Chinese state-run media today played down North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un's pledge not to use nuclear weapons unless his country's sovereignty is threatened, saying that his pursuit of atomic arms remained dangerous.
	Beijing is Pyongyang's main diplomatic protector and source of trade and aid, but relations between them have become increasingly strained by the North's nuclear ambitions, and Kim has yet to visit his neighbour.
	The North's first ruling party congress in nearly 40 years formally endorsed Kim's policy of expanding the country's nuclear arsenal, after he said it would not use the weapons unless attacked, and would work for global denuclearisation.
	But the international community and the United Nations have long demanded an end to the North's nuclear and missile programmes.
	Kim's declaration "was made from the perspective that North Korea is now a nuclear state", China's Global Times newspaper, which is close to the ruling Communist party, said in an editorial.
	As ...

N Korea's nuclear attitude 'has not changed': China media

PTI Automatic

Michel Platini today resigned as UEFA president after his appeal against a ban from football activities failed though it was cut to four years.
     The Frenchman said he was resigning to pursue the case over a suspect USD 2 million payment in Swiss courts in a bid to clear his name.
     He has been UEFA president since 2007 and the FIFA ban upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport effectively ended his career as one of the most powerful figures in sport.
     The CAS rejected the appeal saying it was not convinced about the "legitimacy" of the payment ordered by ex-FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
     It did cut the ban from six years to four and reduced a fine from 80,000 Swiss francs (USD 80,000) to 60,000 Swiss francs.
     "I note today's decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport but I consider it a profound injustice," Platini said in a statement.
     "This decision inflicts a suspension for which the length stops me, de facto, and by luck, from being a candidate in the .

Platini quits as UEFA chief after ban appeal fails

Cambodian police arrested eight rights activists, including two foreigners, today as they stamped down on protests sparked by the detention of their colleagues in a case linked to a shadowy political sex scandal.
	Eight people, including the deputy director of prominent local rights organisation Licadho and two foreigners - a Swede and a German who also work for the group - were detained as they tried to rally outside a prison in Phnom Penh, Am Sam Ath of Licadho, told AFP.
	"I don't know yet what charges they are facing," he said, adding that the foreigners had been sent to immigration police.
	"The government is scared by its own shadow," he added.
	Rights workers and activists dressed in black uniforms were calling on authorities to free five colleagues charged last week in connection with a sex scandal that has engulfed Cambodia's political opposition.
	Opposition lawmaker Kem Sokha, the deputy leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, has been accused of having an affair with 

Swede, German among activists arrested in Cambodia

Tens of millions of Filipinos jammed into schools and other voting stations today to elect a new president, with anti-establishment firebrand Rodrigo Duterte the shock favourite after an incendiary campaign full of profanity-laced threats to kill criminals.
	The elections will also see Filipinos choose more than 18,000 other positions, down to the local village councillor level, in another milestone for a nation that has struggled to cement democracy after emerging from dictatorship three decades ago.
	Duterte, the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao, has hypnotised millions with his vows of brutal but quick solutions to the nation's twin plagues of crime and poverty, which many believe have worsened despite strong economic growth in recent years.
	The candidate's critics have warned he will plunge the country into another dark period of dictatorship and turmoil, after a "People Power" revolution ended the regime of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
	Duterte, a pugnacious ...

Duterte favourite as Philippines holds presidential polls

A Japanese sushi chef who served Kim Jong-Il claims North Korea's current leader has no intention of waging war with the United States.
	The chef, who goes by the pseudonym Kenji Fujimoto, told a Japanese tabloid magazine he was invited to Pyongyang last month for the first time in almost four years, and that Kim Jong-Un himself picked him up at the airport.
	"I was surprised when I looked at the driver's seat," Fujimoto was quoted as saying in a piece written under his byline in the weekly Shukan Gendai.
	"Field marshall Kim Jong-Un himself was driving, he'd come to check up on me."
	Fujimoto, one of the few non-Koreans to have met the young leader, said that he arrived in Pyongyang on April 12 to have dinner with Kim, who greeted him with a hug and asked about feelings in Japan towards the secretive state.
	Fujimoto, who is said to carry business cards emblazoned with the words 'Kim Jong-Il's chef', reportedly replied "with blunt honesty: it's terrible. Since the start of the year ..

