President Barack Obama today said the US would send up to 250 more special forces and other military personnel to Syria to help rebels fight Islamic State group jihadists.
	Obama was in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, and both later met the British, French and Italian leaders to discuss the battle against IS in its self-declared "caliphate" across northern Syria and Iraq.
	In a speech in the German city of Hanover, Obama hailed NATO partners' progress so far in pushing back IS, which he called "the most urgent threat to our nations".
	"A small number of American special operations forces are already on the ground in Syria and their expertise has been critical as local forces have driven ISIL out of key areas," he said, using an alternative acronym for the militant group.
	"So, given the success, I have approved the deployment of up to 250 additional US personnel in Syria, including special forces, to keep up this momentum."
	The US forces will not lead the fight on ...

Obama to send 250 more special forces, troops to Syria

PTI Automatic

Police fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters as around 50 anti-government demonstrators gathered in a square of Egypt's capital today in defiance of an official ban.
	President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his interior minister had warned on the eve of the planned demonstrations that security forces would deal firmly with protesters.
	Police had sealed off access to three venues for protests called by the secular and leftist opposition as well as making dozens of arrests over the previous four days.
	The protesters who gathered in a small square came under tear gas fire after a first police van at the scene was pelted with stones, an AFP journalist said.
	Several arrests were made and journalists briefly detained until their credentials had been verified.
	Sisi, who has ruled Egypt with an iron fist and cracked down on all dissent, said yesterday: "Our responsibility is to protect security and stability."
	His Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar warned that "the security ...

Tear gas at launch of Egypt demo in defiance of ban

European aerospace giant Airbus delivered its first made-in-the-USA aircraft today to mark a new stage in its battle for the home market of rival Boeing.
	Airbus handed over an A321 passenger jet assembled in its Mobile, Alabama, plant to US carrier JetBlue, three years after beginning construction of the facility and just seven months after it was inaugurated.
	"Going from breaking ground on this facility three years ago to handing over the first Alabama-produced A321 today is an amazing accomplishment," said Airbus chief operating officer John Leahy in a statement.
	With nine other aircraft in its single-aisle A320 family currently being built at the plant, Airbus aims to get production up to four aircraft deliveries per month by the end of 2017.
	The facility is the France-based company's fourth around the world. It also produces aircraft in Hamburg, Germany; Toulouse, France; and Tianjin, China.
	The plant was built on the site of a World War II bomber support base in Mobile, with 

Airbus delivers first made-in-USA aircraft

Relief groups today began their second major aid delivery in a week to tens of thousands of besieged people in central Syria, a Red Cross spokesman said.
	Thirty-five aid trucks would be delivered to Rastan and surrounding rural areas in central Homs province, said International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Pawel Krzysiek told AFP.
	ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are delivering aid including food parcels, medicine, diapers and 100 delivery kits for pregnant women.
	Rastan and nearby villages are home to 120,000 people, half of whom had fled fighting in neighbouring Hama province.
	Last Thursday, aid groups sent 65 trucks into the town in the largest aid delivery yet in Syria.
	More than four million people live in besieged or hard-to-reach areas with little or no access to food or medicines.
	Rebel groups seized Rastan and the vast agricultural land around in 2012.
	Krzysiek said residents had since received so little aid that they found it hard to believe there would ..

Second aid delivery to besieged central Syria town: Red Cross

Israeli prosecutors today charged seven young Jews in connection with a wave of so-called "price tag" attacks targeting Palestinians and Arab Israelis and their property, the justice ministry said.
	The seven, including a soldier and two minors, allegedly carried out a series of attacks between 2009 and 2013 and in the second half of 2015.
	They included torching an inhabited Palestinian home and beating a Palestinian man with sticks, a ministry statement said.
	Four of the suspects live in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Nahliel northwest of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, another is from the Maaleh Efraim settlement and the other two are from Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh.
	"The actions targeted innocent people and their property, solely because of their religious or national identity," the ministry statement read.
	"The perpetrators strove to sow fear and panic among the Palestinian residents of (the West Bank), while at the same time to convey messages to the Israeli public and .

