Pope Francis today asked God to "convert the hearts of those who sow death and destruction" following a series of deadly attacks by the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria.
	During his weekly audience in St. Peter's Square, the pontiff prayed for "eternal rest to the victims" and "consolation to their relatives" after suicide attacks in the regime's coastal heartland that killed more than 150 people on Monday.
	Francis said almost all the victims of the seven explosions targeting bus stations, hospitals and other civilian sites in the seaside cities of Jableh and Tartus were "unarmed civilians". Eight of them were children.
	More than 300 people were wounded in the attacks on strongholds of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
	IS claimed the blasts in a statement, saying they were in retaliation for Syrian regime and Russian air strikes against jihadists.

Pope prays to 'convert hearts' of IS jihadists

PTI Automatic

US President Barack Obama arrived in Japan today for a Group of Seven summit, kicking off a historic visit that will also take him to the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima.
	Obama was joining other leaders from the club of rich democracies for a gathering set to be dominated by the lacklustre state of the global economy.
	Heads of state and government from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and host Japan were also making their way to Ise Shima, a mountainous and sparsely populated area 300 kilometres southwest of Tokyo, whose mainly elderly residents rely chiefly on tourism and cultured pearls.
	Security was tight across the region, with thousands of extra police drafted in to patrol train stations and ferry terminals, and to direct traffic on the usually quiet roads during the two-day meeting.
	Tokyo said it was taking no chances in the wake of terror attacks that struck Paris and Brussels in recent months.
	Dustbins have been removed or sealed and coin-operated lockers blocked ..

World leaders gather in Japan ahead of G7

France expressed its "deepest regret" today at a decision by the Egyptian authorities to expel a journalist working for the French Catholic daily La Croix.
	Correspondent Remy Pigaglio was put on a plane out of the country "for no reason", the newspaper's publication director Guillaume Goubert told AFP.
	Pigaglio "was returning from holidays in France on Monday when he was detained by airport security," he said.
	"After a night in the cells, he was expelled for no reason, although all his papers were in order," Goubert added.
	"France deeply regrets this decision by the Egyptian authorities," said a foreign ministry statement.
	Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault discussed the issue with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry yesterday, it added.
	President Francois Hollande raised the question of media freedom during his visit to Egypt in April, the statement added.
	Goubert said airport police had confiscated Pigaglio's passport and mobile phone and that it was hours before he was ...

Egypt expels journalist working for French Catholic daily

France today said it has dipped into its strategic oil reserves due to blockades at refineries as power workers threatened to join gathering protests against a labour law reform.
	Police fired water cannon to disperse activists blocking an oil depot in the northeast, but six out of eight of France's refineries were still either at a standstill or had sharply reduced their output.
	The head of the oil industry federation (Ufip) said that with a fifth of petrol pumps running dry, it had begun using strategic reserves.
	"For the past two days, since there have been operational problems at the refineries and blockades of depots, we have... been using reserve supplies," Francis Duseux told French radio.
	France has nearly four months of fuel reserves, but the announcement that they are already being tapped heaps further pressure on President Francois Hollande's deeply unpopular Socialist government.
	The CGT union, locked in an increasingly bitter struggle with the government, has ...

Strike-hit France dips into fuel reserves

A Thai man who says he found 700,000 methamphetamine pills - with a street value of nearly USD six million - in a bush, drove the local price of the drug down after handing them out to his friends for free, police said today.
	Prachaub Kanpecth, who normally collects rubbish and forest honey, was charged yesterday with possession and intent to supply after police caught him with 500,000 meth tablets, known as yaba or "crazy drug", at his home in central Ayutthaya province.
	The 41-year-old told officers he found the tablets after watching a group of men in a pick-up truck leave a large package in some shrubbery along the road, district police said.
	Police opened an investigation after a glut of tablets flooded the local market - going for an unusually cheap USD 3. Yaba pills normally cost around USD 8 each. But by the time he was arrested yesterday, Prahuab had already given away 200,000 tablets, said police, who are still investigating the case.
	"He claimed he has been giving [the .

Thai forager who found $6m pill stash 'gave them away' to pals

Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko has been freed after nearly two years in a Russian prison and is expected in the Ukrainian capital Kiev shortly, several sources in the Ukrainian presidency have said.
	Savchenko was expected to land in Kiev this afternoon, one source told AFP, while two more sources said that the 35-year- old was expected to be decorated by President Petro Poroshenko.
	Earlier in the day two alleged Russian soldiers, Aleksandr Aleksandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, sentenced by Ukraine to 14 years in prison for fighting in the rebel-held east, left Ukraine, opening the way for a swap with Savchenko, Yerofeyev's lawyer Oksana Sokolovska said.
	"Yerofeyev and Aleksandrov are no longer in Ukraine, which means that the pardoning has taken place," Sokolovska said.
	"They have already crossed Ukraine's border."
	Savchenko's sister Vira said she was waiting for Nadiya's return home.
	"We are waiting for a statement from the presidential administration," she wrote on Facebook, ...

