Israel has rejected a UN request to release a United Nations staffer charged with aiding Hamas, on the grounds that he enjoys diplomatic immunity.
	Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon yesterday said the UN office of legal affairs had issued a formal letter requesting the release of Waheed Borsh, who worked for the UN Development Program (UNDP).
	In early August, an Israeli court charged the 38-year-old Palestinian engineer with diverting 300 tons of rubble from a UNDP project in Gaza to build a jetty for Hamas.
	"We do not grant immunity to terrorists trying to harm our citizens," Danon said in response to the letter.
	"Israel operates according to the law, and we continue to do so in this case as well," he said in a statement from the Israeli mission to the United Nations.
	The office of legal affairs argued that Borsh, as a UN employee, enjoys immunity from arrest and from legal process, and requested that UN officials be allowed to visit him in jail.
	After reviewing the charge sheet, ..

Israel rejects UN appeal to release Gaza employee

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US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Geneva for a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss the situation in war-ravaged Syria.
	Kerry, who was flying in from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia where he announced a new peace push for conflict-torn Yemen, arrived in the Swiss city shortly yesterday before 10:00 pm (Local Time).
	He was scheduled to meet with Lavrov Friday morning for talks expected to focus heavily on the situation in Syria.
	Earlier yesterday, the UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura described the meeting as "important" and said it could help his push to resume peace negotiations for the country.
	De Mistura did not say whether he would be meeting with the two top diplomats while they were in town.
	Successive rounds of international negotiations have failed to end the Syria conflict, which has killed more than 290,000 people and forced millions to flee their homes.
	Moscow and Washington support opposite sides in the conflict, which erupted in 

Kerry arrives in Geneva for Syria talks with Lavrov

A 35-year-old male suspect was arrested today in connection with an apparent crossbow attack outside Toronto, police said.
	Police said officers responding to an emergency call Thursday found three deceased people on a residential street, on the east side of Canada's largest metropolis.
	Nearby, police also found a crossbow. Authorities said however that it was not immediately clear that the weapon had been used in the attack.
	Paramedics said the three victims, two men and a woman, appear to have died from "blunt force" trauma, a police official said.

Three killed in apparent crossbow attack in Canada

Several gunman attacked a beachfront restaurant in the Somali capital Mogadishu today, prompting an exchange of fire with the security forces.
	The incident began when a nearby car exploded, after which the gunmen ran into the restaurant, a popular eatery near Lido beach. Somali security forces at the scene then exchanged fire with the gunmen who were holed up inside, an AFP correspondent said.

Gunmen storm beach restaurant in Somali capital Mogadishu

More than half of respondents in a new poll said they plan to vote for Hillary Clinton -- the first time the Democratic presidential candidate has breached that all-important 50 percent threshold.
	The poll released today by Quinnipiac University found the former secretary of state leading Trump 51 to 41 percent in a head to head race.
	"We are starting to hear the faint rumblings of a Hillary Clinton landslide as her 10-point lead is further proof that Donald Trump is in a downward spiral as the clock ticks," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
	Support for Clinton falls below 50 percent if third-party candidates are thrown into the equation.
	The former first lady gets 45 percent, with Trump polling 38 percent, when Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party contender Jill Stein are added to the mix.
	Johnson gets 10 percent and Stein is at 4 percent in the Quinnipiac poll.
	Trump's campaign has stumbled in recent weeks after a series 

Clinton tops 50 percent support from US voters in latest poll

Unidentified attackers killed six people, including five police officers, when they ambushed a convoy in Pakistan's troubled southwest today, officials said.
	The attack occurred near Gurdan area in oil and gas rich, but desperately poor Balochistan province bordering Afghanistan and Iran.
	"The convoy headed by a senior local administration official, Naeem Gichki, was passing by an abandoned checkpost of the tribal police...In two vehicles when they were attacked by a group of up to seven people, who were hiding in the post," provincial home secretary Akbar Harifall told AFP.
	He said the assailants fired rockets at the vehicles in the convoy and Gichki and five local tribal policemen were killed and three others injured in the attack.
	Another senior local administration official Qurban Magsi confirmed the incident and casualties.
	No group immediately claimed responsiblity but Balochistan is plagued by roiling insurgencies and hit by regular militant attacks.
	It is also the site ..

