Seven Ukrainian soldiers have died in the country's war-torn east over the past 24 hours in the biggest number of casualties in a single day this year, Kiev said today.
	"As a result of shelling, seven Ukrainian soldiers have died and nine received injuries over the past 24 hours," Oleksandr Turchynov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, said in a statement.

7 Ukrainian soldiers killed in past 24 hours in war-torn east

PTI Automatic

Three people died during clashes which erupted during opposition protests in two towns in western Kenya, police said.
	Two people died of gunshot wounds in the western town of Siaya, and one from a head injury after falling over while running from tear gas in Kisumu, also in the west.
	Police in Siaya opened fire "in self defence" after "a mob with catapults" approached a municipal office, according to a police statement, which said 29 officers were injured in the incident.
	Riot police equipped with shields and batons used tear gas and water canon to disperse protesters who also tried to gather in the capital Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa.
	The opposition protests, in their fourth week, are organised by the CORD party and aimed at forcing a change of leadership at the country's election commission ahead of polls due next year.
	CORD leader Raila Odinga believes the commission is biased, blaming it for his defeat by President Uhuru Kenyatta in the 2013 vote.
	The police ...

Three dead in Kenya protests: police

Switzerland's main telecom group Swisscom has been fined USD 72.5 million for abusing its dominant position in sports broadcasting, the Swiss competition authorities said today.
	The Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO) said Swisscom had gained a "dominant position in live broadcasting of games of Swiss football and ice hockey championships as well as of certain foreign football leagues on pay TV."
	This was mainly because one of its subsidiaries, Cinetrade, owns exclusive rights regarding the broadcast of sports content on Swiss pay TV, COMCO said.
	"Swisscom has abused this dominant position in several respects," it said, pointing out that the company for instance only granted competitors access to a reduced range of sports content.
	"With these practices, Swisscom has gained an advantage in the competition between TV platforms in an illicit manner," the competition authority said.
	Swisscom and Cinetrade insisted in a statement that they "refute these accusations and consider ... ..

Swisscom fined USD 72.5 mn for abusing dominant position

Libyan coastguards said they detained 550 people trying to reach Europe illegally by boat today, the second time in three days they have intercepted migrants in the same area.
	"Coastguards in the west who were patrolling off the Zawiya refinery today intercepted four large inflatables carrying around 550 illegal migrants," navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem said.
	Those detained were from "several African countries" and included three children and 30 women, eight of whom are pregnant, he told AFP.
	"The migrants have been handed over to the relevant authorities to be taken to detention centres," Qassem said.
	On Sunday, Qassem said that coastguards had intercepted seven vessels carrying around 850 migrants, again off Zawiya which is some 45 kilometres west of the capital Tripoli.
	The chaos in the North African country since Moamer Kadhafi's overthrow in 2011 has been exploited by people traffickers, with thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe from Libya just 300 kilometres ...

Libyans intercept 550 people in boats bound for Europe

Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah today dismissed an Israeli proposal for direct negotiations instead of a French multilateral peace initiative, calling it an attempt to "buy time".
	Hamdallah made the comments as he met French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who has held talks in Israel and the Palestinian territories this week to push Paris's peace initiative.
	"Time is short," Hamdallah said. "(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu is trying to buy time... But this time he will not escape the international community."
	Netanyahu has rejected the plan and called for direct negotiations.
	Valls told Netanyahu when he met him yesterday that he would discuss his proposal with French President Francois Hollande, but he has insisted that Paris plans to stick with its approach.
	The French initiative involves holding a meeting of foreign ministers from a range of countries on June 3, but without the Israelis and Palestinians present.
	An international conference would then be ...

Palestinian PM dismisses Netanyahu's direct talks proposal

Japan is on high-alert ahead of a Group of Seven summit with thousands of police on the streets of Tokyo and fanning out across the country as authorities boost security to unprecedented levels.
	The annual event, which takes place on Thursday and Friday, draws leaders from some of the world's richest nations, including US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
	Host Japan said it is taking no chances in the wake of the Paris and Brussels terror attacks, and Fukushima's operator said Tuesday that work at the crippled nuclear plant would be suspended during the talks.
	Up to 70,000 police are being deployed before the two-day meeting of the club of rich nations, with about one-third of the officers headed to Ise-Shima, an area between Tokyo and Osaka that is hosting the event.
	Thousands of other police will be on hand in Hiroshima when US President Barack Obama makes an historic visit to the atomic-bombed city on Friday, the National Police Agency said.
	Dustbins .

