The US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power has accused Russia of telling outright lies about its actions in Syria. She said the Russians were not involved in counter-terrorism there, but in barbarism. Russia’s ambassador Vitaly Churkin accused the rebels of sabotaging the ceasefire which recently failed to take hold. And Syria’s representative told the council that all of Aleppo would be recaptured by his government’s forces. Rebel held areas of Aleppo have continued to be pounded as Russian backed Syrian government forces press on with their offensive. Medical workers report their strikes on neighborhoods throughout the east of the city.
Voters in Switzerland have approved a law that would give new powers to the country’s intelligence services. The legislation will allow the authorities to tap phones, track internet activity and use hidden cameras in microphones to monitor suspects.
Bosnian Serbs have been voting in a referendum on whether to keep January 9 for the national holiday despite the poll being banned by Bosnia’s highest court. The date is an Orthodox Christian Faith day and the court ruled that it discriminated against Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats living in the Serb Republic.
President Francois Holland has acknowledged that France abandoned Algerians who fought on the French side during Algeria’s eight-year-war of independence.Thousands of Algerian volunteers were massacred as traitors after the French retreated from Algeria.
Police in Hungary say an explosion in Budapest on Saturday night which injured two police officers was caused by a homemade bomb. Hungarian police chief said the officers who on foot patrol were deliberately targeted and now in a stable condition in hospital.
And a Portuguese man has managed to walk again after spending 43 years in a wheelchair because of mistaken medical diagnosis. The man, Rufino Borrego, told Portuguese media that a neurologist has found after more than four decades that he suffered from a different disease myasthenia, which unlike the initial diagnosis of muscular dystrophy, is curable.
