China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned at the United Nations today against military action to respond to the threat from North Korea's missile and nuclear programmes.
	"The use of force does not solve differences and will only lead to bigger disasters," Wang told the Security Council.

China: Use of force in N Korea would lead to bigger disasters

PTI Automatic

Experts from the world's watchdog tasked with destroying chemical weapons are probing reports that toxic arms have been used 45 times in Syria since late last year, the body's chief said today.
	Director general Ahmet Uzumcu said there was "a huge list of allegations" of the use of toxic arms reported to the operations hub of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
	In the "second part of 2016, 30 different incidents, and since the beginning of this year, 15 separate incidents, so 45," he told a reporters, brandishing a list of several pages which he chose to keep confidential.
	They include the April 4 sarin gas attack on the rebel- held town of Khan Sheikhun that was reported to have killed 88 people, including 31 children.
	"All these allegations are recorded by our experts, who follow this every day from our operations centre," Uzumcu said.
	The OPCW is currently trying to ensure it is safe enough to deploy its fact-finding team to the town for further ...

Chemical weapons allegedly used 45 times in Syria: OPCW chief

Britain's economic growth slowed in the first quarter to the weakest pace in a year, official data showed Friday -- a blow for a nation facing heightened tensions over Brexit ahead of June's general election.
	Gross domestic product expanded by 0.3 per cent in the three months to the end of March, compared with 0.7 per cent in the final quarter of 2016, the Office for National Statistics said in a statement.
	Analysts' consensus forecast had been for first-quarter growth of 0.4 per cent, with the worse-than-expected result mainly attributable to a slowdown in services sector output, the ONS said.
	"This weakness is likely to be blamed on Brexit," said Alan Clarke, fixed income strategist at Scotiabank.
	"That is probably fair, albeit in an indirect sense. The fears leading up to Brexit were that growth would stall due to a dive in confidence, hiring and investment," he said.
	"That hasn't happened. What did happen is the pound dived, pushing inflation sharply higher and that is ...

British economy slows as Brexit talks, election loom

The United States is not ruling out direct dialogue with North Korea on its nuclear programme, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in an interview with National Public Radio broadcast today.
	"Obviously, that would be the way we would like to solve this," he said, when asked whether Washington seeks direct talks with Pyongyang.
	"But North Korea has to decide they're ready to talk to us about the right agenda -- and the right agenda is not simply stopping where they are for a few more months or a few more years and then resuming things."
	Tillerson has previously said "the era of strategic patience is over." He stressed in the NPR interview that what Washington now seeks is dialogue.
	"Our approach to North Korea is to have them change their posture towards any future talks," he said.
	"I think when we say the era of strategic patience is over - in the past I think we have always negotiated our way to the negotiating table... We don't have the running room left to do that now, given 

US doesn't rule out direct talks with North Korea: Tillerson

Italian police said today they had helped their German counterparts neutralise a Berlin-based Islamist terror cell with links to Christmas market attack suspect Anis Amri.
	The dismantling of the 11-strong group was completed at the end of January after nearly two months of investigations triggered by two of them being picked up at the Italian port of Ancona on December 4, 2016, according to the anti-terrorism wing of Italy's state police force.
	Italian authorities believe Congolese national Lutumba Nkanga, 26, and Moroccan Soufiane Amri, 22, were planning to travel to Istanbul en route to joining Islamic State in Iraq or Syria.
	Their departure was delayed by a Greek ferry strike and it was during the unexpected delay that they were subject to an identity check which revealed that Germany had banned Soufiane Amri from leaving the country.
	Amri was deported to Germany while Nkanga was detained in a centre for failed asylum-seekers awaiting deportation in the southeastern port of ...

