Turkey summoned a senior German diplomat today, a day after a rally in Cologne in support of the Turkish president who was not permitted to address the crowd by video conference.
	"The charge d'affaires has been summoned to the Turkish foreign ministry at 1:00 pm (local time)," a spokeswoman for the German embassy told AFP, adding that the ambassador was not in town.
	Tens of thousands of supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rallied in Cologne yesterday to show their opposition to a failed coup on July 15, which aimed to unseat the Turkish leader.
	Hours before the demonstration, Germany's constitutional court rejected an application to show live speeches from Turkey by politicians including Erdogan, over fears they could work up the crowd.
	The decision sparked anger in Turkey, with presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin calling the move unacceptable and a "violation of the freedom of expression and the right to free assembly".
	Germany is home to three million ethnic Turks, ...

Turkey summons senior German diplomat over Cologne rally

PTI Automatic

Australian MH370 search authorities are hopeful a wing part found in Tanzania will shed light on how the flight crashed, amid a lack of public information on debris found a year ago.
	As the underwater hunt far off Australia's west coast draws to a close without any sign of the plane, there has been speculation the flight's final resting place may be outside the current search zone in the southern Indian Ocean.
	The Malaysia Airlines jet was carrying 239 passengers and crew when it disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
	The first debris linked to MH370 - a two-metre-long (almost seven-foot) wing part known as a flaperon - washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion a year ago.
	But it has remained in the hands of French investigators, leaving questions unanswered on how the airliner entered the ocean.
	"We have also seen some analysis from the French that suggests that it's a possibility that (the flaperon) was in a deployed state," Peter ...

Hopes new wing part could reveal MH370 clues: Australia

Turkey's military and political leaders were to meet today in Ankara with the top US military commander in the first direct talks since last month's failed coup.
	General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, will meet with Turkish chief of staff General Hulusi Akar and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in the Turkish capital.
	Tensions between the two NATO allies have been aggravated by the foiled July 15 putsch by rogue elements in the military who sought to bring down the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
	And some Turkish officials have even alleged that Washington could have had a hand in the plot, although the suggestion has been firmly denied by top US officials.
	Turkey successfully thwarted the attempted coup, blaming it on a military faction loyal to Erdogan's arch-foe Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric who has been in self-imposed exile in the United States for years.
	From his secluded compound in Pennsylvania, the preacher has denied the ...

Turkey, US meet after power grab attempt

Chinese ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing will take over the China operations of its US rival Uber, it said today, ending a ferocious battle for market share that cost both firms billions.
	In exchange for the Uber China assets, Uber and its Chinese partners will receive shares equivalent to 20 per cent of Didi Chuxing, a statement said.
	The combined Chinese firm will be valued at USD 35 billion, Bloomberg News reported.
	Since Uber launched its China operations little more than two years ago both companies have spent billions of dollars on subsidies for drivers and passengers in China, as well as trading vitriolic accusations, as they fought for dominance in the potentially lucrative market.
	But now the companies' founders will swap public acrimony for seats on each other's boards, with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick joining Didi's board of directors, and Didi's founder Cheng Wei getting a seat at Uber's top table.
	In the Didi statement Cheng said the two firms "have learned a great deal .

Ride-share battle ends with Didi buying Uber China operations

Ride-sharing giant Uber is to merge its China operations with local rival Didi Chuxing, reports said today, ending a ferocious battle for market share in the world's second-largest economy.
	   The deal will give Uber a 20 per cent share in the combined firm, Bloomberg News reported, adding it will be valued at USD 35 billion.
	   Both companies have spent billions of dollars on subsidies for drivers and passengers, as well as trading vitriolic accusations, as they fought for dominance in the potentially lucrative market.
	   As reported, the structure of the agreement leaves Didi Chuxing in unquestioned control.
	   By "shedding its massive losses" in the country Uber will help clear its way to a future flotation, Bloomberg said.
	   The Wall Street Journal said a formal announcement could come as early as Monday.
	   A blog post circulating on Chinese social media purportedly written by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said: "I've learned that being successful is about listening to your ...

