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The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made his strongest denunciation yet of Syria's President Assad. \"No regime,\" Mr Erdogan said, \"can survive by killing and jailing its opponents.\" The Arab League has already suspended Syria for failing to implement an Arab peace initiative. Jonathan Head is in Istanbul.

The Turkish prime minister is habitually outspoken. Even so, his latest rebuke of President Assad, a man he considered a personal friend until a few months ago, was dramatic. \"No regime,\" warned Mr Erdogan, \"can survive by killing and jailing. No one can build a future on the blood of the oppressed.\" Turkey has now stopped cooperation on energy projects and says it's considering further sanctions which would not hurt ordinary people. Turkish business leaders say trade, which was worth around $2.5bn last year, has all but stopped.

Syrian opposition groups say as many as 70 people have been killed in the past 24 hours. The head of the main Syrian opposition movement, Burhan Ghalioun, says he has failed to persuade Russia to drop its opposition to international sanctions against Syria. Speaking after talks with Russian officials in Moscow, Mr Ghalioun described the talks as fruitful, although there was no change in the positions of either side.

The Italian Prime Minister-designate Mario Monti has said he has succeeded in forming a new government and will present his appointments to President

Napolitano on Wednesday. Speaking after a day of talks with political parties, Mr Monti said he was confident Italy would overcome its current crisis.

\"I will put the finishing touches to the political appointments in the coming hours, and I will be in a position to present them tomorrow morning to the head of state. Naturally with respect to the president of the republic, you will understand that I cannot reveal the contents. But I will like to assure you all of my absolute faith and conviction in our country's ability to get through this difficult period.\"

After two days of talks in parliament, Mr Monti has received the backing of all but one of the political factions.

The authorities in the Philippines have prevented the former President Gloria Arroyo from leaving the country despite the Supreme Court having overturned a government ruling banning her from travelling abroad. From Manila, Kate McGeown.

Gloria Arroyo and her husband arrived at Manila's international airport just hours after the Supreme Court ruled that she could go abroad. They were trying to get to Singapore and then on to Europe because the former president says she needs urgent medical treatment there. But the Justice Secretary Leila de Lima ordered officials to stop the Arroyos from boarding the plane. Mrs Arroyo faces numerous claims of corruption and electoral fraud, and the government is afraid that if she leaves the country, she'll never come back to face the accusations against her.

World News from the BBC

Protesters in New York have remained on the streets after police cleared their two-month-old anti-Wall Street protest camp from a park in the financial district. Police arrested about 200 protesters after moving in early on Tuesday to clear the camp. Here's Barbara Plett in New York.

The lawyers for the Occupy Wall Street protesters are challenging the eviction. They've filed an injunction with the court, saying essentially that the mayor and the city needed a court order in order to evict the protesters from the park and they didn't get one. And there is a hearing on this as to whether the eviction is in fact legal. In the meantime, the protesters are still milling about. It's not clear what's going to happen next, but definitely the activists are around in the streets of Manhattan and vowing to keep up their protests.

An American biotechnology company says it's been forced to stop trials using embryonic stem cells in humans owing to the high costs. The trials, the first of their kind in the world, involve the treatment of patients with spinal injuries. Matt McGrath reports.

Just over a year ago, Geron Corporation announced that they had enrolled their first patients in a clinical trial of embryonic stem cells to treat spinal injuries. It was hoped that the cells, which have the potential to develop into any type of body tissue, would repair damaged spines and one day allow patients to walk again. But the company say that while the treatment has been well tolerated by

patients and had no serious adverse events, the large financial burden involved has forced them to axe the trial, lay off staff and halt development of their stem cell programmes.

A Liberian court has cleared the way for three radio stations to reopen in spite of finding them guilty of spreading hate messages and inciting violence. The stations were closed last week because of their coverage of clashes between the opposition and the police on the eve of the presidential election run-off.

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From Washington this is VOA News. 12.5

Arab League sets new deadline for Syria and Islamists ahead in Egyptian vote count. I'm Carol Van Dam reporting from Washington.

More violent protests on Saturday have prompted the Arab League to give Syria until Sunday to respond positively to a proposal that would allow observers into the country to help end the military crackdown on political protesters.

Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said officials answered some questions posed by Damascus that did not make any important changes. Top league officials have said that failure to reach an agreement could lead to outside involvement in the Syrian crisis. Meanwhile Reuters is reporting at least a dozen secret police have defected from an intelligence compound in Idlib

province near the Turkish border. Clashes there between Syrian government forces and dissident soldiers left at least 15 people dead on Saturday.

Extremely high voter turnout, that's the words Sunday from Egyptian election officials on the first round of parliamentary elections. And they say Islamist parties are in the lead with 65 % of the vote. The figures released on Sunday by Egypt's High Election Commission put the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party in front with 36.6% of the ballots cast, followed by the hardline Salafist Nour party with 24.4%. The moderate Islamist Wasat party took 4.3%. The liberal Egyptian Bloc garnered 13.4%, putting that coalition of parties in third place. This paste week's voting will determine the membership for about 30% of the 498-seat lower house. Egyptians will return to the polls on Monday for 52 runoff votes for individual candidates.