Berlin terror cell nabbed after Italy arrests

European leaders will discuss for the first time at a summit today the battle to host two London-based EU agencies after Brexit, with a decision expected later this year, officials said.
	Over a dozen member states have already thrown their hats into the ring to host the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Banking Authority (EBA), currently housed in London's Canary Wharf business district.
	EU President Donald Tusk and European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker will bring up the sensitive topic at the summit in Brussels where the 27 remaining EU leaders will adopt Brexit negotiating guidelines, European officials said.
	They will tell the leaders on Saturday that the process to find new homes for the agencies begins in June with the announcement of a set of criteria for the relocations, a senior EU official said on condition of anonymity.
	EU leaders will then vote on a list of contenders later in the year, with Tusk intending to name the new hosts at a summit in ...

EU battle begins to win UK-based agencies after Brexit

Maria Sharapova eased into the semi-finals of Stuttgart's WTA tournament after seeing off qualifier Anett Kontaveit on Friday for her third-straight win on her comeback after a 15-month doping ban.
     The 30-year-old five-time Grand Slam winner has yet to drop a set in Stuttgart and powered past Estonia's Kontaveit, ranked 73rd, for a 6-3, 6-4 quarter-final win in one hour, 23 minutes.
     This was another impressive display from the Russian, who hit four aces, 28 winners and just two double faults, while she converted five of her six break points.
     "I served quite well and held my serve which gave me confidence, so I'm happy," said Sharapova.
     "We haven't played each other before, so the first six games were just about working each other out.
     "I kept myself in good shape, because once you lose it, it's hard to get it back," she added when asked about her fitness on court after 15 months out.
     The former world number one will now play either France's Kristina ...

Sharapova into Stuttgart semis on doping return

Non-tariff measures in Southeast Asia have nearly quadrupled between 2000 and 2015, presenting a key challenge as the region moves toward further economic integration, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said today.
	Speaking at a business forum on the sidelines of the Assocaition of Southeast Asian Nations annual summit, Najib said tariffs in the 10-member bloc averaged around 4.0 per cent in 2015.
	However, non-tariff barriers and measures soared to 5,975 in 2015 from 1,634 in 2000, he said.
	"This has to be checked and reversed," Najib told top business executives and entrepreneurs attending the forum.
	ASEAN groups 10 countries with different political systems and varying levels of economic development from affluent Singapore to impoverished Laos.
	The group has established a free-trade area among themselves aiming to slash tariffs on most goods to zero and minimise non-tariff barriers as well as facilitate the easier movement of capital and people.
	It has also signed free-trade 

Non-tariff barriers rising in SEAsia: Najib

Pope Francis began a visit to Egypt today to promote "unity and fraternity" among Muslims and the embattled Christian minority that has suffered a series of jihadist attacks.
	The 80-year-old pontiff touched down at Cairo airport before he was ushered in a car to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who welcomed him with a military brass band and priests lining up to greet the pope.
	"It's a journey of unity and fraternity. Less than two days but very intense," he said of the 27-hour trip before disembarking.
	He will later meet Muslim and Christian leaders before visiting a church that was bombed in December.
	That attack was followed by twin church bombings in April that killed 45 people, in the deadliest assault in recent memory on the Coptic Christian minority.
	Francis will also meet Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of the prestigious Sunni institution Al-Azhar, sealing a recent improvement in relations between Catholicism and the Sunni branch of Islam.
	"This meeting will 

Pope Francis visits Egypt to promote 'unity and fraternity'

Boeing has filed a petition with the US Commerce Department complaining that Canada's Bombardier is selling its CSeries passenger jet in the United States for less that it costs to make them.
	The US aerospace giant asked the Department's International Trade Commission on Thursday to look into Bombardier's "illegal and unfair business practices" and impose anti-dumping duties on the sale of those airplanes.
	The petition comes after Donald Trump's administration on Monday slapped tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber imports, and after the US president walked back his threat to exit the North American Free Trade Agreement, but said that the trade deal with Canada and Mexico had to be renegotiated.
	Boeing believes that Canadian government subsidies allow Bombardier to sell its CSeries jets at an unfairly low price, undercutting sales of Boeing's own 737 passenger jets.
	According to Boeing, Bombardier "has embarked on an aggressive campaign to sell C Series aircraft into the US market ..

