Senior envoys from world and regional powers gathered once again in Vienna today in an effort to salvage stumbling efforts to halt Syria's civil war.
	US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov -- diplomacy's odd couple, at loggerheads over much else in the world -- are chairing the meeting, which began shortly after 0700 GMT.
	At the gathering, the 17-nation International Syria Support Group (ISSG) will renew its call for a nationwide ceasefire and immediate humanitarian access to besieged areas.
	But headaches were likely to persist over the third plank of the plan -- a call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and the rebels to agree on a framework for a political transition.
	US officials travelling with Kerry say Washington still insists Assad should go, with an August 1 deadline for settling on the framework under which he does so.
	But the Syrian president, bolstered by military support from Russia and Iran, has shown no sign he is ...

World powers meet to save Syria peace hopes

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Leicester City's incredible Premier League fairytale reached a joyous crescendo as thousands of fans turned the city blue while revelling in the club's title parade on Monday.
     For two weeks since Claudio Ranieri's side were crowned one of the most unlikely champions in English football history, the city of Leicester hasn't stop celebrating and the party climaxed beneath sunny skies 24 hours after the Foxes finished their campaign with a draw at Chelsea.
     After starting the season as 5,000-1 outsiders for the title, Leicester defied the odds in stunning fashion and being hailed by a crowd of over 100,000 was a fitting finale for Ranieri's squad and the club's Thai chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, who soaked up the celebrations with his family.
     "The city is here. It's something special. I'm very glad," Ranieri told Sky Sports.
     "This is because the team played with their soul and their hearts. The people understood this. It's unbelievable. I can only say thank you to 

Thousands turn out as Leicester parade trophy

The Rio Olympics in August will give Brazil's battered economy only a limited shot in the arm, Moody's credit rating service said Monday.
     "Rio de Janeiro's upcoming summer Olympic games will give the city some lasting infrastructure improvements, as well as a temporary boost in tax revenues, but once the events are over, the country will wake up once again to its deepening recession," Moody's Investors Service said in a report.
     Spending USD 7.1 billion on infrastructure around Rio will equal all spending for 12 cities during Brazil's hosting of the 2014 World Cup, the report added.
     With Brazil set to remain in deep recession throughout this year, however, the Games will not change the underlying weaknesses, Moody's said.
     One of the biggest injections into the economy -- construction spending -- is already almost over, the report noted.
     Sectors set to get a big lift from the 350,000 tourists and 10,000 athletes the government expects in August include ...

Olympics to give battered Brazil economy limited boost: report

French President Francois Hollande today said he would not withdraw the labour market reforms which have sparked two months of street protests and led to an unsuccessful attempt to bring down the government.
	"I will not give way because too many (previous) governments have backed down," the president said in an hour-long interview with Europe 1 radio.
	France is facing a week of strikes in protest at a package of reforms the government says will make the notoriously rigid labour market more flexible, but which opponents say will erode job security.
	Hollande said he defended the right of people to protest, but insisted the reforms were necessary.
	"I prefer that people remember me as a president who made reforms rather than a president who did nothing," he said.
	Hollande also promised tougher action against troublemakers who have infiltrated street protests against the reforms, damaged property and provoked confrontation with riot police.
	Many of the demonstrations against the ...

French president says won't back down on labour market reform

Manchester United blamed a security contractor on Monday over a dummy bomb that caused the abandonment of Sunday's final Premier League game against Bournemouth and left the club facing a multi-million-pound bill.
     The incident at Old Trafford triggered angry calls for action, with Tony Lloyd, Manchester's mayor and police and crime commissioner, branding it "outrageous" and a "fiasco".
     United vice-chairman Ed Woodward said the device had been left in error by a sub-contractor following an exercise to train dog handlers at the stadium, but was recorded as having been removed.
     "The contractor had signed the device as having been recovered along with the 13 other devices at the end of the exercise," Woodward said in a statement.
     "That device could not have been detected by sniffer dogs on the routine match-day search of the 100 Club (executive lounge), as it contained no explosives and was used in an exercise training handlers not dogs."
     The fake device, thought .

