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BBC News. I'm John Shea.

Environmental groups and some countries have criticized Saturday's agreement at the UN climate conference in Poland as lacking in ambition. The deal sought to lay down the rules to implement the 2015 Paris accord. David Shookman has this assessment. Applause and relief in Katowice mask some difficult questions about this latest deal. Under the new rules, countries are expected to publish their plans for cutting their emissions of greenhouse gases. But the Paris Agreement is voluntary, so no government is under any obligation. And even if every country takes the steps that they've promised to, the world will still be on course for what scientists consider dangerous levels of warming. But critics point to the most recent assessment by the UN climate panel, which concluded that emissions must start falling in the next twelve years.

Sri Lanka's ousted Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe has been sworn back into office nearly two months after he was sacked by President Maithripala Sirisena. The move plunged Sri Lanka into a political crisis which saw Mr. Wickremasinghe replaced by the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, but he's faced political and legal setbacks as Charles Haviland reports. Mr. Wickremasinghe's return to office is likely to end seven weeks of constitutional chaos. In October, his uneasy political ally President Sirisena tried to boot him out and replace him with Mahinda Rajapaksa, the hard-line nationalist ex-president. Mr. Sirisena also tried to dissolve Parliament, but on Thursday the Supreme Court deemed that action illegal. The crisis has rocked a country still grappling with an ugly pattern of human rights abuses during its long ethnic war.

The head of the Pakistani Army has approved death sentences for fifteen people convicted by military courts of involvement in Islamic attacks. Twenty other militants were given prison sentences. This report from Charish Haney. The confirmation of the death sentences comes as Pakistan marks the fourth anniversary of an attack on an army-run school in Peshawar in which more than a hundred and fifty people were killed. The attack prompted Pakistan to lift a six-year moratorium on executions, and hundreds are reported to have been put to death since then. The fifteen who had their death sentences confirmed could appeal. Rights groups say military trials are unfair, but the authorities insist they have no choice in a country ravaged by militancy.

BBC News.