Gunmen ambush police, kill five in SW Pakistan

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos ordered the army today to observe a definitive ceasefire with the FARC rebels after the two sides reached a deal to end their half-century conflict.
	"As head of state and commander in chief of our armed forces, I have ordered a definitive ceasefire with the FARC starting at midnight on Monday, August 29," he said in an address from the steps of Congress, where he formally presented the historic peace deal.
	"The armed conflict with the FARC has ended," he said to applause.
	The ceasefire order came after peace negotiators from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government announced Wednesday they had concluded a final accord after nearly four years of talks in Cuba.
	The accord must now be ratified in a referendum on October 2 to take effect. The "Yes" camp must win a majority and gather a total of at least 4.4 million votes -- 13 percent of the electorate.
	The United Nations, United States and European Union ...

Colombia's Santos orders definitive ceasefire with FARC

Polish discus thrower Piotr Malachowski, who took silver at the Rio Olympics, said that he auctioned off his medal this week to fund treatment for a three-year-old boy struck with cancer.
	The 33-year-old world champion wrote on his Facebook page that he was moved to action his prize after receiving a letter from the mother of a boy called Olek who said he had been battling eye cancer for two years and that treatment in New York was his only hope.
	"I fought for gold in Rio. Today I'm calling on everyone to fight for something even more precious," Malachowski wrote on Friday to announce the auction.
	"If you help me, my silver medal may turn out to be more precious than gold for Olek," he said, adding that he would use the entire sum raised to pay for treatment.
	"Success," he later wrote, saying the medal had found takers.

Polish Olympian sells Rio medal to save boy battling cancer

US Secretary of State John Kerry today announced a fresh international peace initiative for Yemen aimed at forming a unity government to resolve its 17-month-old conflict.
	"This war needs to end and it needs to end as quickly as possible," Kerry said after a meeting in Saudi Arabia with Gulf counterparts, a British minister and the UN peace envoy to Yemen.
	He said participants "agreed on a renewed approach to negotiations" between the Saudi-backed government and Iran- supported rebels, after three months of talks in Kuwait ended earlier in August without making headway.
	Kerry lashed out at Iran, saying its arms shipments to the Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen posed a threat to the United States.
	"The threat potentially posed by the shipment of missiles and other sophisticated weapons into Yemen from Iran extends well beyond Yemen and is not a threat just to Saudi Arabia and... The region," Kerry told reporters in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
	"It is a threat to the United States and ..

Kerry announces new Yemen peace initiative

Egypt's minister of supplies Khaled Hanafy announced his resignation today after reportedly being found politically responsible for wheat deals that cost the country tens of millions of dollars.
	In a televised announcement, Hanafy said much of the criticism against him was personal, in reference to reports he had been living in a posh Cairo hotel since his appointment in 2014.
	"I announce, with all integrity and contentedness, that I am leaving my post," he said.
	"Experience shows that being a minister is no easy task but a burden... And much of what has been said is of a personal nature."
	Egyptian media reported that a committee investigating the wheat deal allegations found that Hanafy bore political responsibility.
	Suppliers were found to have sold cheaper imported wheat as locally produced in order to obtain state subsidies and inflate the annual harvest, costing the government about $55 million.
	The probe comes as the government seeks to cut public spending in Egypt, the ...