Russians cast votes Sunday in parliamentary elections that were plagued by claims of campaign fraud and intimidation of observers. Many voters like this woman say Mr. Putin's United Russia party is behind the campaign fraud. Russian opposition radio station Moscow Echo and election monitoring group Golos report their websites were targeted by hackers Sunday, making them inaccessible. Golos compiled some 5,300 complaints of election law violations leading up to the vote. Mr. Putin's ruling party is expected to win the elections but with a smaller majority this time around.

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Forty-four African delegates at the upcoming international conference on AIDS in Africa are planning to demand more control over the battle against sexually-transmitted infection. VOA's Peter Heinlein reports on World AIDS Day reaction in Addis Ababa where final preparations for the global gathering are underway.

African Union Social Affairs Commissioner Bience Gawanas says it is time the continent has a greater say in how the fight against sexually-transmitted infections is fought. Gawanas told a World AIDS Day observance at AU headquarters that the continent most affected by the epidemic must take ownership of the battle to eradicate it.

\"It is so unfair that everybody talks about Africa being the continent with the highest disease burden, whether it is as a result of HIV, malaria or TB, but it is also the continent where the people do not have all access to treatment\"

Peter Heinlein VOA News, Addis Ababa.

Reports from northern Nigeria say gunmen from a radical Muslim sect have struck once again, this time attacking a wedding ceremony and killing two people, a groom and a guest. Boko Haram has been blamed for staging several attacks over the past year as part of a campaign to implement strict Islamic Shariah law across the central African nation's northern sector. According to an army spokesman Saturday's attack took place in the northern city of Maiduguri. He said three others were wounded in that attack.

Police in Bangladesh used batons and tear gas on Sunday to disperse scores of protesters taking part in a day long opposition strike in the capital Dhaka. Thousands of security officials were deployed across the city in efforts to maintain order as schools and businesses were closed in observance of the strike. Reports from the capital say several opposition and government supporters were injured in scuffles with police. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party organized the strike in protest of the government's decision to divide Dhaka into two administrative zones.

Germans in the western city of Koblenz woke up to quite a surprise Sunday. Officials ordered about 45,000 people to evacuate the city so workers could defuse a World War II bomb found in the Rhine River. The bomb believed to have been dropped by Britain's Royal Air Force more than 60 years ago.

This is VOA

BBC News with Gaenor Howells 12.16

Russia has surprised Western nations at the United Nations in New York by circulating its own draft UN resolution aimed at resolving the crisis in Syria. Western countries have spent months trying to get their own resolution. From the UN, here's Barbara Plett.

Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said there was strong concern in the council about the deepening crisis in Syria, and the draft Russian resolution was

aimed at trying to end the conflict. His intervention took Western nations by surprise. They've been trying to get the Security Council to act for months, but their attempts faced a Russian veto. European diplomats said they would negotiate on this text, but the current draft did not reflect the gravity of the human rights situation in Syria. They also said it suggested an equivalence between the regime and the opposition, and insisted the Syrian government must bear primary responsibility for the violence.

The head of the Bank of France, Christian Noyer, has hit out at international financial ratings companies, saying the arguments they use are often more political than economic. One of the agencies has threatened to downgrade France's rating, which Mr Noyer said was completely unjustified. He said if they were considering economic fundamentals, Britain should be downgraded first as it had a bigger deficit, more inflation, as much debt as France and lower growth.

The former French President Jacques Chirac has been found guilty of corruption after a long-running trial. He was convicted of embezzlement and breach of trust by creating fictitious jobs for members of his party when he was mayor of Paris. Mr Chirac was given a suspended two-year sentence. He is the first former head of state in France to be convicted since the wartime collaborationist leader Marshal Petain. Hugh Schofield reports.

Mr Chirac's lawyer said that the former president categorically contested the guilty verdict. However, he did not have it in him to continue the combat, so he decided not to appeal. The lawyer said that Mr Chirac was at least happy that the

court had recognised he did not personally enrich himself from the embezzlement. The charges go back more than 20 years to when Mr Chirac was the powerful mayor of Paris and controlled the system in which municipal funds were used to pay his political party staff.

Reports from Bahrain say that a blogger and human rights activist, Zainab al-Khawaja, has been arrested during a protest on a main road leading to the capital Manama. Activists have called for her release. Eyewitnesses say security forces used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesters. Sebastian Usher reports.

Zainab al-Khawaja is the daughter of a well-known dissident who was sentenced to life in prison after the mass protests in February and March on charges of plotting a coup. Zainab herself has been briefly arrested before and staged a hunger strike to try to get her father and other members of her family released. Her blog has been one of the most prolific in detailing the continuing protests and the response of the security forces.