Man Utd blame contractor for fake bomb 'fiasco'

Tiger Woods said Monday he hopes to make his comeback from injury at next month's Quicken Loans National -- but highlighted his tough road to recovery by hitting three shots into the water before watching journalists.
     His Tiger Woods Foundation helps host the tournament, which this year takes place at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland from June 23-26, the week following the US Open.
     Woods, who has not played since undergoing two separate surgical procedures late last year, stressed that while he hoped to play at Congressional, his comeback would be contingent on his fitness.
     "Health? I feel good. Thank you. My kids are sick, but I'm good," Woods quipped to reporters at the event's media day.
     "On a serious note, I have been practicing at home. I'm progressing nicely. I'm hoping to play (the Quicken Loans). I don't know that I'm going to play. That's the overriding question I keep hearing: 'When are you coming back? When are you playing?' I get it all .

Woods hoping to return next month

Joe Root was named 'Test Player of the Year', 'Limited Overs Player of the Year' and Fans' 'Player of the Year' at England's annual awards ceremony on Monday.
     The Yorkshire batsman, 25, hit two centuries in England's Ashes triumph last year, scored four one-day tons and was his team's leading scorer at the recent World Twenty20 tournament in India.
     He overcame competition from Stuart Broad and Ben Stokes for the Test award and edged Jos Buttler and David Willey in the Limited Overs category, with both prizes decided upon by a media poll.
     "It's been a remarkable year for our international teams," said England and Wales Cricket Board CEO Tom Harrison.
     "The women's Ashes attracted record attendances and unprecedented levels of media interest, our physical disability team won the inaugural Physical Disability World Cup in Bangladesh and our men's team regained the Ashes, won a major Test series in South Africa and reached the final of the World T20 tournament.
     ...

Joe Root claims England awards triple

Brent crude pushed towards USD 50 a barrel in Asia today, boosted by supply disruptions from the escalating Canadian wildfires and armed attacks against oil facilities in Nigeria.
	Wildfires burning around the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, have been rapidly moving north, forcing firefighters to shift their efforts to protecting existing oil facilities.
	In Nigeria, Africa's biggest crude producer, troops have made several arrests following the attacks on an offshore oil facility as the government yesterday moved to avert a labour strike over petrol prices.
	"People are looking for any signs possible to confirm that supply is decreasing so any news of unplanned outages gets the market particularly excited," said BMI Research oil and gas analyst Peter Lee.
	"A break above USD 50 in the next few days is very possible. In the second half of the year, oil is likely to hold between USD 45 to USD 50 a barrel," he told AFP.
	A report by US banking giant Goldman Sachs has .

Brent creeps toward USD 50 as crude prices hit new 2016 highs

A US federal court has ordered a Mississippi town to desegregate its schools by consolidating them after a 50-year battle to maintain de facto racial segregation, officials have said.
	Black and white students in middle and high school in the town of Cleveland, Mississippi -- population 12,000 -- are largely separated six decades since a landmark Supreme Court decision ended segregation in US schools, the Justice Department said in a statement yesterday.
	The court's 96-page judgement made on Friday found the local school authority's decades of delay had "deprived generations of students of the constitutionally guaranteed right of an integrated education."
	"This failure, whether born of good faith, bad faith, or some combination of the two, has placed Cleveland in the unenviable position of operating under a desegregation order long after schools in bastions of segregation... Have been declared unitary," the decision said.
	Although a middle and high school in the town teach African .

Court orders US town to desegregate schools

Venezuela's government gave itself wide powers over security, food distribution and energy supplies under a decree establishing a state of emergency for at least 60 days.
	The measures, published in the government gazette yesterday, set out in detail an announcement President Nicolas Maduro made last Friday as his administration struggles with a capsizing economy.
	Venezuela is facing hyperinflation, food and electricity shortages, and political confrontation between the unpopular Maduro and a new opposition-led parliament seeking to oust him through a referendum.
	Maduro's decree gives soldiers authority to keep public order and distribute and sell food.
	Local civilian committees currently tasked with handing out food will also be authorised to help the army and police "maintain public order and guarantee security and sovereignty in the country."
	Individuals, companies or non-governmental organisations in Venezuela with links to foreign entities are to be put under scrutiny and ...

