Base metals, Crude oil: Plunge on oversupply

China is the world's largest energy consumer so any indication of how its economy is performing acts as a key driver for oil prices

Oil mixed as traders await China data, Opec meeting

Press Trust of India

North Korea apparently failed with an attempted missile launch today, the latest in a series of setbacks for a ballistic weapons programme that aspires to threaten the US mainland.
	South Korea's defence ministry detected the dawn launch effort, which Japan condemned as an unacceptable and "provocative" act.
	The ministry declined to speculate on the missile type, but military sources cited by local media said it was a powerful, medium-range "Musudan" that has already undergone three failed launches this year.
	UN resolutions ban North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology, although it regularly fires short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast.
	Today's effort came with tensions still running high on the divided Korean peninsula following the North's fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch a month later.
	"We believe that it was a failure," said Jeon Ha-Gyu, spokesman for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff
	"As to why and how it failed, ..

S Korea says North fails with attempted missile launch

PTI Automatic

Jose Mourinho made peace with Bobby Charlton as Manchester United's new manager met the Old Trafford icon at the club's Carrington training ground on Monday.
     Charlton has previously been a harsh critic of Mourinho and was understood to have objected to his potential appointment when United were looking for a successor to Alex Ferguson in 2013.
     The 78-year-old, a member of United's board of directors, also criticised Mourinho in 2012 for poking Barcelona's assistant coach Tito Vilanova in the eye during a heated touchline clash, saying at the time: "A United manager wouldn't do that. Mourinho is a really good coach, but that's as far as I would go really.
     "He pontificates too much for my liking. He's a good manager, though."
     But, despite Charlton's criticism, United finally turned to Mourinho last week, hiring the former Chelsea manager after the failed regimes of David Moyes and Louis van Gaal.
     With Mourinho being taken on a tour of United's training base, it .

Mourinho makes peace with Charlton on United visit

West Ham's Dimitri Payet scored a last-gasp wonder free-kick to help Euro 2016 hosts France snatch a dramatic 3-2 victory over Cameroon on Monday.
     The attacking midfielder stepped up on the stroke of regulation time to curl a magnificent free-kick past Cameroon goalkeeper Fabrice Ondoa.
     France opened the scoring through Paris Saint-Germain's Blaise Matuidi before Cameroon immediately drew level thanks to Porto striker Vincent Aboubakar.
     Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud handed the home side the lead again just before half-time, Eric Choupo Moting equalising before Payet's cherry on the cake.
     "There are things we can improve but it was our first match after a long period without competition for some players," said France coach Didier Deschamps.
     "It's the first game that Adil Rami and Laurent Koscielny have played together in a long time and we were up against a quality team.
     "Cameroon played in a new system with power and speed in midfield and up front," said 

Payet helps Euro hosts France past Cameroon

Two years after their traumatic World Cup semi-final exit Brazil are haunted by the past as they head into the Copa America Centenario aiming for their first title in nearly a decade.
     In previous eras, Brazil would arrive at the Copa America brimming with confidence, with the only debate revolving around who they could expect to face -- and defeat -- in the final.
     Between 1997 and 2007, Brazil won four out of five editions of the tournament, helping to make them the most successful nation since 1975, when the Copa America began to be held regularly after an eight-year absence.
     Yet as Brazil prepare to embark on this year's tournament, the familiar swagger is gone. The humiliating 7-1 thrashing by Germany in 2014 has left a team in search of an identity, torn between a more pragmatic, defensive approach and the hardwired instincts towards flamboyance.
     So far, under the second managerial tenure of 1994 World Cup-winning captain Dunga, the results have been mixed. A ..

Neymar-less Brazil in search of Copa identity

Lionel Messi must shrug off the gruelling demands of a globe-trotting schedule if he is to fulfill his dream of leading Argentina to a first major tournament victory in 23 years at the Copa America Centenario.
     The Barcelona superstar heads into the tournament having barely had a moment's rest for four years, with commitments for club and country meaning he has not had a summer off since 2013.
     The punishing nature of Messi's commitments are illustrated by his hectic preparations for the Copa, where Argentina open against Chile at Santa Clara's Levi's Stadium, the home of the San Francisco 49ers, on June 6.
     Messi left Spain after Barcelona's Copa del Rey victory over Sevilla on May 22 in order to be in Argentina for the Albiceleste's friendly against Honduras in San Juan five days later.
     The 28-year-old was then due to return to Spain after that friendly to attend the opening of his trial for tax fraud this week.
     Following that hearing, Messi faces another ...