Sushi chef says Kim Jong-Un has 'no plans for war'

At least 10 people died across the Philippines in election day violence today, as gunmen attacked polling stations, ambushed vehicles and stole vote counting machines, police said.
	However authorities described the violence as isolated incidents and that the overall conduct of the elections -- which will see tens of millions of people cast their votes for president and 18,000 other positions -- was peaceful.
	In the worst attack, seven people were shot dead in an ambush before dawn in Rosario, a town just outside of Manila known for political violence, Chief Inspector Jonathan del Rosario, spokesman for a national police election monitoring task force, told AFP.
	In Guindulungan, a small impoverished town in the strife-torn southern Philippine province of Maguindanao, where warlord-politicians have their own private armies, a voter was shot dead inside a polling station, police said.
	A bystander was also killed when a grenade was launched at a market in Cotabato, a major city in the 

10 dead in Philippine election day violence

Islamic jihadists killed three police officers in a bomb and gun attack on a police station in the Somali capital today, city authorities said.
	A suicide car bomber and a gunman also died, as did two civilians, apparently shot by police responding to the attack claimed by Somalia's Al-Qaeda-aligned Shebab. Other civilians were also wounded.
	"The attack involved two Shebab members, one of them driving a car loaded with explosives, and another tried to storm the police headquarters but was shot dead. We have lost three policemen," said Abdifatah Omar Halane, spokesman for the Mogadishu city administration.
	He added that two civilians were also shot dead.
	"Two other civilians were shot dead separately at a nearby street," Halane said, adding that the police believed to be responsible had been arrested.
	The Shebab militants are fighting to overthrow the internationally-backed government in Mogadishu, and launch regular attacks in the city.

Police, civilians killed in Mogadishu attack

North Korea's first ruling party congress for nearly 40 years formally endorsed leader Kim Jong-Un's policy of expanding the country's nuclear arsenal, as South Korea today dismissed his proposals for military talks and improved ties.
	The congress, which opened on Friday, has largely been seen as an elaborate coronation for the 33-year-old Kim, securing his status as supreme leader and confirming his legacy "byungjin" doctrine of twin economic and nuclear development.
	Yesterday, the thousands of delegates to what is technically North Korea's top decision-making body, adopted a report submitted by Kim the day before to simultaneously push forward economic construction and "boost self-defensive nuclear force both in quality and quantity."
	It also enshrined a policy of not using nuclear weapons unless its sovereignty is threatened by another nuclear power, and of working towards the eventual reunification of the divided Korean peninsula.
	"But if the south Korean authorities opt for a 

N Korea party congress pushes nuclear weapons expansion

The international sports tribunal will today rule on Michel Platini's final appeal against a six-year ban imposed by FIFA and decide whether he can return as UEFA president.
     Platini was banned for "conflict of interest" over a suspect two million Swiss franc ($2 million) payment authorised by former FIFA leader Sepp Blatter.
     Platini and Blatter have been the two highest profile figures to fall over the scandals that have hit FIFA.
     If the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upholds his appeal, Platini would return as UEFA president.
     That would allow him to officiate over the start of European Championship finals that start in his native France on June 10. Platini was a key organiser up until his suspension in December.
     The French football legend, UEFA president since 2007, acknowledged when he went to the CAS tribunal on April 29 that if he failed "the story is over."
     The Lausanne-based tribunal is to release its verdict at 0900 GMT.
     Rejection of the 

Sport tribunal to rule on Platini fate

Australia has intercepted three asylum-seeker boats so far this year, including one carrying women and children from Sri Lanka, the country's immigration minister said today.
	Under Canberra's hardline measures, asylum-seekers trying to reach Australia by boat are either sent back to where they departed or to remote Pacific island camps, where living conditions have been criticised.
	The government has defended the policy as stopping deaths at sea.
	Since the start of its "Operation Sovereign Borders" in September 2013, it has managed to halt the flood of boats, and drownings, that characterised previous Labor administrations.
	In March, Canberra hailed 600 days with no vessels arriving, with 25 boats carrying 698 people turned back and "safely returned to their country of departure".
	Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said three boats had been intercepted this year, including a small wooden fishing vessel from Sri Lanka last week.
	"I can advise that there were 12 people on that ...

Australia turns back three asylum-seeker boats

England paceman James Anderson is optimistic that whatever happens in the upcoming Test series against Sri Lanka neither he nor captain Alastair Cook will feel as "crushed" as they did during the tourists' 2014 triumph.
     The teams begin a three-match series at Headingley on May 19, the ground where, two years ago, Sri Lanka clinched a dramatic 1-0 win in what was then the second of a two-Test campaign when Anderson was dismissed off the penultimate ball of the match.
     "To get within two balls I did feel crushed at the end of it," said Anderson. "It had been a long game and we came so close."
     England, thanks mainly to Moeen Ali's maiden Test hundred, nearly saved the game having seen Sri Lanka cling on for a draw at Lord's.
     But the damage at Headingley had been done on a fourth day where Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews made a superb 160 and, significantly, shared a stand of 149 for the eighth wicket with tailender Rangana Herath.
     Cook's tactically naive ploy of .

