Turkey has threatened to scrap a critical deal on halting the flow of migrants to the EU amid a spiralling war of words between Ankara and the bloc.
	Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday said the "spirit of fascism" was running rampant in Europe, the latest in a series of incendiary verbal attacks that have left EU politicians aghast and sparked calls for moderation.
	Turkey and the European Union have become embroiled in an explosive crisis after key EU members -- The Netherlands and Germany blocked Turkish ministers from holding rallies to back constitutional changes expanding Erdogan's powers in an April 16 referendum.
	Erdogan has repeatedly accused the two countries of behaving like "Nazis", drawing a firm response from EU chief who yesterday blasted his comments as "detached from reality" and incompatible with Turkey's ambitions to join the bloc.
	But far from stepping back, Erdogan ratcheted up his rhetoric a further notch, comparing the treatment of non-Europeans ..

Turkey threatens EU on migrant deal; Erdogan blasts 'spirit of

PTI Automatic

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte appears to have defeated a strong challenge by his far-right rival Geert Wilders in the key election, exit polls have predicted.
	Rutte's Liberal VVD would scoop up 31 seats in the new parliament making it the largest party, with Wilders and his Freedom Party (PVV) sharing second place on 19 seats with two other parties, the public broadcaster NOS said.
	Millions of Dutch had flocked to the polls yesterday in a near record turnout, with stakes high in an election pitting Rutte against his far-right anti-Islam rival.
	Following last year's shock Brexit referendum and Donald Trump's victory in the US, the Dutch vote is being watched as a gauge of the strength of populism on the continent ahead of key elections in France and Germany.
	If the results are confirmed, Rutte will likely get the chance to form the next coalition and could possibly turn to the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and the Democracy party D66, which both matched Wilders with a ...

Dutch PM beats back far-right challenge: Exit polls

Two Russian intelligence agents and a duo of hackers were indicted today over a data breach that compromised 500 million Yahoo accounts in one of the largest cyberattacks in history.
	The indictment announced by the US Justice Department links Russia's top spy agency, the FSB, to the massive hacking operation which began in 2014 with the twin goals of espionage and financial gain. It comes amid a high-stakes investigation into Russian cyber-meddling in the US election, potentially aimed at boosting the campaign of President Donald Trump.
	The Russian agents were identified as Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, both members of the successor agency to Russia's KGB. Dokuchaev was an officer in the FSB Center for Information Security, known as "Center 18," which is tasked with investigating hacking and is the FBI's point of contact in Moscow for cyber crimes.
	The 33-year-old Dokuchaev was reported to have been arrested in Moscow earlier this year on treason charges. He is accused of ...

US charges two Russian spies in massive Yahoo cyberattack

Bosnia denied entry to two Russians and a Serbian citizen today, classifying them as a security threat on the eve of a Balkan prime ministers' meeting in Sarajevo.
	The Russians were sent back to Istanbul where they had come from, while the Serbian was returned home, said a statement carried by the Fena news agency.
	"Border police did not allow entry to Bosnia and Herzegovina to three persons, because (they) represent a threat to security, public order... And Bosnia's international relations," said a statement.
	Security in Sarajevo was stepped up Wednesday ahead the arrival of heads of governments of the region, notably Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic.
	Having attended a ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men by Bosnian Serb forces, Vucic was attacked by the crowd and forced to leave.
	However, Vucic, an ultra-nationalist-turned-pro-European, said he was coming to Sarajevo "without fear."
	The Western Balkan premiers ...

Bosnia bars two Russians and Serb, citing 'security'

Some 3,000 protesters  marched through the Belarusian capital Minsk today in the latest of a spate of rare demonstrations to challenge the country's authoritarian leader.
	People shouted for strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko to resign as they held an officially sanctioned rally amid anger over plans for a controversial tax on those who work less than six months a year.
	Lukashenko, who has ruled the ex-Soviet country with an iron grip since 1994, suspended the implementation of the so-called "tax on spongers" last week in the face of public ire but refused to scrap the unpopular measure entirely.
	The move was seen as a rare concession to the biggest show of public discontent in years but demonstrations have not dissipated as people suffer in the face of a lengthy economic downturn.
	"The popular protests are not just connected with the decree," Sergei Kalyakin, one of the organisers of Wednesday's march, told AFP.
	"The problem is that it has become unbearable to live."
	While ...