G7 host Japan on high-alert over terrorism threat

The death toll from a wave of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group in the heartland of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime has risen to 154, a monitor said today.
	More than 300 people were also wounded in the attacks yesterday in the Mediterranean coastal cities of Jableh and Tartus, some of them critically, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
	Most of the dead were civilians, among them eight children.
	The two cities, which are majority Alawite -- the offshoot of Shiite Islam followed by Assad -- had been relatively insulated from Syria's five-year civil war.
	IS claimed the blasts in a statement, saying they were in retaliation for air strikes by the regime and its Russian ally and threatening "more devastating and bitter attacks".
	The Syrian foreign ministry blamed "the regimes of hate and extremism" in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading supporters of rebels fighting to overthrow the regime.
	More than 270,000 people have been killed since the ...

'Death toll from IS bombings in Assad heartland hits 154'

Swiss financial regulators approved today the dissolution of Lugano-based BSI Bank over its links to a corruption scandal engulfing Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak.
	Swiss supervisor FINMA accused BSI, a merchant bank, of "serious breaches" of money-laundering regulations in its dealings with the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, which is at the heart of the corruption allegations.
	In the toughest punitive action yet announced in the affair, FINMA said in a statement it was approving the takeover of the merchant bank by Zurich-based private banking group EFG International on the condition that BSI is integrated "and thereafter dissolved" within 12 months.
	It ordered the seizure of 95 million Swiss francs (86 million euros/USD 96 million) of BSI's "illegally generated" profits.
	FINMA said it was investigating two former top managers, who were not identified, to determine what they knew about the illegal activities, warning that it may launch further probes.
	"In the case ..

Swiss approve dissolution of bank in Malaysia scandal

US President Barack Obama told communist Vietnam today that basic human rights would not jeopardise its stability, in an impassioned appeal for the one-party state to abandon authoritarianism.
	In a sweeping speech, which harked back to the bloody war that defined both nations but also looked to the future, Obama said that "upholding rights is not a threat to stability".
	Vietnam ruthlessly cracks down on protests, jails dissidents, bans trade unions and controls local media.
	But the US leader said bolstering rights "actually reinforces stability and is the foundation of progress", in his speech to a packed auditorium including Communist Party officials.
	The visit is Obama's first to the country and the third by a sitting president since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Direct US involvement in the conflict ended in 1973.
	Obama's visit has formally reset the relationship between the former foes with the lifting of a US arms embargo.
	Trade has dominated the trip, with ...

Obama implores Vietnam to embrace human rights

A Vietnamese activist today said he had been stopped by authorities from meeting Barack Obama as the US leader prepares to engage with rights campaigners in the tightly controlled communist nation.
	Obama is currently visiting Vietnam and is expected to meet civil society leaders, including some of the country's long-harassed critics, today morning.
	So far during his trip he has only lightly touched on the thorny subject of Vietnam's still dismal human rights record.
	Lawyer Ha Huy Son, who has defended multiple dissidents in court, said he had been invited to meet Obama at the US embassy in Hanoi today morning but had been stopped from going.
	"Security people have been guarding me at my home for the last two days," he told AFP. "Now they let me out but they have stopped me from going towards the road where the US embassy is."
	"They said I could go anywhere else but not to the embassy. And they are still following and watching me," he added.
	Activists on social media said two ...

