Twin suicide attacks on security service bases in the heart of Syria's government-held third city of Homs killed 14 people today, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
	"The attacks hit the headquarters of state security and military intelligence in two central districts," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Twin suicide attacks on bases in Syria's Homs kill 14: monitor

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A Taiwanese memorial hall named after Chiang Kai-shek has stopped selling souvenirs depicting the former nationalist leader, authorities said today, as the island deals with the "deep scar" left by his rule.
	The decision comes as Taiwan prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of a brutal massacre of protesters by troops from his Kuomintang (KMT) party, when the now democratic island was still under martial law.
	The massacre was followed by decades of political purges under Chiang and his son, known as the "White Terror".
	"Many of the victims and their families suffered long-term discrimination and pain. It is a deep scar hidden in the hearts of all Taiwanese," Culture Minister Cheng Li-chun said of the announcement.
	The Chiang Kai-shek memorial hall, which was built after the leader's death in 1975 and is one of Taipei's most recognisable landmarks, will stop playing a song dedicated to Chiang at its opening and closing, a statement from the culture ministry added.
	References to ...

Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek hall removes souvenirs of ex-leader

The top US military commander for the Middle East made a secret trip to northern Syria to meet a US-backed alliance fighting the Islamic State group, the alliance's spokesman said.
	General Joseph Votel, who heads US Central Command (Centcom), met with leaders from the Syrian Democratic Forces in the first such trip under the new US administration.
	SDF spokesman Talal Sello told AFP that Votel "discussed the increase of coordination and support (to the SDF) in the era of Donald Trump".
	"There were promises of heavy weapons in future stages," Sello said.
	In an online statement, Sello said Votel had met with several SDF commanders.
	"The results were positive. We discussed the developments in the Euphrates Rage campaign and shared military matters," Sello said.
	He described the meeting as "confirmation of US support for our forces".
	An SDF source told AFP the visit lasted four hours.
	According to a senior source in the SDF, "Votel confirmed the coalition's commitment to protecting 

Top US commander for Mideast in secret Syria trip: alliance

Juan Martin del Potro never faced a break point and eliminated defending champion Sam Querrey 7-5, 7-5 on Friday night to reach the Delray Beach Open semifinals.
     Del Potro, the 2009 US Open champion, overcame 16 aces by Querrey, who was seeded fourth. On Saturday, Del Potro will take on No 1-seeded Milos Raonic for a berth in the final. Raonic edged Kyle Edmund 4-6 6-3 6-4.
     Raonic and del Potro are two of the biggest hitters on tour and have split two past matches against each other - but they have not faced off since 2013. On the other half of the draw, Jack Sock moved into the semifinals by beating Steve Johnson 6-4 7-6 (4) in an all-American matchup.
     Sock will play yet another American next: Donald Young, who didn't even need to play a point to get to the semifinals. Young's quarterfinal opponent, Steve Darcis, withdrew from the tournament, citing personal reasons.
     The third-seeded Sock is the only player remaining in the hard-court event who has not dropped a ..

Del Potro beats defending champ Querrey in Delray Beach QF

Nick Kyrgios kept on course to defend his Marseille Open title with a 6-3 6-3 quarter-final victory over Slovak qualifier Norbert Gombos on Friday.
     But he will have to overcome two home players if he is to retain his crown. The 21-year-old Australian fired down 15 aces and lost just six points on serve in a ruthless display that lasted less than an hour.
     In Saturday's semi-final he will face Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who thumped compatriot Gilles Simon 6-4, 6-1. And if the third seed wins that, Kyrgios will also face a Frenchman in the final.
     "I thought I served and returned really well today," said Kyrgios. "All that matters is that I'm going out there and playing every point hard.
     "I think I'm pretty aggressive on my returns, particularly here where I'm trying to get in the first big hit."
     Second seed Tsonga came through a quarter-final between two twice former winners thanks to converting four of seven break points.
     The 31-year-old, on a ...