World News from the BBC

The President of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, has apologised to the relatives of the victims of a massacre committed 30 years ago during the civil war. He said the massacre, in which Guatemalan soldiers killed hundreds of people in the village of Dos Erres, was a stain on Guatemala's history. It wasn't until earlier this year that four former soldiers were sentenced to life in prison for the crime.

Police in Mexico say they've found three bodies at the offices of a student association in the western city of Guadalajara. Prosecutors say they are trying to establish if the three victims were among a group of five people who went missing on Wednesday after a dispute with officials from the student association.

The British Ministry of Defence has announced that 13,500 military personnel will contribute to security during next year's Olympic Games in London. The deployment will be larger than Britain's military force currently based in Afghanistan. Our security correspondent Gordon Corera reports.

HMS Ocean, the largest ship in the Royal Navy fleet, will be berthed on the Thames in Greenwich; RAF Typhoon jets will be stationed at Northolt; and specialist bomb disposal teams will be deployed next summer - all as part of the Olympic security operation the Ministry of Defence announced today. The largest single role will be for up to 7,500 personnel who will help provide security at venues as part of a total guard force of around 23,000. The extra costs will come out of the Olympics budget, not that of the Ministry of Defence.

The South African police say they've opened a case against two international media companies - Reuters and the Associated Press - for allegedly filming Nelson Mandela's residence. Colonel Vishnu Naidoo told the BBC that it was illegal to film or photograph presidential homes. He said the cameras had now been removed from their location in the village in Eastern Cape where Mr Mandela lives. A spokesman for Associated Press denied spying on the former president.

VOA 11.1

The world welcomes the seven billionth baby. And Palestinians are granted full UNESCO membership. I’m Frances Alonzo reporting from Washington.

The world's population hit seven billion on Monday amid celebrations and concerns about how the growing number of people will impact the earth’s resources. The United Nations chose October 31st to mark the milestone. Although it’s impossible to pinpoint the arrival of the world’s seven billionth baby, the Philippines was the first country to publicly declare the symbolic feat. Danica May Camacho was delivered just before midnight Sunday in a Manila hospital.

The United Nations cultural agency has accepted the Palestinian bid for full-membership, a move that could threaten U.S. funding for the international organization. Monday’s action by the Paris-based UNESCO boosts the Palestinian effort for international recognition as an independent state. Applauds broke out after delegates approved membership by a vote of 107 to 14 with 52 abstentions.

NATO’s top official has arrived in Tripoli for talks with the Libyan authorities on the final day of the alliance’s seven-month bombing campaign that helped the former rebels drive Moammar Gadhafi from power. Secretary General Anders Gogh Rasmussen is holding talks Monday with Libya’s National Transitional Council including Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil. His visit marks the first to Libya by a NATO secretary general.

The International Criminal Court meanwhile is trying to arrange the surrender of Saif al-Islam Gadhafi who is on the run and could be heading for Niger. VOA’s West Africa correspondent Scott Stearns has that story.

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi has been on the run since he and his father, the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadahfi fled Tripoli in August. ICC prosecutors say they are trying to arrange his surrender on charges of crimes against humanity. Habi Mahamadou Salissou is a senior member of Niger’s coalition government. He says surrender is Saif al-Islam’s best option. If the International Criminal Court is in talks with him, Salissou says, it’s best that Saif al-Islam go of his own accord, rather than be hunted and caught by Libyans, who, Salissou says, will end up killing him as they did his brother and father.

Scott Stearns, VOA News, Dakar.

The Arab League is waiting for Syria to respond to a proposed plan that will end the country’s crackdown on opposition demonstrations. Qatar’s prime minister said a positive and serious proposal was given to Syria on Sunday after he led talks in the Qatari capital Doha. Edward Yeranian has details.

Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al Muallem in a bid to put an end to the mounting spiral of violence. Al-Arabiya TV said Muallem complained the international community with overreacting to exaggerations and lies in the Arab media. Earlier, in an interview with Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Syrian

President Bashar al-Assad warned against western intervention claiming it would provoke an earthquake or an international crisis on a par with Afghanistan.

Edward Yeranian Cairo.

The United Nations refugee agency says three of its employees are among the five people killed in a suicide bombing in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Two other UNHCR staff members were injured in the attack early Monday.

An international humanitarian group says an airstrike that hit a camp for internally displaced people in southern Somalia has killed five people and wounded more than forty others. Doctors Without Borders said late Sunday it was treating the wounded after jets bombed the camp in the town of Jilib.

Kyrgyzstan’s former Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev is poised to become president after taking a commanding lead in the country’s first presidential election since last year’s bloody uprising ousted the government. With about 99% of the first round votes counted, official results have Ms. Atambayev far ahead of 15 other candidates.

Thailand’s rain-swollen Chao Phraya River passed its peak stage Monday raising hopes that central Bangkok will be spared the flooding that has already inundated much of the city’s northern and western suburb.

More at voanews.com, I’m Frances Alonzo, VOA News.