stryker Brigade, known as the “Kill Team”, into murdering innocent Afghan civilians, in Kandahar province in late 2009. Members of the unit then posed with their dead bodies for photos and kept body parts as mementos.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned Western nations of an “earthquake” and of “another Afghanistan” if they were to take action against the country.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Assad said,

"Syria is the hub now in this region. It is the fault line, and if you play with the ground you will cause an earthquake … Do you want to see another Afghanistan, or tens of Afghanistans?