Kyrgios stands between French and Marseille title

Leicester caretaker manager Craig Shakespeare claims he feels like a pantomime villain after taking over following the shock sacking of Claudio Ranieri.
     Shakespeare is in temporary charge and will pick the team for Monday's crucial meeting with Liverpool after Ranieri was sacked on Thursday just nine months on from leading the club to the Premier League title.
     Ranieri's former assistant admitted he felt uncomfortable when he appeared before the media on Friday and fielded a question on the timing of the Italian's dismissal, amid claims of a revolt from senior players and a breakdown in his own relationship with his former boss.
     "That's a question for the owners and the club," he said.
     "I've been asked to come along this afternoon and I feel a bit like a pantomime villain sitting here. But I've got to answer your questions. My focus is definitely on the Liverpool game. With regard to the timing of it, I have to respect the owners' decisions."
     Asked about his ...

Shakespeare takes unwanted role as pantomime villain

Jose Mourinho won't let his heart rule his head as the Manchester United manager ponders handing Wayne Rooney a start in the League Cup Final against Southampton on Sunday.
     Rooney, 31, announced on Thursday that he will remain at Old Trafford for the rest of the season after turning down lucrative offers from Chinese Super League clubs.
     In response, Mourinho confirmed Rooney would be involved at Wembley for what could prove to be his final appearance at the famous stadium for United.
     Rooney has only started three games since before Christmas, all of them in the FA or League Cup, and played just 45 minutes in February, due to injury. Mourinho has not ruled out naming his club captain in his starting line-up although he will not let sentiment cloud his decision.
     "Only the best 11 players," said Mourinho of his selection philosophy. "We win all together. It doesn't matter if you play or didn't play, if you play a lot or don't play much. I go for the best possible ...

Mourinho won't let emotion cloud Rooney decision

The son of football legend Pele turned himself in late Friday after being ordered by a Brazilian court to begin serving a nearly 13-year prison sentence for money laundering and drug trafficking.
     Edson "Edinho" Cholbi do Nascimento, who briefly played for his father's former club Santos, had so far avoided serving time while his case underwent a lengthy appeals process.
     But on Thursday a judge reaffirmed the conviction, reduced Edinho's original 2014 sentence from 33 years to 12 years and 10 months, and ordered him to begin serving time.
     The 46-year-old former goalkeeper spoke to reporters before turning himself in at a police station in the Brazilian port city of Santos.
     "There's great frustration because I am being accused of money laundering, but I never did that," he said, according to the G1 news portal.
     Edinho -- who was accused of laundering based on phone tap evidence -- has said he will continue to fight the allegations and that his only contact with .

Pele's son turns self in for Brazil prison sentence

Former world number one Rory McIlroy hit back at critics on Friday saying his decision to play a round with US President Donald Trump "wasn't an endorsement nor a political statement of any kind".
     Trump is a keen golfer and McIlroy, a four-time Major winner, accepted an offer from the commander-in-chief to join him for a round at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida last weekend.
     On Friday he posted a statement on Twitter responding to suggestions he had allied himself with the controversial president.
     "I don't agree with everything my friends or family say or do, but I still play golf with them," McIlroy wrote.
     "Last week, I was invited to play golf with the President of the United States. Whether you respect the person who holds that position or not, you respect the office that he holds.
     "This wasn't an endorsement nor a political statement of any kind," McIlroy wrote. "It was, quite simply, a round of golf. Golf was our common ground, nothing else.
 

McIlroy says round with Trump 'not endorsement'

South African AB de Villiers passed the 9,000-run milestone in one-day internationals in the third ODI against New Zealand in Wellington on Saturday.
     De Villiers is the 18th player and second South African behind Jacques Kallis to reach the 9,000 mark but has the highest average of 53.86 and is the only one of the leading scorers to have a strike-rate better than 100.
     India's Sachin Tendulkar has the most ODI runs with 18,426 but averaged 44.83 with a strike rate of 86.23. De Villiers' highest ODI score is an unbeaten 162 against the West Indies two years ago.