Egypt minister quits amid wheat scandal

Animals evacuated this week from a zoo dubbed the "world's worst" in the Palestinian Gaza Strip have arrived at an animal shelter in Jordan, an AFP photographer said today.
	Two turtles, two eagles, two porcupines, a pelican, an emu and a deer arrived late yesterday near Amman after travelling from Gaza via Israel, said Amir Khalil, a vet from the charity organising the transfer.
	Animal welfare charity Four Paws yesterday said it evacuated 15 animals -- including Gaza's last tiger Laziz -- out of the Khan Yunis zoo, as they headed for a new life outside the Israeli-blockaded territory.
	The tiger was put on a plane and flown to South Africa where it arrived today, while five monkeys remained in Israel, Khalil said.
	The animals that arrived in Jordan were placed in quarantine at the New Hope Centre, a shelter near Amman, "while waiting to be transferred somewhere bigger", the vet said.
	The animals would now have access to food and necessary treatment, Khalil said.
	Dozens of animals 

Gaza zoo animals arrive to start new life in Jordan

Eleven children were killed today in a barrel bomb attack carried out by government forces on a rebel-held neighbourhood of Syria's Aleppo city, a monitor said.
	"Fifteen civilians, among them 11 children, were killed in a barrel bomb attack on the Bab al-Nayrab neighbourhood" in the south of Aleppo city, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
	The group also reported eight civilians, including two children, were killed on Thursday in rebel fire on the government-held west of the city.
	An AFP journalist in Bab al-Nayrab saw rescue workers and civilians digging through the rubble of collapsed buildings.
	One man carried out the lifeless body of a baby no bigger than his forearm. Its eyes were closed and its body was white with dust except for speckles and smears of blood.
	Elsewhere, a civil defence worker protected the face of another dead child as his colleagues scraped away the rubble encasing the rest of the child's body.
	Syria's regime has been ...

Barrel bomb attack kills 11 children in Syria: monitor

The world's first driverless taxis went into operation today in Singapore in a limited public trial, beating giants like Uber in the race to roll out the revolutionary technology.
	The "robo-taxi service" is being tested at a small research campus well away from the thrum of the Asian business hub.
	Data from the experiment will feed into the roll-out of driverless taxis across the city-state in 2018, said nuTonomy, a US-based tech start-up that developed the software used in the vehicles.
	"The trial represents an extraordinary opportunity to collect feedback from riders in a real-world setting," said nuTonomy chief executive and co-founder Karl Iagnemma.
	"This feedback will give nuTonomy a unique advantage as we work toward deployment of a self-driving vehicle fleet in 2018," he said.
	The six taxis -- Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric vehicles -- will operate in a 2.5 square mile (4.0 square kilometre) area, with set pick-up and drop-off points. Trips have to be booked ...

Singapore trials driverless taxis in world first

Gabon's leading presidential challenger Jean Ping is a career diplomat determined to wrest power from the Bongo dynasty in Saturday's election after serving the family for two decades.
	Foreign minister of the small oil-rich nation from the late 1990s until being elected to the high-profile post of chair of the African Union (AU) Commission in 2008, he is among a few Gabonese figures to be well-known internationally.
	The Paris university graduate was one of late president Omar Bongo's closest and longest-serving ministers, holding a succession of prestigious posts before turning against President Ali Bongo who stepped in after his father's death in 2009.
	Dubbing the regime that has run the nation on the Equator "a pure and simple dictatorship", Ping turned on Bongo junior in 2014 and now hopes to stop him winning a second seven-year term.
	Launching his campaign in the central town of Lambarene in mid-August, the 73-year-old pledged that if elected he would ensure Gabon would be ...

Jean Ping, former top diplomat out to topple Gabon dynasty

The death toll from a powerful earthquake in central Italy rose to 247 today amid fears many more corpses would be found in the rubble of devastated mountain villages.
	Rescuers sifted through collapsed masonry in the search for survivors, but their grim mission was clouded by uncertainty about exactly how many people had been staying in communities closest to the epicentre of Wednesday's quake.
	Hundreds of people spent the night sleeping in their cars, in hastily-assembled tents or as guests of families in nearby areas less affected by the quake.
	Monica, a survivor from the tourist town of Amatrice, told of her numbed response when a 4.5-magnitude aftershock rattled the area just after 5.00 a.M. (0300 GMT).
	"We are sleeping in the car and there were shocks all night. When the biggest one came, the car started moving and shaking.
	"But what have we got to lose now? We have lost our house. So many friends and family are dead. We have lost everything, even our fear," she told AGI ...

