More than 50,000 people have fled rebel-held east Aleppo in the last four days as government forces advance, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said today.
	The Britain-based monitor said more than 20,000 people had fled to western neighbourhoods of the city held by the government, with another 30,000 moving to areas held by Kurdish forces.
	Syrian troops have seized at least a third of eastern Aleppo since renewing their bid to recapture all of the battered second city just over two weeks ago.
	The former rebel stronghold has been under a government siege for more than four months, with international aid rations exhausted and other food stocks dwindling.
	The government has said passages are open for civilians or surrendering rebels to cross into the west of the city, and accuses opposition forces of trying to prevent residents from leaving.
	Many have chosen to go from the east to neighbourhoods held by Kurdish forces, which are officially aligned with neither the regime nor ...

50,000 have fled east Aleppo as army advances: monitor

PTI Automatic

A Thai soldier was killed and three others wounded today by a roadside bomb in the kingdom's far south where a Malay-Muslim insurgency has claimed thousands of lives in the past 12 years.
	The four soldiers were travelling to set up a checkpoint in Yala, one of the main towns in the Muslim-majority region, when the bomb struck.
	"It was buried under the road and detonated by radio control," Chinawat Vethayakorn of Yala provincial police told AFP.
	"The dead soldier was 22-years-old. One of the injured soldiers had his leg amputated," he added.
	The attack comes three days after a heavily pregnant 26-year-old Buddhist woman was gunned down in nearby Pattani province.
	Authorities say rebels also carried out that attack.
	Conflict has ravaged Thailand's southernmost region since 2004, with Malay-Muslim rebels trying to shake off rule by Thailand, which colonised the culturally distinct area a century ago.
	Bombs and assassinations are the near-daily reality for civilians in the area, ...

Bomb kills Thai soldier as insurgency grinds on

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi vowed today to work for "peace and national reconciliation" amid mounting international condemnation of a bloody army crackdown on her country's Muslim Rohingya minority.
	The Nobel Peace Prize winner did not mention the violence in Rakhine state, but told a business forum in Singapore that multi-ethnic Myanmar needed to achieve stability to attract more investment.
	Suu Kyi started a three-day visit to wealthy Singapore, the largest foreign investor in Myanmar after China, as international pressure mounted on her government to address the Rohingya crisis.
	Crowds of Rohingya have flooded over the border into Bangladesh, making horrifying claims of gang rape, torture and murder at the hands of security forces.
	Myanmar has denied allegations of abuse, saying the army is hunting "terrorists" behind deadly raids on police border posts last month.
	Thousands also fled into China this month after clashes broke out between the army and ethnic ...

Myanmar's Suu Kyi vows 'reconciliation' amid Rohingya crisis

The Royal Bank of Scotland is the worst prepared among Britain's lenders for another financial crisis, the Bank of England said today, forcing the state- rescued lender into a new capital-raising plan.
	The BoE, revealing its latest stress tests on Britain's top seven banks, added that two - Barclays and Standard Chartered - also missed key hurdles but had taken steps to strengthen their capital positions.
	The stress tests, designed to see if the sector can weather a global recession and crashing house prices, found that four out of the seven top banks did not have capital inadequacies based on their balance sheets at the end of 2015.
	The four comprised HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide Building Society and Santander UK.
	"The bank's 2016 stress test comprised a severe, synchronised UK and global recession with associated shocks to financial market prices. It also incorporated a misconduct cost stress," the BoE's Financial Policy Committee said in a report.
	The FPC added that, 

Royal Bank of Scotland fails stress test: BoE

An outspoken billionaire Saudi prince has called for an "urgent" end to his country's ban on women driving.
	"Stop the debate: Time for women to drive," Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said on his official Twitter account, @Alwaleed_Talal.
	Alwaleed is an unusually outspoken member of the Saudi royal family who holds no political posts but chairs Kingdom Holding Co., interests of which include US banking giant Citigroup and the Euro Disney theme park.
	Philanthropist Alwaleed is a longtime advocate of women's rights in the kingdom, which has some of the world's tightest restrictions on women and is the only country where they are not allowed to drive.
	In conjunction with his short tweet, Alwaleed's office issued statement Tuesday outlining his reasons for supporting an end to the ban.
	"Preventing a woman from driving a car is today an issue of rights similar to the one that forbade her from receiving an education or having an independent identity," Alwaleed said in the statement.
	"They ..

