Wales and unsung hero Hal Robson-Kanu completed a stunning fightback to beat Belgium 3-1 in Euro 2016 and reach their first major tournament semi-final.
     The victory last night in Wales' first ever participation in a European Championship finals sets up a mouthwatering duel between their talisman Gareth Bale and his Real Madrid team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo when the tournament's last British representatives face Portugal in Lyon on Wednesday.
	Radja Nainggolan gave Belgium the lead in the quarter-final in Lille, but Ashley Williams brought Wales level before a dazzling strike from Robson-Kanu, whose contract with English second-tier club Reading expired on Thursday.
	A late header by substitute Sam Vokes wrapped up a historic victory for Wales.
	"Dreams, don't be afraid about dreams, because four years ago I was as far away from this as you can imagine and look what has happened," said Wales manager Chris Coleman, who succeeded his late friend Gary Speed as manager in 2012.
	"If you 

Wales fight back to reach historic semi-final

PTI Automatic

World number one and defending champion Novak Djokovic was facing Wimbledon humiliation before rain saved him from his worst defeat at the tournament since 2008.
     Three-time winner Djokovic, who is halfway to the first calendar Grand Slam in 47 years, yesterday dropped the first two sets of his third round clash against American 28th seed Sam Querrey 7-6 (8/6) 6-1.
	But after just 73 minutes of action, rain sent the pair running for cover off Court One, giving 12-time major winner Djokovic welcome sanctuary before play was called off for the day.
	By the end of yesterday, which had seen just three hours of action on outside courts, only 15 of the scheduled 32 ties had been completed.
	That led organisers to decide that for the first time since 2004, and only the third time in history, play will take place on the middle Sunday.
	Djokovic, who has an 8-1 record over Querrey, has made at least the quarter-finals on his last seven visits to Wimbledon since losing to Marat Safin in the 

Djokovic facing Wimbledon humiliation as Sunday play confirmed

Australians began voting in national elections today with conservative leader Malcolm Turnbull the slight favourite ahead of Labor's Bill Shorten, although opinion polls point to it being a close race.
	Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (local time) with some 15.6 million electors taking part in a mandatory ballot across the huge country, with a final survey putting Turnbull, who has campaigned on economic management, marginally ahead.
	After eight weeks on the hustings, a Newspoll published in The Australian showed his Liberal/National coalition 50.5 to 49.5 percent in front on a two-party basis, while a poll in the Sydney Morning Herald had them in a dead heat.
	Shorten's Labor needs to pick up an estimated 19 seats in the 150-seat parliament to secure the 76 it needs to govern in its own right.
	The coalition, which headed into the election with a comfortable majority, can afford to lose as many as 13 seats and still hold power.
	Turnbull called an election early because ...

Too close to call as polls open in Australian elections

Palestinian militants fired a rocket from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, causing material damage but no injuries, the army said.
	"A rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel and hit in the city of Sderot, causing damage to a building," a statement from the military read. "No injuries have been reported."
	Israeli media said the rocket had hit a kindergarten.
	Medics said they treated two people for shock.
	No group in Gaza claimed responsibility for the attack, which came hours after Israel announced a lockdown on the West Bank city of Hebron and cuts in monthly tax payments made to the Palestinian Authority, following a wave of deadly attacks on Israelis.
	Yesterday's rocket is the thirteenth projectile fired from the Gaza Strip -- which is run by the Islamist movement Hamas -- to have hit Israel since the start of 2016.
	Smaller, more radical Islamist groups have often been blamed, with Hamas forces either unwilling or unable to prevent the rocket ...

Gaza rocket hits Israeli city, none wounded: army

A coalition air strike near the Islamic State bastion of Mosul in Iraq has killed two of the jihadist group's senior military leaders, the Pentagon has said.
	"Coalition forces conducted an air strike against two ISIL senior military commanders on June 25 near Mosul, Iraq, resulting in their deaths," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement yesterday, using an acronym for the IS group.
	"The precision strike killed Basim Muhammad Ahmad Sultan al-Bajari, ISIL's deputy minister of war, and Hatim Talib al-Hamduni, an ISIL military commander in Mosul."
	Cook said al-Bajari was a former Al-Qaeda member who joined the IS group and oversaw the June 2014 offensive to capture Mosul.
	He "also led the ISIL Jaysh al-Dabiq battalion known for using vehicle-borne IEDs (homemade bombs), suicide bombers and mustard gas in its attacks."
	Al-Hamduni was a military commander in Mosul and the head of military police in the region, Cook said.
	Mosul is Iraq's second-largest city and became 