Israel charges 7 over 'price tag' attacks on Palestinians

BHS, the owner of department stores across Britain, has called in outside help to rescue the struggling firm from potential closure and the loss of around 11,000 jobs, administrators said today.
	The 88-year-old chain has failed to keep pace with rivals such as Marks and Spencer selling clothing and homeware in stores and online, resulting in a significant loss of market share.
	"The group will continue to trade as usual whilst the administrators seek to sell it as a going concern," administrators Duff & Phelps said in a statement.
	BHS, which also sells food, has been undergoing restructuring but has been unsuccessful in negotiations to find a buyer, while property sales have not materialised as expected, Duff & Phelps added.
	"Consequently, as a result of a lower than expected cash balance, the group is very unlikely to meet all contractual payments," the administrators said.
	"The directors therefore have no alternative but to put the group into administration to protect it ...

UK retailer calls in administrators, with 11,000 jobs at risk

Oil prices fell today on a report OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia could maintain its total production capacity with the expansion of an oilfield, fuelling fears over the global supply glut.
	Approaching 1630 IST, US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in June shed 54 cents to USD 43.19 a barrel.
	Brent North Sea crude for June sagged 37 cents to USD 44.74 a barrel compared with Friday's close.
	"Prices (are) meandering... As news disperses of a possible Saudi oilfield expansion which could bolster supply, ultimately spelling more problems for a market already excessively oversupplied," said analyst Lukman Otunuga at trading firm FXTM.
	The losses come after a week of strong gains in the commodity that were on the back of hopes for the outlook for China's economy and speculation about the resumption of talks on limiting output.
	Saudi Arabian Oil Co. Will complete an expansion of its Shaybah oilfield by the end of May, allowing the world's largest exporter to maintain total .

Crude dips on report of Saudi oilfield expansion

The UN's health agency warned today of the potential for a "marked increase" in Zika infections, and the spread of the virus to new parts of the world, even as the outbreak declines in Brazil.
	Largely contained to Latin America and the Caribbean, Zika's range is likely to expand as summer arrives in the northern hemisphere -- and with it virus-transmitting mosquitoes.
	"As seasonal temperatures begin to rise in Europe, two species of Aedes mosquito which we know transmit the virus will begin to circulate," World Health Organization assistant director general Marie-Paule Kieny told a Zika science conference in Paris.
	"The mosquito knows no borders."
	Add to that the risk of Zika-infected men passing the virus on to women via sex, and the world "could see a marked increase in the number of people with Zika and related complications," Kieny said.
	At the same time, with cooler temperatures in the tropics and subtropics, the outbreak in hardest-hit Brazil was "clearly on the decline," ..

WHO warns of risk of 'marked increase' in Zika cases

An Indonesian minister has suggested an unusual reason for the scourge of corruption in the graft-ridden country -- men are just trying to please their greedy wives.
	Indonesia has struggled against graft for years, with the country's vast bureaucracy crippled by corruption and leading public figures, from ministers to senior judges, jailed for accepting kickbacks.
	But rather than taking aim at the grasping officials themselves, Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin suggested it was greedy wives who were fuelling corruption.
	The wives of the elite in Indonesia are well-known for their love of expensive designer clothes and handbags.
	"Corruption is often motivated by many things," he was cited as saying in Kompas newspaper, referring to "extraordinary demands" from family members that pushed people to behave unusually.
	"My message is not to demand too many material things that are out of the ordinary, that would be an outstanding contribution by women," he added.
	His ..

Greedy wives to blame for corruption: Indonesian minister

Serbia's pro-EU Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic won a landslide victory in general elections, the electoral commission confirmed today after nearly all ballots were counted.
	Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party won 48.25 per cent of the vote which would give him 131 MPs in the 250-seat parliament -- down from the 158 won in the last election, the commission said based on 98 percent of votes counted.
	The Socialists, Vucic's coalition partners in the outgoing government, came second with 11.01 percent of the vote.
	They were followed by the far-right Radicals led by ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj, who won 8.05 percent of the vote. Seselj was recently acquitted of war crimes charges arising from the 1990s Balkans conflicts.
	The anti-EU and pro-Russian Radicals were set to return to parliament with 21 MPs, having failed to win any seats since 2012.
	Four other political groupings just passed the five percent threshold needed to enter parliament, according to the commission.
	They were .