Anderson confident Sri Lanka won't 'crush' him again

Australian media mogul Reg Grundy, a game show pioneer who also developed television hits including Neighbours, Sons and Daughters and Prisoner, has died aged 92, it was announced today.
	"Reg Grundy has passed away in the arms of his beloved wife Joy, on their Bermuda estate," radio personality Alan Jones, a long-time friend, said on his morning programme.
	"So ends a remarkable chapter of a great Australian."
	Reports said he had been in ailing health in recent years, although no cause of death was immediately given.
	Grundy founded one of Australia's first entertainment groups - the Reg Grundy Organisation - and was widely regarded as the king of the game show, as well as producing a host of very successful soap operas.
	After serving in the army during World War II, he worked as a boxing and general sports commentator on radio before devising and hosting the Wheel of Fortune, which he moved to television in 1959.
	A year later he founded his entertainment group and began producing 

Australian TV pioneer Reg Grundy dies

Two Turkish soldiers were killed in a bomb blast today in the southeast of the country, where the military is waging an offensive against Kurdish rebels, a military official said.
	Another soldier was also wounded when the device -- which the official said was planted by Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters -- exploded in the city of Nusaybin as the soldiers were trying to defuse it.
	The military has been battling for months against Kurdish fighters in Nusaybin, and eight PKK militants were killed there on Saturday, according to a military statement.
	Turkish warplanes also hit PKK bases in northern Iraq overnight, destroying bunkers and weapons depots, the Anatolia news agency reported.
	Fighting between Turkish security forces and the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by Ankara and its Western allies, erupted again last summer after the collapse of a two-year ceasefire.
	Since then, hundreds of members of the Turkish security forces and several thousand Kurdish ...

Two Turkish soldiers killed in bomb blast in southeast: army

The sight of cars thundering down Paris's most famous boulevard was replaced today by people strolling, cycling and taking selfies in the sun as the Champs-Elysees went traffic-free.
	The first instalment of a monthly series of pedestrian-only days was hailed as a resounding success by Parisians and tourists alike on the two kilometre-long (1.2-mile) avenue leading to the Arc de Triomphe.
	"Oh la la. Look at that, it's magnificent," said Roger, 67, who lives just off the Champs-Elysees as he got his first look at the thousands of people walking where normally cars and motorbikes would be thronging the road.
	"All of Paris should be like this," he said. "We have to stop poisoning people, we need to open up the city. There should be more public transport and more taxis, but we don't need cars in Paris.
	"I just hope the city authorities are going to continue to make progress on this."
	Lined with French flags after a ceremony to mark the end of World War II in Europe 71 years ago, the ..

Strolling and selfies as Paris' Champs-Elysees goes car-free

At least 20 people, many of them children, were killed overnight by devastating landslides in northern Rwanda triggered by torrential rainstorms, the disaster management ministry said today.
	"Up until now we have counted at least 20 dead in landslides that buried houses in the district of Gakenke," the ministry's spokesman Frederic Ntawukuriryayo told AFP.
	"Most of the victims were children," Ntawukuriryayo added, without  specifying how many were minors.
	The landslides occurred at the peak of Rwanda's rainy season, affecting homes on hillsides and in valleys.
	"It's a huge catastrophe," the spokesman said, adding that rescuers had managed to pull some survivors out of the disaster area.
	The hilly, densely populated central African nation is frequently hit by landslides and the government has been moving people out of the most at-risk areas in a bid to limit the casualties.
	But "this year, the incidents and number of victims is rising," said Ntawukuriryayo, blaming the El Nino ...

20 killed, mostly children, by Rwanda landslides

Proof that diamonds are getting harder to find can be seen in the South African bush, where one of the world's largest mining companies is spending USD 2 billion tunnelling beneath a vast open-pit mine.
	De Beers spent 25 years digging a 450-metre deep by one-kilometre wide hole to access diamond-rich rock from the surface at the Venetia mine, close to the border with Zimbabwe and Botswana.
	Now a whole new underground mine is being constructed underneath the hole to reach diamonds more than 1,000 metres below ground -- a big bet by De Beers that their investment will reap decades of profit.
	"We are in very challenging times," Ludwig Von Maltitz, the mine's general manager, told AFP on the edge of the cavernous open-pit as trucks rumbled up to the processing plant.
	"Worldwide, the easier diamond sources have probably been found but, with this resource here, we hope we have something that can extend well into the future."
	As the hunt for diamonds becomes tougher, mining companies ...

