Six foreigners suspected of links to the Islamic State group and accused of planning an attack against "state dignitaries" have been arrested in Turkey ahead of a visit by top EU officials, local authorities said today.
	The arrests took place overnight in Konya, in the centre of the country, as Turkey prepared for a visit by European Council head Donald Tusk and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Gaziantep, which borders Syria and territories controlled by IS.
	The suspects "wanted to attack dignitaries of the state and strategic targets," according to a statement from officials in Konya, a conservative city where police have carried out several raids on suspected jihadist circles.
	"The operation has helped to thwart a possible attack," it added.
	Tusk, Merkel and the vice president of the European Commission Frans Timmermans, are expected to visit a refugee camp during their trip to the country's southeast, and hold a press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet ...

Turkey arrests IS suspects ahead of Merkel visit

PTI Automatic

At least 27 civilians were killed today in regime bombardment on rebel-held areas across Syria, a monitor and local sources said, in the latest deadly violence despite a ceasefire deal.
	Twelve civilians were killed in Aleppo, according to a local civil defence official, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 13 others died in shelling on the rebel town of Douma, east of Damascus.
	And two men were killed in regime airstrikes on Talbisseh in Homs province, the monitor said.
	Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the escalating violence meant the ceasefire in Syria had effectively collapsed.
	The barrage of air strikes on Aleppo began around 10:00am (0700 GMT) on several neighbourhoods, including the heavily-populated Bustan al-Qasr district, an AFP correspondent in the city said.
	But the deadliest raid was on the Tareeq al-Bab neighbourhood on the eastern edges of the city.
	A civil defence member responding to the incident said 12 civilians had been killed there.
	AFP ...

Regime bombardment kills 27 civilians across Syria: monitor

At least eight Cambodians were killed and 33 others injured today when a passenger bus collided into an oncoming crane truck at full speed in the country's northwest, a police officer said.
	The bus, travelling from the capital Phnom Penh, swerved into the truck after its front tyre exploded on a road in Battambong province, said Sath Kimsan, chief of provincial traffic police.
	"Eight people, including a woman and a Buddhist monk, died on the spot," he told AFP.
	The injured were rushed to nearby hospitals, he said.
	"The front tyre on the left side of the bus exploded while it was driving at a fast speed," said the officer, adding that both drivers were killed in the collision.
	Images published in local media showed bodies scattered on the ground near a badly damaged bus and a crane truck flipped on its side.
	Cambodia's roads are notoriously dangerous with around 2,000 people dying in accidents annually.
	Last August, 16 Cambodians were killed and 23 others injured after a bus ...

Cambodian passenger bus crash kills eight: police

South Sudan rebel chief Riek Machar will miss an international deadline today to return to the capital to take up the post of vice president, the government and rebels said, with his arrival now expected next week.
	"There is no coming today," Minister of Information Michael Makuei said, adding that the government will issue flight clearance for Machar to arrive by plane from Ethiopia only after international monitors have verified the number of weapons carried by the rebels accompanying him.
	The rebels, who were at an airport in Ethiopia, said they were ready to fly but needed permission to do so.
	An AFP reporter at the airport in Gambella said there was growing frustration among the rebel troops, who have now been there for several days, waiting to leave.
	UN chief Ban Ki-moon has urged Machar to return to Juba "without delay", while the US, Britain and Norway - key international backers of peace efforts - demanded he return by today.
	Machar was due to return to the capital Juba .

S Sudan rebel chief to miss int'l deadline to return: govt

North Korea today tested what appeared to be a submarine launched ballistic missile in the Sea of Japan, the South Korean defence ministry said.
	"North Korea launched a projectile which was believed to be a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) around 6:30 pm (0930 GMT) in the East Sea (Sea of Japan)" near the northeastern port of Sinpo", a defence ministry spokesman said.
	"We are keeping close tabs on the North Korean military and maintaining a full defence posture", he said.
	It was not immediately known whether the launch was a success, he added.
	North Korea has been pushing to acquire SLBM capability that would take its nuclear strike threat to a new level, allowing deployment far beyond the Korean peninsula and the potential to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack.
	It has conducted a number of what it says were successful SLBM tests, but experts question the claim, suggesting Pyongyang had gone little further than a "pop-up" test from a submerged platform.

