The main whistleblower in the "LuxLeaks" scandal told his trial in Luxembourg today that he was proud that leaking of thousands of secret documents had opened up the issue of tax avoidance in Europe.
	Frenchman Antoine Deltour, a former employee of auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), is on trial along with two other people over the leaks and faces up to 10 years in jail.
	"I feel a certain pride in having contributed to these important advances to taxation in Europe," Deltour told the court in the tiny EU duchy of Luxembourg as he gave evidence for the first time.
	"One may hope that the outrage aroused (by the leaks) resulted in concrete political action."
	Deltour, who faces charges of stealing documents, revealing business secrets and violation of professional secrets, is accused of leaking the documents to French journalist Edouard Perrin, who is also on trial.
	The documents were originally used for a 2012 report on French public television, but only really exploded onto .

LuxLeaks whistleblower 'proud' to open up tax issue

PTI Automatic

Saudi Arabia's stock market regulator said today it would ease rules for foreign investment on the bourse, as part of efforts to open its capital market under an economic diversification plan.
	Overseas institutions with at least 3.75 billion riyals (USD 1 billion) under management will now be able to invest on the Tadawul All-Shares Index (TASI), the largest Arab bourse, a notice on the exchange website said.
	Under initial rules that applied last June when the TASI first opened to Qualified Foreign Investors (QFIs), at least 18.75 billion riyals in assets were required.
	The regulator has also doubled the amount of a stock which QFIs may own, to a maximum of 10 percent of a listed company.
	Government funds and university endowments will now be able to invest, adding to foreign banks, brokerage houses, fund managers and insurance companies that were permitted at the initial opening.
	The effective date of the changes will be published in the first half of next year, the bourse ...

Saudi bourse to ease rules for foreigners

An Israeli court today handed down a life sentence to the ringleader of a Jewish gang who kidnapped, beat and burned alive a Palestinian teenager in 2014.
	Yosef Haim Ben-David, 31, was sentenced for killing 16- year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, and was also given 20 years for other crimes.
	Abu Khdeir was kidnapped by Ben-David and two young accomplices from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem on July 2, 2014 and beaten. His burned body was found hours later in a forest in the western part of the city.

Life sentence for Israeli ringleader in burning alive of

Sri Lanka's former army chief told parliament today that a bomb blast apparently targeting former president Mahinda Rajapaksa's brother 10 years ago was an "inside job" to win sympathy for the then-ruling family.
	Sarath Fonseka, now a government legislator, said the December 2006 bomb attack blamed on separatist Tamil Tiger rebels had been stage-managed by the president's brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the then defence secretary.
	"No terrorist will set off a suicide bomb 25 meters away from the intended target," Fonseka told parliament during a debate on scaling down military security granted to the former strongman leader.
	The government has said it is removing troops in Rajapaksa's bodyguard and replacing them with police commandos as part of a policy of relieving the military from civilian security duties.
	Gotabhaya escaped the 2006 bombing in Colombo unhurt but it killed two members of his military convoy.
	Soon after the attack, the government asked peacebroker Norway to halt ..

Sri Lanka's ex-army chief says 2006 bombing an inside job

The crash of a Super Puma helicopter off the coast of Norway last week that killed all 13 people on board was due to a technical failure, Norwegian investigators said today.
	"Based on the facts we have, it was a technical failure. It was not human error," a director of the Norwegian accident investigation board, Kare Halvorsen, told a press conference held in a hangar in the western city of Bergen, where debris from the wreck was visible.
	The EC225 Super Puma built by Airbus Helicopters crashed Friday on a small island off Bergen, en route from a North Sea oil platform. The 13 killed included 11 Norwegians, one Briton and one Italian.
	While investigators seemed to be in no doubt about the helicopter's technical failure, they did not disclose the exact cause of the accident -- the deadliest helicopter crash in Norway since 1978 -- adding the investigation was still ongoing with French and British assistance.
	Eyewitness accounts and footage captured on cell phones indicate that the .

