Iraq can offset the impact of the Iran nuclear deal on oil prices and competition for export markets with higher production and improved regional trade, the oil ministry said today.
	The deal reached between Tehran and world powers yesterday could lead to the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran and allow the Islamic republic to increase its oil exports.
	Experts predict that the return of Iranian oil exports could help keep oil prices low.
	Cash-strapped Iraq relies on oil exports for the vast majority of its income.
	"Iraq's income will be reduced but this has been taken into account," oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told AFP.
	World oil prices collapsed by 60 per cent between June 2014 and January, when they hit a low of USD 45 a barrel. This was due in part to excessive supplies caused by the boom in US shale oil.
	"Iraq has for some time already been working to increase production and exports to compensate for the losses caused by oil prices," Jihad said.
	Iraq's exports hit .

Iraq says no alarm at prospect of hiked Iran oil exports

PTI Automatic

China has begun building a 314-metre high dam which will be among the world's tallest, officials said, as the country massively expands hydropower.
	The Shuangjiankou dam on a tributary of China's mighty Yangtze river will be completed in 2022, the environmental ministry said on its website yesterday.
	The facility, costing 36 billion yuan (USD 5.8 billion), will be higher than the world's current tallest dam, the 305-metre Jinping-1, also in China.
	China has been expanding its hydropower electricity generating capacity as it seeks to reach a goal of obtaining 20 per cent of its power from non-fossil sources by 2030.
	Beijing says reaching the target will help reduce growth in its carbon emissions responsible for climate change, the world's largest.
	China is home to the world's largest dam, the Three Gorges, as well as some 85,000 other hydropower facilities.
	Millions of people have been forced to relocate because of dam building in the country in recent decades, often with little .

China begins construction of 'world's tallest' dam

A mouse triggered panic and a crush in a Casablanca mosque has left more than 80 injured, mostly women, the Moroccan news agency MAP reported.
	The incident occurred in the city's Hassan II mosque, which was packed during evening prayers Tuesday, the holiest night of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, MAP said.
	"Eighty-one people, mostly women, suffered light injuries and fractures while some of them fainted," it said.
	The panic broke out after a woman raised the alarm over the mouse, sparking a sudden exodus of screaming worshippers.
	Among those needing treatment was a pregnant woman who suffered a double fracture in the leg and has been kept under surveillance in hospital.

Over 80 hurt as mouse sparks Casablanca mosque crush

The sun-powered plane Solar Impulse 2 will be grounded for months in Hawaii to carry out battery repairs, after completing nearly half of an unprecedented round-the-world flight, the project said today.
	"Irreversible damage to certain parts of the batteries will require repairs which will take several months," it said in a statement.
	The team said last week that battery temperatures in the innovative craft had surged during a gruelling, five-day journey from Japan to Hawaii, and there was no way to cool the battery packs once the aircraft was in flight.
	There had been hope that repairs could be completed by next month, but the statement said fixes will take until "early spring 2016."
	A spokeswoman for the project separately told AFP that it was possible the battery packs needed to be replaced entirely if the existing system could not be repaired.
	"We don't know yet if we have to change everything or if we can repair (the existing material)", but any new parts would have to be ...

Record-breaking Solar Impulse 2 grounded for 'several months'

Mohammad Rizwan smashed 52 off 38 balls towards the end to lift Pakistan to 287-8 in the second one-day international against Sri Lanka here today.
     Azhar Ali played a captain's innings of 79 and senior pro Shoaib Malik made a run-a-ball 51, the pair adding 83 for the fourth wicket after the tourists won the toss and elected to bat in the day-night match.
     But Rizwan stole the show with five boundaries and a six as the tourists plundered 88 runs in the last 10 overs.
     Anwar Ali, who put on 56 for the seventh wicket with Rizwan, returned unbeaten on 29 off 20 balls.
     Pakistan had won the first match in Dambulla by six wickets last Saturday to take the lead in the five-match series.
     Ninth-ranked Pakistan need a series win to stay in contention for a place in the eight-nation Champions Trophy in England in 2017.
     Sri Lanka, currently ranked fifth, are assured of taking part in the tournament.
     Ahmed Shehzad put on 59 for the first wicket with Azhar when he ...

