in February next year.
The defeated opposition leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Etienne Tshisekedi, says he will be sworn in as the country's president this week despite the Supreme Court
upholding
the election victory of the
incumbent
, Joseph Kabila. Last Friday, the court formally declared Joseph Kabila the winner with nearly 49% of the vote against just over 32% for Mr Tshisekedi.
An oil drilling platform that sank off Sakhalin island in the Russian far east was hit by such strong waves that its life rafts">rafts were ripped away.
The rescue centre in Vladivostok said empty
rafts
and rescue suits had been seen floating near the spot where the Kolskaya platform capsised. Fourteen people were rescued; 49 others are missing.
The government in China's most populous province Guangdong is introducing new restrictions on the use of the regional dialect in the media. This report from Charles Scanlon.
Cantonese is perhaps the strongest of China's numerous regional dialects, and it's so distinct it's seen by some
linguists
as virtually a language in its own right. All Chinese television and radio broadcasts are supposed to be in the national language Mandarin, but an exception has long been made in the southern province of Guangdong - home to most of the estimated 70 million Cantonese speakers. Now the authorities say that from March all prime time programmes will have to be in Mandarin. When the changes were first proposed last year, hundreds of people took to the streets to defend their local culture.