N Korea tests sub-launched missile: South

Yemeni forces backed by air power from the Saudi-led Arab coalition launched an operation today to drive Al-Qaeda fighters out of a southern provincial capital, military officials said.
	Forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in Abyan province advanced towards Zinjibar and the neighbouring town of Jaar, the sources said.
	Soldiers reached Al-Kud, five kilometres (three miles) south of Zinjibar where they clashed with Qaeda militants, while coalition Apache helicopters targeted extremist positions in the vicinity, according to the officials.
	Twelve Al-Qaeda militants and three soldiers died in the fighting, a military official said.
	Government forces last week expelled militants of the jihadist network's local branch -- Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- from Huta, the provincial capital of Lahj, as part of a widespread operation to secure southern provinces.
	Coalition-backed forces have driven militants out of Aden, the southern city declared by Hadi as temporary ...

Yemen launches southern operation against Qaeda militants

Would you like a drone with your cocktail? The world's first cafe using the tiny domestic unmanned aircraft as servers has opened in a Dutch university.
	The pop-up drone cafe will be serving up all weekend as part of celebrations for the "Dream and Dare" festival marking the 60th anniversary of the Eindhoven University of Technology.
	The 20 students behind the project, who spent nine months developing and building the autonomous drone, aim to show how such small inside craft could become an essential part of modern daily life.
	"It has potential as a useful tool for human kind. We see it as the next mobile phone. You choose and you programme it like you want," student and project leader Tessie Hartjes told AFP.
	The drone, nicknamed Blue Jay, which resembles a small white flying saucer with a luminescent strip for eyes, flies to a table and hovers as it takes a client's order, who points to the list to signal what they would like.
	"The blue eyes of the first drone load" up by ...

Dutch students open world's first pop-up drone cafe

The firebrand head of South Africa's radical opposition Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, has warned he could seek to remove the government "through the barrel of a gun."
	"We are not scared of the army. We are not scared to fight. We will fight," he told the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera network in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
	Asked by the interviewer if that meant he was ready to take up arms, Malema said "Yeah, literally I mean it literally. We are not scared...
	"We will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through a barrel of a gun".
	The EFF has been demanding the ouster of President Jacob Zuma for several months, accusing him of corruption.
	Late last month, South Africa's constitutional court ruled Zuma had violated the constitution in using public funds to upgrade his private residence and said he must repay the money.
	EFF deputies regularly disrupt parliamentary sessions, sometimes shouting anti-Zuma slogans.
	Last year, EFF MPs were ...

S African leftist leader threatens violence to oust Zuma

Syrian regime officials and Kurdish representatives were to meet today for a second day of talks on ending deadly clashes in the northeastern city of Qamishli, a senior security source said.
	A truce agreed on Friday held through the night, an AFP correspondent reported, and no gunfire was heard in the mainly Kurdish city, where control is split between Kurdish militia and the Syrian army and its allies.
	The army and the Kurds have coordinated on security in Hasakeh province against Islamic State jihadists, but tensions have built up between the sometimes rival authorities.
	The fighting in Qamishli began on Wednesday with a scuffle at a checkpoint and was a rare outbreak of violence between the two sides.
	According to the Kurdish security forces, the three days of fighting have left 17 civilians, 10 Kurdish fighters, and 31 troops and allied militiamen dead.
	Government officials and Kurdish representatives met at Qamishli's army-controlled airport on Friday and agreed to observe a 

Syria Kurds, regime to press talks after deadly clashes

Israel scrambled fighter planes today to intercept an unidentified passenger aircraft entering its airspace and escorted it to land at Tel Aviv, the Israeli military said.
	Israeli media reported that the aircraft turned out to be an Air Sinai flight from Cairo to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport.
	"Earlier this morning, two Israel Air Force aircraft accompanied a foreign aircraft planning to land at Ben Gurion airport which did not identify itself when entering Israeli airspace," a military spokeswoman said.
	"The aircraft landed safely at Ben Gurion airport as planned," she added, without giving further details.
	Last month, an EgyptAir domestic flight was hijacked and forced it to land on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where an Egyptian is currently in custody awaiting extradition proceedings.
	And in what Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has acknowledged as a jihadist bombing, a Russian plane crashed in the Sinai Peninsula in October killing all 224 people on ...