Rizwan steers Pakistan to 287-8 against Sri Lanka

Wan Li, a major Chinese Communist political figure who served as vice premier and who was seen as a liberal voice in the Communist leadership, has died, state television reported today. He was 98.
	CCTV said among the opening headlines of its main evening news bulletin that Wan died in Beijing.
	Wan was classed by some analysts as one of Communist China's so-called Eight Immortals, a reference to a group of elite, elderly revolutionaries who survived the purges of Maoism and backed the ascent of Deng Xiaoping -- one of their number -- to power.
	He was chairman of the rubber stamp legislature National People's Congress (NPC) for five years from 1988, a tumultuous time that saw the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protestors at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in June 1989.
	Like many Chinese officials Wan was persecuted during the chaotic 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, though he was rehabilitated and became vice premier in the 1980s before being named head of the NPC.
	Online Chinese news 

Former top Chinese official Wan Li, 98, dies: state TV

There were chaotic scenes inside Japan's normally orderly parliament today as opposition lawmakers thronged a committee room in an unsuccessful bid to block Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's controversial security bills.
	Dozens of politicians held signs protesting against what they said was the "forced" passage of legislation that will bolster the role of Japan's military, in a way they say is anathema to the country's pacifist constitution.
	The floor of the committee room filled moments after chairman Yasukazu Hamada, a member of Abe's conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), called a vote.
	Lawmakers chanted "nay, nay, nay" and held posters saying "No to Abe politics", and "No to a forced decision", as their LDP colleagues pressed on with the vote, which they won comfortably.
	"This will drastically change our defence policies. It's also likely they are unconstitutional," said Katsuya Okada, head of main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
	"I strongly protest that these ...

Chaos in Japan parliament as defence bill sparks uproar

The effects of air pollution cost France some 100 billion euros (USD 110.1 billion) each year, a French Senate committee report estimated today, citing impact to health as the major expense.
	The study said air pollution is not merely a health threat, but also represents "an economic aberration" costing the French state and businesses billions annually in treating illness, and financing employee sick leave, lost productivity, reduced agriculture yields and cleaning up sooty buildings and other venues.
	It estimated the financial impact of atmospheric pollution for health reasons at "between 68 and 97 billion euros" per year, ranging from treatment of aggravated conditions like asthma to battling forms of cancer caused by smog.
	It pegged the direct cost to France's health care system at least three billion euros per year, with the remainder of the linked largely to time and productivity lost by businesses whose employees require sick leave during peak pollution periods.
	Outlays for ..

Air pollution costs France 100 billion euros per year

Japan said today its top security diplomat will tour China and Mongolia in a trip seen as a potential precursor to another summit between Tokyo and Beijing.
	Shotaro Yachi, the head of the National Security Council, will visit Beijing from tomorrow through Saturday for talks including a meeting with Yang Jiechi, China's top diplomat who serves as state councillor, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said.
	Yachi will also go to Mongolia after his visit to Beijing, Suga added.
	The government said the trip by Yachi, formerly a top career diplomat, is part of routine work to build ties with his counterparts around the world.
	Yachi "regularly visits foreign countries under the prime minister's orders to meet with his counterparts to build relations," Suga told a press briefing. "This trip to China and Mongolia will be part of that," he said.
	Local media is rife with speculation that he is going there to pave the way for a possible visit to China by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for ...

Japan's top security envoy to visit China

US entertainment giant Disney today unveiled details of its planned theme park in Shanghai, promising Chinese features and new attractions not found in its five other resorts.
	The Walt Disney Co. And Chinese Partner Shanghai Shendi Group broke ground on the $5.5 billion park in April 2011. The opening was originally planned for this year, but Disney has pushed it back to 2016.
	"When we began this project, our goal was to create something that was authentically Disney and distinctively China. We believe we've achieved the perfect blend," Disney chairman and chief executive Robert Iger told a media event.
	The company has scrapped its signature "Main Street, USA" for mainland China, using a "Mickey Avenue" to replace the facade of an American town found at its theme parks in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo as well as those in the US.
	When the French park was first proposed there was outrage over the prospect of an American cultural invasion, although Europeans later embraced it.
	For the .

Disney gives sneak peek for planned China theme park

Loyalists of Yemen's exiled president seized more ground in second city Aden today after recapturing the airport held by Iran-backed rebels for four months, military sources said.
	The offensive, dubbed Operation Golden Arrow, is the first major advance by the loyalists since the Huthi rebels entered the port city in March, forcing President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi into exile in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
	Despite an appeal from US President Barack Obama to King Salman of Saudi Arabia for an urgent end to the fighting, Saudi-led warplanes carried out six raids on rebel positions before dawn, witnesses and military sources said.
	Popular Resistance fighters -- a southern militia that has been the mainstay of support for Hadi -- recaptured the provincial government headquarters in the Mualla district by Aden's main commercial port, militia spokesman Ali al-Ahmadi told AFP.
	They also advanced in the Crater district of the city, he added.
	Yesterday, the militia, backed by reinforcements .

