An Israeli Bedouin teenager shot dead while working along the Egyptian border appears to have been killed by Egyptian forces in error, an Israeli source said today.
	Nimr Abu Ammar from the southern town of Laqiya was shot yesterday as the 15-year-old took part in maintenance work on the border fence.
	The Israeli army had initially said that the "shooting does not appear to be connected to terror activities," without providing further details.
	An Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue told AFP the shooter was a member of the Egyptian security forces, who apparently mistook the youth for a militant.
	According to the official, initial findings showed that the work was taking place in a "no-man's land" where there are "quiet understandings with the Egyptians regarding the Israeli presence there."
	The official said the initial findings showed that an Egyptian officer at the site "mistakenly thought the boy was planting a mine" - while ..

Egyptian officer shot dead Israeli teen: official

PTI Automatic

The United States today praised Qatar's role in the fight against the Islamic State group and its "positive efforts" to deny the jihadists funds.
	A senior Treasury Department official, Daniel Glaser, is in Qatar and has held talks with Prime Minister Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al-Thani on the issue, the statement released by the US embassy added.
	Washington's public backing comes just weeks after leaked emails alleged that presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton believed Qatar was "providing clandestine financial and logistic support" to IS.
	"Glaser discussed the Government of Qatar's recent positive efforts to counter terrorist financing with Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser," the statement from the embassy said.
	"The United States Government enjoys a close and ongoing relationship with the Government of Qatar in combating terrorist financing and supports Qatar's efforts to deny terrorist financiers access to its financial system.
	"The United States appreciates ...

US praises Qatar moves to deny jihadists funds

A South Korean court today convicted the former director of Asia's top film festival of accounting fraud, in what critics have called a politically-motivated case that has damaged the event's artistic independence.
	Lee Yong-Kwan, who headed the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) until February this year, was given a suspended jail sentence for making fraudulent payments amounting to 27.5 million won (USD 24,200) to a firm that brokers sponsorship deals.
	Three other current and former BIFF officials indicted on similar charges also received suspended jail terms.
	The case was brought against Lee earlier this year as the prestigious annual festival was embroiled in a bitter row with state authorities over alleged political interference.
	The dispute began in 2014 when the BIFF screened a controversial documentary about the Sewol ferry disaster, despite angry opposition by the mayor of the host city Busan.
	The film, "Diving Bell," criticised Seoul's botched rescue effort during .

Ex-director of Busan film fest convicted of fraud

Hostages were forced to eat mice, scorpions and centipedes to survive during the nearly five years they were held by Somali pirates, according to a Taiwanese seafarer who arrived home today.
	Shen Jui-chang, among 26 hostages freed from the crew of Naham 3 seized south of the Seychelles in March 2012, added he had constantly had a gun pointed at his head during his ordeal.
	Shen, the chief engineer on the fishing boat, was reunited with his wife and daughter yesterday in Guangzhou, southern China, after a long flight from Kenya with Chinese crew members after they were freed Sunday.
	An emotional Shen arrived at Taipei's main airport this afternoon and said he was in "very poor physical health".
	"Every day was nerve-wracking, with the pirates pointing their AK-47 rifles at me 24 hours a day," the frail-looking sailor told reporters.
	Shen had earlier told reporters the hostages were given little to eat during their four-and-a-half years in captivity and were sometimes denied ...

Taiwan hostage freed by Somali pirates ate mice, scorpions

A chest of drawers by the star Australian designer Marc Newson has sold at auction in Paris for more than one million euros, more than twice its estimate.
	The piece called "Pod of drawers" by the creator who has worked for Apple for the past decade, was bought for 1.019 million euros (USD 1.1 million) by an Asian buyer, the auction house Artcurial said yesterday.
	Newson, 53, made the shiny aluminium drawers by hand in 1987 while he was at art school having earlier trained as a jeweller.
	The creator of the Lockheed Lounge chair has said he was inspired to take up furniture design by the European decorative art magazines his Greek-born grandfather left lying around the house in Sydney.
	The piece was inspired by French Art Deco designer Andre Groult's famous body-shaped "Chiffonnier Anthropomorphe", Artcurial said.
	"Entirely made by hand, the chest of drawers shows the fusion between European decorative arts and his know-how as an apprentice jeweller," it added in a statement.
	Two .