Norway helicopter crash due to technical failure:investigators

The EU will today grant conditional approval for Turks to gain visa-free access to the Schengen zone, meeting one of Ankara's key demands to keep a migrant deal alive.
	The European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation EU, will say Turkey must still implement further measures in order to access the passportless Schengen area without visas by June, the sources said on today.
	Ankara has demanded visa-free travel in exchange for taking back migrants who land in Greece under a controversial deal signed in March seeking to curb the influx as Europe grapples with its biggest migrant crisis since World War II.
	EU member states and the European Parliament must still approve the Turkey visa plan after it clears the Commission, which is by no means a foregone conclusion as many countries have concerns over human rights in Turkey.
	"The Commission will put forward a plan to include Turkey in the list of countries exempted from visas," a European source told AFP, adding that "only 64 .

EU to grant Turkey visa-free travel under migrant deal

China plans to release the last prisoner known to be held in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests after nearly three decades in jail, a US-based human rights group said today.
	Miao Deshun, 51, is due to be released in October, the Duihua Foundation said, after serving more than 27 years in prison for his involvement in the mass demonstrations that were brutally put down by China's government.
	Chinese courts originally gave him a suspended death sentence for arson after he and "four coworkers allegedly threw a basket onto a burning tank", it said.
	Commuted to life imprisonment, his prison term was subsequently reduced several times, most recently this year, when authorities shortened it by 11 months for good behaviour.
	"People who served sentences with him in the 1990s remember him as a very thin man who refused to admit wrongdoing and participate in prison labour", the statement said, noting that he had spent time in solitary confinement and been diagnosed with ...

China to release last Tiananmen prisoner: activists

The UN Security Council today demanded that hospitals and clinics be protected in war zones, in a resolution that draws attention to the rise in attacks on medical workers in conflicts worldwide.
	Less than a week after air strikes on a hospital in the Syrian battleground city of Aleppo killed at least 30 people, the council unanimously adopted a measure that strongly condemned the targeting of health facilities and recalled that such attacks are war crimes.
	French Ambassador Francois Delattre described the measure as a "major resolution" that sent a strong message that there will be "no impunity for the authors of attacks perpetrated against medical installations and medical personnel."
	The resolution does not break any new legal ground. But British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft stressed that it was "shining a spotlight" on the increase in attacks and serves as a reminder that hospitals, ambulances and medical workers cannot be targets in war.
	It was the first-ever resolution adopted 

UN demands protection of hospitals in war zones

Iran has stopped placing orders to import US-made cars after criticism from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, news agencies in the Islamic republic reported today.
	The industry, mining and trade ministry had previously allowed 24 models manufactured by the General Motors-owned Chevrolet to be brought in via a third country.
	"Import order placement for American Chevrolet cars has been disabled since Sunday" on the government's online imports website, Farhad Ehteshamzadeh, head of the Association of Auto Importers, told the Fars news agency.
	"After Chevrolet order placements were removed from the system, no orders will be allowed for (Chevrolet) cars," he said, without giving figures for the number of vehicles imported previously.
	The order to halt the imports came from Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, following a call by Khamenei last week, the Mehr news agency said.
	"Americans themselves don't use US-made cars," Khamenei said on Wednesday during .

Iran stops importing US-made cars: reports

A German couple lured women to their village home with personal contact ads, then trapped, tortured and killed at least two of them, authorities said today.
	Police said they were not ruling out more deaths from what one newspaper dubbed the "house of horrors", where one woman's body was cut up and burnt in the fireplace.
	The 46-year-old man, identified by Bild daily as Wilfried W., and his ex-wife, Angelika B., 47, were arrested last week, accused of tormenting a woman through almost two months of captivity.
	The couple was caught after their car broke down with the badly wounded 41-year-old woman inside. She died hours later in hospital from a head injury.
	On Tuesday prosecutors and police said the female suspect had admitted to at least one more killing by the couple, and to trapping several more women over the years.
	The second victim was a 33-year-old woman, whose body the couple had stored in a deep-freezer, then cut into pieces and incinerated in their fireplace.
	The woman .

German 'house of horrors' couple tortured, killed 2 women

An ongoing joint Iraqi operation against the Islamic State group south of the city of Mosul could displace 30,000 civilians in the coming weeks, the UN refugee agency warned today.
	Iraqi federal and Kurdish forces backed by the US-led coalition against IS launched the offensive in March in the province of Nineveh, of which jihadist-controlled Mosul is the capital.
	These forces are still at least 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Iraq's second city but the fighting there has been forcing thousands of civilians from their homes.
	An existing camp in Debaga, which lies east of Makhmur -- the main staging ground for that operation -- already hosts around 8,000 people, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said.
	It said it opened a new camp on the grounds of a football stadium in Debaga this week "in response to increasing numbers of newly displaced families".
	"As many as 30,000 newly displaced individuals may arrive in Makhmur over the coming weeks as the military offensive ...