2 'senior' IS military leaders killed in Iraq strike: Pentagon

Up to 116 civilians and as many as 2,581 combatants were killed in US counterterror strikes outside Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria from 2009 to 2015, US intelligence officials announced today.
	The Director of National Intelligence provided fatality estimates for 473 strikes between January 1, 2009 and the end of 2015 "against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities," in a much-anticipated report into American plane and drone strikes.
	It is the first time the administration of President Barack Obama has published a toll from its secret strikes outside of "active" war zones, and the release comes after rights groups and the media for years demanded a better accounting of such military actions under Obama.
	Critics have long said US drone strikes kill far more civilians than the administration claims, and today's release is unlikely to change that narrative.
	"The figures released today should be considered in light of the inherent limitations on the ability to determine the 

US says up to 116 civilians killed in strikes outside warzones

Separate air raids in northern Syria by regime aircraft and warplanes of the US-led international coalition killed at least 25 civilians today, a monitoring group said.
	President Bashar al-Assad's air force attacked a crowded market in Aleppo city's rebel-held district of Tariq al-Bab, killing 11 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
	Another five people were killed in an air raid on the southern rebel-held neighbourhood of Sheikh Said, it said.
	The Britain-based monitor said rebel bombardment of government-held districts killed two civilians in the city that has been divided since July 2012.
	It also said a coalition raid on the northern city of Manbij, where US-backed fighters are battling the Islamic State jihadist group, killed two women and their seven children.
	Kurdish and Syrian Arab fighters have been advancing on Manbij, an important waypoint between the Turkish border and Raqa, the jihadists' de facto capital.
	The conflict in Syria has killed more ...

Syria air raids kill 25 civilians: monitor

Myanmar's new civilian government should prioritise ending deep discrimination against the Rohingya and other Muslims in restive Rakhine state, a United Nations envoy said today.
	Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, was speaking after a nearly two-week visit to the Buddhist-majority nation, her first since Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy party took office several months ago, ending five decades of military rule.
	Suu Kyi, a globally celebrated champion for human rights, has faced criticism for not taking a stronger stance on the Rohingya's plight as she leads her country into a new era.
	Lee's visit included a trip to strife-torn Rakhine, a western region scarred by bouts of religious bloodshed between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012.
	The state has since been almost completely divided on religious grounds, with Muslim communities trapped in camps or isolated communities and subject to a range of restrictions on their movements and access to basic services and ...

Myanmar must 'urgently' end abuses against Muslims: UN envoy

The favourites to succeed Prime Minister David Cameron pushed today for a delay in initiating Britain's talks to leave the EU as French President Francois Hollande insisted "Brexit" cannot be cancelled or delayed.
	In further signs of economic fallout from last week's shock vote, the government also warned that Britain will likely abandon a key promise to achieve a budget surplus by 2020, while no-frills airline EasyJet announced contingency plans to ensure its European operations after Brexit.
	Britain has been plunged into extraordinary political turmoil since Britons voted by 52 per cent in favour of leaving the European Union, with the ruling Conservatives and opposition Labour party in disarray and the country deeply polarised.
	As he outlined his bid for Cameron's job today, top Brexit campaigner Michael Gove said he had "no expectation" that Article 50 - the formal procedure for leaving the EU - would be invoked this year.
	Justice minister Gove, who torpedoed fellow anti-EU ...

Cameron's potential successors push for Brexit delay

Israel is to reduce the amount of tax funds transferred monthly to the Palestinian Authority, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today, as part of a measures following deadly anti-Israeli attacks.
	"Netanyahu has ordered that the entire amount of support for terrorists and their families be deducted from the tax revenues that Israel transfers monthly to the Palestinian Authority," his office said.
	Israel transfers around USD 127 million in customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through Israeli ports monthly.
	The statement from Netanyahu's office accused the PA of supporting the families of militants with funds transferred "by various laundering methods".
	An Israeli official put the amount of money at "tens of millions of shekels".
	The decision comes hours after suspected Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli man, and a day after a 13-year-old girl was stabbed to death in her home in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba.
	It was announced 

Israel cuts Palestinian tax transfers after attacks: PM office

Istanbul's towering Camlica mosque will receive its first worshippers today, as Turkey unveils the latest grand project emblematic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's big ambitions.
	Erdogan personally supervised the controversial construction of Turkey's biggest mosque - designed to accommodate up to 60,000 worshippers and visible to all from its perch on a hill on Istanbul's Asian side.
	Its inaugural prayers will be held this night to mark Laylat al-Qadr, one of the holiest nights in the month of Ramadan, when sins are forgiven.
	But as the 15,000-square-metre mosque remains unfinished, with several more months of work ahead, worshippers will pray in the courtyard.
	Under construction since 2013, the project - which also also includes a library, a museum of Turkish Islamic art, design workshops and conference rooms - has forged ahead despite protests from architects, urban planners and environmentalists.
	A legal bid to axe it was rejected by the courts, but several separate legal .

