North Korea said Sunday it was considering postponing a planned long-range rocket launch originally set for between December 10 and 22, citing unspecified problems during preparations.

The Korean Committee for Space Technology said its scientists and engineers were "considering seriously the possibility of readjusting the launch period".

The General Prosecution filed a lawsuit on Saturday against Abdul Latif Fneish, brother of Minister of State for Administrative Reform Mohammad Fneish for being involved in the illegal drugs scandal, al-Jadeed television reported.

“Abdul Latif Fneish will be tried for forging medications,” al-Jadeed said.

Hundreds of Tunisians, most of them Islamists, rallied on Saturday in the capital to demand that cronies of ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali be put in the dock on corruption charges.

"The people want to clean up the country," demonstrators chanted in central Tunis, with some holding Salafist flags. "People, rise up against the cronies of the dictator," they said amid a heavy police presence.

A delegation of Congolese rebels has arrived in Kampala for talks with the government aimed at ending a crisis that has led to widespread rights abuses and displacement and sparked fears of an all-out regional conflict.

The negotiating team from the M23 rebel group arrived in the Ugandan capital late Friday, their spokesman Amani Kabasha told Agence France Presse Saturday.

Nelson Mandela was on Saturday admitted to a hospital for tests consistent with old age and is doing well, the office of South Africa's president, Jacob Zuma, announced.

"Former President Nelson Mandela has today, 8 December 2012, been admitted in hospital in Pretoria to undergo tests," Zuma's office announced. Mandela "is doing well and there is no cause for alarm," it added.

Bahrain's Shiite opposition on Saturday welcomed a call for dialogue made by Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, saying it was ready to talk in an effort to solve the Gulf kingdom's political crisis.

The opposition, led by the main Shiite Al-Wefaq grouping, said it "looks favorably upon the appeal by the crown prince," and urged "a serious dialogue with agreement on the participants, agenda and duration."

Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday ended weeks of speculation by announcing he would run again for the job of prime minister, the post he was forced out of last year.

"I am running to win," the leader of the right-wing populist People of Freedom (PDL) party told journalists in Milanello, near the northern city of Milan.

A growing number of Malians, including in the military, feel abandoned by the international community and are advocating unilateral action to reclaim the north from Islamist militia if foreign armies are too slow to the rescue.

The transitional government in Bamako which still has control over Mali's southern half made a fresh appeal to the United Nations Security Council on December 5 for a 3,300-strong regional standby force to intervene.

Afghanistan may consider giving conditional immunity from local prosecution for U.S. troops remaining in the country after NATO forces withdraw in 2014, President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday.

Negotiations on a U.S.-Afghan security pact that involves talks on the status of U.S. bases in post-2014 Afghanistan were launched in November but negotiators said the immunity issue was not discussed in the first round.

Syria warned on Saturday that rebels could use chemical weapons in their fight against President Bashar Assad's forces, and insisted that the regime will never unleash such arms on its own people.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, however, said there was evidence the Damascus government could actually employ chemical weapons stocks in the conflict which a rights group says has killed at least 42,000 people in nearly 21 months.