Official count confirms big win for Serbia's pro-EU PM

US President Barack Obama made an impassioned plea for European unity in the face of rising populism and scepticism today, warning this was a "defining moment" for the continent.
	"A strong and united Europe is a necessity for the world," Obama said in the German city of Hanover, in a landmark speech that carried the tone of a blunt challenge to friends.
	Visiting a region reeling from a migration crisis, economic stagnation and facing the prospect of Britain abandoning the European Union, Obama warned that "progress is not inevitable".
	Contrasting the prosperity of Europe today with the wars and hardship of the last century, Obama called on Europeans reject the "us-versus-them" politics that has fuelled the rise of the far right in countries from Poland to France.
	"Perhaps you need an outsider, somebody who is not European, to remind you of the magnitude of what you have achieved," he said, a day after the anti-immigration far-right triumphed in a presidential vote in ...

Obama calls for strong, united Europe

Deutsche Bank co-CEO Juergen Fitschen today was cleared of charges of giving false testimony in a legal battle with the defunct Kirch media group.
	"After a year-long trial, we can establish that the allegations have not been proven," presiding judge Peter Noll told the higher regional court in the southern city of Munich.
	A guilty verdict would have dealt a severe blow to Germany's biggest lender as it struggles to clean up its image in the wake of a long list of legal challenges in recent years.
	Fitschen and four others -- ex-chief executives Rolf Breuer and Josef Ackermann and former executives Clemens Boersig and Tessen von Heydebreck, had been accused of giving misleading evidence to judges in one of the lawsuits brought by the late media magnate Leo Kirch against the bank.
	If found guilty, they could have faced prison sentences of up to 10 years.
	But all five were acquitted today.
	Kirch, who died aged 84 in 2011, had accused Deutsche Bank of causing the downfall of his ...

Deutsche Bank CEO cleared of false testimony charge

Nearly 30 schoolchildren and their supervisors were killed and many more injured when their truck crashed in eastern Burundi overnight, a local official said today.
	About 130 students from Kigugu secondary school in Rutana province were on their way home from a visit to central Burundi when the packed vehicle overturned outside Musongati, local administrator Revocate Nibigira said.
	"The (Roman Catholic) father superior of Musongati parish and a nun who was accompanying them died on the spot, with 13 children," she said.
	"There are already 27 dead in all," she added, making an estimate on the basis of casualty figures from hospitals in the area, which took in almost 100 victims of the accident.
	"Some of the injured are in a very bad way."
	The children had been on their way home from a visit to the choir of Notre Dame of Gitega high school in the centre of the small, densely populated country in central Africa.
	Trucks packed with dozens of people are a common sight on the roads of 

Almost 30 children, supervisors killed in Burundi road crash

Turkey has killed almost 900 alleged members of the Islamic State group since January through artillery fire and air raids, the state-run Anatolia news agency said today, citing military sources.
	The country, a member of a US-led coalition fighting IS, has killed 492 "terrorists" since January 9 in air raids, while another 370 were killed in artillery strikes which also destroyed arms depots, the agency said.
	The figures could not be independently verified.
	Over 3,300 IS suspects have thus far been deported, Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for the Turkish presidency, said on Monday, adding that the government has imposed an entry ban on nearly 41,000 foreign nationals.
	"They are made up of people suspected of ties with the Daesh terrorist organisation," he said, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.
	Turkey has in recent months cracked down on alleged IS sleeper cells throughout the country. Kalin said a total of 2,770 people had been detained -- 1,232 of them were foreign ...

Turkey kills almost 900 IS members in Syria raids: report

Yemen's warring parties held a fifth day of peace talks in Kuwait today after the UN envoy said "significant differences" still separate them.
	A UN spokesman said the talks between the government and the Shiite Huthi rebels had resumed after extensive discussions of security, political and humanitarian issues yesterday.
	"Significant differences in the delegations' points of view remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace and to work intensively towards an agreement," UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said in a statement yesterday.
	Negotiations on a political settlement have made no headway as the two sides are still discussing ways to consolidate a fragile ceasefire that went into effect on April 11.
	The delegations have agreed to appoint two officials, one from each side, to make recommendations on how to sustain the ceasefire, the envoy said.
	The government delegation has insisted that the ceasefire should include confidence-building measures, such as ..