Time is now for weary Messi and Argentina

England captain Alastair Cook praised his side's determination after a series-clinching win over Sri Lanka.
     Monday's nine-wicket success in the second Test at the Riverside gave England an unbeatable 2-0 lead in the three-match campaign.
     The fourth and, as it turned out, final day's play also saw the 31-year-old Cook become the youngest player, and first from England, to score 10,000 Test runs during his 47 not out.
     That he had a second innings was due to some long-awaited Sri Lankan resistance with the bat.
     Their first innings 101, made in response to England's 498 for nine declared featuring Moeen Ali's Test-best 155 not out, followed equally meagre totals of 91 and 119 during an innings defeat in the first Test at Headingley.
     But with Dinesh Chadimal scoring 126 and skipper Angelo Mathews making 80, Sri Lanka's vastly-improved second innings 475 left England needing 79 for victory.
     "The 10,000 has been a milestone that has driven me over the last few ..

Milestone man Cook savours Sri Lanka series win

A French court has sentenced a gardener to 30 years in jail, with no possibility of parole for 20 years, for the murder of his British former boss and lover.
	Jean-Louis Cayrou, 54, was convicted yesterday of murdering Patricia Wilson at her home near the southwestern city of Toulouse, in an act portrayed as the work of a "jealous" man who could not accept that Wilson had ended their relationship.
	The 58-year-old woman was last seen alive on August 17, 2012, at her home in the village of Vabre-Tizac, on her return from a trip to England.
	Although police found her clothes and traces of blood, Wilson's body was never found.
	Cayrou remained impassive as a jury in the town of Rodez returned its verdict after more than four hours of deliberations.
	He had steadfastly maintained his innocence, saying that while he did visit Wilson's house on the night of her disappearance, he had arrived on the same scene found by police.
	"I loved Patricia," he told the court, asking the jury to restore 

French gardener jailed for British lover's murder

Belize has said that Guatemala is to deport eight of its nationals who were arrested after allegedly hopping off a boat onto a Guatemalan beach without authorisation.
	The incident occurred amid revived tensions between the two Central American neighbours, fuelled by a longstanding border dispute and a fatal shooting incident last month.
	"It is expected that the group will be deported back to Belize by road later this week," the Belizean government said in a statement yesterday.
	It said the eight had been allowed to go to the Belizean embassy in Guatemala City to secure travel documents ahead of their deportation.
	Last Friday, the Belizean government announced that Guatemala had arrested the group as it alighted from a boat on Punta Manabique, a beach on a Guatemalan peninsula jutting into the Caribbean that is about 25 kilometers (17 miles) from Belize's coastline.
	Guatemala's navy had reported the group possessed Belizean fishing licenses but no boat registration nor a ...

Guatemala to deport eight arrested Belize nationals

Mexican football player Alan Pulido was rescued after he fought one of his kidnappers and took away his phone to call police hours after his abduction, authorities said today.
	Pulido, 25, cut his right wrist when he punched a glass pane on a door as he tried to flee before police saved him in a home in his northeastern hometown of Ciudad Victoria late yesterday, Tamaulipas state prosecutor Ismael Quintanilla said.
	Pulido, who plays for Greek giants Olympiakos and was part of Mexico's 2014 World Cup squad, was kidnapped late Saturday by four armed men as he returned from a party with his girlfriend in the crime-plagued region.
	The woman was allowed to leave while Pulido was taken to a house, where he eventually found himself alone with one of his abductors on the first floor, Quintanilla said.
	"They traded blows. (The phone) belonged to the criminal. He takes it and calls (emergency number) 066," Quintanilla told Imagen radio.
	"It all happened very quickly."
	The police swooped in 

Mexico footballer Alan Pulido freed after fighting kidnapper

Authorities temporarily placed the White House on lockdown today after someone threw a metal object over the fence around the presidential mansion, officials said.
	Reporters working at the White House said a woman had been arrested.
	"An individual threw a metal object over the north fence line at the White House," the Secret Service said in a statement after the approximately three-hour lockdown ended.
	"Secret Service uniformed division officers immediately apprehended the individual without incident."
	Officials said they conducted "protective sweeps" of the object but determined it was not a threat.
	"The White House has returned to normal operations," the Secret Service said.
	President Barack Obama had been attending a Memorial Day service at Arlington National Cemetery when the incident occurred.