Several thousand in rare march against Belarus leader

French scientists said today they had found a way to pinpoint elusive white blood cells which provide a hideout for the AIDS virus in people taking anti-HIV drugs.
	Being able to spot, and one day neutralise, these "reservoir" cells has long been a holy grail in the quest to wipe out AIDS and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it.
	The discovery "paves the way to a better fundamental understanding of viral reservoirs," said France's CNRS research institute, which took part in the study published in Nature.
	"In the longer term, it should lead to therapeutic strategies aiming to eliminate the latent virus," it added in a statement.
	There is no cure for HIV, and infected people have to take virus-suppressing drugs for life.
	This is because a small number of immune system cells, in a category of cell called CD4 T lymphocytes, provide a haven for the virus, enabling it to re-emerge and spread if treatment is stopped --  even after decades.
	In tests using the blood of ...

Scientists zoom in on AIDS virus hideout

The US Federal Reserve today raised the benchmark interest rate a quarter point, noting that inflation is moving closer to the central bank's two percent target.
	But in announcing the first move since President Donald Trump took office in January, the Fed gave no hint that rates might have to rise more quickly if the White House pushes through its pro-growth policies, including tax cuts and spending programs.
	The Fed's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted to raise the key federal funds rate to a range of 0.75-1.0 percent. There was one dissenting voice.
	Neel Kashkari, the newly installed president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, voted against it, preferring to hold off on raising rates.
	"Inflation has increased in recent quarters, moving close to the Committee's 2 percent longer-run objective," the FOMC statement said, while also noting that "the labor market continued to strengthen" amid solid job gains, and that "economic activity has continued to ..

US Fed raises benchmark interest rate a quarter point

Australia's Great Barrier Reef may never recover from last year's warming-driven coral bleaching, said a study today that called for urgent action in the face of ineffective conservation efforts.
	Record-high temperatures in 2015 and 2016 drove an unprecedented bleaching episode, which occurs when stressed corals expel the algae that live in their tissue and provide them with food.
	Bleached coral is more susceptible to disease, and without sufficient time to recover -- which can take one decade or several depending on the species -- it can die.
	For the new study, an international team examined the impact of three major bleaching events -- in 1998, 2002 and 2016 -- over the reef's entire 2,300-kilometre (1,400-mile) length.
	In 2016, they found, the proportion of constituent reefs experiencing extreme bleaching was over four times higher than in the two previous episodes.
	Only nine percent escaped bleaching altogether, compared with more than 40 percent in 2002 and 1998.
	"The ...

Great Barrier Reef may never recover from bleaching: study

A car bomb ripped through a busy street in the Iraqi city of Tikrit today, killing at least seven people, police and a doctor said.
	The bombing hit Al-Ataba Street, which is home to medical clinics as well as shops, also wounding dozens of people, the sources said.
	There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State jihadist group carries out frequent bombings targeting civilians in Iraq.
	Tikrit, located north of Baghdad, was the first Iraqi city to be recaptured from IS, which overran large areas north and west of the capital in 2014.
	Iraqi forces retook Tikrit in 2015, and while some of it was heavily damaged, civilians have since returned to the city.
	Baghdad's forces went on to recapture the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, and are now battling to retake the western side of second city Mosul, after seizing its east from the jihadists earlier this year.

Car bomb kills at least seven in Iraq's Tikrit: police

A Jordanian court today opened the trial of five Syrians charged with planning a deadly attack claimed by the Islamic State group near the Syrian border last year, a judicial source said.
	"The five accused, all Syrian and aged 20 to 26, appeared in court and pleaded not guilty," the source said.
	The suicide bombing on June 21, 2016 killed seven soldiers in a no-man's-land near the Rukban crossing with Syria.
	Soon after the attack, the army declared Jordan's desert regions that stretch northeast to Syria and east to Iraq "closed military zones", stranding thousands of Syrian refugees in the area.
	The charge sheet said the five suspects all lived in the Rukban camp, which is home to around 60,000 Syrian refugees.
	One of them, an alleged IS member, arrived in the camp in February last year and recruited the others to plan the attack, it said.
	Jordan is part of the US-led coalition fighting IS.
	The UN refugee agency says it has registered more than 650,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan 

