Iran held on Monday the official opening ceremony of its first nuclear power plant completed after long delay with Russia's assistance.

Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko and head of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) Sergei Kiriyenko attended the ceremony.

"This demonstrates that Russia has met all its obligations [under the construction contract] despite the adverse political situation [surrounding the project]," Kiriyenko said.

The first unit at Bushehr has capacity to generate 1,000 megawatts. It was connected to the grid last week.

KABUL, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- NATO is committed to train and equip the Afghan army after the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) end their combat operation by the end of 2014, a NATO general said here on Monday.

"The NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan (NTM-A) was only started in the late 2009 and as a consequence with mission going on to 2014, we are not even half way through on mandate on our task, and with the announcement of NATO of course we'll stay here past 2014," Major General Michael Day, Deputy Commander of NTM-A told a joint press conference with the spokesman of ISAF Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson.

He said that NTM-A aims to bring the strength of Afghan National Army (ANA) from 171,600 at present to 195,000 by the end of 2014.

The Helsinki Court of Appeal on Monday began hearing the testimony in a genocide trial in the African country of Rwanda. Over the next five weeks, the court will hear from 39 Rwandan witnesses in the case.

Last year, a Finnish court sentenced Francois Bazaramba, a Rwandan national resident in Finland , to life imprisonment for his involvement in genocide against the Tutsi minority in his home country in 1994. He has appealed the conviction.

For the next five weeks, the Helsinki Court of Appeal will be in session in the conference facilities of a hotel in the Rwandan capital Kigali. Bazaramba is following the proceedings along with his defense lawyer from the prison where he is being held in Vantaa. The two have declined to travel to Rwanda due to personal safety concerns.

A South African court has found Julius Malema, the fireband leader of the youth brigade of the country's ruling African National Congress (ANC), guilty of hate speech.

The court on Monday ordered the youth leader to pay costs for singing an apartheid-era song that advocated the killing of white farmers.

"I find the words uttered by Malema constitute hate speech" Judge Collin Lamont said.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep. 12, 2011 (IPS) - A former U.N. secretary-general was once quoted as having described non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as the world's "third superpower".

But come September, the thousands of NGOs armed with U.N. credentials will be barred from the United Nations, specifically when world leaders arrive to address the General Assembly sessions.

The annual ritual where civil society is treated as political and social outcasts has always triggered strong protests. The United Nations justifies the restriction primarily for "security reasons".

The 10-day ban on NGOs will begin Sep. 20, the day before U.S. President Barack Obama's address to the General Assembly, which will be followed by speeches from more than 100 world leaders.

This year, however, the ban has generated more protests because most NGOs have been shut out of three key "high-level meetings" scheduled for next week - on desertification and poverty eradication; on racism and xenophobia; and on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases - plus a nuclear security summit.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- Guatemala's leading presidential candidates are headed for a November runoff after a retired general who had a commanding lead in the polls failed to win 50 percent of the vote. With 95 percent of the polling stations reporting Monday, preliminary results showed Otto Perez Molina of the Patriot Party with 36 percent support, followed by businessman Manuel Baldizon with 24 percent and Eduardo Suger with 16 percent. "We are going to double our efforts, now that we are in the second round," Perez said after learning he would be in the runoff.

MercoPress: Chile's Sunday September 11 demonstrations to recall the military coup of 1973 turned violent and left one adolescent with a gun wound, power cuts, dozens of arrests and 350 "outbreaks of violence" in the capital Santiago according to the Carabineros (militarized police) report. Deputy Interior Secretary Rodrigo Ubilla said that during Saturday night and the following Sunday night a total 280 people were arrested, of which 182 in Santiago's metropolitan region and 98 in the rest of the country. Forty members of the police forces also were reported to have suffered injuries during the incidents.

NISGUA blog: Association for Justice and Reconciliation - AJR; Center for Human Rights Legal Action - CALDH; Guatemala, September 6 2011: Today Guatemalan society is witness to an historic event. For the first time in our country, the Attorney General presented an accusation for the crime of genocide against a retired army general. This step towards justice is of utmost importance for thousands of survivors of genocide in Guatemala.  The accusation against General Héctor Mario López Fuentes is a follow up to the indictment presented by the presiding Judge of the First Sentencing Court for High Risk Crimes, who in June ordered these proceedings.

Turkey has developed a new identification system for its U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, which will now allow them to fire at Israeli targets, the Iranian state-run news agency Press TV quoted a Turkish newspaper as reporting on Tuesday.

According to the report, the new technology will allow Turkey to identify its enemies itself, as opposed to the old U.S. system which automatically identified all Israeli targets as a "friend," preventing Turkish fighter jets from firing at them, even if Turkish pilots were ordered to do so.