On the 14th day of anti-government protests sparked by rising inflation in Sudan, over 1000 protesters have been arrested and detained in secret locations.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has termed the conflict in Syria a civil war and appealed for “further militarisation of the conflict [in Syria]” to be “avoided at all costs".

President Assad of Syria was previously considered for an honorary knighthood by the Queen during Tony Blair's era, reports The Times on Sunday.

According to official papers obtained by The Sunday Times under freedom of information laws, discussions took place ahead of Assad's 2002 visit to the UK, where he was granted an audience with the Queen and Prince of Wales.

Speaking to The Guardian from Turkey, exiled members of Syria’s opposition have written off UN diplomacy and talks of peace-brokering as by and large irrelevant to the crisis.

Dissidents have said that talking had simply consolidated and bought time for the Assad regime, and an end to the turmoil could only be arrived at through all-out war.

The Guardian’s Martin Chulov reports that the UN is largely viewed as impotent by the Syrian opposition.

Mali’s Islamist rebel group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) have started destroying sacred shrines, after it declared control over the Northern part of Mali, including the historic town of Timbuktu.

The town’s ancient Sufi shrines face complete destruction, as Ansar Dine considers them idolatrous and incompatible with the group’s interpretation of Sharia Law. According to AFP seven tombs of Sufi saints have been demolished in the past two days.

Ansar Dine’s demolition campaign has horrified and outraged both Mali’s government and the international community.

The Danish government has decided to extradite a man, suspected of taking part in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

The man, named in Danish media as Emmanuel Mbarushimana, is accused of being one of the ringleaders of massacres by Hutus against ethnic Tutsis.

The Danish Justice ministry said on Friday, the man had been living in Denmark since 2001, but refused to divulge any further information.

Burma’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been warned for referring to the country as ‘Burma’ instead of ‘Myanmar’ by government officials.

The comments come in the midst of Suu Kyi’s European tour, during which she has repeatedly used the term Burma in speeches and interviews.

The Burmese electoral commission published a statement in the New Light of Myanmar newspaper saying “as it is prescribed in the constitution that the ‘state shall be known as the Republic of the Union of Myanmar’ no-one has the right to call [the country] Burma.”

UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan has called for a transitional government to be established in Syria.

The UN brokered peace plan, which calls for the creation of a transitional government in Syria, was accepted after talks in Geneva, attended by Russia, China and western countries.

The agreement says that members of the current government and the opposition could be a part of it.

Australia’s Senate has voted down an asylum bill which would have reopened an off-shore detention centre and allowed the Australian government to deport asylum-seekers to another country for processing.

The bill was supposed to deter asylum-seekers from making the long and dangerous boat journey to Australia. The defeat of the bill means the political stalemate on the asylum debate, which has been reignited by the sinking of two boats in the past week, continues.

The US has given China and Singapore exemptions from sanctions for buying Iranian oil.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that both countries had earned the exemptions by cutting imports.

All of the twenty biggest importers of Iranian oil have been granted reprieves from the sanctions, before the deadline on June 28.

The sanctions would have seen the concerned nations cut off from the US financial system.