Boeing wants dumping probe against Canada's Bombardier

A Chinese court today sentenced the former director of Shanghai's free-trade zone to 17 years in prison for corruption, saying he pocketed USD 7.2 million through embezzlement and taking bribes.
	Ai Baojun, also a former vice mayor of Shanghai, was formally stripped of his free-trade zone post in January 2016 after coming under investigation by the ruling Communist Party, which at the time accused him of a decadent lifestyle at private clubs, playing golf, and "trading power for sex".
	A court in the city of Zhangzhou in eastern Fujian province where he was tried said in a statement that his embezzlement and bribe-taking spanned 2000-2014, starting from when he was a top official with steelmaker Baosteel, and through his time in Shanghai government and the trade zone.
	It made no mention of the previous accusations over his lifestyle or sexual transgressions.
	His sentence was lightened from an intended 25 years since most of the bribes were routed through family members, the ...

Former Shanghai trade-zone chief jailed 17 years for graft

The number of people in need of food aid in Ethiopia's drought-hit regions has surged to 7.7 million, over two million more than an estimate earlier this year, state media reported today.
	The National Disaster Risk Management Commission said in January that failed rains would leave 5.6 million people in need of emergency food this year in three of the country's nine regions: Oromia, Amhara and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region.
	Public relations director Ababe Zewdie told the state-run Ethiopian News Agency that cold snaps as well as localised flooding in some areas have further decimated what crops had managed to grow, causing them to revise upwards their estimates.
	"Over USD 742 million (679 million euros) is needed to support the people affected by drought and more than 432,000 tonnes of additional food up until early July," the news agency reported.
	Ethiopia is prone to droughts, and the lack of rains in the country's highlands forced 10.2 million people ..

Ethiopia drought creates food crisis for 7.7 million

Tehran protested to Islamabad today over a cross-border raid by armed rebels who killed 10 Iranian guards in the restive southeast.
	"We expect those responsible for this terrorist attack to be arrested and prosecuted," President Hassan Rouhani said in a letter to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
	The foreign ministry also called in the Pakistani ambassador to protest over Wednesday evening's raid in the Mirjaveh district of Sistan-Baluchistan province.
	The province has a large Sunni community and has seen repeated attacks by Sunni militants against the security forces of mainly Shiite Iran.
	The porous border region with Pakistan has also been prey to violence by drug smugglers.

Iran protests to Pakistan over deadly rebel raid

The United States is not ruling out direct dialogue with North Korea on its nuclear programme, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in an interview with National Public Radio.
	"Obviously, that would be the way we would like to solve this," he said, according to the transcript published today, when asked whether Washington seeks talks with Pyongyang.
	"But North Korea has to decide they're ready to talk to us about the right agenda - and the right agenda is not simply stopping where they are for a few more months or a few more years and then resuming things.

US seeks talks with North Korea to solve nuke issue: Tillerson

US seeks talks with North Korea to solve nuke issue:

Russian prosecutors have called for a three-and-a-half year jail sentence for a blogger who hunted Pokemons in church, in a case that has drawn ire from rights activists.
	Ruslan Sokolovsky posted a YouTube video in August 2016 showing him playing Pokemon Go on his phone in a Russian Orthodox church in the central city of Yekaterinburg that was viewed more than 1.7 million times.
	The militant atheist -- dubbed a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International -- was detained and charged under controversial legislation for "inciting hatred" and "insulting the feelings of religious believers" before being put on trial.
	"There are no grounds to let the defendant go unpunished," Russian news agencies quoted a prosecutor as saying in court.
	"I ask for a punishment of three years and six months of imprisonment for all crimes."
	Sokolovsky's harsh treatment has drawn comparisons with the jailing of the Pussy Riot performance artists after they staged a punk performance in a Moscow ...