'Jailed pilot freed by Russia, expected in Kiev shortly'

At least seven migrants have drowned off the Libyan coast after the heavily overcrowded boat they were sailing on overturned, the Italian navy said today.
	The navy said 500 people had been pulled to safety and seven bodies recovered, but rescue operations were continuing and the death toll could rise.

Seven migrants dead in shipwreck off Libya: navy

A Stockholm district court today maintained a European arrest warrant against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over a 2010 rape allegation, rejecting his lawyers' request to have it lifted.
	"The court considers that Julian Assange is still suspected of rape... And that there is still a risk that he will abscond or evade justice," it said in a statement.
	Swedish prosecutors issued the arrest warrant because they want to question Assange about the rape allegation, which he denies.
	The 44-year-old Australian sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in June 2012 after exhausting all his legal options in Britain against extradition to Sweden.
	Assange's lawyers requested the lifting of the warrant after the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued a non-binding legal opinion on February 5 saying his confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy amounted to arbitrary detention by Sweden and Britain.
	Both Britain and Sweden have angrily disputed the group's findings.
	"The court ..

Stockholm court maintains European arrest warrant agst Assange

Barack Obama fielded questions today on everything from rap and weed smoking to his good looks at a lively meeting with young Vietnamese, who see the US leader as a far cry from their staid Communist rulers.
	The US President, on the final leg of a three-day trip to Vietnam before flying to Japan, held one of his trademark town hall gatherings with hundreds of youngsters in the country's buzzing commercial and creative capital Ho Chi Minh City.
	The president received a huge cheer as he took to the stage in a one-party authoritarian state where politics is opaque and young people's voices are rarely heard.
	Suboi, one of the country's best known female rap artists, serenaded Obama with Vietnamese lyrics about whether people are really happy if they have lots of money.
	Seemingly delighted with the exchange, Obama praised the journey of hip-hop "which started out as an expression of poor African Americans" and became a "global phenomenon".
	He then appeared to take a thinly veiled ...

Young Vietnamese quiz Obama on rap, weed and good looks

The daughter of one of five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing late last year has called on US authorities to help end her father's "unofficial and illegal" detention in China.
	Four booksellers working for a Hong Kong publishing house which specialised in gossipy works about Chinese leaders went missing from various locations in October, with another disappearing at the end of December.
	They all reappeared eventually in mainland China.
	The disappearances fuelled growing unease in Hong Kong over the erosion of freedoms in the semi-autonomous city, which was handed back to China from Britain in 1997.
	"It has now been eight months since my father and his colleagues were taken into custody. I still haven't been told where he is, how he's been treated, or what his legal status is," Angela Gui said at a US congressional hearing yesterday in Washington DC.
	Her father Gui Minhai, a Swedish national and co-owner of the Mighty Current publishing company, failed to return from a holiday 

Daughter of missing Hong Kong bookseller calls for US help

Russian high jump Olympic champion Anna Chicherova today vowed to clear her name after testing positive for doping at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, casting doubt on her participation in Rio.
     Russia's Olympic Committee (ROC) said Tuesday that 14 of its athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics -- including Chicherova and nine other medallists -- tested positive in new tests on samples given during the Games, as Moscow faces allegations of state-organised doping.
     "For me it's the most complete shock. I can't explain how it could have  happened," said Chicherova, who hopes to compete in August's Rio Games if Russia's team is allowed to enter.
     Chicherova is the reigning Olympic high jump champion after winning gold in London in 2012. She won bronze in Beijing.
     "I was always sure what supplements and medicines I was using," she told AFP.
     "I hope I can defend my name as clean."
     The announcement came after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said that 31 athletes 

Russian Oly high jumper calls positive test 'complete shock'

A deal has been reached to bring far-right former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party into Israel's governing coalition pushing it further to the right, negotiators said today.
	The agreement, confirmed by Tourism Minister Yariv Levin to public radio and Lieberman's spokesman to AFP, will expand Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition to 66 lawmakers and make Lieberman defence minister.
	Lieberman's spokesman said the deal would be signed in parliament, at 1330 IST.
	Besides Lieberman becoming defence minister and another member of his party becoming immigrant absorption minister, the government agreed to allocate approximately USD 363 million to pensions of elderly Israelis, including immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Lieberman's largest support base.
	"These are the two major issues that are important to our constituency, and significant achievements," Lieberman's spokesman told AFP.
	Netanyahu has sought to ease fears over Lieberman's ...

Deal reached for far-right Lieberman to join Israel govt

French police fired water cannon today to disperse scores of activists blocking a northeastern oil depot, as pumps ran dry and unions stepped up strikes in a bitter battle over labour reforms.
	With a fifth of petrol stations in France running low, police moved in to break a blockade at the depot in Douchy-les-Mines near the Belgian border that had been in place since Thursday.
	"They cleared away all our barricades. The depot was unblocked without confrontation," said Willy Dans, a spokesman for the local branch of the SUD union.
	"The police moved in quickly. They used water cannon. We got the feeling they were tense," Dans told AFP.
	Watched by around 80 striking workers, firefighters extinguished burning tyres that were blocking roads and sending thick plumes of smoke billowing into the air.
	Most petrol stations in the area were empty, forcing motorists to hop over the border to Belgium to fill up, reported an AFP photographer on the ground.
	The blockades are part of a wave of ..