Vietnam activist 'stopped' from meeting Obama

The head of security for the US Transportation Security Administration has been replaced amid questions about why he was paid USD 90,000 in bonuses when airport security lines were growing, a congressional committee has said.
	"Kelly Hoggan has been removed from his position as head of security at TSA, following our hearing on May 12 on mismanagement at TSA," the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced on its official Twitter account yesterday.
	"Despite significant security vulnerabilities, TSA's head of security took home USD 90,000 in bonuses over 13 months," the committee -- the House's main investigative body -- tweeted earlier this month, when it held a hearing on TSA's operations.
	Hoggan's removal from the key intelligence division at the TSA, which operates under the Department of Homeland Security, comes as wait times for security checks at US airports are prompting a public outcry.
	"Obviously, waiting 3 hours for what may be a 2-hour flight or a ...

TSA security chief replaced after criticism: officials

The leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine have called for a peace deal aimed at ending the separatist war in eastern Ukraine to be implemented "as quickly as possible", as fresh clashes erupted.
	The office of France's President Francois Hollande said in a statement yesterday that the leaders spoke over the phone and "recalled their commitment to the Minsk peace accords and their determination to do everything to ensure they are implemented in full as quickly as possible".
	The Minsk accords, signed in February 2015 with French and German mediation and in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, calls for a ceasefire along with a range of political, economic and social measures to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
	The call comes as a Ukrainian soldier was killed and three others injured in a mortar attack by pro-Russian insurgents in the country's east, where violence has persisted since the peace treaty.
	Ukrainian leader Petro Porochenko and German Chancellor ..

European leaders call for 'immediate' peace in Ukraine

Mexican authorities and independent experts today began the exhumation of more than a hundred bodies buried in pits in the central state of Morelos.
	Prosecutors announced that the 116 bodies in the mass grave -- located in the town of Tetelcingo, just south of Mexico City -- were buried on March 28, 2014.
	Activists are questioning the validity of the official record because authorities have files on only 88 bodies in the pits.
	The unfenced rural grave consists of two adjacent 10-meter (33-feet) deep holes covering an area about six meters in length and four in width.
	Morelos has been one of the Mexican states most affected by drug violence plaguing the country, including kidnappings and murders.
	"We recognize the tireless struggle of the relatives and victims' organizations of the more than 30,000 missing in this country that's sinking into barbarism," said Alejandro Vera, rector of the Autonomous University of the state of Morelos (UAEM), who started a program for those ...

Mexico begins exhumation of more than 100 bodies

Singapore's central bank on today said it was kicking out Swiss bank BSI, which has been linked to a global money-laundering scandal at Malaysia's state fund 1MDB that has embroiled Prime Minister Najib Razak.
	In a statement, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said it had also asked state prosecutors to investigate six senior executives of BSI Bank Limited including its former chief executive for possible criminal offences.
	Two Singaporean executives of the bank are already facing charges in the city-state, which is Southeast Asia's financial hub.
	The MAS said it has served BSI Bank with a "notice of intention to withdraw its status as a merchant bank in Singapore for serious breaches of anti-money laundering requirements, poor management oversight of the bank's operations, and gross misconduct by some of the bank's staff".
	It is the first time the MAS has cancelled the licence of a merchant bank since 1984, when the local branch of Jardine Fleming was shut down for ...

Singapore kicks out Swiss bank linked to Malaysia's 1MDB

Basic human rights are not a threat to Vietnam's future, Barack Obama told the country's communist leadership today during an impassioned appeal for the one- party state to abandon its authoritarian past.
	"It is my view that upholding these rights is not a threat to stability but actually reinforces stability and is the foundation of progress," he told delegates during a speech in Hanoi.

Obama tells Vietnam that rights are 'no threat to stability'

US President Barack Obama called today for territorial disputes in the South China Sea to be "resolved peacefully" as Vietnam baulks at Chinese actions in the bitterly contested waters.
	"Big nations should not bully smaller ones, disputes should be resolved peacefully," he told an audience in Hanoi, referring to the disputed maritime region.
	His remarks won loud applause from more than 2,000 delegates including top Vietnamese leaders.
	Washington and Hanoi have been drawn closer together through their mutual concern at Beijing's increasing assertiveness in the sea.
	China claims almost all the South China Sea and has rattled neighbours with a series of reclamation and construction projects - including airstrips - on reefs and islets.
	Vietnam and four other countries also have claims to parts of the sea.
	The United States takes no position on the competing territorial claims but asserts freedom of navigation and flights in the sea and has sent warships near Chinese-held ...