Uber China to merge with local rival Didi: Bloomberg

All 5 in Russian military chopper shot down in Syria dead:

A Russian military helicopter with five people on board was shot down today over the Syrian province of Idlib, the Russian defence ministry said.
	"A Russian Mi-8 military transport helicopter was shot down from the ground after delivering humanitarian aid to Aleppo," the defence ministry said in a statement quoted by Russian news agencies.
	"Three crew members and two officers... Were on board," it said, indicating that their fate was unclear.

Russian military chopper shot down in Syria: ministry

Turkey has arrested 11 fugitive soldiers suspected of involvement in an attack on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's hotel during the night of the failed coup, the deputy prime minister said today.
	Erdogan was staying in the western seaside resort of Marmaris on July 15 but dashed to Istanbul just before the hotel came under attack from rebel soldiers determined to oust him from power.
	"Eleven of them were captured in Ula," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told a press conference after a cabinet meeting, referring to a town near Marmaris.
	He said one soldier was still at large.
	Erdogan earlier said his swift escape had saved him from being killed or taken hostage.
	An interior ministry official, who declined to be named, described the arrested men as members of a "death squad" and said the overnight operation to catch them followed a tip-off from local villagers.
	The soldiers had been hiding in the wild landscape above Marmaris since the military action, and the villagers ...

Turkey arrests 11-man 'death squad' over Erdogan hotel raid

Cricket Australia said today it has extended the contract of head coach Darren Lehmann until October 2019 to keep him in place during the next Ashes series and World Cup.
	Lehmann's contract was due to expire in June next year. CA said it has been extended to cover the 2017-18 Ashes series in Australia and the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup in England and Wales.
	Since Lehmann's appointment in 2013 he has taken Australia's Test and one-day teams to the top world ranking, won a home Ashes series 5-0, beat South Africa in a Test series away from home and won last year's ICC Cricket World Cup.
	"2019 is such a big year for Australian cricket and we wanted certainty and stability for the playing group, with both the coach and assistant coach contracted, as we build towards the Ashes series and the 2019 World Cup," CA's executive general manager Pat Howard said in a statement.
	"Darren has had great success in the role and he and the national selection panel deserve a huge amount of credit for 

Lehmann's contract extended as Australia coach

There's not a lot of green in the urban jungle of Sao Paulo, but thanks to Fernanda Danelon, restaurants in the Brazilian mega-city are turning their waste back into food at innovative gardens tucked amid the skyscrapers.
	Danelon, a 43-year-old journalist by training, quit her day job two years ago to launch the Guandu Institute, which recycles restaurants' food waste and helps them set up gardens to put all that compost to good use.
	Cities in Brazil, the economic giant of Latin America, throw out more than 75 million tons of trash a year, according to the Brazilian Association of Public Sanitation Companies (ABRELPE).
	About half of it is organic waste, according to the Brazilian environment ministry.
	There are no municipal recycling or composting programs to reduce all that garbage, and triaging trash is a foreign concept to most Brazilians.
	The country recycles about three percent of its waste, according to ABRELPE.
	To fill the void, Danelon decided to put her passion for ...

Brazilian restaurants turn waste back into food

A Nigerian behind an online fraud network, which engineered scams worth more than USD 60 million through email accounts of small to medium businesses around the world including India, has been arrested in southern oil city of Port Harcourt, Interpol said today.
	"The 40-year-old Nigerian national, known as 'Mike', is believed to be behind scams totalling more than USD 60 million involving hundreds of victims worldwide," the international police organisation said in a statement.
	"In one case, a target was conned into paying out USD 15.4 million," Interpol said, indicating that the arrest was carried out with the support of Nigeria's anti-graft agency the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
	"The network compromised email accounts of small to medium businesses around the world including in Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, Romania, South Africa, Thailand and the United States," it said.
	The suspect ran a network of at least 40 people working from Nigeria, Malaysia and ..

