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Should the United States chastise or even break with Azerbaijan? One congressman thinks so, given its troubling authoritarian policies, alleged human rights violations, egregious electoral fraud, jailing of investigative journalists and torture of political prisoners.

Secretary of State John Kerry has tapped one of Congress’s longest serving overseers of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to become the State Department’s new gatekeeper of arms sales to foreign countries. The hiring of Bill Monahan, which has not previously been reported, removes the veteran staffer from the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he has been knee-deep in scrutinizing the Pentagon’s conduct of the twin conflicts as well as the U.S. military’s coordination with governments in Europe and South Asia.

The United Nations is seeking $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid for South Sudan, where two in ten of the population have been driven from their homes during two years of conflict. More than 10,000 people have been killed and 2.3 million displaced since the country's civil war broke out in December 2013, when soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir first clashed with troops who backed his deputy, Riek Machar.

The Mauritanian military has taken delivery of at least a dozen Otokar Cobra armoured vehicles, which are being deployed to the Central African Republic (CAR) as part of the United Nations mission there. Twelve of the vehicles were seen during a ceremony on 12 January when President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz inspected the battalion the North African country is sending to the Central African Republic.