The move came after Syria refused to allow 500 Arab League monitors into the country to assess the situation on the ground.

The league also voted to impose a ban on commercial flights between Syria and member states. A date for the ban to enter into force will be agreed within the next week.

"When civilians are killed in Syria and the Syrian regime increases its cruelty to innocent people, it should not be expected for Turkey and the Arab League to be silent," said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, according to the state Anatolia news agency.

The country's Information and Communications Technology minister, Anudith Nakornthap, said that if such users "share" or "like" articles on Facebook that are considered to insult the Thai royal family, they could face sentences of between three and 15 years in jail – as laid out in Thailand's Computer Crimes Act.

In October, a UN human rights expert called on Thailand to amend laws that impose such jail terms on “whoever defames, insults or threatens” the Thai royal family.

Mr Berlusconi is Italy's longest-serving post-war prime minister. His premiership has recently been marred by many scandals.

After losing his parliamentary majority on Tuesday, Berlusconi promised to resign when austerity measures, demanded by the EU and designed to restore markets' confidence in the country's economy, were passed by both houses of parliament.

But he is currently involved in several trials for fraud, corruption and having sex with an under-age girl, and has attracted media attention for so-called "bunga-bunga" parties which young women were allegedly paid to attend.

His announcement of a referendum angered European leaders and sent shockwaves through its markets.

New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras said Mr Papandreou had "nearly destroyed Europe and the euro" with his call for a referendum.

Mr Papandreou told the gathering the referendum on the deal was never an end in itself, and there were two other choices - an election, which he said would bankrupt the country, or a consensus in parliament.

An independent tribunal in Australia has ordered a permanent end to the industrial dispute that has grounded all Qantas flights.

Secretary of the ACTU union Jeff Lawrence said the ruling had made it clear that union action was not causing harm to the economy and that it was Qantas's actions that had brought the tribunal's intervention.

A Qantas statement on Saturday said all employees involved in industrial action would be locked out from Monday evening and flights grounded from 06:00 GMT on Saturday.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has now been signed by several nations – even if its actual status is by no means clear. But that doesn't mean governments have finished with their trade negotiations behind closed doors. As Techdirt reported earlier this year, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is, in some ways, even worse than ACTA, and looks to be a conscious attempt to apply the tricks developed there to circumvent scrutiny yet further.

The parties have apparently agreed that all documents except the final text will be kept secret for four years after the agreement comes into force or the negotiations collapse.

Like the recently-signed bilateral trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, these treaties are incredibly one-sided, essentially giving the US media companies everything they are demanding in an attempt to prop up their dying business models through disproportionate copyright enforcement legislation around the world.

From the moment the so-called "voluntary" six strikes agreement between the RIAA/MPAA and various ISPs came out, it was obvious that the Obama administration, in the form of VP Joe Biden's office and IP Czar Victoria Espinel, were involved.

Both of those organizations were regularly in touch with the administration, including planning about how the deal was going to be announced.

It was clear from the beginning that the White House was heavily involved, and was very much backing the entertainment industry's viewpoint. In theory, the government should be representing the people, but the cozy nature of the relationship suggests it was exactly the opposite. The government was representing industry against the public interest.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said troops had gained ground after defectors pulled out of the town, in restive Homs province.

Analysts have expressed concern that the revolt in Syria, which began peacefully six months ago, is evolving into an armed conflict.

On Friday, the draft of a UN Security Council resolution against the violence in Syria was watered down, with a reference to sanctions being removed in order to appease Russia.

European nations instead called for "targeted measures" in the text, which Russia and China have threatened to veto.

The remains are thought to be those of inmates who were killed by security forces in 1996 in the Abu Salim prison.

The NTC said it had discovered the site - a desert field scattered with bone fragments within the grounds of the Abu Salim prison - by questioning prison guards who had worked there when the prisoners were killed after protesting against their conditions.

A few eyewitnesses have talked about the fact they were killed in their jail cells by grenades and sustained gunfire after a protest.

One 64-year-old villager told the Associated Press that the factory - located close to a school and kindergarten - discharges waste into the river and spews dense smoke out of a dozen chimneys.

Chen Hongming, a deputy head of Haining's environmental protection bureau, was quoted by Chinese news agency Xinhua as saying that the factory's waste disposal had failed pollution tests since April.

The company is a subsidiary of a New York Exchange-listed Chinese solar company, JinkoSolar Holding Company.