Saudi prince Alwaleed says women must drive

An earthquake has left at least two people dead and six others missing at a copper mine in Poland, the owners said today.
	Five injured workers at the Rudna mine in the southwestern town of Polkowice were taken to hospital but their lives were not in danger, a KGHM spokesperson, Anna Osadczuk told AFP.
	"Two bodies have been recovered and the searches continue," she said.
	The magnitude 4.4 quake struck deep underground yesterday evening near the town of Glogow, the US Geological Survey said.
	One of the largest copper mines in the world, the Rudna mine has 11 operating shafts at a depth of around one kilometre.
	It employs 4,400 people and extracts around 12 million tonnes of minerals a year.

Quake kills 2 at copper mine in Poland

Thousands of Indonesians rallied across the country today, praying, singing and calling for peace ahead of a major protest this week by Muslims against Jakarta's Christian governor.
	Friday's rally in Jakarta is expected to attract about 150,000 people who have been angered by allegations that Basuki Tjahaja Purnama insulted Islam, a criminal offence in the Muslim-majority country.
	That would make it even bigger than a protest earlier this month that was marred by deadly violence.
	Tens of thousands of people rallied in the capital on November 4 in the largest protest the city has seen for years.
	It turned violent as night fell, with hardliners setting fire to police cars and battling with security forces, who responded with water cannons and tear gas. One person was killed and hundreds injured.
	The military and police today organised "Archipelago Unity" gatherings across the country to call for peace and reduce tensions before Friday's protest, with thousands packing out a park ...

Indonesians rally for peace before mass Muslim protest

Colombia's Senate has approved a revised peace accord between the government and the FARC rebel group, taking a first step toward ratifying an agreement that was rejected by voters.
	The text, which was renegotiated after an earlier version was given a thumbs down in the October 2 national referendum, now must be approved by the lower house of the Colombian Congress.
	Members of the Centro Democratico, the right-wing party that has led the opposition to a peace deal, walked out of the Senate in protest before yesterday night's vote.
	The measure then passed by a vote of 75-0.
	"Long live peace, long live Colombia," shouted Senate president Mauricio Lizcano as he closed the session.
	The accord seeks to end a 52-year-old armed conflict between the FARC, Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla group, and the state.
	Colombian voters, however, wary of a deal that goes easy on rebel leaders, dealt an unexpected blow to the process when they voted against it.
	The sides returned to the ...

Colombia peace accord wins Senate approval

Anti-riot police today fired tear gas at about 300 Sudanese protesters demonstrating against a government decision to cut fuel subsidies.
	Groups have staged persistent protests for weeks over the subsidy cuts, which have led to a sharp rise in the cost of other goods, including medicines.
	Several opposition groups called for a three-day nationwide strike earlier this week, which received a mixed response.
	"No, no to high prices," shouted about 300 men and women as they marched along a main street of Omdurman near Khartoum this morning, an AFP correspondent reported.
	Anti-riot police swiftly arrived at the scene and fired tear gas to disperse them, the reporter said.
	Sudanese authorities have cracked down on protests in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the deadly unrest that followed a previous round of subsidy cuts in 2013.
	Dozens of people were killed after large demonstrations were crushed, drawing international condemnation.
	Authorities have already arrested more than a ...

Police fire tear gas at demo over Sudan price hike

An impeachment vote against South Korea's scandal-hit president will be postponed by at least a week, lawmakers said today, after Park Geun-Hye announced she was willing to stand down early.
	Lawmakers from Park's own party had backed moves to impeach her this Friday, but now want the issue discussed in parliament before holding a vote, likely to be scheduled a week later.
	Park said yesterday she would let parliament decide her fate following accusations that Choi Soon-Sil -- a secretive confidante dubbed "Korea's Rasputin" -- elicited more than $60 million in payments from some of the country's top firms, including Samsung.
	Park has been named as a suspect in the growing investigation, making her the first sitting president to be subject to a criminal probe while in office.
	"Once lawmakers come up with measures to transfer power in a way that minimises any power vacuum and chaos in governance, I will step down," she said in a live video address.
	Critics said the statement was a ..

South Korea president's impeachment vote delayed

The Bangladesh Cricket Board has levied a record fine on two national team players for what it called "serious" breaches of discipline after they reportedly entertained female guests in their hotel rooms.
     Pace bowler Al-Amin Hossain and batsman Sabbir Rahman were both fined around USD 15,000 for "serious off-field disciplinary breaches" during the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) Twenty20 tournament, said the BCB in a statement late Tuesday.
     It gave no details of the charges against the players, but the Prothom Alo daily reported online that they had taken female guests to their hotel rooms during the tour.
     "The players have been reminded of their responsibility as national cricketers and have been warned that any repetition of similar acts of indiscretion in the future will result in harsher penalty," the BCB said.
     The BPL is modelled on the glitzy Indian Cricket League and has been blighted by match-fixing scandals, prompting authorities to suspend the ...