Obama calls for peaceful settlement of SCS disputes

Chinese state media today slammed the lifting of decades-old US arms embargo against Vietnam, saying the move was aimed at Beijing and calling Barack Obama's assurances to the contrary "a very poor lie".
	Obama announced the end of the 41-year-old ban on weapons sales to the United States' former foe in Hanoi yesterday, as Washington and Beijing jockey for influence in Asia and tensions mount in the strategically important South China Sea.
	Beijing is taking an increasingly assertive stance in the area, building up artificial islands with facilities capable of military use, while Washington has responded with "freedom of navigation" sail-bys and fly-pasts.
	Beijing claims almost the whole of the sea, while several of its neighbours have conflicting claims, including Vietnam.
	The arms sales decision "was not based on China", Obama said, but part of normalising ties with the ex-enemy.
	China's Global Times newspaper, which is close to the ruling Communist party, reported today that the 

Chinese media slam US lifting of Vietnam arms embargo

At least 11 people died in a landslide in a remote jade mining region of northern Myanmar with many more feared missing, authorities said today, in the latest deadly incident to hit the shadowy industry.
	"We have found 11 dead bodies so far. When the landslide happened, about 50 people were searching for jade," Nilar Myint, a local official from Hpakant in Kachin state, told AFP, adding that the rescue operation was ongoing.

'At least 11 dead in Myanmar landslide, many feared missing'

Oil extended losses in Asia today as a stronger US dollar and progress in controlling wildfires in Canada's crude-producing Alberta province dampened prices.
	Hawkish remarks by US Federal Reserve officials hinting at a June interest rate hike pushed up the greenback against major currencies.
	"A stronger US dollar continued to extend pressure on commodity prices," CMC Markets analyst Margaret Yang said in a note.
	A stronger US dollar makes dollar-priced commodities like oil more expensive, curtailing demand.
	At around 0930 IST, US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for July delivery was down 17 cents at USD 47.91.
	Brent North Sea oil, the European benchmark, for July was down 20 cents at USD 48.15.
	Prices have rebounded since plunging to near 13-year lows below USD 30 in February but are still well short of peaks of more than USD 100 a barrel reached in June 2014.
	There are market concerns that a supply glut may return following news of Canada lifting evacuation orders for ...

Oil prices continue dip with stronger dollar

All-rounder Moises Henriques earned a surprise recall Tuesday to Australia's Test squad for Sri Lanka after James Pattinson was ruled out injured, with Stephen O'Keefe included as a second spinner.
     Australia are embarking on their first Test tour of Sri Lanka in five years, as part of a two-month series that also involves five one-day internationals and two Twenty20s.
     Henriques was an unexpected choice, returning for the first time since 2013 with pacemen Pattinson and Peter Siddle both ruled out with back injuries.
     Nathan Coulter-Nile was also included in the 15-man squad for the July-August Test series, along with O'Keefe who was picked for last summer's final Test against the West Indies but overlooked for their two-match tour to New Zealand on green, seaming pitches.
     Pace spearhead Mitchell Starc returns to Test cricket after a six-month injury absence.
     "This squad has proven experience in sub-continental conditions," said national selector Rod Marsh.
     

Henriques gets surprise Australia call for Sri Lanka

A Baltimore police officer involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray, an African American man who later died in custody, has been acquitted of assault and other charges, raising questions about whether anyone will be held accountable for his death.
	The verdict by a Baltimore judge yesterday found Officer Edward Nero not guilty of four misdemeanors: second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and two counts of misconduct in office.
	The 25-year-old Gray was arrested April 12 last year after fleeing police, and suffered a broken spine while being transported in the back of a Baltimore police van, unsecured and with his hands and feet bound. He died a week later.
	Gray's treatment and death triggered violent riots in Maryland's largest city and fuelled a national debate about police brutality.
	The six police officers being tried over his death -- three white, including Nero, and three African Americans, including a woman -- claim it was an accident.
	The first case ended with a hung jury 

AFP

AFP

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