Barcelona are the more desperate side as Real Madrid visit Catalonia today for the first El Clasico of the season boasting a six-point lead at the top of La Liga.
     Madrid have won 15 more points in all in La Liga under the guidance of Zinedine Zidane since the sides last met in April and are riding a 31-game unbeaten run in all competitions.
     "On Saturday we have more to play for than Madrid, they can lose, we can't," said Barcelona defender Gerard Pique.
     Barca are off to their worst league start in nine seasons.
     However, coach Luis Enrique believes much of the media criticism of his side has been overblown, citing the institutional crisis that Barca overcame in the January his debut season in 2015 to win the treble.
     "We remain favourites for all the titles, but it is evident we have to improve," said Enrique.
     "We lack consistency, but don't exaggerate. In my first season you (the media) exaggerated and we ended up winning the treble."
     The biggest ...

Barca desperate to break Madrid's unbeaten streak

PTI Automatic

A 5.5 magnitude earthquake struck southeast Peru, damaging some homes and roads but causing no casualties, the National Civil Defense Institute (INDECI) said.
	The quake in the Puno region hit at 5:40 pm local time (2240 GMT), its epicenter 58 kilometers from the town of Lampa and at a depth of 30 kilometers, according to the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP).
	"Eight collapsed homes are reported in Lampa and 40 affected in the Paratia district. People are located in safe areas," INDECI said on Twitter, adding that communication with the area had been disrupted.
	Minutes earlier, IGP head Hernando Tavera reported that "the population was scared and took to the streets" in Lampa, which has 15,000 residents.
	The tremor lasted about 30 seconds and was also felt in the nearby city of Puno, located in the Andes mountains more than 3,800 meters above sea level.
	Both Lampa and Puno are close to Lake Titicaca on the Bolivian border.
	Peru lies on the so-called "Ring of Fire" -- an arc of .

5.5 magnitude quake damages homes in southeast Peru

US President-elect Donald Trump has warned American firms wanting to relocate abroad that they will face punishment, as he announced a deal with air conditioning manufacturer Carrier to keep jobs in the country.
	"Companies are not going to leave the United States any more without consequences. Not going to happen," Trump told workers at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis in his first major public remarks yesterday since winning the White House.
	"They can leave from state to state, and negotiate deals with different states, but leaving the country will be very, very difficult," Trump added.
	During the presidential campaign, the Republican billionaire threatened to slap tariffs on firms that decamped for places like Mexico or Asia where labor costs are cheaper. It became a repeated refrain of his victorious campaign.
	Trump specifically singled out Carrier, a brand of United Technologies Corporation, saying he had been encouraging the company not to shift thousands of jobs to ...

Companies leaving US will face 'consequences': Trump

Pro-EU candidate Sarah Olney today won a parliamentary by-election in the posh London suburb of Richmond, ousting the pro-Brexit incumbent Zac Goldsmith in what will be seen as a blow for the British government.
	The Liberal Democrat candidate won with 20,510 votes, ahead of Goldsmith's 18,638 votes, local mayor and councillor David Linnette announced.
	The race left six other candidates falling far behind Olney and Goldsmith, in a by-election which saw 41,367 votes cast with turnout at 53.6 percent.
	The vote has been widely seen as a mini-referendum on Brexit in a pro-European Union heartland, with locals turning out to support the Lib Dem centrist party that wants a second referendum on EU membership.
	The Richmond election was sparked after Goldsmith quit as an MP in the ruling Conservative Party following government backing to expand the nearby Heathrow Airport, vowing to stand for re-election as an independent.
	The outcome will come as a shock for Goldsmith, who was re-elected .

Pro-EU candidate wins London suburb 'Brexit by-election'

A political drama threatening Brazil's President Michel Temer has deepened with judges ordering his top ally to stand trial and corruption suspects lining up to make more potentially explosive revelations.
	After a roller-coaster year for Brazil, the latest allegations risk destabilizing Temer just six months after he took office, as he seeks to rescue Latin America's biggest economy from crisis.
	Supreme Court judges yesterday ruled that Brazil's third-most powerful official, Senate president Renan Calheiros, 61, must face trial for alleged embezzlement.
	He denies the accusations that he used public funds to make maintenance payments to a woman with whom he had a child.
	In a separate case, Calheiros is also among numerous top politicians including an ex-president and lawmakers accused of helping steal billions from state oil firm Petrobras.
	In a fresh development in the Petrobras affair on Thursday, a source close to construction firm Odebrecht told AFP that 77 of its current and .

