Yukos shareholders said today that Russian government assets in France including bank accounts and real estate had been frozen in a dispute over compensation for the seizure of the defunct oil giant.
	"It's bank accounts and real estate," Tim Osborne, executive director of main shareholder GML, told AFP, adding that accounts in around 40 banks had been frozen along with "eight or nine buildings".
	He said the asset freeze occurred two weeks ago but had only been "leaked" by Russia on Thursday. There was no immediate official confirmation from Moscow or Paris.
	"Proceedings are already under way in Britain and the United States and further countries will follow," he said, following a move by Belgium to freeze Russian government accounts which sparked anger in Moscow.
	Osborne explained that legislation in Belgium and France made it easier to freeze assets pending the outcome of the Yukos compensation dispute.
	The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled last year that Moscow .

Yukos shareholders say Russian state assets frozen in France

PTI Automatic

The black church where a horrific shooting claimed the lives of nine people boasts a rich history echoing America's own painful passage through slavery, civil rights, and now, its racially turbulent present.
	Many congregants refer to the Emanuel AME Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina as "Mother Emanuel" because of its storied past, as well as its central role as a place of worship and social gathering place for many in the city's African American community.
	The church is one of dozens of African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches across the United States, the oldest independent denomination founded by blacks.
	AME churches are an offshoot from a white-run Methodist denomination that once refused entry to black members.
	The picturesque white brick Gothic church with its weather vane-topped steeple -- one of the most recognizable structures in Charleston -- has come to be seen as a symbolic beacon for African American worshippers not just in the city, but throughout the ...

'Mother Emanuel': Spiritual home for blacks in Charleston

Crunch talks to resolve a five-month standoff between Greece and its EU-IMF creditors ended Thursday without a deal, Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission vice-president for the euro, said today.
	"No deal at Eurogroup," Dombrovskis said in a tweet after the talks broke up after 90 minutes of discussion on Greece.
	"Strong signal for Greece to engage seriously in negotiations. The Eurogroup stands ready to reconvene at any moment," he added.

Greek debt talks end with no deal: EU

US lawmakers voted today to give President Barack Obama fast-track authority to negotiate a major trans-Pacific trade accord, moving it closer to his desk after a dramatic defeat last week.
	Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) narrowly passed the House of Representatives by 218 votes to 208 as a stand-alone bill, after congressional leaders uncoupled it from a worker-assistance program that crashed to defeat Friday when most Democrats voted against it in order to block the trade package.
	TPA now heads to the US Senate, where it could receive a vote as early as next week.
	Holding the vote so soon after last week's blockage -- a major embarrassment for Obama, whose Democrats largely deserted him -- signalled Republican congressional leaders' confidence they have sufficient votes to get the entire package across the finish line.
	Only 28 Democrats supported the measure, with 158 voting against, along with 50 Republicans.
	House Speaker John Boehner offered little insight into what may have 

In re-vote, US House passes key trade promotion bill

Pomp, pageantry and a vast array of elaborate hats make Royal Ascot a truly English affair -- but Britain's most prestigious horse race meeting is attracting a growing international contingent.
	More than 300,000 people are expected during the course of the five-day extravaganza in Berkshire, southeast England, attended yearly by Queen Elizabeth II -- with Ladies Day today a sartorial highlight of the upper class social calendar.
	Steeped in three centuries of tradition, and with a strict dress code to observe, the first hurdle for international visitors is negotiating the rules of etiquette.
	Taiwanese couple Chinghan Wang and Tienjen Hsieh, who are studying in London, said they spent about a month researching and preparing their outfits.
	"It's a formal event, part of British culture. That's what we want to experience," said Wang, wearing a demure, ivory-coloured dress and matching fascinator.
	Tienjen, dressed in top hat and tails, added: "There's not much of a hat culture in Asia. 

