Apple iOS 5 review

The latest version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 5, is such a significant overhaul that users who install it today will feel like they have a new device, says Shane Richmond.

Among the 200 or so new features are some big changes, none bigger than the overhauled notifications system. The iPhone and its cousins the iPod touch and iPad have handled notifications poorly for a long time.

If a text message arrived while you were playing a game, for example, then it would interrupt everything and place a message in the middle of the screen. The game would not resume until you had dealt with the message. Alerts that arrived when your device was inactive caused a different problem: unlock the screen without thinking and the notifications would disappear, leaving you wondering which app required your attention.

iOS 5 sweeps all of that away with Notification Centre. Swipe down from the top of your screen and you'll see all of the notifications that require your attention. Weather reports, stock prices, calendar entries and more can all be stored there. Android users will rightly point out that Apple's implementation here is very similar to the way notifications work on Android.

However, as ever with Apple the important bits are the details, the 'fit and finish' of the feature, and it is these that make notifications a triumph. Whether it's the ability to 'unlock' a notification itself and go straight to the relevant app (instead of unlocking the screen and then opening the app) or the way that notifications subtly roll in at the top of the screen while you're doing something else, the implementation is excellent.

U.N. peacekeepers killed in Darfur

Three United Nations peacekeepers were killed in an ambush in a camp for displaced people in Sudan's Darfur region, the global body said Tuesday.

Two of the dead were soldiers; the third was a police adviser for the joint U.N. and African Union mission in the troubled region. Another six peacekeepers were injured in the incident.

They came under attack at 10:15 Monday night in the Zam Zam camp in North Darfur while the security unit was on patrol. One of the assailants was also killed, a statement from the joint mission said.

It was unclear why the attack occurred.

Tymoshenko Conviction Puts Ukraine at Crossroads with Russia, Europe

A Kyiv court has sentenced former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to seven years in jail for abusing her power in a 2009 gas deal with Russia. The conviction and jail sentence comes just as Ukraine hopes to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union.

Protesters jostled with riot police on the main street of Ukraine's capital as news came that Yulia Tymoshenko had been sentenced to prison and to repay $190 million lost in a gas deal with Russia.

But Tymoshenko, with her trademark blond peasant braid, also has supporters in Brussels, the seat of the European Union.  Last week, with Tymoshenko already in jail for two months, European officials warned Ukraine's government that her conviction would threaten a free trade pact with the European Union.

"The European Union has warned [Viktor] Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president, that his attempts to finalize a free trade agreement with the bloc would be put in jeopardy if the case went forward, and [it] ended in a sentence for Yulia Tymoshenko," said Yevgeny Kiselyov who runs a political talk show in Kyiv.

Sweden's Prime Minister Carl Bildt warned recently, as the trial ground through its third month, that "political show trials have no place in our Europe." On Tuesday, after the court decision, Catherine Ashton, the EU's top foreign affairs official, said from Brussels that the EU is "deeply disappointed" with the verdict.

DC Protesters Continue to Occupy After Permit Expires

Anti-war and anti-Wall Street demonstrations are springing up in major cities across the United States, nearly a month after they started in the heart of New York's financial district. Our correspondent reports from one protest in Washington, where demonstrators say they plan to stay even if they risk arrest.

What was supposed to be a four-day demonstration in Washington against U.S. wars abroad and corporate greed showed no sign of ending on its fifth day Monday. People continued to protest a few blocks from the White House.

The occupation of Washington's Freedom Plaza by the October 2011 movement is one of two ongoing demonstrations in the capital alongside protests in major cities across the United States.

The group's permit to gather in the square expired late Sunday. National Park Police had given the group until Monday afternoon to leave. 

On Monday, police officers came to meet with the protestors, but the officers left after leaders of the movement refused to speak with them in private.

Even though protesters no longer have permission to remain here in downtown D.C., more and more tents are popping up, with many protesters saying they have no intention of leaving.

Pay funeral costs of organ donors, says think-tank

People who donate organs on their death beds should have their funeral expenses paid for by the NHS, a leading medical ethics think-tank has suggested.

Doing so could markedly increase the number of donations made every year without compromising the altruisitic motivation behind the act, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has concluded in a report published last night (MON).

Hugh Whittall, director of the centre, said there was a need to think radically because demand for organs far outstripped supply.

"8,000 people are currently on a list for transplant and three people die every day while waiting for an organ," he said.

Even though 29 per cent of the population is on the Organ Donor Register, the number who actually donate organs upon death is remarkably small: only 1,010 did so last year.