Jordan tries 5 IS suspects over deadly border attack

Four skiers were killed today after an avalanche engulfed a tour party of eight people in western Austria, police said.
	"Four from the group survived and were rescued by helicopter," Sabine Reinthaler, police spokeswoman in Tyrol state, told AFP.
	But the others died, with three bodies extracted soon afterwards from the snow and a fourth later after a major search by emergency workers.
	"He was recovered around 12 metres (40 feet) below the surface," rescue worker Peter Veider told the Austria Press Agency (APA).
	Rescue services said that the victims were believed to be Swiss, APA reported.
	The incident occurred near the Jochgrubenkopf peak at 2,450 metres (8,040 feet) above sea level.
	The deaths take to 17 the number of avalanche victims in Austria since January 1, the same level as last year.

Austrian avalanche kills four

Renault has used "fraudulent strategies" for over 25 years to cheat on pollution tests for diesel and petrol engines with the knowledge of top management, according to a report by French fraud investigators obtained today by AFP.
	"The entire chain of management" of the French car maker up to its chief executive Carlos Ghosn were implicated in the suspected fraud, added the report, which led prosecutors to open a probe into Renault in January.
	Police suspect the automobile maker of having put in place the fraudulent strategies "with the objective of creating false results for antipollution tests," in order to be seen to be complying with regulatory norms.
	The document, the existence of which was first revealed by the Liberation daily, concentrates on recent car models, but the fraud investigators -- helped by statements by a former Renault employee -- estimate that questionable practices have been in place since 1990.
	The first generation Renault Clio, which came out in 1990, is ...

Renault's entire management implicated in pollution test

At least 12 people were killed and nearly two dozen kidnapped in western Ethiopia, in an attack blamed on cattle herders who crossed the border from South Sudan, the government in Addis Ababa said today.
	"Twelve were killed and 22 were kidnapped," government spokesman Zadig Abrha said.
	While Abrha said the attack in the Gambella region near South Sudan had occurred this week, he did not specify when exactly it had taken place.
	"We're in hot pursuit of the perpetrators," he said.
	Abrha blamed the incursion on nomadic cattle herders from the Murle ethnic group who wanted to force children to work as labourers.
	"What they do is abduct children and use them as shepherds for their cattle," he said, adding that the military has captured, killed and injured several of the attackers.
	In a similar assault in April last year, attackers from South Sudan crossed into Ethiopia, killing at least 216 people and abducting more than a hundred children, most of whom have since been freed.
	South .

12 killed on Ethiopia border with South Sudan

An Israeli military court sentenced a Palestinian to life today for the murder of a rabbi in the occupied West Bank, the military said.
	Mohammed El-Amaira, a member of the Palestinian Authority security services, was convicted of planning and carrying out a July 2016 attack during which gunmen opened fire on a car near the city of Hebron, an army statement said.
	The car crashed and rabbi Michael Mark, who led a religious school in the Israeli settlement of Otniel, was killed, while his wife and two young children were injured.
	Amaira was convicted of driving the car used by the attackers, the army said.
	He also received a second life sentence for preparing armed attacks that did not ultimately take place, it added.
	He was ordered to pay a fine of 250,000 shekels (USD 67,500, 64,000 euros).
	In August, the Israeli army destroyed Amaira's house in the Palestinian village of Dura in the West Bank.
	Mohamed Fakih, another Palestinian accused over the attack, was killed in July 2016 ..

Palestinian sentenced to life for rabbi killing: military

The death toll from a landslide at Ethiopia's largest rubbish dump in the capital Addis Ababa climbed to 113 today, a city spokeswoman said.
	The toll from Saturday's disaster has "reached 113", Dagmawit Moges, a spokeswoman for the Addis Ababa city administration, told AFP.
	Tragedy struck when part of the largest hillside at the Koshe rubbish dump collapsed, burying a slum that had been built on the landfill.
	Communications Minister Negeri Lencho said the majority of the dead were women, and that rescue operations are continuing.
	"As far as I know, they are still searching," Lencho said, adding that he could not explain why the toll had risen so dramatically from a previous tally of 72 dead on Tuesday.
	Koshe is the largest rubbish dump in Ethiopia, and home to a community of perhaps hundreds of people who collect and resell rubbish trucked in from around the capital city.
	The government tried to close the dump last year and move it to a new location, but opposition from people ..

