A covert intensive investigation, by the US consul general in Istanbul, Scott Fredric Kilner, into chemical weapons in Syria has concluded that the Syrian military used them against its own people, in a deadly attack last month.

The Swiss foreign minister has said Switzerland will file a petition on Monday to call on the International Criminal Court to open war crimes investigations in Syria.

“Serious war crimes are being committed in Syria. We must make sure they not go unpunished,” Didier Burkhalter told Swiss national television TSR.

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 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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

French President Francois Hollande has said that his government is ready to stop rebels who are currently in control of the north Mali.

The rebels have been advancing southwards and captured more territory in recent weeks, prompting Mali’s President Diancounda Traore to send a letter to Paris and UN chief Ban Ki-moon, pleading for assistance.

Rebels and government forces in the Central African Republic have agreed to a ceasefire after talks held in Gabon.

The ceasefire follows three days of negotiations after a month-long rebellion was sparked in early December. The deal states that President Francois Bozize can remain in power until 2016 and calls for the dissolution of the country’s National Assembly as well as the appointment of a Prime Minister.