Russia seeks prison sentence for church Pokemon hunter

Ukraine today launched a process to return some USD 1.5 billion in assets allegedly stolen from the budget by the deposed Russian-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych and his team.
	The National Security and Defence Council said the state savings bank had begun confiscating the old regime's holdings in line with an earlier court ruling.
	Council chief Oleksandr Turchynov said the USD 1.5 billion (1.4 billion euros) would be returned to the state budget.
	Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's press service put the exact amount at 40 billion hryvnias -- a figure that was worth about USD 5 billion when Yanukovych was still in power.
	"This money was stolen from the Ukrainian people," Poroshenko said in a public address. "It was pulled out of the pocket of every Ukrainian."
	   The financial monitoring service said in 2016 that the assets belonging to Yanukovych and his cronies had been frozen in Ukraine since the February 2014 pro-EU revolution.
	The Kremlin-backed leadership has been ...

Ukraine orders confiscation of $1.5 bn in Yanukovych regime

Germany today urged fellow EU nations not to end membership talks with Turkey despite deep misgivings over its rights record because the country is key to European interests.
	Austria has led calls for the negotiations to be ditched, saying President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has violated the basic EU rule of law and democratic norms candidate countries must put in place.
	Other member states have been reluctant to call time on a key NATO ally seen as vital to Europe's security.
	German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said his government was "strictly against breaking off the accession talks.... It would be the completely wrong reaction."
	"In NATO, we did not even exclude Turkey even during the times of military dictatorship (there)," Gabriel said as he arrived for an EU foreign ministers meeting in Valletta.
	The Turkish foreign minister is due to join them for a session on relations with EU candidate countries.
	French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he would be seeking ...

Germany urges EU not to break off Turkey accession talks

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today expressed confidence he would be able to open a "new page" in troubled relations with Washington at a meeting with his counterpart Donald Trump next month.
	"I believe that we will open a new page with Mr Trump in Turkey-US relations," Erdogan told the Atlantic Council Istanbul summit ahead of his meeting with Trump in mid-May, adding that American support of Kurdish militia in Syria was "harming the spirit" of their alliance.

Erdogan says to open 'new page' in Turkey-US

A British soldier jailed for killing an injured Taliban fighter in Afghanistan was freed today after his sentence was reduced from murder to manslaughter, his lawyer said.
	Former Royal Marine Alexander Blackman was jailed for life in 2013 for shooting the fighter at close range in Helmand Province on September 15, 2011, after the man was injured by helicopter fire.
	The sentence was later reduced to eight years but a judge in March reduced this further to seven years, quashing the murder conviction and replacing it with one of manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
	Blackman's lawyer Jonathan Goldberg told AFP that he was released overnight, while a statement from his campaign Facebook page said he was now in a "safe/private location with Claire", his wife.
	In footage captured by a camera on another soldier's helmet, Blackman was heard to tell the injured Afghan fighter: "There you are. Shuffle off this mortal coil" -- paraphrasing Shakespeare.
	"Obviously this doesn't go ...

British soldier who killed Afghan fighter freed from jail

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today slammed Germany's foreign minister as "insensitive" over refusing to cancel meetings with rights groups critical of Israel's government, amid rising tensions between the two allies.
	Netanyahu had scrapped talks with Sigmar Gabriel at the last minute, after Germany's top diplomat pressed on with plans to meet with Israeli rights groups Breaking The Silence and B'Tselem.
	In an interview with Germany's biggest selling Bild daily, Netanyahu defended his decision.
	"Foreign diplomats are welcome to meet with civil society activists and members of the opposition and anyone else they'd like," he said.
	"But my red line is that I will not meet diplomats who come to Israel and lend legitimacy to fringe radical groups that falsely accuse our soldiers of war crimes and undermine Israeli security," he added.
	   Pointing out that the meetings with the activist groups were held on a day when Israel was commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, ...

AFP

AFP

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