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China has lifted its ban on sales of video games consoles which has been in force for 15 years. The sales ban was imposed in 2000 over concerns Chinese children would waste time playing video games. It is being lifted to promote the industry and a new manufacturing zone in Shanghai. Consoles manufactured in the Shanghai Free-Trade Zone will automatically be approved for sale in the rest of the country, according to a Ministry of Culture notice dated Friday. Big-name consoles have been made in China for many years for export, with some machines inevitably finding their way on to…

A woman was killed after falling into an escalator in a shopping centre in central China, local media report. Surveillance footage from Sunday’s incident shows a metal panel at the top of the escalator giving way, causing the woman and her toddler to stumble. The woman, identified by local media as Xiang Liujuan, 30, was able to push her child to safety as she fell in. The incident in Jingzhou, in Hubei province, has sparked widespread anger at the department store. The woman fell into the escalator at 10:09 local time (02:09 GMT) on Sunday, state broadcaster CCTV and newspaper…

NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler telescope has spotted an Earth-like world 1,400 light years away, the space agency has announced. Kepler-452b is 60% larger in diameter than Earth and orbits a sun-like star in the constellation Cygnus, said NASA. The new world sits squarely in the so-called habitable zone – where life could exist because it is neither too hot nor too cold to support liquid water. Its mass and composition have not yet been established, but researchers believe there Is a good chance Kepler-452b is made of rock. It takes 385 days for the planet to orbit its star, says NASA, not far…

President Barack Obama has admitted that his failure to pass “common sense gun safety laws” in the US is the greatest frustration of his presidency. In an interview he said it was “distressing” not to have made progress on the issue “even in the face of repeated mass killings”. However, Mr Obama said race relations had improved during his presidency. Hours after the interview, a gunman opened fire at a cinema in the US state of Louisiana, killing two people and injuring several others before shooting himself. In a wide-ranging interview, President Obama also said: The UK must stay in the…

The hunt for the world’s most wanted people smuggler took us through some of the most inhospitable places on Earth as well as some of the most dangerous. We traced the key human trafficking routes used by one of the kingpins and followed the same path through which his network has smuggled thousands of migrants. We saw the vast expanse of the Sahara desert crossed by hundreds and witnessed the instability across Libya which has created the perfect anarchic conditions for smugglers to flourish. From the searing hot desert that makes up Kufra in Libya’s south, we followed the smugglers’…

North Korea’s state-controlled elections saw a 99.97% voter turnout on Sunday, with only those absent from the country not participating, state media reported. Almost the entire country reportedly made it to the polls, including the elderly and ill, who cast their votes through “mobile ballot boxes” for uncontested candidates carefully selected by the ruling party. North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, who exercises complete control over the country’s 24.9 million citizens, was also seen casting his ballot in the capital, Pyongyang. The elections were Mr Kim’s first at a local level since he inherited the position in 2011, with voters reportedly  “singing and…

Fifa president Sepp Blatter is set to announce his plans to reform football’s crisis-hit governing body on Monday. Blatter will also hold talks with Fifa’s executive committee over a date for the new presidential election. The 79-year-old announced on 2 June he was stepping aside as head of Fifa, having just been re-elected. But the date for what is billed as an ’emergency congress’ could slip to early 2016 given Blatter’s reported desire to stay in power until the new year. European governing body Uefa is likely to push hard in Monday’s meeting for a December date but is not expected to…

Greek banks are reopening after three weeks of closures sparked by the deadlock over the country’s debt. Athens reached a cash-for-reforms deal aimed at avoiding a debt default and an exit from the eurozone. But many restrictions remain, including a block on money transfers abroad, and Greeks also face price rises with an increase in Value Added Tax (VAT). Meanwhile, Germany has said it is prepared to consider further debt concessions to Greece. Queues at ATMs have been a feature of life in Greece for weeks, with people waiting in line each day to withdraw a maximum of €60 (£41)…