Apple designer's chest of drawers sells for over $1m

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said today they had developed a "suicide drone" capable of delivering explosives to blow up targets at sea and on land.
	The new drone is primarily for maritime surveillance and "has not been designed to be armed with missiles," the Tasnim news agency, which is close to the Guards, reported.
	"(But) it can carry heavy payloads of explosives for combat missions to launch suicide attacks.
	"Flying at a high cruising speed near the surface of the water, the aircraft can collide with the target and destroy it, either a vessel or an onshore command centre."
	Tasnim said the drone was designed to fly as low as half a metre above the water at a speed of around 250 kilometres per hour but could reach an altitude of 900 metres.
	As with previous drone announcements by Iran, the news agency released photographs of the aircraft on the ground, but no footage of it flying.
	"It has an advanced military camera with the capability of being used at night and during ..

Iran unveils 'suicide drone'

Airbus Group today posted a five percent fall in January-September net profit to 1.81 billion euros (USD 2 billion) as it revealed it intends to deliver more planes than initially forecast this year.
	Citing stable overall sales of 43 billion euros for the period, the company said it would seek to raise deliveries to 670 planes, a rise of 20 aircraft, in order to hit its annual earnings targets.
	"As expected, the nine-month performance reflects the heavily back-loaded aircraft delivery schedule, ongoing production ramp-up and transition to new versions of our A320 and A330 aircraft," said CEO Tom Enders.
	"For the remaining months of the year we remain totally focused on deliveries to achieve our earnings and cash guidance," he added.
	Financial director Harald Wilhelm indicated Airbus was targeting delivery of "more than 670 planes" to hit full-year earnings targets.
	Wilhelm conceded that, with 462 deliveries to end September, there remained much still to do but that the firm was ..

Airbus Group says 9mth profit slips; raises deliveries target

Eleven Indonesian men are feared dead after water and mud engulfed an illegal gold mine, an official said today, the latest deadly accident to hit the illicit industry.
	The men were in a narrow, 50-metre deep shaft on Sumatra island on Monday when heavy rain sent water and earth surging into the mine.
	Rescuers have headed to the remote site in Jambi province to hunt for the miners, who were aged between 21 and 55 and had been working in a pit they dug themselves, said police spokesman Kuswahyudi Tresnadi.
	He said none were believed to have survived.
	Illegal gold mining has boomed in Indonesia in recent years as the price of the precious metal has surged, and deaths are common.
	Twelve people were killed in October last year when a shaft collapsed on them after they tunnelled into a disused mine on Java island in the hope of finding gold.
	Heavy downpours during Indonesia's months-long rainy season regularly cause landslides, which often bury villages and cause fatalities.

Eleven Indonesians feared dead in gold mine accident

Militants linked to Islamic State jihadists abducted and killed around 30 civilians, including children, in central Afghanistan, officials said today, raising concerns about the group's expanding presence beyond its eastern stronghold.
	The killings occurred late yesterday north of Firoz Koh, the capital of Ghor province, with the local government calling it a revenge attack after a local IS commander was gunned down.
	ISIS, which controls territory across Syria and Iraq and is making steady inroads in Afghanistan, has so far not officially claimed responsibility for the attack.
	"Our security forces with the help of locals conducted an operation and killed a Daesh (IS) commander yesterday. Daesh fighters in return abducted around 30 villagers, mostly shepherds," Ghor Governor Nasir Khazeh told AFP.
	"Their dead bodies were found by local people this morning."
	Abdul Hameed Nateqi, a Ghor provincial council member, gave a similar account to AFP, adding that the assailants were Taliban 

IS militants abduct and kill 30 in Afghanistan, officials say

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said today he wants US troops out of his country in the next two years and is willing to scrap defence pacts with longtime ally Washington if necessary.
	The comments follow a series of anti-American tirades by the firebrand leader, who has repeatedly attacked the US while cosying up to Beijing, upending his nation's foreign policy in comments that have sometimes been quickly retracted.
	"I want, maybe in the next two years, my country free of the presence of foreign military troops," Duterte told an economic forum in Tokyo, in a clear reference to US forces.
	"I want them out and if I have to revise or abrogate agreements, executive agreements, I will," he added.
	The US, which once operated sprawling bases in the country, now has a small number of Special Forces on the southern island of Mindanao to aid in counter-terrorism operations.
	Duterte has previously said he wants US troops out of Mindanao because their presence stokes tensions on the ...