White House on alert after 'metal object' hurled over fence

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani today launched restoration work at Kabul's historic Darul Aman Palace, whose bombed out ruins have long symbolised the suffering caused by decades of conflict.
	The once-grand hilltop palace at the edge of Kabul was also the venue of Ghani's cabinet meeting on Monday, the first such official gathering there in nearly a century.
	The building's lion-headed buttresses are broken, its colonnades pockmarked by bullets, the metal sheets of its roof crumpled.
	Up to USD 20 million will be spent on restoring the former glory of the palace, built by Afghan King Amanullah Khan in the 1920s, Ghani's office said, calling the project a symbol of national pride.
	"Today we are returning to our past... To set the foundation for our future," Ghani said at the inauguration of the project.
	"We are determined to reconstruct the historical structure from the budget of the Afghan government."
	The palace fell victim to the carnage of the early 1990s as rival mujahideen ...

Restoration starts at Kabul's war-battered palace

A public backlash intensified today after zookeepers killed a critically endangered gorilla holding a young boy who had fallen into its enclosure in a horrifying incident captured on video.
	Harambe, a 17-year-old Western lowland silverback gorilla, was shot after the four-year-old crawled through a barrier and tumbled into the enclosure on Saturday.
	Video footage shows the creature dragging the boy through a water-filled moat while onlookers scream.
	At one point, the huge animal stops and appears to hold the child's hand before pulling him out of view.
	While generally acknowledging that zookeepers had few options, critics slammed the zoo and the child's parents.
	"The enclosure should have been surrounded by a secondary barrier to prevent this," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) wrote on Twitter.
	"This tragedy is exactly why PETA urges families to stay away from any facility that displays animals as sideshows for humans to gawk at."
	Zoo officials said they were .

Backlash over shooting of gorilla at US zoo

Deep, cold ocean currents from the North Atlantic blunt the effect of global warming on Antarctica and slow the rise of sea levels, according to a study published today.
	This icy insulation of the snowy continent -- covered by a sheath of ice up to four kilometres (2.5 miles) thick -- could last for centuries, the research published in Nature Geoscience said.
	That's good news to hundreds of millions of people in low-lying regions who are threatened by seas set to rise up to a metre by the end of the century, according to the latest report by the UN climate science panel.
	Newer studies suggest the ocean waterline could go up even more, pushed by surface water that expands as it warms, along with runoff from glaciers and two huge ice sheets.
	One of those ice sheets sits atop Greenland. The other is on West Antarctica, a sliver of the larger continent that is warming faster than the rest.
	If East Antarctica were melting at the same rate, the impact on human settlements along ...

Oceans delay warming of Antarctic waters: study

NATO's parliamentary assembly today called on members of the Western military alliance to be ready to respond to the "potential threat" of Russian aggression against them.
	The assembly issued a unanimous declaration of proposals after a three-day meeting in Tirana, ahead of a landmark NATO summit in Warsaw in July.
	"The challenge from Russia is real and serious," said Michael Turner, the US president of the assembly, which gathered around 250 lawmakers from the 28 member states.
	The declaration expressed regret over "Russia's use of force against its neighbours and attempted intimidation of (NATO) Allies".
	It said this had "left NATO no choice but to consider the prospect of aggressive Russian action against an Alliance member as a potential threat, and to adopt measured, proportionate responses".
	NATO cut all practical cooperation with Moscow following Russia's Ukraine intervention and annexation of Crimea, but the US-led alliance has said it will hold formal talks with Moscow ..

NATO urged to ward off 'serious' Russian challenge

A prominent Crimean Tatar journalist on the Moscow-annexed peninsula today said she had received a warning from prosecutors over extremist views for highlighting the plight of Tatar children whose parents have been detained.
	Liliya Budzhurova, who is deputy director of the Crimean Tatar television channel ATR and also works for AFP, posted the official warning from prosecutors on her Facebook page.
	A spokesman for regional prosecutors told AFP that some Facebook posts by Badzhurova and an article she wrote for a Ukrainian website were considered to contain "extremist appeals and to inflame the atmosphere".
	Experts will conduct an analysis of her output, possibly leading to "an administrative or criminal probe," said the spokesman Alexander Shkitov.
	Budzhurova, an influential member of the Crimean Tatar community in Crimea, spoke out against the growing number of arrests of Crimean Tatars and wrote an appeal in support of the children of those detained by the authorities.
	"Soon ...