Brazil political drama deepens with graft plea deal

The death of six people including three children from the same Austrian family is being treated as a domestic shooting, prosecutors said after police found the bodies.
	The corpses were discovered in the family's home in Boeheimkirchen, a town 55 kilometres (34 miles) west of Vienna.
	"The alert was raised by the employer of one of the victims, because the person had not gone to work for some time," said Michaela Schnell yesterday, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office.
	When they died is not known but investigators' initial findings suggest the mother shot all five members of her family before turning the gun on herself.
	The dead were a 35-year-old woman, her three children -- two 10-year-old twins and a seven-year-old -- and her 40-year-old brother and 60-year-old mother.
	Local media reported that the family moved into the house in 2015 and largely lived in isolation and said the children had not been in school for three days.

Six dead in Austria suspected family shooting

Elite Syrian troops moved into east Aleppo today ahead of a push into the most densely populated areas, as regime ally Russia called for corridors to bring in aid and evacuate wounded.
	   Despite global criticism including the UN warning Aleppo risked becoming a "giant graveyard", government forces have pressed an assault to retake control of the divided city.
	   The artillery-backed offensive has spurred an exodus of tens of thousands of residents from the rebel-held east.
	   It has left Aleppo's streets strewn with the bodies of men, women and children, many lying next to the suitcases they had packed to escape.
	   Artillery fire continued on Thursday but subsided as heavy rainfall hit the city.
	   The assault has seen President Bashar al-Assad's forces make significant gains in the past week.
	   After overrunning the city's northeast, they were in control of 40 per cent of the territory once held by opposition forces in Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human ...

Troops advance in Aleppo, Russia proposes aid corridors

A Belgian man accused of giving money to a key suspect in the Brussels and Paris terror attacks took the stand in his British trial today to protest his innocence and condemn Islamic State militants as "worse than animals".
	Zakaria Boufassil, who lives in Birmingham in central England, is accused of handing 3,000 pounds (USD 3,770) in cash to Mohamed Abrini when the latter visited the city in July 2015, with the knowledge that it would be used for terrorism.
	Testifying at Kingston Crown Court near London, the 26-year-old admitted to meeting Abrini and to holding a bag of money for his alleged conspirator, Mohamed Ali Ahmed, but said he had "no idea" of its intended use.
	Ahmed, also from Birmingham, pleaded guilty to the same charge last month, but Boufassil said he had "never communicated his plans to me" and took "advantage of my naivety".
	Speaking in French through a translator, Boufassil said he gave the money to Ahmed in a park in Birmingham, and stayed there smoking while he .

Belgian denies funding Brussels, Paris attacks suspect

Tiger Woods teed off in the opening round of the Hero World Challenge Thursday to launch his long-awaited competitive comeback, the 14-time major champion having missed 16 months following back surgery.
	The former world number one, now at 898th in the rankings, sent his first shot into the rough left of the first fairway at the 7,302-yard Albany Golf Club layout to end his longest career layoff after 466 days.
	Playing alongside fellow American Patrick Reed in windy conditions, Woods -- clad in black shirt, pants, cap and shoes -- blasted his approach onto the green 15 feet from the hole.
	His birdie putt slid two feet past the cup and he tapped in for a par at the 423-yard dogleg right first hole.
	Woods hosts the 18-man invitational event on an Ernie Els-designed par-72 course complete with natural Caribbean brush and sand collecting wayward shots from a field that includes six of the world's top-10 players.
	"Can't wait to get back out there and mix it up with the boys," Woods ...

Golf: Tiger begins comeback after surgery at World Challenge

The US-led coalition bombing the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq said today that 54 civilians had been "inadvertently killed" in seven air strikes between March and October.
	"Although the coalition makes extraordinary efforts to strike military targets in a manner that minimizes the risk of civilian casualties, in some cases casualties are unavoidable," the coalition said in a statement.
	A July 18 strike that killed 100 IS fighters also killed as many as 24 civilians, the statement added.