UN fears operation near Mosul will displace 30,000 more Iraqis

UEFA admitted Kosovo as its 55th member in a narrow vote today, boosting its hopes of competing in the 2018 World Cup despite warnings from former ruler Serbia.
     The UEFA congress voted 28 to 24 with two votes declared invalid to accept Kosovo, which will also have a team at the Olympics for the first time at the Rio de Janeiro Games in August.
     FIFA will now decide at its congress in Mexico City on May 13 whether to become the last major sporting federation to admit Kosovo.
     The Kosovo Football Federation hopes that if FIFA gives its green light, it will get a late place in a European qualifying group for the World Cup in Russia in two years.
     "We are very happy today of course," federation president Fadil Vokrri told AFP.
     "Now we have to wait and see what FIFA decides in 10 days in Mexico, but we hope for the best, that we can compete in the World Cup."
     There were also new celebrations in Kosovo where the congress was broadcast live on four major TV ...

UEFA admits Kosovo in step toward World Cup

Iceland's First Lady Dorrit Moussaieff has reportedly been named among clients of British bank HSBC with holdings in tax havens, the media outlets behind the Panama Papers and other leaks said today.
	The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) found Moussaieff's name in the "Swiss Leaks" list of more than 100,000 HSBC clients with offshore holdings, Britain's The Guardian newspaper, which is part of the consortium, reported.
	The Swiss Leaks documents were made public in 2015 -- about a year before the Panama Papers trove of leaked documents showing the vast extent of global tax evasion. Moussaieff's presence on the list had not been previously reported.
	The British-Israeli wife of President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson is an heiress of the Moussaieff jewellery dynasty.
	When the media first made it public on April 25 that her family had holdings in the British Virgin Islands, the office of the Icelandic president said the first lady was unaware of any such ...

Iceland's First Lady linked to offshore accounts: reports

The Islamic State group broke through Kurdish defences in northern Iraq today and killed an American service member of the US-led coalition fighting the jihadists, officials said.
	The service member, whom the Pentagon confirmed was American, was at least the third killed by enemy fire in Iraq since IS overran swathes of the country in 2014.
	President Barack Obama hailed the 2011 withdrawal of American troops from Iraq as a major accomplishment of his presidency, but US forces have been drawn back into combat in the country against IS.
	"On May 3, 2016, a coalition service member was killed in northern Iraq as a result of enemy fire," the coalition said in a statement.
	Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the death occurred during an IS attack on a peshmerga position north of Iraq's jihadist-held second city Mosul.
	US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said from Germany: "Our thoughts and prayers are with that service member's family."
	A coalition military official said on condition of 

IS kills US service member in northern Iraq attack

The UN envoy has met delegates of Yemen's warring parties separately in a bid to restart peace negotiations after a protest walkout by the government, the United Nations said on today.
	The government delegation quit on Sunday in protest at the rebels' seizure of one of the few loyalist army bases in the northern mountains in a blow to the peace talks launched on April 21.
	It came just a day after the rival delegations held their first face-to-face meetings in a bid to end a conflict that killed more than 6,400 people and displaced some 2.8 million since March last year.
	UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed met both government and rebel delegations late on Monday in a bid to find a swift resolution to the dispute over the rebels' seizure of the Al-Amaliqa base on Saturday despite an April 11 ceasefire.
	Commanders appear to have put up no resistance as the rebels overran the base in Amran province, nearly all of which is under their control, tribal and military sources said.
	Foreign ..

UN Yemen envoy bids to revive troubled peace talks

Rebel fire on a hospital in a government-controlled neighbourhood of Syria's second city Aleppo killed three women and wounded another 17 people today, state media reported.
	The rockets hit Al-Dabbeet hospital in the Muhafaza district, state news agency SANA said.
	Rebel rocket fire on other government-held neighbourhoods killed another 11 people, it added.
	The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels had fired rockets and shells on government-controlled western districts of the city throughout the day.
	After a lull through the morning, regime air strikes on rebel-held eastern areas resumed in the afternoon, an AFP correspondent reported.
	Moscow has faced mounting pressure from Washington to rein in air raids by its Damascus ally after a hospital and three clinics were hit.
	The northern metropolis has been hit by a wave of violence that has killed more than 250 civilians since April 22, sparking a diplomatic push by Russia and the United States to end the carnage and ...