Nigerian behind USD 60 mn online fraud network arrested

Singapore's central bank today formally launched a unit to fight money laundering, strengthening the financial hub's safeguards against illicit fund flows.
	Officials of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) have said plans to create the special unit predated a continuing scandal involving state fund 1MDB in neighbouring Malaysia and banks operating in Singapore.
	"But these recent developments have indeed underscored the merits of bringing together supervisory resources from across MAS to give a centralised focus on combating money laundering," a spokesman for the MAS said in June when it announced the creation of the unit.
	Singapore last year opened an investigation into fund flows linked to 1MDB. In May this year it expelled Switzerland's BSI Bank for "gross misconduct" related to the Malaysian fund.
	Last month Singapore revealed it had seized nearly USD 180 million in assets through its investigations into suspected fraud and money-laundering linked to 1MDB.
	Half those ...

Singapore launches unit to fight money laundering

Tough new security legislation came into force today in Malaysia, with critics saying the "draconian" law threatens democracy and could be used against opponents of the scandal-tainted premier.
	The National Security Council Act was pushed through parliament in December by the government of Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has faced calls to resign for more than a year over an huge alleged corruption scandal.
	The legislation gives the government power to declare virtual martial law in areas deemed to be under "security threat".
	Critics accused Najib and his government of enacting the law, and other tough recent legislation, to ward off political and legal challenges.
	"The law will definitely put fear in people planning to participate in street protests," said Wan Saiful Wan Jan, head of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, a Malaysian think tank.
	"The public perception in terms of the timing of the draconian law is that Najib wants the law in order to stay in ...

New Malaysia security law debuts as PM fights critics

Tokyo's new governor Yuriko Koike today credited her landslide victory to having stood up to the powers that be in Japan's ruling party who didn't want her to run.
	Koike, 64, was elected Tokyo's first female governor in the yesterday vote, winning more than 2.9 million votes, far outpacing the nearly 1.8 million ballots cast for closest challenger Hiroya Masuda.
	Masuda, a former governor of Iwate prefecture in northern Japan, was the favoured candidate of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner.
	The LDP spurned Koike, an LDP member, for failing to seek its approval before announcing her candidacy, with a top party official calling her "selfish".
	Koike, however, had the last laugh after her campaign drew huge crowds during street rallies ahead of the vote.
	"I fought this race without support from the party, and people joked I was like the sole player in a theatre company," she told reporters early today.
	"But in the end it ...

New Tokyo governor says defying party secured win

Sun Yang's career has mixed tales of sex and drugs with jaw-dropping world records, but China's wild-child star will hope to stay clear of trouble as he anchors his country's Rio Olympics swimming assault.
     If China's swimming team has a reputation for controversies, Sun is no exception, and the man who knows no equal over 1500m has often made headlines for his activities outside the pool.
     Chief among his indiscretions was a three-month doping suspension in 2014 -- served in secret and announced retrospectively -- for taking a banned stimulant, which he said he needed for a heart complaint.
     Sun's rap sheet also includes clashing with officials over his affair with an air hostess, detention time for driving a Porsche SUV -- that was hit by a bus -- without a licence, and an altercation with a female Brazilian swimmer at last year's world championships.
     Along the way, Sun lashed the national anthem of China's bitter war-time rivals Japan as "ugly", and turned heads by 

Sex, drugs and record roll for China's swim Sun-sation

It's now or never for British cycling great Mark Cavendish in his goal to at last win an Olympic medal.
     In theory everything appears in mint condition for the 31-year-old 'Manx Missile' to fill the one hole in his CV as he arrives in Rio fresh from four stage wins in the Tour de France -- taking his total to 30, just four shy of Eddie Mercx's record.
     However, Cavendish -- who pulled out of the Tour de France early so as to preserve his strength for the Games -- will have to adapt quickly as he is not competing on the road but reverts to the track, something he has not competed at in the Games since 2008.
     Cavendish teams up with Wiggins in the six-discipline Omnium in Rio -- the duo having won the world title this year in the Madison -- and hope for a happier outcome than when they finished ninth in the 2008 Beijing Games.
     "Olympic gold is one thing left - I've tried it twice and I was in superb form on both days and they eluded me," said Cavendish, whose other ...