'Significant' differences persist among Yemen foes: UN

A Tutsi general and security advisor to Burundi's vice president was killed today in an attack by heavily-armed men, along with his wife and daughter, a security source said.
	It was the latest bloodshed to hit a country which has been engulfed by a political crisis which erupted in April 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a third term in office, which he won in July.
	The resulting violence has left at least 500 people dead, while more than a quarter of a million others have fled the country, prompting the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor to announce today she was opening a preliminary probe into the crisis.
	The latest attack took place in the capital Bujumbura as General Athanase Kararuza was dropping his daughter off at school in the northeastern Ghosha district, the high-ranking security source said.
	He had been recently named as advisor to Vice President Gaston Sindimwo, also a Tutsi. Under the constitution, the vice president must always be 

Tutsi general killed in Burundi attack

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani today implored Pakistan to battle the Taliban instead of trying to bring them to peace talks, in a new hardline stance after a brazen insurgent attack killed at least 64 people.
	The assault last Tuesday on a security services office in the heart of Kabul appeared to be the deadliest on the Afghan capital since the Islamists were ousted from power in 2001.
	It cast a pall over international efforts in recent months to jumpstart Pakistan-brokered peace talks, which stalled last summer after the Taliban belatedly confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar.
	"I want to make it clear that we no longer expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table," Ghani said in a sombre address to both houses of the Afghan parliament.
	"But we expect them to launch a military operation against their sanctuaries and leadership based on their soil. If they can't target them they should hand them over to our judiciary."
	Afghanistan for years has accused 

Afghan leader implores Pakistan to battle Taliban

President Barack Obama today said the US would send up to 250 more special forces military trainers to Syria to help rebels fight Islamic State group jihadists.
	Obama was in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, and both were to be joined later by the leaders of Britain, France and Italy in a meeting expected to focus on the fight against the IS in Syria and Iraq.
	In a speech on transatlantic unity, Obama hailed NATO partners' progress so far in pushing back IS, which he called "the most urgent threat to our nations".
	"A small number of American special operations forces are already on the ground in Syria and their expertise has been critical as local forces have driven ISIL out of key areas," he said, using an alternative acronym for the militant group.
	"So, given the success, I have approved the deployment of up to 250 additional US personnel in Syria, including special forces, to keep up this momentum," added Obama, speaking in the northern city of Hanover.
	"They're 

Obama to send 250 more troops to Syria as truce falters

Philippine presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte has widened his lead over rivals despite remarks about the rape and murder of an Australian missionary which sparked protests from diplomats, the Catholic church and women's groups.
	Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of the southern city of Davao, emerged as the "clear frontrunner" in a survey which research institute Social Weather Stations (SWS) released today.
	The candidate, who has promised mass killings of suspected criminals, saw his support rise from 27 per cent of respondents in March to 33 per cent in April, giving him a nine-point lead over second-placed Senator Grace Poe just two weeks before the vote.
	The survey was conducted from April 18-20, shortly after a video circulated showing Duterte making the remark about the missionary in a campaign hustings event.
	Duterte, 71, had told laughing followers that the woman was so beautiful he wished he had been the first in line to rape her -- before she was murdered in a jail ...

Philippine prez candidate widens lead despite rape comment

A car bomb killed at least five people near the revered Shiite shrine of Sayyida Zeinab, south of the Syrian capital Damascus today, state news agency reported.
	The bomb struck Al-Diyabiyah, a town that serves as one of the gateways for the many pilgrims from around the world who visit the Shiite holy site.
	Another 20 people were also wounded, SANA reported.
	The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at eight. It had no immediate word on whether there were civilians among the dead.
	The shrine contains the grave of Zeinab, a venerated granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed, and is known for its glistening golden onion-shaped dome.
	An AFP correspondent said he heard ambulance sirens wailing through the streets of Damascus on their way to Sayyida Zeinab.
	The area around the shrine, which is heavily secured with regime checkpoints hundreds of metres (yards) away to prevent vehicles from approaching, has been hit by Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group several ..

Car bomb kills five near Syria Shiite shrine: state media

Global carmakers gathered in Beijing today to show off their wares as competition intensifies and growth slows in the world's biggest auto market, with the key SUV and new energy vehicle sectors the focus of attention.
	Total auto sales in China reached 24.6 million last year, making it a crucial market for foreign manufacturers as well as domestic brands, but that represented growth of just 4.7 per cent, down from 6.9 per cent in 2014, data from industry group China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) showed.
	"It is slowing down," Ford China chairman and CEO John Lawler told reporters. "The market is really acting more and more like a mature market rather than an emerging market.
	"It is part of a more competitive environment."
	German manufacturer Audi has an enviable brand position in China and has long been seen as a marque to aspire to by consumers, but it too is feeling the pressure.
	"For sure, our competitors are trying to grab market shares from us, and some are ..

AFP

AFP

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