Istanbul's vast Camlica mosque holds first prayers

A Syrian air force pilot was captured by Islamist rebels after his plane crashed near Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said today.
	The aircraft crashed in the mountainous region of Qalamun, northwest of the Syrian capital, the Britain-based monitoring group said.
	"It is not known whether it crashed due to a technical fault or it was hit by rebels," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
	The pilot ejected himself and landed near the town of Jayrud, 60 kilometres northeast of Damascus, he added.
	Nusrat Al-Mazlum, a small group of Islamist rebels, captured the pilot and handed him over to another group, said Abdel Rahman, who was not able to identify the second group.
	The Saudi-backed rebel group Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), which controls areas east of Damascus, claimed it had hit the plane - identified as a Russian-made Sukhoi Su-22 - and captured the pilot.
	Jaish al-Islam's spokesman, Islam Alloush, posted a photo and a video of the pilot on his Twitter 

Syrian regime pilot captured by rebels, says monitor

Tajikistan announced today it had awarded the Italian company Salini Impregilo a USD 3.9 billion contract to build a hydroelectric dam that threatens to raise tensions in Central Asia.
	The ex-Soviet country's presidential press service said a state commission approved on June 27 the Rogun project seen as vital to the water-rich republic's efforts to step up electricity production.
	The dam on the Vakhsh river, which at a planned 335 metres would be the tallest dam in the world, was begun during Soviet times but faces major opposition from downstream Uzbekistan.
	Tajikistan's more populous and militarily powerful neighbour depends on water that flows through Tajikistan for its agricultural sector.
	Uzbekistan's septuagenarian President Islam Karimov has in the past even warned of potential wars over water in the economically depressed and occasionally volatile region.
	Tajikistan views Rogun as a means of ending regular winter power outages in the republic and increasing electricity ..

Tajikistan awards contract to build USD 3.9 bn mega-dam

European Commission chief Jean- Claude Juncker has vowed that free movement will remain a cornerstone of the EU after the outgoing British prime minister insisted that reforming it would be "key" to post- Brexit ties.
	"I will not change that (free movement) because that is a basic freedom of the EU," Juncker said in Bratislava alongside Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose country assumed the bloc's six-month presidency today.
	Juncker invited British authorities to "make their intentions clear" following the June 23 vote to leave the EU.
	"I would like to make it perfectly clear: no negotiations before notification. We have no time to lose," Juncker said, referring to the requirement London formally state it is leaving to begin talks on departing the EU.
	Yet Prime Minister David Cameron told EU leaders Tuesday they should consider reforming rules on freedom of movement, a Downing Street source said.
	Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said Cameron told a leaders' ...

Free movement in EU 'will not change': Juncker

A Pakistani teenager allegedly burned alive for refusing a marriage offer actually committed suicide, police said today, in a statement slammed by a prominent rights activist and the girl's father.
	The death of 19-year-old Maria Sadaqat made international headlines after claims she was tortured then set alight in the country's conservative northeast for refusing the proposal.
	Hundreds of women are murdered by their relatives in Pakistan each year on the pretext of defending what is seen as family honour.
	Sadaqat was said to have been attacked by a group of people near the summer hill resort of Murree, outside the capital Islamabad, in late May, and died several days later.
	At the time police said she gave a statement before she died naming the man who had allegedly proposed, as well as his father, among others as her attackers.
	But today police discounted her dying words, claiming Sadaqat and the man had been in a "relationship" for years and that in thousands of text messages ...

Pakistan police rule suicide for teen burned alive

A Hungarian court handed jail terms of between one and three years to a group of mostly Syrian migrants today for illegal border-crossing during a riot last year soon after Hungary sealed its border with Serbia.
	Nine Syrians and one Iraqi were convicted by the court in Szeged (160 kilometres south of Budapest) of participation in clashes with police at the border on September 16, a day after authorities closed the border with a razor-wire fence.
	The toughest sentence, a three-year jail term, was given to a man who spoke to the crowd with a megaphone during the disturbances.
	Six other men received prison terms of 14 months as well as four-year expulsions from Hungary. A further two men and one woman received suspended jail terms on account of their ill health.
	Tough new laws passed last September by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government made it a crime to illegally cross the border, punishable by between one and five years in prison.
	Today's first-instance verdict brings to a ..