Loyalists advance in Yemen's Aden

South Korea has decided to return one of two ancient Buddha statutes that were stolen by Korean thieves in Japan three years ago, the prosecutor general's office said today.
	Although Japan had demanded the return of both Korean-made statues, the prosecutor said the second likeness would remain in South Korea pending the resolution of a dispute over its original ownership.
	The argument over the fate of the statues, which were stolen from different shrines on the Japanese island of Tsushima in 2012, is a reflection of the troubled nature of Japan and South Korea's historic ties.
	Four people were arrested in South Korea in 2013 over the original theft, after they tried to sell the statues which were then confiscated by the authorities.
	Japan requested the statues' swift return, but a South Korean District Court blocked their repatriation on suspicion that they might have been stolen from Korea centuries ago by Japanese pirates.
	In its decision today, the prosecutor's office said ...

S Korea to return one of two stolen statues to Japan

A German court today sentenced a former Nazi SS officer known as the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz" to four years in jail, in what was expected to be one of the last Holocaust trials.
	Oskar Groening, 94, sat impassively as judge Franz Kompisch said "the defendant is found guilty of accessory to murder in 300,000 legally connected cases" of deported Jews who were sent to the gas chambers in 1944.
	Groening served as a bookkeeper at the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, sorting and counting the money taken from those killed or used as slave labour, collecting cash in different European currencies, and shipping it back to his Nazi bosses in Berlin.
	The sentence was longer than the three and a half years prosecutors had demanded in the court in the northern city of Lueneburg, which has been hearing the case since April.
	Groening had yesterday seized a last opportunity to address the judges and said he was "very sorry" for his time stationed at the concentration camp, telling them that "no 

'Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' sentenced to four years in prison

An Australian ghost tour company has ceased visits to the forest where a notorious serial killer buried the remains of young backpackers, following a backlash over the idea which has been labelled "horrendous".
	Goulburn Ghost Tours recently added the night-time visits to the Belanglo State Forest, where killer Ivan Milat dumped the bodies of young travellers more than 20 years ago, to its other tours.
	But it said late yesterday that the "extreme terror tour" to Belanglo, southwest of Sydney, where the bodies of two Britons, three Germans and two Australians were found in the 1990s, were cancelled for good.
	"From here on in, we will not be running Belanglo tours," Louise Edwards told Channel Ten's The Project.
	Edwards said ghost tours were controversial, because "people believe in ghosts or they don't so we are used to a little bit of controversy".
	But in hindsight she said the marketing of the "extreme terror" tours, which had included lines such as "Once you enter Belanglo State 

Backlash ends Australian backpacker murder tours

The US state of Missouri has executed a death row inmate, the first execution since the country's Supreme Court backed the use of a contested lethal injection drug.
	At 1941 local time (0041 GMT), David Zink was pronounced dead yesterday by lethal injection in Bonne Terre, Missouri, prison spokesman Mike O'Connell said.
	Zink, 55, was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a young woman he abducted after a car accident in July 2001. Zink appealed unsuccessfully for a halt in his capital punishment.
	The execution was the first since the US Supreme Court gave the green light in June to the use of a controversial sedative in lethal injections after another drug became scarce.
	In a 5-4 ruling, the court decided that plaintiffs had failed to show the drug midazolam used in lethal injections had a substantial risk of causing severe pain.
	The drug was used in several botched killings, where inmates appeared to suffer for extended periods of time before death.
	Zink was the 18th ...

US state carries out first execution since SC ruling

A Chinese-led consortium was selected today as the preferred bidder to take on the massive task of raising the South Korean passenger ferry that sank last year with the loss of more than 300 lives, most of them schoolchildren.
	The 6,825-tonne Sewol ferry sank off the southwest coast in April 2014. A total of 295 bodies were recovered, but nine remained unaccounted for when divers finally called off the dangerous search of the sunken vessel last November.
	The Sewol lies 40 metres down on the sea bed and bringing it to the surface represents a substantial technical challenge. The salvage operation is scheduled to begin in September and take as long as one and a half years.
	The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries said it would begin negotiations next Monday with the consortium involving China's state-run Shanghai Salvage Co and a South Korean firm, which beat six other competitors including European and US firms.
	Shanghai received good marks for its experience in salvaging sunken ...