Ethiopia rubbish dump landslide death toll soars to 113

Cameroon said its troops had rescued 5,000 civilian "hostages" held by Boko Haram Islamists in a cross-border operation that left scores of jihadists dead.
	Cameroonian troops carried out "a vast operation all along the Cameroon-Nigeria border and in Nigeria" from February 27 to March 7, government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary said in a statement seen by AFP Wednesday.
	The operation, dubbed Thunder 2, "led to the liberation of more than 5,000 people taken hostage by the terrorists", he said, referring to Boko Haram.
	"The freed hostages -- most of them women, children and elderly people -- were taken to a camp for displaced people in Banki, Nigeria," he added.
	"More than 60 terrorists" were killed, he said, adding that "21 suspects were arrested".
	Boko Haram, which wants to establish a caliphate in northern Nigeria, has been waging an insurgency since 2009.
	Though it was born in Nigeria, the Islamic State-affiliated group has also carried out frequent attacks on "soft" targets ..

5,000 civilians freed from Boko Haram's grip: Cameroon

The US government today delayed the call for bids from companies to help build the Trump administration's controversial wall on the Mexican border, saying the interest from contractors has been high.
	Customs and Border Protection previously said it would issue the request for proposals today but in a statement the agency said it was still finalizing the documents, which should be released "soon."
	"Industry interest has been high," the statement said. To accomodate that the agency "intends to expand the opportunity for offerors to propose wall designs."
	More than 650 construction-related businesses, including 66 identified as Hispanic-American-owned, expressed interest after the agency issued a "pre-solicitation" announcement last month.
	Plans for the wall have been a pillar of President Donald Trump's harsh new immigration policies, which also have involved a controversial travel ban on refugees and migrants from several predominantly Muslim countries.
	Trump has repeatedly ...

US agency delays start of bidding on Trump border wall

From rising levels of air pollution to increased water contamination and a widening range for disease-carrying mosquitoes, climate change is making people sick, a coalition of 11 US medical groups said today.
	Known as the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, the group represents more than half of US doctors, and aims to help policy makers understand the health dangers of global warming, and what must be done to guard against it in the coming years.
	"Doctors in every part of our country see that climate change is making Americans sicker," said Mona Sarfaty, a physician and director of the new consortium.
	"Physicians are on the frontlines and see the impacts in exam rooms. What's worse is that the harms are felt most by children, the elderly, Americans with low-income or chronic illnesses, and people in communities of color."
	The group is releasing a report that highlights the ways climate change affects health, and calls for a speedy transition to clean renewable ...

Climate change is making people sick: US doctors

Two agents of Russia's FSB spy agency and two "criminal hackers" were indicted today over a massive cyberattack affecting 500 million Yahoo users, the US Justice Department announced.
	The indictment unveiled in Washington links Russia's top spy agency in one of the largest cyberattacks in history, revealed last year, and which officials said was used for espionage and financial gain.

Two Russian FSB agents indicted in massive Yahoo hack

Sri Lanka today raised nearly a billion dollars through a domestic bond auction after the IMF asked the government to build its foreign reserves amid increased capital outflows.
	The Central Bank of Sri Lanka said the offer of USD 830 million was over subscribed by over one and a half times and it eventually accepted bids up to USD 973.25 million.
	The bonds with tenures ranging from one to five years were taken at interest rates ranging from 254 to 411 basis points over and above the London-Inter Bank Offered Rate, which is currently at 1.8 percent for one year.
	The bank raised the dollar-denominated bonds through local financial institutions as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that the country's foreign reserves were "below comfortable levels".
	Official reserves improved slightly to USD 5.6 billion at the end of February, up from USD 5.4 billion a month earlier, but down from USD 6.0 billion at the end of 2016.
	Last June, the government received a USD 1.5 billion ...

Sri Lanka raise $1 bn through domestic bond auction

Twitter confirmed today a major hacking attack which has seen a number of high-profile accounts defaced by pro-Turkey supporters with a message condemning "Nazi Germany" and "Nazi Holland".
	"We are aware of an issue affecting a number of account holders this morning," a Twitter spokesperson said, adding the source of the attack had been tracked to a third party app whose permissions had been removed.

AFP

AFP

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