Crimean Tatar journalist warned of 'extremism' over FB post

Latin America's biggest airline LATAM said today it will suspend its flights to crisis-hit Venezuela for an indefinite period, following a similar move by German carrier Lufthansa.
	Chile-based LATAM Airlines group and its Peruvian and Brazilian subsidiaries decided to cut the flights "due to the complex macroeconomic situation that the region is currently going through," it said in a statement.
	It said challenging economic conditions in Latin America were prompting changes to its domestic and international routes.
	"In this context, the companies will suspend, temporarily and for an indefinite period, their operations in Simon Bolivar international airport in Caracas," the statement said.
	Venezuela is in economic and political crisis, with a shortage of dollars making it difficult for businesses to operate.
	LATAM said it is cutting all three of the major routes it currently operates to Caracas: from Sao Paulo in Brazil, Lima in Peru and Santiago in Chile.
	The Sao Paulo flight has 

Big airline LATAM suspends flights to Venezuela

Prime Minister David Cameron put aside recent animosity with London Mayor Sadiq Khan to make a joint call today for Britain to stay in the European Union, as personal attacks from within his own party intensified.
	Cameron told a campaign event in London that he and the new Labour mayor backed Britain's EU membership because "we love our country and we want our country to be the best it possibly can," just weeks after accusing Khan of repeatedly appearing with Muslim extremists.
	"I'm proud to be here with the Labour mayor of London," said Cameron.
	"He is the son of a bus driver and it makes an important point about our country: in one generation someone who is a proud Muslim, a proud Brit and a proud Londoner can become mayor of the greatest city on earth."
	Last month, Labour MPs had branded Cameron racist after he told parliament he was "concerned" about Labour's mayoral candidate who had "appeared again and again and again" on stage with "extremists".
	Khan admitted there were ...

British PM, London mayor bury hatchet for pro-EU rally

The head of Egypt's press syndicate and two colleagues were in custody today after being charged with harbouring journalists and publishing false news, a lawyer and one of them said.
	The arrests, which Amnesty International denounced as a "draconian clampdown" on media freedom in Egypt, comes weeks after the arrest of two reporters on allegations of incitement to protest.
	Union chief Yahiya Kallash had denounced the arrests earlier this month and told a news conference that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's government is "escalating the war against journalism and journalists".
	Yesterday, the Cairo prosecutor summoned Kallash, union secretary general Gamal Elbashy and the head of its freedoms committee Gamal Abd el-Rahim for questioning, the latter told AFP.
	Twelve hours later he charged the three with having "harboured fugitives" and "publishing false news", Abd el-Rahim and Elbashy's lawyer Abd al-Rady said.
	The prosecutor then ordered the release of the three on condition that ..

Egypt detains journalist union chief over 'false news'

Alastair Cook became the first England batsman to score 10,000 Test runs as his side sealed a series win over Sri Lanka at the Riverside today.
     England won the second Test by nine wickets with more than a day to spare to go an unassailable 2-0 up in the three-match series.
     Set 79 for victory after making Sri Lanka follow-on, England finished on 80 for one.
     Left-handed opener Cook was 47 not out and Nick Compton, who hit the winning runs 22 not out.
     His innings saw Cook score the five he needed to become just the 12th player of all time to make 10,000 Test runs.
     Fellow opener Alex Hales was 10 not out.
     Cook reached the landmark when he clipped Nuwan Pradeep for four through mid-wicket, having got off the mark with an edged single against left-arm spinner Rangana Herath.
     At 31 years and 157 days he was the youngest player ever to achieve the feat, beating the previous record of India great Sachin Tendulkar (31 years and 326 days).
     - Chandimal ...

Record-breaker Cook leads England to Sri Lanka series win

A surprise assault by the Islamic State group has trapped tens of thousands of terrified people on the Syrian border with Turkey, Doctors Without Borders said today, warning the situation was "unacceptable".
	Pablo Marco, the regional manager of the charity known by its French acronym MSF, said concerns were rising for a large civilian population less than five kilometres (three miles) from advancing IS jihadists.
	"We are talking about 100,000 people who are trapped a few kilometres from IS. They are terrified, there is nowhere to go," Marco said in a telephone interview with AFP.
	IS swept towards the last rebel strongholds of Marea and Azaz in Aleppo province on Friday, forcing thousands to flee towards the northern frontier.
	But Turkey has kept the border closed, leaving civilians stuck between the violent front line with IS to the east, the sealed border to the north, and the autonomous Kurdish canton of Afrin to the west.
	"These people are now in a very small area of four by ..

AFP

AFP

Page 1662 - Afp