SKorea selects China consortium for Sewol ferry salvage

France's foreign minister said today he had accepted an invitation to visit Iran after the historic deal on its nuclear programme but did not give a date for the trip.
	Laurent Fabius said his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif had "reinvited" him as the deal was clinched yesterday.
	"I told him I would go to Iran so I will go to Iran," Fabius told French radio.
	Fabius noted that French firms were "very well thought of" in Iran but denied the nuclear deal was struck with an eye on business.
	"Trade is very important. It fosters growth. It's important for the Iranians, it's important for us," he said.
	"But when the president of the Republic (Francois Hollande) and I took the strategic decision (to agree to a deal) ... We did not take it for commercial reasons, but for strategic reasons because we wanted to avoid nuclear proliferation," stressed the minister.
	France used to have a strong presence in Iran before the sanctions went into effect, with Peugeot and Renault being ...

France's Fabius says 'will go' to Iran after nuclear deal

Mexico's government has released a video showing fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman going into his prison cell's shower and bending down behind a short dividing wall before disappearing.
	While Guzman paced back and forth several times between the bathroom area and his bed before vanishing, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said it was common behavior for prison inmates.
	The small hole on the shower floor that Guzman, 58, slipped into for his daring escape late Saturday is not seen in the footage.
	While a surveillance camera was on a corner outside the cell and another inside pointing toward the shower, authorities said they had two blind spots to protect the inmate's privacy.
	Rubido said Guzman was last seen at 8:52 pm, without indicating how long it took for prison guards to sound the alarm.
	Guzman's second escape from a maximum-security prison in 14 years is a huge embarrassment to President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration, which had celebrated 

Video shows drug lord Guzman's daring escape

The Philippines said today it was repairing a crumbling ship serving as its lonely outpost in the disputed South China Sea as China deploys more vessels and builds new islands nearby.
	This would ensure the rust-eaten World War II-vintage BRP Sierra Madre remains livable for a tiny unit of marines guarding Second Thomas Shoal, said Philippine Navy spokesman Colonel Edgard Arevalo.
	"Maintenance repair is being done to ensure the vessel's minimum habitability. We are morally and duty-bound to provide for our troops there," he told AFP.
	The Philippine military deliberately grounded the 100-metre (328-foot) vessel atop the reefs in 1999 in a last-ditch effort to check the advance of China, which four years earlier occupied Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef some 40 kilometres (25 miles) away.
	The disputed outcrops are located around 200 kilometres from the western Philippine island of Palawan and roughly 1,100 kilometres from the nearest major Chinese land mass.
	The Philippines ...

Philippines repairs crumbling South China Sea ship outpost

US top seed John Isner crashed out Tuesday in the opening round of the ATP Hall of Fame Championships, losing to 161st-ranked countryman Rajeev Ram 6-7 (5/7) 6-3 7-6 (10/8).
     Isner, ranked 18th, was coming off a third-round Wimbledon exit at the hands of reigning US Open champion Marin Cilic after dropping the fifth set 12-10. He was seeking a third title at Newport and the 10th ATP crown of his career.
     Isner blasted 21 aces with only a lone double fault but Ram fired 18 aces back and rallied after dropping the first set tie-breaker, taking the only break of the second set and outlasting the top American after neither broke in the last.
     Ram, whose only career ATP title came at Newport in 2009, advanced to a second-round matchup against Japan's 144th-ranked Yuichi Sugita, a first-round Wimbledon loser who ousted American Ryan Harrison 6-1, 5-7, 6-3.
     Also defeated was US eighth seed Tim Smyczek, who fell 6-3, 6-4 to Czech Jan Hernych.
     Two other US seeds advanced .

Top seed Isner toppled by Ram on Newport grass

Australia, reeling from the late withdrawal of wicket-keeper Brad Haddin, are reportedly set to drop Shane Watson for the second Ashes Test at Lord's on Thursday as they bid to level the five-match series at 1-1.
     Watson was twice out lbw cheaply in all-too familiar fashion as England, against many pre-series predictions, won the first Test in Cardiff by the crushing margin of 169 runs with more than a day to spare last week.
     With his medium-paced bowling barely used by captain Michael Clarke at Sophia Gardens, Australia's Fairfax Media reported Wednesday that the 34-year-old Watson would be dropped at Lord's and replaced by fellow all-rounder Mitchell Marsh, 11 years his junior.
     Watson's lbw double in Cardiff means he has now passed fifty in just two of his past 16 innings.
     "My gut feeling is they'll probably go with Mitchell Marsh," former Australia captain Steve Waugh told Sky Sports before the Fairfax report, subsequently cited by Cricket Australia's own ...

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