Iran and North Korea blocked agreement Thursday on the first treaty over the $80 billion a year conventional arms trade, forcing last-ditch talks to save the UN-brokered accord. Diplomats from the two isolated states raised flags of objection on the last day of the final session of the seven-year-old negotiating process, just as the conference chairman was about to declare the treaty sealed.

The UN Security Council on Thursday unanimously approved the first-ever "offensive" UN peacekeeping brigade to battle rebels groups in Democratic Republic of Congo. A council resolution gave the force of more than 2,500 troops orders to "neutralize" and "disarm" armed groups in the resource-rich east of the huge country, which has been gripped by conflict for more than two decades. The intervention brigade and surveillance drones to monitor the DR Congo's borders with neighbors accused of backing the rebels will be operating by July, according to UN officials.

A Liberian actor has filed a $25 million lawsuit against UNICEF for alleged child abuse over his starring role aged 13 in a fundraising film as a murderous child soldier who tortures his victims. Mike James, now 28, says he and other cast members have been "stigmatised as rebels, killers, cannibals and drug addicts" after being recruited for the 1997 film "Soldier Boy" and made to act out eating human body parts.

Up to 11,200 troops could be needed for a peacekeeping mission in Mali but a "parallel" military force will have to battle radical Islamists, UN leader Ban Ki-Moon said Tuesday. The 11,200 troops would only be enough to cover main towns "assessed to be at highest risk," Ban said in a grim report on conditions in Mali that the UN Security Council will discuss Wednesday.