Philipines' Duterte wants US troops out in two years

Saudi Arabia's financial position remains strong despite sinking oil prices, although there is "some pressure" on bank liquidity, the finance minister has said.
	The kingdom projects a budget deficit of USD 87 billion this year as a result of the fall in oil revenues, which still account for most of its income.
	Among measures to cover the fiscal gap, Riyadh has drawn on its foreign reserves, issued domestic bonds and last week raised USD 17.5 billion in its first international bond offering.
	"We have been able to maintain a good position in public finances," Ibrahim al-Assaf told a seminar, the official Saudi Press Agency reported late yesterday.
	"We have been able to maintain the stability of government reserves as they are still high. The level of debt remains low."
	The kingdom's banks still have strong balance sheets and relatively high levels of capital adequacy and liquidity ratios, "despite some pressure on liquidity at the system level in general," he said.
	A tightening of 

Saudi financial position strong: minister

Iran today urged more Asian companies to invest in the country, saying the lifting of nuclear-linked sanctions had opened vast opportunities for foreign capital.
	Central bank governor Valiollah Seif told a business seminar in Singapore that reforms put in place since President Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013 helped restore economic stability while the lifting of the sanctions had reintegrated the economy with the rest of the world.
	Iran's gross domestic product is expected to grow 5.0 per cent this year and next, up from 3.0 per cent over the past two years, Seif told the private seminar of businessmen from Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Australia.
	Iran in January signed a historic deal with western powers to end years of crippling sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, which Tehran has long insisted was for peaceful purposes rather than building atomic weapons.
	"The lifting of sanctions has created unprecedented opportunities for investors," Seif ...

Post-sanction Iran makes play for Asian investment

The government of Kyrgyzstan resigned today after the president's party quit the ruling coalition, sparking fears the Central Asian country could plunge into instability, the presidency said.
	President Almazbek Atambayev's Social Democratic Party left the four-party ruling coalition on Monday after its other members did not back constitutional reforms.
	A statement issued by the Kyrgyz presidency said that Atambayev had signed a decree on the "resignation of the government of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan" that went into immediate effect.
	Atambayev is expected to call for the creation of a new coalition by the end of the week and later approve a new cabinet.
	The coalition had been formed last year after toughly fought parliamentary elections in a move some thought could shore up stability in the volatile ex-Soviet state of six million.
	The country's parliament in April endorsed a new government led by the country's sixth prime minister in as many years since a violent revolution ...

Kyrgyzstan government resigns after coalition collapses

A teenage girl was killed and three people wounded by gunfire in Haiti when chaos broke out during humanitarian aid distribution to hurricane victims, the UN mission here said.
	The much-needed aid was being unloaded from a Colombian ship at the port in the southwestern town of Dame-Marie when a stampede occurred on the dock in the afternoon.
	"The Brazilian peacekeepers who were there supporting the Haitian national police fired rubber bullets and two tear-gas grenades," Mourad Wahba, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Haiti, told AFP.
	National police fired live ammunition on the crowd demonstrating over the slow pace of aid some three weeks after Hurricane Matthew struck southern Haiti, killing at least 546 people and leaving 175,000 without homes.
	The girl who died was struck in the chest by a bullet and three other victims suffered gunshot wounds, Wahba said, adding that a UN investigation was under way.
	The exact circumstances surrounding the death, however, were not ...

One dead, three injured in Haiti aid distribution chaos

Militants linked to the Islamic State group killed at least 30 civilians in the central Afghan province of Ghor, the local government said today.
	"Daesh (Islamic State group) killed around 30 civilians, including children, after they were taken hostage," Ghor Governor Nasir Khazeh told AFP.
	There has so far been no official claim of responsibility from the group.

IS militants kill 30 in central Afghanistan: official

The US has said it was "troubled" by Iran's reported 18-year sentence of an Iranian American accused of spying, a week after two other dual citizens were sentenced amid tense bilateral relations.
	In an interview from a prison in northeast Iran with the Los Angeles Times, Gholamrez Reza Shahini, 46, said yesterday he was being sent to prison for "collaborating with a hostile government," a reference to the United States.
	The San Diego man, who goes by the nickname Robin, said he was arrested July 11 when he was visiting his mother and other family members in Iran.
	"We are troubled by reports that Robin or Raisa Shahini, a person reported to be a US citizen, may have been convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison," said State Department spokesman John Kirby.
	"We reaffirm our calls on Iran to respect and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms, cease arbitrary and politically motivated detentions, and ensure fair and transparent judicial proceedings in all criminal ...