Bangladesh players fined for female guests - reports

A plane that crashed in the mountains of Colombia, killing 71 people, including members of a Brazilian football team, may have run out of fuel, a Colombian military source said.
	"It is very suspicious that despite the impact there was no explosion. That reinforces the theory of the lack of fuel," the source said yesterday.
	Six people miraculously survived the crash Monday night, but the disaster virtually wiped out an up-and-coming Brazilian football team and sent shock waves through the world of football.
	Football legends Pele and Maradona as well as current superstars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo led tributes to the players of Chapecoense Real, a humble team whose march to glory was cut abruptly short.
	Having risen only recently from obscurity, the team was on its way to play in the finals of the Copa Sudamericana, South America's second-biggest club tournament, when disaster struck.
	"The pain is terrible. Just as we had made it, I will not say to the top, but to have ...

Football mourns Brazilian players killed in air crash

At first glance, Mashvisor is just one of thousands of websites specialising in US real estate.
	But it has a unique feature, undetectable to customers: its designers created it in the West Bank and it is run from the Israel-occupied Palestinian territory.
	"The great thing about a start-up is you can work on it anywhere in the world. You can be in Palestine, you can be in Cambodia, Vietnam, China. It doesn't matter," explains Peter Abu al-Zolof, who founded Mashvisor more than a year ago with a friend.
	Last week, Mashvisor became the first Palestinian company to get the support of the influential American 500 Startups venture capital fund.
	It is one of a number of Palestinian start-ups in the occupied Palestinian territories, long overshadowed by Israel's so-called "Start-up Nation".
	The online platform automates and analyses US real estate data nationwide to find investors the best property deals.
	As in Silicon Valley, the staff dress casually, drink coffee from state-of-the-art 

Palestinian start-ups innovate way past obstacles

The sun is setting on Japan's clean-energy boom, despite projects like a massive floating solar farm near Tokyo, as the government cuts subsidies and bets on nuclear and coal-fired power, critics say.
	Workers at the floating power station, one of the world's biggest, have just finished laying about 50,000 interconnected panels on a vast dam reservoir.
	Taking up space equivalent to several Tokyo Dome-sized baseball stadiums, the vast carpet of panels will supply power to about 5,000 homes from early 2018.
	The project is the centrepiece of a solar-dominated wave of renewable energy investments that followed the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
	The accident forced the shutdown of reactors that had supplied about one-quarter of resource-poor Japan's energy.
	To plug the gap, electricity providers have been obliged since 2012 to buy power generated from green suppliers, including solar, at above-market rates -- known as feed-in tariffs -- fixed by the government each year.
	But ...

Sun setting on Japan's solar energy boom

Businessman Jovenel Moise's election as Haiti's next president was challenged by losing rival candidates, signaling more political upheaval in the troubled nation as sporadic protests erupted in the capital.
	Violence broke out in some of Port-au-Prince's poorest neighborhoods, which were carried by Maryse Narcisse's Fanmi Lavalas party, against Moise, the man former president Michel Martelly chose to represent his party.
	Police launched tear gas grenades to disperse a crowd of hundreds of her supporters who called the vote an "electoral coup" and reacted to the advancing officers by throwing stones.
	"We didn't vote in secret. All of the working-class neighborhoods in the country... Voted for Maryse, but the results they announced were an electoral coup," said Rose-Marie Rosilus.
	Rosilus lives in Bel Air, a neighborhood that has historically been a bastion of former leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who heads the Lavalas party.
	"We will stay out in the streets until the electoral ...

Haiti vote results contested, spark protests

Protestors demanding the closure of offshore detention camps for boatpeople disrupted Australia's parliament today with some supergluing their hands to railings in the public gallery.
	Speaker Tony Smith suspended question time in what cabinet minister Christopher Pyne said was the most serious intrusion into parliament in 20 years.
	The group of around 30 activists began chanting loudly soon after the session began, shouting "close the camps" and "where is your moral compass?".
	Some superglued their hands to the public viewing gallery railings as security tried to remove them, with guards using hand sanitiser to help peel them free, television images showed.
	They were eventually pulled from the chamber, some forcibly.
	The protesters, from the Whistleblowers Activists and Citizens Alliance, said offshore detention represented a "state of emergency".
	"Parliament shutdown by @akaWACA #closethecamps #bringthemhere," the grassroots alliance said on Twitter.
	The same group stormed the 