US-led coalition admits another 54 civilian deaths in Syria,

Mexico's central bank chief Agustin Carstens resigned today, officials said, sending the peso on its latest plunge since Donald Trump's victory in last month's US presidential election.
	Carstens, who had compared Trump with a maximum Category Five hurricane because of his tough stance toward Mexico, will step down on July 1 next year, the Banco de Mexico said in a statement.
	He will become director general of the Bank for International Settlements, the Switzerland-based bank for central banks.
	Analysts describe Carstens as a steady and experienced hand at the tiller amid a period of volatility for Latin America's second-largest economy.
	A former deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund, he became central bank chief in 2010 after serving as finance minister from 2006 to 2009.
	The peso fell 1.19 per cent today after the news, to 21.05 to the USD.
	Mexico has found itself on the receiving end of some of Trump's most virulent rhetoric.
	The Republican billionaire ..

Mexico's central bank chief resigns amid Trump turmoil

Voters in the posh London suburb of Richmond headed to the polls today in a parliamentary by-election that has turned into a mini-referendum on Brexit in a pro-EU heartland.
	Liberal Democrat challenger Sarah Olney, whose centrist party wants a second referendum on Brexit, is hoping the result will send shockwaves through Downing Street as the government presses on towards the EU exit door.
	Olney is running against Zac Goldsmith, who held the seat for Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party but quit in protest after the government backed expanding the nearby Heathrow Airport.
	He is now standing as an independent candidate.
	"While some people feel very strongly about Heathrow expansion, lots more people feel much more strongly about Brexit," Olney told AFP during the campaign.
	"That's really alarmed and upset people and they want to use this opportunity to send a message."
	The Lib Dems say a shock result would force the government to think again about pursuing a so-called .

Voters in London hit the polls for 'Brexit by-election'

Cristiano Ronaldo and Antoine Griezmann both appeared among the 55 nominees for the FIFPro 2016 World 11 released today but Wayne Rooney failed to make the shortlist for the first time.
     Portugal captain Ronaldo, led his country to victory at Euro 2016, while France forward Griezmann was the top player at the tournament.
     It is the first time that 25-year-old Griezmann has made the cut, but England captain Rooney is absent for the first time in the competition's 12-year history, after England crashed out of Euro 2016 to lowly Iceland.
     That leaves Juventus goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon and Real Madrid superstar Ronaldo as the only ever-presents for an award based on votes from professional players from 75 countries.
     Also absent from the list is Algerian international Riyad Mahrez, the top Premier League player last season with surprise champions Leicester.
     The eight newcomers also include France's N'Golo Kante and Dimitri Payet, Ivorian Serge Aurier, Spaniard ...

Ronaldo, Griezmann make World 11 list, not Rooney

Close to 2,000 members of the Iraqi security forces were killed in November across the country, along with hundreds of civilians, the United Nations said today.
	According to the UN mission in Iraq's monthly tally, 1,959 Iraqi forces were killed last month and at least 450 others wounded.
	The toll includes members of the army, police who are engaged in combat, the Kurdish peshmerga, interior ministry forces and pro-government paramilitaries.
	The UN statement also said at least 926 civilians were killed, bringing to 2,885 the number of Iraqis killed in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict last month.
	"The casualty figures are staggering, with civilians accounting for a significant number of the victims," the top UN envoy in Iraq, Jan Kubis, said.
	The spike in casualties comes as a major offensive to retake the Islamic State group stronghold of Mosul, Iraq's largest military operation in years, entered its seventh week.
	Kubis said the growing death toll was largely a ...

Nearly 2,000 members of Iraqi forces killed in November: UN

Qatar's internet service providers have apparently blocked access to the Gulf state's most popular English-language news website in what managers said today looked like a deliberate move by the government.
	Amnesty International swiftly condemned the move as "alarming" and urged Qatari authorities to "immediately reverse the blocking of Doha News".
	A censorship row is likely to be embarrassing for the Qatari authorities as they face constant international scrutiny after controversially winning the right to host the 2022 football World Cup.
	Doha News, which published several sensitive articles earlier this year, said it had been inaccessible to most online users for almost 24 hours.
	"We can only conclude that our website has been deliberately targeted and blocked by Qatar authorities," the website's management said in a statement.
	"We are incredibly disappointed with this decision, which appears to be an act of censorship.
	"We believe strongly in the importance of a free press, ...