'Manx Missile' targets elusive Olympic medal

The world's top ping pong player Ma Long has added a secret new performance-enhancing substance to his Rio 2016 training regime as he tries to overcome anxiety: booze.
     China's top table-tennis player has long dominated the world rankings, but failed to qualify for the singles competition at the London 2012 Olympics and finally won the world championship last year at his fifth attempt, raising questions about his mental resilience.
     The lanky, muscular 27-year-old from the northeastern province of Liaoning lacks nothing when it comes to technical skills and is renowned for his scorching serve and deceptive spin.
     But his struggles with nerves under pressure have driven China's chief table tennis coach Liu Guoliang to focus instead on teaching his protege how to relax.
     "For Ma Long, two things are most important," he told AFP. "One is that when the pressure gets very high, to make him go to a bar and drink some alcohol."
     The other was to distract him with ...

Beer pong - China's Ma drinks to table tennis glory

Swimmer Yulia Efimova became the third Russian swimmer to challenge her Rio Olympics ban as the International Olympic Committee rejected blame for the Russia doping crisis.
     A Russian wrestler, Viktor Lebidev, has also made an appeal against bans ordered over Russia's state-organised use of banned substances.
     Efimova, who won a 200m breaststroke bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics, follows Vladimir Morozov and Nikita Lobintsev in taking her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
     CAS confirmed the new appeals by Efimova and Lebidev.
     The cases of Morozov and Lobintsev, also medal-winners in London and the Beijing Games in 2008, were heard by a CAS tribunal on Sunday with a new hearing set for Monday, CAS secretary general Matthieu Reeb told AFP.
     Efimova's hearing will start Monday, he added.
     Lebidev has launched his case against the IOC, wrestling's governing body and the Russian Olympic Committee.
     Seven Russian swimmers were banned from Rio ..

New Russian appeals as IOC rejects blame for doping crisis

Protesters turned out for lightly attended demonstrations in Rio against embattled President Dilma Rousseff five days before the start of the 2016 Olympic Games.
     About 4,000 protesters gathered on the beach at Copacabana in a festive atmosphere with sound trucks blasting out a mix of samba and the national anthem.
     Marchers carried an enormous banner that read "Dilma out and prison for Lula," a reference to former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was charged Friday with obstruction of justice in an ongoing corruption probe.
     "We want our country back and for these people to go," said Vilma Moniz Portella, a lawyer carrying a small inflatable doll of the judge leading the probe into bribes and kickbacks at state oil giant Petrobras.
     The scandal has shaken Brazil's political and business establishment, casting a shadow over the August 5-21 Olympic Games, the first ever held in a South American country.
     Marchers said the turnout was smaller in Rio than at ..

Brazilians protest in Rio as city prepares for Olympics

Security at the Olympic village has been tightened following the theft of a computer and team shirts from the Australian delegation during a fire evacuation, team officials said.
     Australia chef de mission Kitty Chiller told reporters that a laptop and team jerseys were stolen when the facility was evacuated for a small blaze on Friday.
     "There was one laptop taken from one of our cycling officials on the fifth floor. Our IT equipment in our operational space had also been rifled through but nothing had been stolen," Chiller said.
     Chiller said during the evacuation she had noticed three fire marshals apparently stealing the Australia team shirts.
     "When I arrived, which was halfway through the evacuation, I saw three fire marshals - I don't know who they were - walking out with team shirts," she said.
     "I thought maybe they have helped evacuate people and we've given them a shirt. It doesn't seem to be what happened.
     "We don't know how many team shirts were ..

Village security beefed up after Australia theft

Minutes after completing a 6-3, 7-5 ATP Toronto Masters final win over Kei Nishikori for his 66th career title, Novak Djokovic had already shifted his focus to the Rio Olympics.
     The world number one, who claimed his fourth Canadian title with a command performance over Asia's top player lasting less than 90 minutes, will waste no time in heading south to Brazil for the weekend start of the Summer Games.
     "It's the biggest event in the history of the sport, so to be part of it is already a huge privilege and honour that I will cherish, as I did in Beijing and London Olympic Games," said the holder of a leading 30 Masters 1000 trophies.
     "I had an honour of carrying the flag for my country in London 2012, one of the most unique and unforgettable moments of my life. So I look forward to that, honestly, just being part of it.
     "I'm approaching the Olympic Games as any other tournament. I'm trying to respect the same kind of preparation and routine that I have with my team 

AFP

AFP

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