Italy quake death toll nears 250

Sixteen people were killed after militants stormed the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, officials said today, in a nearly 10-hour raid that prompted anguished pleas for help from trapped students.
	Explosions and gunfire rocked the campus after the attack began Wednesday evening, just weeks after two university professors -- an American and an Australian -- were kidnapped at gunpoint near the school.
	No group has so far claimed responsibility for the assault, but it occurred as the Taliban ramp up their nationwide summer offensive against the Western-backed government.
	The presidential office said the attack was "orchestrated" from Pakistan, Afghanistan's longtime regional nemesis often accused of harbouring the Taliban.
	"Sixteen people, including eight students, were killed and 53 others were wounded," health ministry spokesman Waheed Majroh told AFP. "Some of the wounded are in critical condition."
	The interior ministry said the fatalities included policemen, a ...

Hours-long attack on Kabul American university kills 16

Iraqi forces today pushed the Islamic State group from Qayyarah, a northern town considered strategic for any future offensive against the jihadists' last stronghold of Mosul.
	Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hailed the victory as a key step in the fight against IS but hours later suffered yet another political setback when lawmakers impeached his defence minister.
	Special forces, backed by US-led coalition air strikes, wrapped up a three-day operation to retake Qayyarah, a town which lies on the banks of the Tigris river.
	"We control all parts of the town and managed, in very limited time, to root out Daesh," Lieutenant General Riyadh Jalal Tawfik, who commands Iraq's ground forces, told an AFP reporter in Qayyarah, using an acronym for IS.
	The commander said engineering units were now clearing the town, which lies about 60 kilometres south of Mosul, of unexploded ordnance and booby traps.
	Residents greeted the security forces under skies blackened by huge fires IS fighters set to 

Iraq forces retake key town south of Mosul

Russia will work with the United States on a response after a UN investigation found that the Syrian regime had carried out chemical attacks, Moscow's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said today.
	"We have a joint interest in discouraging such things from happening, preventing such things from happening even in the fog of war," Churkin told reporters.

Russia to work with US on response to Syria gas attacks probe

Iraqi lawmakers today voted to impeach Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi over corruption allegations, MPs said.
	Two members of parliament told AFP that lawmakers voted to withdraw their confidence from Obeidi by 142 votes to 102 in a secret ballot, while 18 abstained.

Iraq parliament impeaches defence minister: MPs

The impeachment trial of Brazil's first woman president Dilma Rousseff got underway today with high expectations that the suspended leader of Latin America's biggest economy will be sacked within days.
	The Senate trial was opened by Supreme Court president Ricardo Lewandowski half an hour late in the blue-carpeted chamber at 9:30 am.
	The proceedings in the capital Brasilia were considered almost sure to result in Rousseff, 68, being found guilty of cooking the budget books to mask the depth of economic problems during her 2014 reelection campaign.
	If she is removed from office, her former vice president turned rival Michel Temer will be sworn in to serve until 2018, shifting Brazil to the right after 13 years of leftist rule under Rousseff's Workers' Party.
	Rousseff, who was tortured and imprisoned by the 1970s dictatorship for membership in a Marxist urban guerrilla group, swore to resist what she calls a coup.
	"We will fight to reinforce democracy in our country with the same ..

Brazil Senate opens impeachment trial against Rousseff

Turkey's main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said today his convoy came under attack from gunfire in the northeastern region of Artvin but he was unharmed.
	Kilicdaroglu, leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP), said he was safe and well after the incident whose origin was not immediately clear.
	"There is no problem, we are fine, don't worry," Kilicdaroglu told CNN-Turk television by telephone.
	Kilicdaroglu had been in the province to attend a rally where he planned to make a speech, private-run Dogan news agency reported.
	It was not yet known if Kilicdaroglu was the target or if he was caught up in a separate incident.
	Ozgur Ozel, head of CHP's parliamentary group, told CNN-Turk that a soldier driving a military vehicle had been injured.
	President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim were briefed by the provincial governor shortly after the incident, said a Turkish official, who did not wish to be named.
	Erdogan and Yildirim as well as Interior ...

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