3 dead,17 wounded by rebel fire on hospital in Syria's Aleppo

The French government's contested labour reform bill finally reached parliament today, having sparked two months of mass protests, but neither employers nor unions are happy.
	The government says the bill is designed to unlock France's rigid labour market and cut stubbornly high unemployment of around 10 percent -- the issue that has dogged Socialist President Francois Hollande's four years in power.
	But since March 9, hundreds of thousands of people in cities around France have demonstrated against what they see as a reform weighed in favour of businesses.
	With 12 months until the presidential election, the bill is likely to be the last of its size to be introduced by Hollande's government.
	It also has the unenviable record of being the reform that has brought the most Socialist supporters onto the streets during Hollande's rocky time in office.
	On Tuesday, as lawmakers begin to examine the bill, unions and student organisations held another demonstration outside the National ...

France's contested labour reform reaches parliament

Two Indonesian passenger planes clipped wings as they were about to take off from Jakarta's main airport, an airline said today, the latest accident in the country's beleaguered aviation sector.
	The planes operated by domestic carrier Lion Air were Sunday heading towards a runway at Soekarno-Hatta airport, just outside the capital, when their wings collided.
	There was only minor damage to the planes and no one was injured, said Edward Sirait, general affairs director at Lion Air.
	After the collision between the Boeing and Airbus aircraft, all the passengers were transferred to other planes to continue their journeys, to Bali and Sulawesi islands, he said.
	Asked about a reason for the accident, Sirait said: "We are waiting for results of the authorities' investigation."
	It came a month after two planes collided at a smaller airport in the capital.
	A plane operated by Batik Air -- part of the Lion Group along with Lion Air -- was taking off from Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma ...

Indonesian planes clip wings at airport in latest scare

Brazil's Dilma Rousseff greets the Olympic flame today in what could be her last big public appearance as president if she is impeached.
     The arrival of the flame in Brasilia from an ancient Greek temple via Switzerland will start a three-month countdown to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, Brazil's big chance to shine on the global stage.
	The flame will be met with indigenous rituals, dangled from a helicopter and carried on a canoe, on foot and on horseback to mark its arrival for the first Olympics in South America.
	Rousseff will take hold of the torch in her presidential Planalto Palace in the capital.
	It will then be carried around the country by a relay of 12,000 people before reaching the legendary Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro for the start of the Games on August 5.
	The president, 68, will meanwhile be counting down the days until next week.
	On May 11 or 12 the Senate is expected to vote to open an impeachment trial against her over allegations that she illegally ...

Olympic torch to land in middle of Brazil crisis

Israel's opposition Labour party said today that it was weighing severing ties with its British counterpart after fresh allegations of anti-Semitism in its ranks.
	More than 50 British Labour party members have been suspended in the past two months over comments deemed racist or anti-Semitic, according to The Daily Telegraph, including former mayor of London Ken Livingstone.
	After the latest suspensions of three local councillors on Monday over comments posted on social media, a spokesman for the Israeli party said breaking off relations with British comrades was "one of the options that is being considered."
	He told AFP that the Israeli party was looking for assurances from British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn that he was treating the allegations with the necessary gravity.
	In the most high-profile case, the former London mayor was sanctioned on Thursday after saying that Adolf Hitler "was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews".
	Livingstone's .

Israel Labour mulls break with British party

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said today a faltering truce in Syria must be "brought back on track" as he held talks in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on ending a fresh upsurge in fighting.
	As the talks kicked off in Moscow, fighting raged in Syria's second city of Aleppo, with state media reporting that rebel fire on a hospital killed three women.
	Another 11 people were killed in rebel attacks on other government-held neighbourhoods, SANA state news agency said.
	In televised remarks, de Mistura praised the two-month-old truce brokered by Moscow and Washington as a "remarkable achievement" and said the two global powers should help "all of us to make sure that this is brought back on track".
	Russia's top diplomat for his part said that "there was no alternative to the political settlement of the Syrian crisis," adding Moscow highly valued Mistura's efforts to help negotiate an end to a conflict that has killed more than 270,000 people since 2011.
	"I am looking ..

AFP

AFP

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