US 'troubled' by spying sentence of Iranian American

Punters watching Australia play Pakistan at the Brisbane Test in December will enjoy a novel way to escape the heat by having a dip in a pool in the stands.
     Cricket Australia said it would be "a unique at-match experience" during the day-night game at the Gabba ground from December 15.
     "Featuring a pool and two large tiered decks with seating, tables and shade, the Pool Deck at the Gabba will give fans the chance to take a dip, escape the heat, and relax in comfort while still enjoying world class Test cricket action," it said.
     A draw among ticket-holders will determine who gets to relax by the pool, with cricket chiefs encouraging fans to turn up in their swimming costumes.
     Australia will also face Pakistan in Sydney and Melbourne Tests but first they host South Africa in a three-Test series.

Fancy a dip? Pool planned for Gabba Test

Filipino star Manny Pacquiao says he remains undecided about his future in boxing beyond this year, insisting he is not looking past his upcoming world title bout with Jessie Vargas.
     Pacquiao returns to the ring to face World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Vargas on November 5, three months after ending his four-month "retirement".
     But the 37-year-old eight division world champion said he has not thought about his plans after the Vargas fight as he continues to juggle the demands of the sport and his duties as a newly elected member of the Philippines Senate.
     "Right now my focus is on this fight. Then I go back and do my job, then I could think about 2017," Pacquiao told reporters on a conference call.
     Asked if he expected to fight again, he added: "I don't know yet. One fight at a time. I cannot say yes right now.
     "Today, Jessie Vargas is the most important fight of my career."
     Pacquiao's veteran promoter Bob Arum believes that the Filipino ...

Pacquiao not looking beyond next fight

Gambia has announced its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, accusing the Hague- based tribunal of the "persecution and humiliation of people of colour, especially Africans".
	The announcement late yesterday comes after similar decisions this month by South Africa and Burundi to abandon the troubled institution, set up to try the world's worst crimes.
	Information Minister Sheriff Bojang said in an announcement on state television that the court had been used "for the persecution of Africans and especially their leaders" while ignoring crimes committed by the West.
	He singled out the case of former British prime minister Tony Blair, who the ICC decided not to indict over the Iraq war.
	"There are many Western countries, at least 30, that have committed heinous war crimes against independent sovereign states and their citizens since the creation of the ICC and not a single Western war criminal has been indicted."
	The withdrawal, he said, "is warranted by the fact that ..

Gambia to withdraw from International Criminal Court

The United Nations' refusal to admit full responsibility for the years-long cholera epidemic that has claimed more than 9,000 lives in Haiti is a debacle that it has a duty to correct, a UN expert said yesterday.
	The world body admits that it is morally bound to help Haiti deal with the deadly outbreak, which is blamed on UN peacekeepers who were sent to the Caribbean country after the 2010 earthquake.
	But it denies being legally responsible and has ignored lawsuits filed by victims that have been rejected in US courts after the UN invoked diplomatic immunity.
	Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur for extreme poverty and human rights, on yesterday described the refusal to acknowledge responsibility as "morally unconscionable, legally indefensible, politically self-defeating and entirely unnecessary."
	Alston said the world body must set up a procedure to settle claims by the families of thousands of victims killed by cholera.
	Alston was addressing a General Assembly committee as ...

UN refusal to recognise role in Haiti cholera a 'debacle':

Canada's parliament adopted has 0an opposition motion to resettle Yazidi refugees within four months, while declaring IS group's persecution of Yazidis near the Syrian border in northern Iraq a genocide.
	Iraqi activist Nadia Murad was on hand for the unanimous vote in the House of Commons.
	The government said it is still sorting out a plan for the airlift and does not yet know how many Yazidi refugees Canada will take in over the 120-day period.
	But Immigration Minister John McCallum reminded that Canada had managed to resettle more than 25,000 Syrian refugees in just a few months at the start of the year.
	"It is important to emphasise that Canada will always be an open country willing to step up and support people in need from all around the world," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in the Commons.
	"I am pleased to see Nadia (Murad) again today and reassure her that in the coming months we are committed to bringing in vulnerable Yazidi refugees," he said.
	Murad was taken by ...

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