Venezuela boosts govt powers over security, food, energy

Pope Francis has ruled out seeking the fast-track resignation of a French cardinal accused of failing to inform the authorities about an alleged paedophile priest, the French newspaper La Croix reported today.
	In an interview with the Catholic daily yesterday, the pope said it would be "contradictory, imprudent" to seek Cardinal Philippe Barbarin's resignation at this stage.
	"We will see after the end of (any) trial. But (to seek his resignation) now would be to imply guilt," the pontiff said.
	Francis said he believed Barbarin had "taken the necessary measures, he took things in hand. He is brave, creative, a missionary. We should now wait for the outcome of the civilian judicial procedure."
	Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, France's second largest city, is facing a storm over his handling of allegations against Father Bernard Preynat, accused of sex attacks on four boy scouts between 1986 and 1991.
	Preynat was placed under formal investigation in January, but his lawyer argues ..

Pope rules out early resignation for French cardinal

The US military doesn't have a "great picture" of the situation in Libya, but small teams of US special operations forces continue working in the war-torn country to gain intelligence, a spokesman has said.
	The Pentagon was forced to acknowledge in December that a team of US commandos had gone to Libya after they were kicked out the country by local forces who posted a photograph of the men on Facebook.
	The United States still has a "small presence" in Libya tasked with trying to identify the players and which groups might be able to assist the United States in its mission to combat the Islamic State group, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters yesterday.
	Exploiting Libya's power vacuum, the jihadists have established a firm foothold in the North African country, especially in the coastal city of Sirte.
	"This small presence of US forces has been trying to identify players on the ground, and try and find out exactly what are their motives and what they are trying to do," ...

US commandos continue to gain intel in Libya: Pentagon

The Islamic State group has continued losing control over territory across Iraq and Syria, a Pentagon spokesman said today, including almost half of what it had once held in Iraq.
	The Defence Department had previously estimated that IS fighters had lost control of about 40 percent of the territory they claimed in Syria and about 10 percent of the land they held in Syria.
	Those tallies had gone up in recent weeks, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said.
	"The number right now in Iraq is about 45 percent of the territory they once held has been recovered," Cook said.
	"The number in Syria is anywhere between 16 to 20 percent."
	IS jihadists stormed across large parts of Iraq and Syria in early 2014, meeting little resistance from Iraqi security forces and exploiting the chaos in civil-war-torn Syria.
	Since August 2014, the United States has led an international coalition fighting back against the IS group, using a combination of air strikes and training and equipping local partners.
	IS .

IS has lost nearly half the area it once claimed in Iraq

A trove of Marilyn Monroe's belongings including handwritten letters, shoes and jewelry is expected to fetch up to USD 4 million when it goes under the hammer in Los Angeles in November.
	More than 500 lots of her personal possessions -- the largest collection ever offered for auction -- are being sold by the estate of her acting coach, Lee Strasberg, who died in 1982.
	"Marilyn was a complex and beguiling figure in her lifetime, leaving generations of adoring fans to speculate, infer, and debate about her life," Strasberg's wife Anna said in a statement.
	"What has resulted is a prismatic kaleidoscope image built upon both fact and fantasy."
	The collection includes an alligator skin men's accessory case owned by Monroe's second husband, the baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, as well as a number of Monroe's handbags, fur coats, cigarettes and a tube of used Revlon lipstick dated from 1947.
	"This is one of the most important and historic auctions of Marilyn Monroe ever. This diverse ...

Rare collection of Monroe's belongings to be auctioned

The Church of England, which has an ethical investment policy, holds shares in Google's parent group despite criticism of the Internet giant's tax affairs, the church's annual report said today.
	Alphabet Inc is listed as the most valuable equity holding of the church's USD 10 billion investment fund in 2015, although its exact value was not revealed.
	Google is among a number of multinational companies which have been criticised for failing to pay enough tax, a practice that has been condemned in general by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
	"There has always been the principle that you pay the tax where you earn the money," the leader of the Church of England told the BBC last year.
	Earlier this year Google agreed to pay 130 million pounds to Britain following a government inquiry into its tax arrangement.
	In a foreword to the annual report, Welby says the church's "ethical and responsible investment" reflects its responsibilities to the common good of society.
	But the Times 

Church of England defends Google investments

US Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Cairo on Wednesday for talks with President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, amid a stark crackdown on political freedoms in Egypt.
	State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Kerry would fly to Cairo after talks on the Syrian crisis in Vienna and before heading to Brussels to meet the NATO allies.
	The spokesman did not say what would be on the agenda in Cairo beyond "a range of bilateral and regional issues."
	Last week US government auditors criticised Kerry's department for authorising arms sales to Egypt without properly checking they would not be used in rights abuses.
	On Sunday, a Egyptian court jailed 152 people who had dared to protest against Sisi's government, the latest stage in what rights groups say is an authoritarian assault on dissent.