Israeli fighters scramble to intercept undeclared airliner

Twelve people were arrested overnight in Paris during clashes between the police and anti-government demonstrators following the nightly "Nuit Debout" sit-in, police said.
	Police fired teargas to disperse a group of around 100 people who tried to break through police lines around the Place de la Republique, where protesters have been holding nightly rallies for the past three weeks, the police said in a statement.
	A police car was torched during the clashes which erupted shortly after midnight, the statement said, adding that 12 people had been arrested for participating in an illegal gathering and throwing projectiles.
	No injuries were reported.
	Over the past few weeks, there have been several such flare-ups on the sidelines of the youth-led "Nuit Debout" (Up All Night) gatherings, which began on March 31 to protest the government's proposed labour reforms and have since grown to encompass a range of grievances, from the plight of migrants to tax evasion.
	The latest arrests ...

Twelve arrested after clashes at Paris youth protest

Eight members of one family, including a teenager, were shot dead in rural Ohio, just before gunmen killed five people in Georgia.
	In Ohio, seven bodies were found at three houses close to eachother and an eighth was later found at a separate site, Sheriff Charles Reader told reporters.
	The victims were "all adults except for a male juvenile" who was 16 years old, he said, and all members of a single family.
	Two babies -- one aged four days, the other six months -- and a three-year-old child survived the shootings, he added.
	The authorities gave no possible motive. And, with at least one suspected gunman still on the loose, no arrests have been made.
	"Each one of the victims appears to have been executed, each one of the victims appears to have been shot in the head," Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said.
	"The preliminary determination has been made that none of the individuals committed suicide," he added, saying the shooter or shooters "are still at large. We do not know ...

Separate US shootings in two states leave 13 dead

Panamanian authorities launched a new raid on an address linked to the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers scandal, local media reported.
	Prosecutors focused on organized crime "carried out a raid on a storage property belonging to the firm Mossack Fonseca," La Prensa newspaper said, publishing a photo of people putting documents into a vehicle.
	Prosecutors confirmed to AFP that a raid "is under way" but did not provide further details.
	After the raid, Mossack Fonseca said it was "ready to cooperate with investigations under way" and that the contents of the storage area was "information" prosecutors already had from an earlier inspection.
	The firm stressed in the statement that it was shredded paper awaiting recycling.
	It was the second raid in as many weeks on Mossack Fonseca in Panama. On April 12, the same prosecutorial unit swooped on the firm's main offices for a search that lasted 27 hours.
	Officials said after that first raid that no evidence was uncovered to ...

New raid on Panama Papers law firm: report

Veteran Thai politician and former premier Banharn Silpa-archa died today at the age of 83, a Bangkok hospital said.
	"Banharn Silpa-archa passed away peacefully," said a statement from Siriraj hospital, where he was admitted with asthma on Thursday.
	Born to a Chinese family in central Suphan Buri province in 1932, Banharn was first elected an MP in the seventies and went on to become Thailand's 21st prime minister in 1995.
	He stepped down the following year following a string of scandals and a bruising no-confidence debate in parliament.
	His Chart Thai party nevertheless remained a key coalition partner in governments led by then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the rival Democrat Party, earning the nickname "eel" for its slippery alliances.
	Banharn was banned from Thai politics for five years in 2008 and his party was dissolved for electoral fraud alongside other parties in the Thaksin-backed government.
	But he continued to wield influence as an advisor to the party after .

Former Thai PM Banharn Silpa-archa dies at 83

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has pressed South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar to return to Juba "without delay" and begin work in a transitional government.
	Machar had been expected to return to the capital on Monday, in line with a political agreement aimed at ending the two-year war, but differences over security arrangements in Juba delayed his arrival.
	Ban yesterday said President Salva Kiir's government had agreed to a compromise proposal on the arrangements for Machar's return and said this breakthrough should help with the swift formation of the new unity government.
	"Maintaining a spirit of cooperation will be crucial as the country's leaders begin the work of reversing the years of destruction this conflict has brought upon the people of South Sudan," he said in a statement.
	Ban urged Machar to travel to Juba "without further conditions which could jeopardize the fragile peace process and prolong the suffering of the South Sudanese people."
	Under the peace deal, ...

UN chief asks South Sudan's Machar to return to Juba

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has admitted she had made an "error" in the bitter freedom of speech row sparked by a comedian's poem about Turkey's president.
	But she defended her decision to authorise criminal proceedings against popular comedian Jan Boehmermann, saying this was a "fair" reaction to the poem that accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of paedophilia and bestiality.
	Merkel did, however, express regret that her spokesman Steffen Seibert had said she viewed the poem as "deliberately insulting" in the chancellery's first official reaction to the row.
	"With hindsight, it was an error," Merkel told regional officials meeting in Berlin yesterday, adding that the remark could have given the impression that "freedom of opinion is not important, that freedom of the press is not important".
	Merkel's decision to allow proceedings against Boehmermann has appalled rights groups, while the comedian has received vocal support from media and cultural figures.
	He could be ...

