WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London over rape allegations, his Swedish lawyer Thomas Olsson said on Thursday.

"We sent a confirmation earlier today to the prosecutors that Julian Assange agrees to be questioned in London," Olsson told AFP.

He said Assange made no specific demands about the questioning.

Swedish prosecutors offered in March to question Assange in London, dropping their previous demand that he come to Sweden to answer to the 2010 allegations, making a significant U-turn in the case that has been deadlocked for nearly five years.

Prosecutors said they had changed their stance because some of the alleged offences will reach their statute of limitations in August.

Sweden issued an arrest warrant for Assange in 2010 following allegations from two women in Sweden.

The Australian former hacker, who has always vehemently denied the allegations and insisted the sexual encounters were consensual, has been ensconced in Ecuador's embassy in London since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Published: 28 April 2015

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Surrounded by hundreds of dogs, wagging their tails and running free on fenced-off land in a Serbian town, Sasa Pesic knows each of the pooches by name.

"I know exactly how each dog arrived at my shelter, I know their names, personalities," says Pesic as he patted one of his charges.

It all started when Pesic, out of work like around 17 percent of Serbians, came upon four abandoned puppies in woods near his home.

The discovery changed his life dramatically, setting him on a path to becoming an advocate for stray dogs and opening a shelter in Nis in southern Serbia.

Today it is home for more than 450 animals, but Pesic may soon have to move his canine horde as the city wants him to find a new location.

When the 45-year-old walks into the shelter, set on a piece of land near the centre of town, hundreds of mongrels of all sizes and colours run to him barking happily in greeting.

The refuge is located at a former equestrian club stable that Pesic got rent-free from the owner back in 2010 where the dogs can be outside all day long.

"It is only when night falls that we put them in their cages. They are happy this way," he tells AFP, adding that all the dogs have been vaccinated, sterilised and have microchips.

There are 280,000 registered dogs in the Balkan country, but veterinary authorities say it is practically impossible to determine the exact number of stray canines, many being pets abandoned by their owners in hard economic times.

Published: 06 April 2015

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A review of 34 clinical trials on a popular drug to treat hair loss in men found that none of the studies adequately reported on sexual side effects, researchers said.

The findings raise serious questions about whether the drug -- known as finasteride and marketed as Propecia and Proscar, among other names -- is safe, said the report by scientists at Northwestern University, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Dermatology on Wednesday.

The drug, approved in 1992, works by interfering with testosterone, and the pharmaceutical giant Merck lists decreased sex drive, impotence and problems with ejaculation among its common side effects.

- Key questions unanswered -

However, the study in JAMA said these side effects have not been properly studied.

"Not one of the 34 published clinical trial reports provided adequate information about the severity, frequency or reversibility of sexual adverse effects," said the study.

That has left key questions unanswered, such as the actual risk of developing sexual side effects, how long they may last, how severe they may be and whether sexual function may return to normal if the drug is stopped, the researchers said.

Most published studies on the duration of drug safety were one year or less, but about a third of men took the drug for more than a year.

"People who take or prescribe the drug assume it's safe, but there is insufficient information to make that judgment," said lead study author Steven Belknap, research assistant professor of dermatology and general internal medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

He pointed to several questions raised by the study's findings, including the lack of adequate information about the severity and frequency of sexual toxicity.

"Was this information obtained but then not included in published articles? Or, were these clinical trials performed in a way that simply didn't capture this essential information?" Belknap asked.

Published: 02 April 2015

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Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks on Saturday made his first public appearance in Copenhagen after surviving an attack last month in the Danish capital, local media reported.

The 68-year-old cartoonist, who whipped up an outcry across the Muslim world with his 2007 sketch of the Prophet Mohammed as a dog, had lived in a secret location since the February 14 attempt on his life.

A Dane of Palestinian origin had fired a series of shots at a Copenhagen cultural centre that was hosting a debate on free speech attended by the cartoonist, killing a filmmaker.

The gunman later shot dead a Jewish man outside a synagogue before he was killed by police.

On Saturday, Vilks emerged in public to receive a prize awarded by a Danish association promoting free speech called Trykkefrihedsselskabet.

The ceremony was held under tight police surveillance at the Christianborg Castle, which also houses the parliament and other Danish institutions, Danish news agency Ritzau reported.

Published: 16 March 2015

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Women are far more exposed to disasters than men given their frontline roles in the home and in healthcare, the UN says, arguing that improving gender equality is key to saving lives.

Globally, women and children are up to 14 times more likely than men to die in a disaster, according to UN Population Fund account executive Lamar Dawson.

"Women are more exposed to disasters," United Nations Development Programme Administrator Helen Clark told AFP on the sidelines of a once-in-a-decade UN conference on disaster risk reduction in Japan.

"There is a range of reasons," said Clark, a former New Zealand Prime Minister. "They may be trapped at home, they may be caring for sick or disabled family members, young children.

"In some societies where these disasters hit, the culture may be that the woman doesn't leave the home. So if she can't leave the home how can she escape?"

Clark was speaking as aid agencies and governments scrambled to get help to Vanuatu, where dozens are feared dead after the Pacific nation was raked by a huge cyclone on Friday.

A state of emergency was put in place over the weekend amid reports entire villages had been "blown away".

The calamity in the Pacific gave greater resonance to the Sendai meeting, which runs until Wednesday, where Clark said policymakers must work on improving the lot of women.

"The issues will (be) how we make sure that women are fully engaged, and (the conference should) argue for women's empowerment and full equality, because why should they suffer?" she said.

"It's a huge issue" and has to "be integrated in the Sendai outcome".

- Caring for families -

Remi Sogunro, who represents the United Nations Population Fund in Liberia, said women bore the brunt not only of natural disasters like that unfolding in Vanuatu, but in human catastrophes like the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

"Women are caregivers at home, and when their... families are sick, they take care of them," he said.

Around 25,000 people are known to have been infected with Ebola since the latest outbreak began in December 2013. Around 10,000 of them have died.

In Liberia, one of the worst-hit countries, thousands of people were infected including 300 health workers, said Sogunro.

"Half of (the health workers) died. Most of them are nurses, some of them are midwives, a few of them are senior medical doctors. Many of these were women," he said.

"The women were trying to help the country to stop the Ebola virus and they died in the course of duty. So you can see why it's really very important to talk about women in the Ebola forefront," he said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that even in developed countries like Japan, much more needed to be done to get women more involved in reducing the impact of disasters.

Published: 16 March 2015

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