The President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, has said that clashes in the capital Juba were due to an “attempted coup”.

The president said soldiers loyal to ousted Vice-President Riek Machar were behind the fighting, which erupted the shots were fired near a ruling party conference.

The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has responded to a report on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, calling on the international community to place sanctions on those responsible.

Speaking to the General Assembly on Friday, Ban Ki-Moon stated,

France is not sending any high-level government officials to the Winter Olympics in Russia next year.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius made the announcement on Sunday however failed to provide an explanation.

Human rights activists have called for a boycott of the games in Sochi over Russia’s recent legislation banning “homosexual propaganda”.

4 people have been killed in clashes in Bangladesh, following the execution of Abdul Quader Mollah earlier this week.

The president of the Central African Republic, Michel Djotodia, has offered peace talks to the leaders of Christian militias, in order to resolve the sectarian violence that has gripped the country.

Catalans have reacted defiantly after Spain’s pledge to block an independence referendum in Catalonia, which was announced for November 9 2014 yesterday.

The United Nations has confirmed that it collected evidence of at least one large scale chemical weapons attack in its latest report on Syria, indicating that a further four more attacks it investigated were likely due to chemical weapons.

The report, compiled by UN inspectors in Syria, confirmed that, regarding an alleged attack in Ghouta on the 21st of August of this year,

In 2009 Rwanda sought to extradite 4 genocide suspects from the UK for trial in Rwanda, a request that was turned down by the UK High

Catalan parties seeking the right to self-determination in the Spain’s  north-eastern Catalonia region, today, agreed on the wording of an independence referendum that is proposed for November 2014 despite staunch opposition from the Spanish government.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has signed a peace deal with M23 rebels, after defeating the group based in the east of the country, with the help of UN forces.

The deal was signed in Nairobi and did not include an amnesty for war crimes, said the DRC's spokesperson Lambert Mende to the BBC.