Keeping tradition intact, Ascot goes international

South Africa's parliament collapsed in chaos today, allowing President Jacob Zuma to escape questions over why Sudan's leader was allowed to leave the country despite a court order barring his departure.
	The Economic Freedom Fighters opposition party prevented Zuma from speaking, demanding that he first agree to pay back millions of dollars of taxpayer's money spent on his private rural residence at Nkandla - a long-running domestic scandal.
	Zuma, appearing for his quarterly question time in parliament, had been expected to be pressed on the international scandal over Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's visit to the country.
	Bashir flew out of South Africa on Monday in defiance of a court order as judges weighed up an application for his arrest on a warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and genocide.
	The court condemned the government's failure to prevent his departure as unconstitutional and gave it seven days to disclose why he was allowed to leave 

S Africa's Zuma escapes Bashir probe in parliament chaos

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Israel today to protect the lives of Palestinian children, who have borne the brunt of its military operations in Gaza.
	"Last year was one of the worst in recent memory for children in countries affected by conflict," the UN leader said, adding he is "deeply alarmed at the suffering of so many children as a result of Israeli military operations in Gaza last year."
	More than 500 children died during the conflict in Gaza last year. A United Nations report accused the Israeli army of being responsible for strikes on buildings where civilians were sheltering during the conflict.
	At the height of the conflict, some 300,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering in some 91 UN schools, several of which were hit by Israeli strikes.
	"I urge Israel to take concrete and immediate steps, including by reviewing existing policies and practices, to protect and prevent the killing and maiming of children, and to respect the special protections afforded to ...

Ban urges Israel to safeguard lives of Palestinian children

Fisticuffs broke out today at a Geneva press conference by Yemeni rebels when their leader was attacked by a slipper-wielding woman and others accusing them of mass killings in the country's south.
	The incident underscored the deep divisions between the various sides involved in trying to get Iran-backed rebels and the exiled government to agree to a badly-needed humanitarian truce.
	Hamza al-Huthi, the head of the rebel delegation and from the Ansarullah group, was addressing reporters when a woman in a headscarf barged in and threw a slipper at him - a huge insult in the Arab world.
	Al-Huthi promptly threw it back.
	She was quickly joined by six men who shouted slogans against the rebels and started raining blows at them, screaming "Killers, you are spreading death and disease in South Yemen."
	The melee lasted several minutes with bottles hurled before the intruders were hauled out.
	The woman's gesture was immediately hailed on social media in Aden, the main port city in South ..

High drama at Yemen talks as slipper hurled at rebel leader

The Palestinians will next week submit their first file to the International Criminal Court in their bid to open criminal proceedings against Israel, an official said today.
	The move is part of an increased focus on diplomatic manoeuvring and appeals to international bodies by the Palestinians, who have been frustrated by a lack of progress in ending the Israeli occupation and creating their own independent state.
	The file is to be handed to ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on June 25, and will detail alleged violations of international law by the Jewish state, Palestinian foreign ministry official Ammar Hijazi told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
	On April 1, the Palestinians formally joined the ICC with the goal of trying Israeli leaders for alleged abuses during last summer's war in the Gaza Strip, and alleged crimes relating to the occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
	The file is "only general, it's only statistical", Hijazi said.
	"But it certainly ..

Palestinians to submit first file to ICC next week

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde warned Greece today it would get no leeway on a huge debt payment as EU ministers warned they were looking at a "plan B" for a possible default.
	Eurozone finance ministers holding a crisis meeting in Luxembourg pressed Athens to finally present a credible reform plan and end the five-month standoff between Greece's anti-austerity government and its creditors.
	But with Athens owing a 1.6-billion-euro payment to the IMF at the end of June and Greece's international bailout due to expire the same day, they were pessimistic about the chances of a deal today.
	"There will be no period of grace" for the loan payment, Lagarde told reporters before she joined the ministers for their Eurogroup meeting. "I have a term of June 30 - if it's not paid by July 1, it's not paid."
	Greece's creditors are withholding the last 7.2 billion euros of its bailout until Athens caves in, but leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has refused to make changes 

IMF rules out Greek payment delay

Global police have seized "huge amounts" of wildlife contraband, including some 12 tonnes of ivory, as well as rhino horn and whale bones, in a massive operation across 62 countries, Europol said today.
	"Operation COBRA III, the biggest ever coordinated international law enforcement operation targeting the illegal trade in endangered species, has led to the recovery of a huge amount of wildlife contraband," Europe's police agency said in a statement.
	In a separate statement issued in Bangkok, one of the operations' organisers, the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations' Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN) said COBRA III resulted in at least 300 arrests.
	This included "kingpins and over 600 seizures of assorted wildlife contraband," it said.
	Eight suspected kingpins arrested included a Chinese national involved in Namibia's biggest rhino horn smuggling case and a notorious elephant poacher in India, it added.
	The two-month-long operation involving 62 European, African, ...