Merkel admits 'error' in Erdogan satire row

The Islamic State jihadist group has captured a Syrian pilot alive after shooting down his plane east of Damascus, an IS-affiliated news agency said.
	Amaq news agency yesterday gave the pilot's name as Azzam Eid, from Hama. It said IS fighters had shot down his plane and found him alive after he parachuted down to the crash site.
	A video posted by Amaq showed the charred remains of a plane, some parts still on fire, lying on a vast desert plain.
	Several apparent IS fighters in military-style fatigues circle around the wreckage, pointing to the two-starred Syrian government flag clearly visible on one of the wings.
	Syrian state news agency SANA had no immediate news on the incident.
	IS fighters have shot down several Syrian government warplanes in recent weeks, including over the Dmeir military airport near Damascus and in the southern province of Sweida.
	But the pilots were able to land in regime-held zones on both occasions.
	In December 2014, IS shot down a warplane from the ..

IS claims capture of Syrian pilot after shooting down plane

Israelis have begun marking the Jewish Passover holiday with increased security after a bus bombing this week wounded 20 people and threatened to reverse a decline in attacks.
	The bomb exploded aboard a bus in a relatively isolated area of southern Jerusalem on Monday, with the Hamas- affiliated bomber later dying.
	Israeli authorities called it a suicide bombing, the first since a wave of violence began last October.
	Violence since then has killed 28 Israelis and 201 Palestinians. The majority of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.
	However the violence had appeared to subside in the weeks before Monday's bus blast.
	Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted on April 10 there has been a "significant decline in the scope of terrorist attacks".
	Authorities yesterday increased security in Jerusalem for the eight-day Passover festival, during which thousands of Jews come to the city to celebrate.
	Israeli 

Israelis mark Passover with boosted security after bus bomb

US Secretary of State John Kerry brought his granddaughter to work today as he joined senior world officials to formally sign the Paris climate deal at the United Nations.
	Washington's top diplomat came to the podium cradling two-year-old Isabelle Dobbs-Higginson and triggered warm applause as he endorsed the accord for the United States.
	Earlier, Kerry had addressed the General Assembly to hail the agreement, which he said was the last chance to slow the devastating pace of human-generated climate change.
	Isabelle is the daughter of Kerry's eldest daughter, filmmaker Alexandra Kerry.

Kerry takes granddaughter to UN climate deal signing

- Air strikes on rebel-held neighbourhoods in Syria's second city Aleppo today killed at least 25 people and wounded more than 40, emergency workers said.
	The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said regime warplanes carried out the air strikes, earlier gave a toll of 19 dead but said this was likely to rise.
	An AFP correspondent in the opposition-held eastern part of the city said several districts were targeted including Bustan al-Qasr, Al-Mashad and Salhin.
	Late today, two barrel bombs also hit the southern district of Bab al-Nayrab, killing an ambulance driver.
	"It was a bloody, black day in Aleppo, with aircraft not leaving the sky," Bibres Mashaal, the head of civil defence in Bab al-Nayrab, said.
	"Twenty-five air strikes where launched on the city, as well as barrel bombs," he said, adding they targeted residential neighbourhoods and main roads.
	"Today the civil defence was fully mobilised and there were also fires," Mashaal said.
	Civil defence workers also ...

Air strikes on Syria's Aleppo kill 25

At least five people have been killed and dozens injured by storms raging in southwestern China that blew down a market building, state media reported on today.
	Nearly 115,000 people have been affected by the gales, which have hit eight cities since descending on the region on Sunday, Xinhua said.
	Two people were killed and 24 injured when a storm brought down a wholesale market building in Foshan city, Guangdong province, the state media agency said.
	A strong gale and heavy rain struck the fruit market in Foshan city, Guangdong province, at around 7:00 am (2300 GMT Thursday), Xinhua said, citing local officials.
	Another three people have been killed in neighbouring Guangxi province over the past few days, it said, two of them hit by falling trees while another drowned.
	Three more are missing after falling into flood waters, Xinhua added.
	Storms have already caused havoc in the region. Last week, a huge crane collapsed in high winds in Guangdong province, killing 18 people at a .

AFP

AFP

Page 1759 - Afp