Digging deep in S Africa as diamond hunt gets tougher

Egyptian prosecutors have detained a member of a group of satirists that posted a video mocking the government, a prosecution official and his lawyer said today, amid a wide-ranging crackdown on dissidents.
	Police arrested Ezzedine Khaled at his apartment yesterday and he was remanded into custody for four days, his lawyer Mahmoud Ottman told AFP.
	Khaled is a member of a group called Street Children that posts satirical songs on its Facebook page.
	Its latest appears to have touched a nerve as police round up activists involved in April protests against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for handing over two islands to Saudi Arabia.
	Many Egyptians believe the islands in the Straits of Tiran belong to them, although the government says they were Saudi and had been leased to Egypt in the 1950s.
	The issue galvanised dissidents who say Sisi, a former military chief who overthrew his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013, now rules the country with an iron fist.
	In the video, Khaled .

Egypt detains satirist over video mocking government

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Athens today as Greece's parliament prepared to vote on a controversial tax and pensions overhaul which has sparked mass opposition.
	Police said almost 15,000 people turned out to march in Athens and the second city of Thessaloniki against the measures demanded by the EU and IMF that the government is seeking to adopt ahead of a crunch meeting of eurozone creditors in Brussels on Monday.
	The reforms to be voted on later Sunday would reduce Greece's highest pension payouts, merge several pension funds, increase contributions and raise taxes for those on medium and high incomes.
	The austerity measures are part of a package demanded by the European Union and International Monetary Fund in exchange for a 86 billion euro (USD 95 billion) bailout agreed in July, the third for the debt-laden country since 2010.
	Central Athens was largely closed to traffic with a significant police presence in the city although numbers were significantly down 

Thousands take to streets in Greece ahead of reform vote

Israeli ex-president Moshe Katsav, in prison for rape and other sexual offences, has asked the current head of state for a pardon, President Reuven Rivlin's office said today.
	"A request for pardon arrived at the president's office today," it said in a brief statement.
	"As is the custom with every request for a pardon it has been passed for handling to the presidential legal department," the statement added.
	Katsav, the first Israeli head of state to be sent to prison, was jailed in 2011 for seven years on two counts of rape as well as sexual harassment, indecent acts and obstruction of justice.
	A parole board last month turned down his application for early release, saying that Katsav, 70, "expressed no regret and no sympathy toward the victims of his crimes".
	"The prisoner has presented himself as a victim and has continually attributed responsibility for his situation to others," the justice ministry said in a statement following the decision.
	Katsav's 18-month trial included 

Israeli ex-president Katsav, jailed for rape, seeks pardon

Three Spanish journalists taken hostage in Syria by an Al Qaeda-linked group returned today to Madrid where they were welcomed by overjoyed family members after nearly a year in captivity.
	Antonio Pampliega, Jose Manuel Lopez and Angel Sastre were flown on a Spanish defence ministry jet from Turkey to Torrejon air base near Madrid where they were greeted by Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria.
	The three men smiled as they descended from the plane as officials held up umbrellas to shield them from driving rain, according to a video released by the government.
	Pampliega kissed his sister Alejandra on the forehead and gave her a hug after she ran to greet him.
	"Crying from joy falls short," she said on Twitter yesterday when the news broke that the three experienced conflict zone reporters had been released and were in good health.
	Pampliega's mother Maria del Mar Rodriguez Vega said she planned to cook her son's favourite dish to celebrate his return - spinach with ...

Three journalists return to Spain after Syria kidnapping

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today criticised the deputy head of Israel's armed forces for remarks appearing to compare contemporary Israeli society to Nazi Germany.
	"The comparison drawn in the words of the deputy chief of staff regarding events which characterised Nazi Germany 80 years ago is outrageous," said Netanyahu.
	"They do injustice to Israeli society and cause a belittling of the Holocaust," the Israeli leader added.
	"The deputy chief of staff is an outstanding officer, but his remarks on this issue were utterly mistaken and unacceptable to me."
	In an address delivered Wednesday on the eve of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, Major General Yair Golan said the commemoration "must bring us to reflect deeply on the nature of man, even when that man is ourselves".
	"If there is something that frightens me with the memory of the Holocaust, it is identifying horrifying processes that happened in Europe, and specifically in Germany, 70, 80 and 90 years ago, and finding ..

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