Global police in 'huge' wildlife contraband haul: Europol

In the year since it declared its "caliphate," the Islamic State group has become the world's most infamous jihadist organisation, attracting international franchises and spreading fear with acts of extreme violence.
	IS proclaimed its self-described caliphate on June 29, 2014, urging Muslims worldwide to pledge allegiance to its Iraqi leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, renamed Caliph Ibrahim.
	Vowing to make "the West and the East... Submit", IS has expanded its territory throughout northern and western Iraq and eastern and northern Syria.
	It now controls some 300,000 square kilometres, terrifying residents with a gruesome brutality that analysts say has become central to its existence.
	"By not shrinking from extreme violence... Daesh is implementing a technique in which the psychological impact is more important than the acts themselves," said Karim Bitar of the Paris-based Institute for International and Strategic Studies, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
	"More than anything, it's ...

A year on, Islamic State 'caliphate' infamous for brutality

The UN has closed the last remaining shelter for Palestinians displaced in last summer's war in Gaza, a spokesman said today, with families seeking temporary accommodation elsewhere.
	The July-August conflict between Israel and Islamist movement Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, left 100,000 Gazans homeless and forced many to seek refuge in schools belonging to the UN's Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA.
	"Some 30 families left the shelter of the Bahrain school (in western Gaza City), where up to 1,100 displaced people had been living," UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna told AFP.
	It was the final UN building being used as a shelter for those displaced in the war, he said.
	The United Nations has stressed the need for its schools being used as shelters to be able to function fully as educational institutions.
	UNRWA gave between USD 800 and USD 1000 to each family to be spent on temporary accommodation for several months, Abu Hasna said.
	He said that the amount of money the agency ...

Final UN shelter in Gaza closes, many remain homeless

Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment provides a massive mobilising boost for efforts to reach a UN deal on climate change this year, green campaigners said today.
	They hailed the 184-page document, "Laudato Si" as a milestone.
	For many Catholics, they predicted, it could transform climate from a remote environmental problem into a pressing moral issue demanding action.
	Its impact could be far-reaching in the effort to conclude a UN accord on curbing greenhouse-gases, due less than six months from now.
	"The Pope's message can only help strengthen the momentum toward an agreement in Paris," said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), a US thinktank.
	"(He) is injecting a powerful moral voice into a debate usually mired in science, politics and economics.
	"He speaks to our collective conscience, and while he's unlikely to win over many skeptics, he's educating countless others about the stakes and the ...

Papal move boosts hopes for climate deal: activists

A British artist who created a controversial sculpture at the Palace of Versailles that has become known as the "queen's vagina" lashed out at French "intolerance" today after his work was vandalised.
	The work "dirty corner" by Anish Kapoor was found sprayed with yellow paint on Wednesday and is now being cleaned by palace authorities.
	"If this act of vandalism means anything, it speaks more to a certain intolerance in France than to art itself," Kapoor said in an interview with Le Figaro daily.
	"The problem seems more political than anything else," he added.
	The 60-metre (200-foot) long, 10-metre (33-foot) high steel-and-rock abstract sculpture by the British-Indian sculptor, resembling a funnel in the form of an orifice, is set up in the garden aimed directly at the royal chateau, which attracts five million tourists a year.
	Inside the palace itself is a smaller work -- a cannon that fired red wax at white walls, symbolising a phallus and an ejaculation of blood.
	Some French ..

'Queen's vagina' sculptor lashes out at French 'intolerance'

Three of 10 staffers kidnapped from Tunisia's Tripoli consulate by Libyan militia last week have been released, and the remainder are expected to be freed soon, the foreign minister said today.
	Their release comes as Tunisian authorities announced that a Libyan man they have been holding, whose freedom was reportedly demanded by the kidnappers, is to be deported.
	The 10 staffers were abducted on Friday when gunmen stormed the mission.
	Libya descended into chaos after a revolt unseated longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. It now has rival governments and parliaments, as well as powerful militias battling for influence and a share of its oil wealth.
	Foreign Minister Taieb Baccouche told Mosaique FM radio today that negotiations for the liberation of all those held began the same day as the kidnapping.
	He said "three were freed on Wednesday, and talks are still under way for the release of the others", adding that the outlook was "reassuring".
	Tunisian media and officials ...