South Africa's de Villiers tops 9,000 ODI runs

Photographers, poachers and eco-tour operators are in the crosshairs of a Canadian conservationist who warns that tracking tags are being hacked and misused to harass and hunt endangered animals.
	Steven Cooke, a biology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, says that the very tools used by scientists to study and protect animals and fish are being hijacked to do just the opposite.
	Cooke, the Canada research chair of environmental science and biology, is the lead author of a paper published this week in the journal Conservation Biology.
	The research paper cites the example of anglers in the US state of Minnesota who petitioned for access to data on northern pike movements, arguing that it should be publicly available because the research was publicly funded.
	Australian authorities have used tags to locate and cull sharks while in India, attempts were made to hack the global positioning system (GPS) collars on endangered Bengal tigers in a case of "cyber poaching."
	Cooke said 

Canada conservationist warns of 'cyber poaching'

Thirteen people were killed and 34 injured when two buses collided head-on in eastern Argentina, the emergency services have said.
	The buses were full of passengers when they collided and crashed yesterday into a ditch near the city of Rosario, civil defense official Marcos Escajadillo told television channel C5N.
	He said investigators had yet to establish the cause of the crash, which occurred on a level road and under good weather conditions.
	Two young women were hospitalized in critical condition, a hospital director said.
	The bus company Monticas said in a statement that both drivers were killed in the accident and that the two buses, model year 2012, were routinely inspected, had daily maintenance and were in excellent condition.

Bus collision kills 13 in Argentina

Ukraine has said that it was seeking a compromise with nationalist activists who were cutting off coal and other trade between the ex-Soviet republic and its Russian-backed separatist east.
	President Petro Poroshenko warned last week that protesters blocking a railway to the coal-rich war zone since January could cause power outages across the country and job losses as a result.
	Ukraine has declared a state of emergency in the energy sector over the blockade.
	Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman yesterday said the cash-starved and war-torn east European country could soon start losing electricity and heating because of the strike.
	"The government's position is clear -- we are ready for dialogue, for professional talks," Ukrainian media quoted the pro-Western prime minister as saying.
	"But we are not ready for sabotage."
	The strikers believe that the insurgents use the freight cars to shuttle fighters and weapons to hotspots in the war.
	They also accuse corrupt officials of ...

Ukraine seeks end to paralysing coal strike

Russia vowed today to use its veto to block a proposed UN resolution drafted by the United States, France and Britain that would impose sanctions on Syria for the use of chemical weapons.
	The trio are pushing for a vote early next week on the measure that would slap sanctions on 11 Syrians and 10 entities linked to chemical attacks in the nearly six-year war.
	"I just explained our position very clearly to our partners. If it is tabled, we will veto it," Russian Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told reporters following a closed-door meeting of the Security Council.
	Safronkov rejected the measure as "one-sided", saying it was based on "insufficient proof" and contradicted "the fundamental principle of presumption of innocence until the investigation is over".
	Russia has used its veto six times to shield its Damascus ally from any punitive action by the Security Council.
	The draft resolution follows a UN-led investigation which concluded in October that the Syrian military had ..

Russia to veto Syria sanctions over chemical weapons

Dozens of Coptic Christians have left Egypt's Sinai Peninsula after a string of jihadist attacks killed three Christians in the restive province, church officials said.
	Yesterday, suspected Islamic State jihadists killed a member of the minority in the North Sinai city of El-Arish and set his house on fire.
	The Coptic Church condemned the "terrorist" attacks in a statement on Facebook, saying the assaults were aimed at "dividing and torpedoing" the Egyptian people.
	About 250 Christians took refuge in the Evangelical Church in the Suez Canal city of Ismailiya, said church deacon and administrator Nabil Shukrallah. "They've come running with their children. It's a very difficult situation. We're expecting 50 or 60 more," he told AFP.
	Other church officials said they have also received Copts fleeing the peninsula.
	Families sat in the Evangelical Church's courtyard amid bags filled with their belongings and blankets, some of them still terrified of the danger they escaped.
	"We've ...

Copts flee Sinai after suspected Islamic State attacks

Sweden has sought to set the record straight after Donald Trump linked immigration to a supposed rise in violence in the Scandinavian country, publishing "facts" to correct "simplistic" and "inaccurate information".
	The foreign ministry posted on its website a series of claims that have been circulating in the media since the US president made his remarks about Sweden in a speech in Florida on February 18.
	Addressing supporters, Trump listed places that have been targeted recently by terrorists, citing Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Nice, and appeared to suggest something had happened in Sweden on February 17.
	"You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They're having problems like they never thought possible," he said.
	Apart from the fact that no major incident happened in Sweden, the remarks sparked indignation in the Nordic country and have led to a flurry of news ..