Hungary jails 10 migrants over border riot

Italian police said today they had raided nine premises in the country's biggest Chinatown as part of an investigation into a criminal gang suspected of being behind attacks on North Africans.
	The raids were carried out in the Tuscan town of Prato, home to one of the biggest Chinese communities in Europe and a booming textile industry notorious for sweatshop exploitation.
	Today's raids were carried out under warrants issued for criminal association and commissioning racially-motivated violence.
	Police said nine individuals were under investigation but that they had not been arrested or charged with any crime. They are all linked to a Chinese cultural association called "The City of the White Stag."
	A police statement said the head of the White Stag group had organised vigilante-style patrols in Prato which had led to attacks on Arab immigrants with no criminal connections.
	Giuseppe Nicolosi, the prosecutor in charge of the probe, told a press conference he was looking into five ..

Police raids as tensions mount in Italy's Chinatown

Support grew today for British interior minister Theresa May's bid to succeed premier David Cameron and lead the country out of the EU, after Boris Johnson's shock withdrawal from the race.
	Dozens of Conservative MPs have backed her bid to take over from Cameron, who announced his resignation after losing a referendum last week in which 52 per cent of Britons voted to quit the EU.
	Britain has been plunged into extraordinary political turmoil since the Brexit vote, with the ruling Conservatives and opposition Labour party in disarray and the country deeply polarised.
	In further signs of economic fallout, finance minister George Osborne warned that London will likely abandon a key budget promise, while budget airline EasyJet announced plans to ensure its European operations after Brexit.
	May supported the "Remain" campaign but has assured "Leave" supporters she will proceed with Brexit although she said she would not begin formal talks with the EU before the end of the year.
	The ...

Theresa May early favourite in race to lead 'Brexit' Britain

Expensive and high-maintenance, baby elephants have become the ultimate status symbol for Sri Lanka's wealthy elite - a trend that has horrified conservationists and prompted a government crackdown.
	Elephants are venerated in mainly Buddhist Sri Lanka and capturing them is illegal.
	Yet authorities say more than 40 have been stolen from national parks over the last decade and are being kept as pets.
	"The new rich wannabes want an elephant at home for prestige," said Asian elephant expert Jayantha Jayewardene, recalling an old Sri Lankan aristocratic tradition of keeping herds of the wild beasts.
	"This is for social climbing."
	Earlier this year, the gift of a baby elephant to the visiting New Zealand Prime Minister John Key sparked anger from animal rights activists who said it was cruel to separate her from her family, and the incident has not been repeated.
	Worse, Jayewardene says elephants are almost certainly dying to fuel the illegal trade.
	"The maternal instinct in ...

Sri Lanka's latest status symbol, a baby elephant

The parents of an American woman who disappeared in Afghanistan four years ago while pregnant and backpacking with her husband have appealed to the Taliban to release the couple and their two young children.
	James and Lyn Coleman, who live in Pennsylvania, believe the insurgent group is holding their daughter, Caitlan, her Canadian-born husband Joshua Boyle and two sons, to whom she gave birth in captivity.
	"We desperately want to be with and old our daughter and grandsons, whom we long to meet and care for," said Coleman in a short video, sitting next to his wife, whose hair was covered in a black veil.
	Coleman addressed his plea directly to the new leader of the Afghan Taliban, Haibatullah Akhundzada, whose predecessor was killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan in May, and his deputies.
	He asked them "to show mercy" and release the family. "Please allow Caity and her family to come home," he said.
	"May God reward your good deed and see that it is returned to you in kind, Eid ..

Parents of captive US mom ask Taliban for her release

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said today she will abide by decisions of the FBI and prosecutors on whether to bring charges over presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's use of personal email while at the State Department.
	"The recommendations will be reviewed by career supervisors and by the FBI director, and they will present it to me and I fully expect to accept the recommendations," Lynch said at a conference in Aspen, Colorado.
	The announcement by Lynch was pushed to the fore after her impromptu meeting with former president Bill Clinton at the Phoenix, Arizona airport this week touched off a political firestorm, with Republicans arguing that the encounter compromised the integrity of the investigation.
	Lynch said it was "important to make it clear that that meeting with President Clinton does not have a bearing on how this matter will be reviewed, resolved, and accepted by me.

AFP

AFP

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