Qatar accused of blocking news website

Struck by the legendary sniffing skills of man's best friend, scientists in the United States fitted a dog-inspired plastic nose to an explosives detector, and reported today it worked much better.
	With the prosthetic nose, and programmed to take multiple "sniffs" of the air rather a single, long suction, the machine was 16 times more sensitive in detecting molecules in the air, the team reported in the journal Scientific Reports.
	"By mimicking the way a dog sniffs, we can improve the performance of commercial trace vapour detection systems," study co-author Matthew Staymates of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told AFP.
	"Our findings suggest that the next generation of... detection systems may benefit from lessons learned from the canine."
	This may improve detection of anything from explosives, narcotics, disease-causing pathogens, perhaps even cancer.
	Staymates and a team read up on the workings of the canine "nose" when the dog is sniffing. The organ exhales 

Dog nose inspires better explosives 'sniffer'

A total of 1,600 Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been killed since the start on October 17 of a huge offensive to retake the jihadist bastion of Mosul, a spokesman said today.
	Close to 10,000 peshmerga were also wounded in the six weeks of fierce fighting to oust the Islamic State group from Iraq's second city, said Halgord Hekmat, spokesman for the autonomous Kurdish region's peshmerga ministry.

1,600 Kurdish peshmerga killed in Mosul offensive: spokesman

In one of the biggest takedowns to date, police across the globe have smashed a massive criminal network providing online services including malware attacks that infected half a million computers worldwide, Europol said today.
	Known as "Avalanche", the criminal network "was used as a delivery platform to launch and manage mass global malware attacks and money mule recruiting campaigns," Europe's policing agency said in a statement.
	The network would be contacted by other criminal groups to send emails to specific victims containing malware to steal bank details and passwords as well as to conduct so-called distributed denial of service (DDos) spam attacks.
	"Victims of the malware infections were identified in more than 180 countries," it said from its fortress-like headquarters in The Hague.
	The damage caused ran into "hundreds of millions of euros" and in Germany alone -- where the gang's activities were first detected -- some six million euros (USD 6.3 million) in losses were ...

Global police smash huge online crime network: Europol

British Prime Minister Theresa May's office will hold regular briefings with foreign journalists from early next year to counter "misreporting" about its plans for Brexit, a spokeswoman said today.
	Officials already update members of the foreign press ahead of international summits and some major events, but this will become a regular feature as Britain prepares to begin the formal negotiations on leaving the European Union by the end of March.
	"It's about directly engaging with them, being able to directly counter misreporting," a spokeswoman for May's Downing Street office told AFP.
	Confirming it would happen before Britain triggers Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon treaty, beginning the two-year exit process, she added: "It's not unprecedented. We already do it on an ad-hoc basis."
	The government has repeatedly said it will not give a "running commentary" on its negotiating strategy for Brexit, but the absence of any clear position has forced many observers to rely on speculation ..

UK to brief foreign press on Brexit to counter 'misreporting'

Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author Wole Soyinka said today he has fulfilled his pledge to throw away his US residency green card and leave the country if Donald Trump won the presidential election.
	Shortly before the vote, Soyinka had vowed to give up his permanent US residency over a Trump victory to protest against the Republican billionaire's campaign promises to get tough on immigration.
	"I have already done it, I have disengaged (from the United States). I have done what I said I would do," the 82-year-old told AFP on the sidelines of an education conference at the University of Johannesburg.
	"I had a horror of what is to come with Trump... I threw away the (green) card, and I have relocated, and I'm back to where I have always been" -- meaning his homeland Nigeria.
	The prolific playwright, novelist and poet won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986 and has been a regular teacher at US universities including Harvard, Cornell and Yale.
	At the same time he said he would not .

Nigeria's Soyinka bins 'green card' over Trump

The Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow, one of the giants of African art, died today in Dakar aged 81, his family told AFP.
	The artist was best known for his monumental sculptures of Nubian wrestlers inspired by the pictures taken in Sudan by the controversial German photographer Leni Riefenstahl.
	Sow's series of striking bronzes of muscular African men -- "The Maasai", "The Zulus" and "The Fulani" -- were widely exhibited in France and at the prestigious Documenta festival in Germany and the Venice Biennale.
	"The fact that his works were shown all over the world proved that he was a giant of culture. It is a real loss," said Senegal's Culture Minister Mbagnick Ndiaye.
	The former physiotherapist, who was the first African to be admitted to the French Academy of Beaux Arts, only began working seriously when he was 50.
	Yet his 1999 retrospective on the Pont des Arts next to the Louvre in Paris attracted an estimated three million visitors.
	A part of his dramatic installation on the ..

AFP

AFP

Page 1283 - Afp