Sweden fires back at Trump with 'facts'

Internet users today were being urged to change all their passwords in the wake of a Cloudflare bug that could have leaked passwords, messages and more from website visits.
	A Cloudflare service used by millions of websites to enhance security and performance said that it had fixed the flaw quickly after being alerted a week ago by Google researcher Tavis Ormandy.
	"It turned out that in some unusual circumstances, our edge servers were running past the end of a buffer and returning memory that contained private information such as HTTP cookies, authentication tokens, HTTP POST bodies, and other sensitive data," Cloudflare chief technology officer John Graham-Cumming said in a blog post.
	"And some of that data had been cached by search engines."
	Essentially, sensitive data intended to be temporarily stored overflowed "buffering" memory space and was then tucked into more exposed spots such as web pages that could then be captured by online search engines, according to descriptions ..

Private data leaked online by Cloudflare bug

Armed groups traded fire with heavy weapons in the centre of Tripoli, injuring at least nine people and paralysing the Libyan capital, residents and the Red Crescent said today.
	"Our team...Rescued nine people injured in the indiscriminate firing," said the Libyan Red Crescent, which has set up a field hospital on a roundabout on the fringes of the urban combat zone.
	There was no official casualty toll from the clashes which raged most of last night and resumed the following day after a truce collapsed.
	The fighting between two rival armed groups in eastern Tripoli erupted after one accused the other of kidnapping four of its members, the Tripoli-based news agency LANA reported.
	It said families trapped in the conflict zone of Abu Slim were appealing to the authorities to intervene to halt the violence which has closed down the city centre.
	Mediators had secured an overnight ceasefire but fighting later resumed, LANA said.
	"Two apartments in housing blocks on the airport road ...

At least 9 hurt as heavy fire paralyses Libya capital

Google said it will begin offering media groups an artificial intelligence tool designed to stamp out incendiary comments on their websites.
	The programming tool, called Perspective, aims to assist editors trying to moderate discussions by filtering out abusive "troll" comments, which Google says can stymie smart online discussions.
	"Seventy-two per cent of American internet users have witnessed harassment online and nearly half have personally experienced it," said Jared Cohen, president of Google's Jigsaw technology incubator.
	"Almost a third self-censor what they post online for fear of retribution," he added in a blog post yesterday titled "When computers learn to swear".
	Perspective is an application programming interface (API), or set of methods for facilitating communication between systems and devices, that uses machine learning to rate how comments might be regarded by other users.
	The system, which will be provided free to media groups including social media sites, is ..

Google rolls out AI tool to combat online trolls

Iran is complying with a landmark atomic deal signed with major world powers in 2015, according to a report from the UN nuclear watchdog seen by AFP today.
	The International Atomic Energy Agency's report showed that Iran "has not pursued the construction of the existing heavy water research reactor" and has "not enriched uranium" above the 3.67 per cent-limit imposed on Tehran.
	Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium, material which can be used for peaceful purposes but when further processed could be used as a core of a nuclear warhead, has not risen above the agreed level of 300 kilos (660 pounds).
	The level of so-called heavy water has not exceeded the permitted level of 130 tonnes, as it did briefly during previous reporting periods.
	Heavy water, a modified form of normal water, is used in certain types of nuclear reactors.
	Plutonium for use in nuclear weapons can be extracted from fuel rods used in heavy water reactors.
	In November 2016, the atomic watchdog noted that Iran 

Iran complies with nuclear deal: UN watchdog

German auto giant Volkswagen today said it raced back into the black in 2016 as car sales hit an all-time high, in the latest sign of its "dieselgate" scandal fading into the rearview mirror.
	VW reported a net profit of 5.1 billion euros (USD 5.4 billion) last year, recovering from a stinging 1.6-billion-euro loss in the immediate aftermath of the emissions cheating revelations in 2015.
	"While the past fiscal year posed major challenges for us, despite the crisis the group's operating business gave its best-ever performance," chief executive Matthias Mueller said in a statement.
	The VW group -- which includes the brands Porsche, Audi and Skoda -- beat analyst expectations with record revenues of 217.3 billion euros, up nearly two percent on the year before.
	Underlying or operating profit rose to 7.1 billion euros, from a loss of 4.06 billion in 2015, it said.
	Despite the damage to its reputation by the dieselgate scandal, the group delivered 10.3 million vehicles in 2016, driven .

AFP

AFP

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