US top envoy Kerry to visit Egypt's Sisi

Five months after ushering in a landmark climate deal, diplomats kicked off a new round of talks today tasked with converting a political blueprint into a workable plan.
	"The whole world is united in its commitment to the global goals embodied in the Paris Agreement," the UN's outgoing climate chief, Christiana Figueres, told the 196-nation UN climate body at the start of a 10-day session in Bonn.
	"Now we must design the details of the path to the safe, prosperous and climate-neutral future to which we all aspire."
	That remains a daunting task, negotiators and experts agreed.
	The targets set are hugely ambitious, and the rift between rich and developing countries -- sufficiently reconciled to seal the deal in December -- remains just beneath the surface.
	The new goal of capping global warming at "well below" two degree Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) means nothing less than weaning the world economy off fossil fuels within a few short decades.
	It will also require mobilising ...

New UN climate talks aim at fleshing out Paris deal

Dubai airport has become a transit point for smugglers bringing high-value narcotics into Europe, the Italian police said today.
	Two smugglers have been arrested in recent days at Rome's Fiumicino airport after arriving via Dubai, they said.
	One was an 19-year-old Slovak with two kilos (4.4 pounds) of cocaine stashed in a false bottom of his suitcase who had departed from Rio de Janeiro, while the other was a Nigerian who hid vials of cocaine in his socks.
	The street value of the two seizures was put at around half a million dollars (441,000 euros).
	The smugglers do not leave Dubai's transit lounge, as this would expose them to customs checks, the police said in a press release.
	Instead, they use the Dubai-Europe leg and the tough anti-drug reputation of the United Arab Emirates to mask the country where they began their trip.
	"The trick aims at providing the smuggler with an itinerary that looks unsuspicious to police officers," they said.

'Dubai airport a transit point for drugs traffic to Europe'

Russia's economy contracted by 1.2 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same quarter last year, in a tentative sign of stabilisation, the state statistics service said today.
	The latest GDP figures compared favourably to the 3.8 percent contraction in the last quarter of 2015 and were better the forecast by Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev who had expected a decline of 1.4 percent in the first quarter.
	Russia has seen its economy slump into a profound recession, partly on the back of the fall in oil prices and Western sanctions over Moscow's role in the Ukraine conflict.
	London's Capital Economic consultancy said the year-on-year figure confirmed "the acute phase of the crisis is now over."
	"The annual growth rate could return to the positive territory towards the end of the year," it said in a note to clients. "Even so, the recovery looks set to be disappointing."
	Oleg Kouzmin, Renaissance Capital's economist for Russia and CIS countries, agreed that the .

Russian economy shrank by 1.2 percent in first quarter

Former Moroccan Salafist prisoners protested on today outside parliament to demand the reopening of an investigation into bombings in Casablanca in 2003, and accused the government of "shirking its responsibilities".
	Some 150 former prisoners and their families answered a call by the "joint committee for the defence of Islamist detainees" to demand that the probe into the bombings that they called "the biggest lie Moroccans have ever known".
	Salafists adhere to a strict Sunni interpretation of Islam.
	Today's demonstration comes 13 years to the day after the wave of suicide bombings in the country's commercial capital killed 33 people.
	In the wake of the attacks, the authorities arrested more than 8,000 people and more than 1,000 were later sentenced, including 17 given the death penalty.
	"We demand a transparent and impartial investigation into the events of May 16, 2003," committee coordinator Osama Boutahir told AFP.
	"We ask Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane to meet this ...

Moroccan ex-inmates demand probe into Casablanca blasts

UN special envoy Angelina Jolie Pitt urged the international community today to respond to Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II with generosity and not the "politics of fear".
	In a speech in London, the Oscar-winning Hollywood actress said there was a "duty that falls on all of us" to help those fleeing their homes, warning the alternative was "chaos".
	The American star also had criticism for US presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has proposed building a wall to stop Mexican immigrants and called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States.
	"It is hard to hear that this is coming from somebody who is pressing to be an American president," she said in a question and answer session after her speech.
	"America is built on people coming together for freedom, especially freedom of religion."
	Conflicts, including the five-year war in Syria, have fuelled a global refugee crisis, with 60 million refugees and displaced people across the ..

AFP

AFP

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