AFP - France announced Tuesday that it was sanctioning 25 people and companies over their links to Syria's chemical weapons programme, as diplomats were set to meet in Paris to push for action against perpetrators of the deadly attacks.

AFP - The Philippines Tuesday hailed the retention of duty-free privileges for most of its exports to the European Union despite concerns over alleged "extrajudicial killings" in President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs.

AFP - Myanmar blamed Bangladesh on Tuesday for delays to a huge repatriation programme for Rohingya refugees, as the deadline passed for starting the return of the Muslim minority to strife-torn Rakhine state.

AFP - At least 21 people, including children, suffered breathing difficulties Monday, a monitor said, in a suspected Syrian regime chemical attack on a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus.

United Nations inspectors have accused President Bashar al-Assad's regime of being behind multiple deadly poison gas attacks during the country's devastating seven year war.

AFP - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday vowed that Turkey would not take any step back in its operation against Kurdish militia in Syria's Afrin region, saying the campaign had the backing of Moscow.

FRANCE24 - Former international football star George Weah was sworn in as Liberia's new president on Monday, in the country's first transition between democratically-elected leaders since 1944.
Weah, 51, took over from Nobel laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who spent 12 years at the helm, steering the West African nation away from the trauma of a civil war.

AFP - The speaker of the Catalan parliament on Monday proposed the region's ousted leader Carles Puigdemont as president of Catalonia, as Spanish prosecutors sought a European warrant for his arrest.

REUTERS - Turkish police have detained 24 people for allegedly “spreading terrorist propaganda” on social media related to Ankara’s military operation against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, the interior ministry said on Monday.

REUTERS - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday a military operation in Syria’s Kurdish-controlled Afrin region had begun after cross-border shelling by the Turkish army.

THEGUARDIAN - Rarely someone to pass up a photo opportunity involving a manly activity and his bare chest, Vladimir Putin has stripped to his swimming trunks and immersed himself in the freezing waters of a lake in northwest Russia to celebrate the feast of Epiphany.