This is our new Friday Digest! Every Friday, this weekly news round-up gives us the occasion to share with you news from various topics: politics to arts, entertainment, media, science, sports, fun and less fun news…

This digest is a list of news published this week on the Internet (Friday to Friday), selected by the Sama Team, and it is by no means exhaustive. If you want to suggest a news to be added in the next Friday Digest, contact us.

Turkey’s Erdogan attacks France on genocide law
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan attacked the French parliament on Tuesday for passing a “discriminatory and racist” bill which makes it illegal to deny that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide. However, Erdogan said there was still hope that NATO ally France “would correct its mistake” and that any retaliatory measures would be held back…

U.S., South Korea plan first joint drills since Kim Jong Il’s death
Ready to test the diplomacy waters of North Korea’s new regime, the militaries of the U.S. and South Korea will hold their annual joint exercise next month, a drill that Pyongyang has previously called a provocative act, the South Korean press reported Wednesday. The Key Resolve exercise will begin Feb. 27 and last two weeks, according to Seoul’s JoonAng Ilbo newspaper, quoting unnamed South Korean…

Fukushima’s animals abandoned and left to die
When you stand in the center of Japan’s exclusion zone, there is absolute silence. The exclusion zone is the 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, an area of high radiation contamination. On March 12, the day after the quake and tsunami hit, 78,000 people were evacuated out of this area, believing they would return within a few days. As such, thousands of people left with…

France to Speed Troops’ Withdrawal from Afghanistan
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced Friday a significant acceleration of France’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying combat troops would leave a year early, by the end of 2013. He increased this year’s withdrawal of troops from 600 to 1,000, and said that French troops would hand over security responsibility in one of its main areas of responsibility in Afghanistan, Kapisa Province, northeast of Kabul…

Kiir-Bashir Meeting Produces No Deal, Parties Commit to More Talks
No deal on the current oil crisis between Sudan and South Sudan emerged from the highly anticipated meeting today between Presidents Salva Kiir and Omar al-Bashir. Following the meeting, it was announced that the two parties would continue negotiations. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, and former presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Pierre Buyoya of Burundi…