Libya militia frees 3 Tunisia consular workers: Tunis

Last month marked the hottest May in modern history, continuing a troubling trend of rising global temperatures, US government scientists said today.
	"This was the warmest May on record," said Derek Arndt, chief of the monitoring branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information, during a conference call with reporters.
	When global air and sea surface temperatures were averaged, May was 1.57 degrees Fahrenheit (0.87 Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average, said the NOAA monthly report.
	The temperatures were the highest for May in the 1880-2015 period, "surpassing the previous record set last year in 2014 by 0.14 Fahrenheit (0.08 Celsius)," said the NOAA report.
	One quarter of the United States is experiencing drought, primarily in California and nearby West Coast states but also in parts of the northeast and New York.
	The monthly figures for May continue an upward climb for temperatures since the start of the 

Last month was hottest May in modern history: US

China's government has passed new guidelines requiring civilian shipbuilders to ensure their vessels can be used by the military in the event of conflict, state-run media said today.
	The regulations require five categories of vessels including container ships to be modified to "serve national defence needs", the state-run China Daily newspaper said.
	The regulations "will enable China to convert the considerable potential of its civilian fleet into military strength", it said.
	The report said that China had about 172,000 civilian ships at the end of last year, suggesting the measure could be a major boost to China's navy.
	China's government will cover the costs of the plan, it added.
	China has rapidly expanded its navy in recent years, commissioning its first aircraft carrier in 2012 and adding to its submarine and surface fleets.
	The increased military spending comes as Beijing asserts its territorial claims in the East and South China Seas, where it has disputes with several ...

China orders civilian ships adapted for military use: report

Germany agreed today to turn more than 60 former military bases into nature preserves, with the aim of creating vast new green oases and sanctuaries for rare species of birds.
	Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said an ongoing overhaul of the German armed forces had made it possible to set aside more than 76,600 acres of forests, marshes, meadows and moors.
	She said the government had opted against selling the land, in some cases, prime pieces of real estate, to investors in favour of creating natural refuges.
	"We are seizing a historic opportunity with this conversion -- many areas that were once no-go zones are no longer needed for military purposes," she said.
	"We are fortunate that we can now give these places back to nature."
	In recent years, large swathes of land in the former communist east that had been occupied by the military, including the so-called "Green Strip" along the once-fortified heavily border to then West Germany, have been turned into nature reserves for 

Germany turns military bases into rare-bird nature reserves

One of Japan's biggest banks today said it would sell bonds denominated in China's yuan currency as frosty ties between the major trading partners show signs of thawing.
	Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, a unit of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, said it would raise 350 million yuan (USD 56 million) through the two-year bond offering that would be sold to Japanese life insurers, regional banks and other institutional investors.
	The sale next week would be a first for Japan, it said, following yuan bond sales by British and Singaporean lenders and major firms including US fast-food giant McDonald's and heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar.
	"We understand this will be the first issuance of yuan bonds in our country," said a company spokesman.
	The company's operations in China include about a dozen branches that supply loans, foreign currency and trade finance.
	The sale comes as China pushes to internationalise its currency and follows a thawing in diplomatic ties since last year, when ...

Japan banking giant to sell country's first yuan bond

US technology giant Cisco announced today that it will invest more than USD 10 billion in China in coming years to help the country "innovate and globalise".
	Cisco signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planning agency, to expand investment in China focusing on areas of innovation, equity investment, research and development and job creation, the company said in a statement.
	The company, which entered China in 1994, also inked an MOU with an association of universities of applied science to train information and communications technology talent, it said.
	The initiatives are worth in excess of $10 billion in total, which will be spent over the "next several years", the company said.
	Cisco's routers, servers and switching systems are key units of global interconnectivity and help power the Internet.
	"We look forward to furthering our digitisation efforts, contributing to talent development and GDP ..

AFP

AFP

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