he loved his i-Phones and sports

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has been warned that he could face prosecution for crimes against humanity after a United Nations inquiry accused him of some of the worst human rights abuses since the Second World War.

In some of the harshest criticism ever unleashed by the international community against the Pyongyang regime, a UN panel branded it “a shock to the conscience of humanity”.

Michael Kirby, a retired Australian judge who has spent nearly a year taking testimony from victims of the regime, said much of it reminded him of atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

Yesterday his team published a 374-page report detailing allegations of murder, torture, rape, abductions, enslavement, and starvation, describing North Korea as a dictatorship “that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world”.

It came after a decade of near fruitless efforts by UN human rights workers to establish a dialogue with Pyongyang, which denounced the inquiry panel members as “human scum” and refused to allow them entry to the country.

Instead, the panel took testimony from more than 80 former North Koreans now living abroad, including ex-prison guards, who give evidence in public hearings in London, Tokyo, Washington and Seoul.

destroy the ivory

The Duke of Cambridge has spoken out against elephant poaching after he said he wants to destroy all the ivory from Buckingham Palace, it has been reported.

The Duke is a strong supporter of fighting against the illegal trade of animals, having launched United for Wildlife last week.

His comments, which could see more than 1,000 items stripped from the royal collection, have been welcomed by conservationists as it is hoped it will encourage other heads of states to give up their ivory stores.

However art critics have warned against destroying historic pieces including an 1851 ivory throne from India and said this will not help the current fight against poaching.

Putin Will Teach You To Love Your Motherland

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova told the BBC's Steven Rosenberg that she and Maria Alyokhina were being held at a police station after being detained on suspicion of "theft". They have not yet been officially charged.

Ms Tolokonnikova said that they had arrived in Sochi on Sunday to perform a new song, Putin Will Teach You To Love Your Motherland, about "political repression in Russia".