Activists superglue hands in Australia parliament protest

Rwanda opened a formal probe into 20 French officials suspected of playing a role in the 1994 genocide, in a move likely to further sour diplomatic ties with France.
	Kigali has long accused France of complicity in the genocide of some 800,000 mostly ethnic Tutsis, at the hands of Hutu extremists, angering Paris and straining relations.
	"The inquiry, for now, is focused on 20 individuals whom, according to information gathered so far, are required by the prosecution authority to explain or provide clarity on allegations against them," said prosecutor general Richard Muhumuza in a statement.
	This will enable prosecutors to decide "whether the concerned individuals should be formally charged or not".
	Muhumuza said the relevant French authorities had been contacted and that full cooperation was expected.
	The dispute centres on France's role prior to the genocide as a close ally of the Hutu nationalist regime of Juvenal Habyarimana. The shooting down of his plane over Kigali on April .

Rwanda to probe French officials' genocide role

A reform-driven Sebastian Coe and drugs-tainted Russia will again be in the spotlight of athletics' world governing body when the IAAF gathers for three days of crunch meetings starting tomorrow.
     A crucial part of the opening IAAF Council meeting will be dedicated to the latest update from Norwegian Rune Andersen, the head of the IAAF Taskforce looking into the steps Russia is taking to combat doping.
     The International Association of Athletics Federations first enforced a ban on Russian athletes in international competition in November 2015 after a bombshell World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report unveiled systematic state-sponsored doping and corruption.
     Andersen will report to IAAF's decision-making body whether he thinks Russia have since met the reinstatement conditions set down. The initial ban has twice been extended, in March and June this year.
     It was Andersen's latter Taskforce report in Vienna that scuppered Russian athletes' chances of competing at the ...

Firefighting Coe, Russia again in IAAF spotlight

Sri Lanka returned home victorious from their Zimbabwe tour but the national coach warned his side faced a "huge challenge" in South Africa next month.
     Having comfortably beaten Zimbabwe in both Tests in Harare, Sri Lanka also lifted the triangular series trophy on Sunday, beating the hosts by six wickets in the final.
     Although regular skipper Angelo Mathews and Dinesh Chandimal missed the entire tour due to injury, Sri Lanka rarely felt their absence as they lost just one game in the process of clinching the tri-series, which also involved the West Indies. But even as Mathews told reporters yesterday that both he and Chandimal had recovered and were ready to play, national coach Graham Ford said the South Africa tour in December would be a different ball game.
     He said the players would have to improve in all three aspects of the game -- batting, bowling and fielding -- when they face the formidable Proteas.
     "We've got a huge challenge coming our way," Ford said ...

Sri Lanka brace for 'huge challenge' in S.Africa

Venezuelan lawmakers voted unanimously to issue a declaration condemning the massacre of 12 civilians by soldiers, a rare display of unity in a country torn by a political crisis.
	President Nicolas Maduro's allies and the opposition majority yesterday came together to "condemn the forced disappearance and killing of a number of citizens... By members of the military," they said.
	The resolution refers to a bloody security operation in October that left 12 farmers missing.
	Their bodies were later found rotting in mass graves in the mountains outside the town of Barlovento, in the central state of Miranda.
	Eleven soldiers were arrested for the killings.
	Yesterday's vote was just the second time Maduro's coalition and the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) have unanimously adopted a piece of legislation since the latter won control of the National Assembly last year.
	The other was an endorsement of Pope Francis's call for dialogue on the country's raging crisis.
	Oil giant 

Venezuela lawmakers condemn massacre in rare show of unity

The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting today on the dire humanitarian crisis unfolding in Aleppo, diplomats said.
	The meeting will begin immediately following a Security Council session on the adoption of a resolution reinforcing sanctions against North Korea, which is scheduled to begin at 1400 GMT.
	The 15 ambassadors of the Security Council will get a videoconference briefing on the situation in Aleppo by a UN official in charge of humanitarian operation and the UN mediator in Syria, Staffan de Mistura.
	In east Aleppo, thousands of civilians have fled the fighting and bombings as the Syrian government forces advanced against parts of the rebel-held areas.
	The UN condemned yesterday the "descent into hell" being endured by civilians.
	Up to 20,000 people have fled the regime offensive in the past 72 hours, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
	"France and its partners cannot remain silent in the face of what could be one of the biggest massacres of ..

AFP

AFP

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