Strike-hit France smashes blockades as fuel runs dry

Brazil's Congress early today approved a deficit spending plan proposed by the interim government of President Michel Temer after 16 hours of debate.
	The government says it is facing a record 170.5 billion reais (USD 48 billion) primary budget deficit in 2016, far higher than suspended president Dilma Rousseff's earlier fiscal target of a 97 billion reais deficit.
	The new deficit target reflects what the economy team says is the significantly worse financial picture uncovered after Rousseff's departure.
	The primary deficit, a key indicator for creditors, measures the difference between government spending and revenue, excluding interest payments on debt.
	To try and balance the books, Temer has proposed austerity measures and bringing efficiency to the bloated government.

Brazil congress approves deficit spending proposed by interim

Suicide bomber kills 10 near Afghan capital: interior

The Afghan Taliban today announced influential religious figure Haibatullah Akhundzada as their new leader after confirming supremo Mullah Akhtar Mansour's death in a US drone strike.
	"Haibatullah Akhundzada has been appointed as the new leader of the Islamic Emirate (Taliban) after a unanimous agreement in the shura (supreme council), and all the members of shura pledged allegiance to him," the insurgents said in a statement.
	It added that Sirajuddin Haqqani, an implacable foe of US forces, and Mullah Yakoub, the son of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, were appointed his deputies.
	Haibatullah was one of two deputies under Mansour, who was killed in a US drone strike on Saturday, the first known American assault on a top Afghan Taliban leader on Pakistani soil.
	Mansour's killing is a major blow to the militant movement just nine months after he was formally appointed leader following a bitter power struggle, and sent shockwaves through the leadership.
	Haibatullah's appointment comes .

Afghan Taliban say Haibatullah Akhundzada appointed new leader

The man accused of gunning down nine African American churchgoers in South Carolina last year will face two death penalty trials, after federal prosecutors announced they would seek capital punishment.
	Dylann Roof, 22, allegedly joined an evening Bible study class at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, then shot participants with a .45-caliber Glock handgun. Three people survived the shooting.
	He has been indicted for the killings in both state and federal court. It is not yet clear when the federal trial will begin.
	"Following the department's rigorous review process to thoroughly consider all relevant factual and legal issues, I have determined that the Justice Department will seek the death penalty," US Attorney General Lynch said in a statement yesterday.
	"The nature of the alleged crime and the resulting harm compelled this decision."
	In a separate filing in US District Court in Charleston, federal prosecutors listed several aggravating factors they ...

Charleston church shooter faces death penalty in federal trial

Survivors of the American nuclear bombing of Hiroshima will be present when US President Barack Obama lays a wreath at ground zero this week, reports said today.
	Former United States prisoners of war captured by the Japanese will also attend the event, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, with US officials hoping their presence will remove any impression it is an apology.
	Obama will offer a floral tribute and make comments in front of a cenotaph for atomic bomb victims on Friday, becoming the first sitting US president to visit the city.
	Earlier this week, he told Japanese television he will not say sorry for the bombing.
	American airmen launched the world's first atomic strike when they bombed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, causing the deaths of about 140,000 people.
	Tens of thousands were killed by the fireball that the powerful nuclear blast generated, with many more succumbing to injuries or illnesses caused by radiation in the weeks, months and years afterwards.
	The southern city of ...

A-bomb survivors to attend Obama's Hiroshima memorial

Afghan Taliban say Haibatullah Akhundzada appointed new

Beleaguered Tokyo 2020 Olympic organisers will be hoping for some warm words of comfort from the International Olympic Committee when senior officials arrive for talks today.
     Controversy has once again cast a shadow over Japan's preparations for the 2020 Games after French prosecutors launched an investigation into $2 million in payments allegedly paid to help Tokyo secure the Olympics.
     John Coates, chairman of the IOC's Tokyo 2020 coordination commission, attempted to deflect attention away from potentially sticky issues on previous visits, such as last year's row over the cost of the main stadium.
     As scandal-hit Tokyo organisers sweat over the French probe into cash funnelled into a Singapore bank account, said to have been paid to the son of disgraced former athletics chief Lamine Diack, Japanese officials will be more grateful than ever for the usual IOC platitudes.
     However, Coates and his team are likely to face tough questions over the alleged bribery ...

Scandal-hit Tokyo seeks crumbs of comfort from IOC

A breakaway European Super League is still being discussed in football's corridors of power, according to the sports executive involved when talks took place earlier this year.
     Charlie Stillitano of the International Champions Cup (ICC) held discussions with Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool amid reports Europe's leading clubs wanted a potential competition in which they would be guaranteed to feature regardless of on-pitch results.
     The ICC oversees lucrative friendly fixtures involving many of those teams and, while Stillitano recognises his company are in no position to create a Super League, he says it is "fact" others are debating one.
     "We cannot in any way, shape or form make a Super League," Stillitano said yesterday.
     "We are not the architects of this discussion. We know for a fact that everyone's talking about it - there's the ECA (European Club Association), there's UEFA - and looking for a way to improve things.
     "If ..

AFP

AFP

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