Guatemalan President Otto Perez has said he has no plans to resign despite being investigated for corruption and facing the possible lifting of his presidential immunity.
	Perez, who has faced large protests calling for his resignation in recent weeks, was dealt a new blow Wednesday when the Supreme Court endorsed an opposition party's request to investigate how much he knew about fraud by senior officials in the customs and social security systems.
	The court also asked Congress to consider lifting his immunity.
	But Perez, a 64-year-old conservative and retired military officer, remained defiant.
	"I am going to remain on the job. It is a constitutional responsibility," he told journalists.
	"I am prepared to follow due process, but I am going to continue working right up to the last moment to serve the Guatemalan people," added Perez, who is not eligible for re-election when his four-year term ends in January.
	"I am not at fault and I can feel at ease that I have not committed any 

Guatemalan president vows to stay despite graft probe

PTI Automatic

The Brazilian parliament passed a law toughening penalties for murderers of policemen, a measure widely demanded by the security forces of a country where hundreds of officers are killed every year.
	The new law passed yesterday stipulates that killers of police officers, prison officers or members of the armed forces will be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison, against a maximum 20 before.
	After the vote, president of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, said there had been "strong demand from society" for the stiffer penalty.
	The new law, which needs to be signed off by President Dilma Rousseff, also toughens punishment for those who kill the relatives of law enforcement officials.
	From 2009 to 2013, some 1,770 policemen were killed in Brazil, according to the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety.
	But the group says that police on average kill six people every day.

Brazil ramps up punishment for cop killers

Spain's King Felipe VI has issued a decree stripping his sister Princess Cristina of her title as Duchess of Palma, the palace has announced, as the royal sibling faces tax evasion charges in a scandal that has embarrassed the monarchy.
	"The Official Journal of the state will tomorrow (Friday) publish a royal decree by which His Majesty the King will revoke the use of the title of Duchess of Palma de Mallorca by Her Royal Highness the Infanta Cristina," the palace said in a statement yesterday.
	Cristina, 49, stands accused of taking part in tax evasion by her husband, the former Olympic handball player Inaki Urdangarin.
	A judge ruled in December that she must stand trail on two counts of accessory to tax fraud, making her the first member of the Spanish royal family to be sent to the dock. No date has been set for her trial.
	Both Cristina and Urdangarin have suffered a dramatic fall from grace since they married in 1997 in a lavish ceremony in Barcelona and were bestowed the ...

Spanish king strips graft-accused sister of duchess title

Spain said test flights of Airbus A400M military planes that have already rolled off the assembly line could resume, after suspending them in May following a crash that killed four people.
	Airbus executives met with Spain's National Institute of Aerospace Technology yesterday to discuss resuming flights after one of the massive transport planes crashed during a test on May 9 near Seville, killing four of the six people on board and seriously injuring the two others.
	"After the meeting the decision was made" to reauthorise test flights by prototype A400M planes that have already left the assembly line, the defence ministry said in a statement yesterday.
	But A400M models that are still in production have not been given the green light to take off.
	"We're waiting for Airbus to bring us new data," a defence ministry spokesman told AFP.
	"Further meetings will be held in the coming days" on this matter to achieve "maximum safety guarantees for flights by these planes," the ministry ...

Spain allows A400M test flights to resume after deadly crash

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket toward southern Israel but it landed inside the Palestinian territory, the army said.
	"The rocket that was launched from Gaza earlier this evening, fell short and landed in the Gaza Strip," army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said on Twitter yesterday.
	Tensions on the border have been rising recently and on Sunday, the Israeli air force hit the Gaza Strip after rocket fire from the territory hit southern Israel, the previous night.
	There were also retaliatory air strikes after three previous rocket attacks since May 26.
	Israel went to war against the Islamist Hamas, the de facto power in Gaza, last summer with the aim of stamping out cross-border rocket and mortar attacks.
	The 50-day conflict killed about 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 73 on the Israeli side, most of them soldiers.
	It caused heavy damage to Gaza's infrastructure and damaged more than 160,000 homes.
	The latest round of rocket fire is ...

Palestinian rocket falls short of Israeli border: army

Rupert Murdoch's sons James and Lachlan are set to play a key role in his media-entertainment empire in a succession plan unveiled today.
	Murdoch, an 84-year-old Australian-born US citizen, also has four daughters, for a total of six children from his three marriages.
	Lachlan and James are both sons from Murdoch's marriage to journalist Anna Torv. The third child from that marriage, Elisabeth, sold her audio-visual production company Shine to her father's company.
	James Murdoch, 42, is set to become chief executive at 21st Century Fox, the television and film group that includes Fox's Hollywood studios, Fox television and other assets around the globe. He will move up from the job of co-chief operating officer. He holds that title at News Corp, which is the publishing group created when Rupert Murdoch broke up his conglomerate.
	James ran the Asian and European operations for his father's group and was thrust into the position of crisis management in the phone-hacking scandal that .

Rupert Murdoch puts two sons in succession plan

A new regional fighting force against Boko Haram will be headed by a Nigerian commander, the five-nation coalition agreed today, after talks on military strategy against the militants.
	The decision came after Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari rejected calls for a rotating command between the partners, arguing it could hamper the counter-insurgency effort.
	Buhari has made ending the six-year Islamist insurgency his top priority but since coming to power on May 29, more than 150 people have been killed in an upsurge of attacks.
	In the latest sign of the need for an enhanced force against the rebels, residents said 43 people were killed in raids on three villages in Borno state in Nigeria's restive northeast.
	A final communique following three days of talks in Abuja on the remit of the new 8,700-strong force backed Buhari's stance for a Nigerian to control operations "until the end of the mission".
	Cameroon will take the number two role of "deputy first commander" for an initial .

Nigeria's Buhari draws red line for anti-Boko Haram force

The United States is considering setting up additional bases in Iraq similar to a new hub planned in Anbar province to help Iraqi forces battle the Islamic State group, the Pentagon said today.
	Establishing more bases to get US military advisers closer to the battlefront would likely require yet more American troops to deploy to Iraq beyond the 450 reinforcements announced by the White House yesterday.
	The Pentagon raised the possibility of more bases a day after President Barack Obama's administration unveiled plans to send dozens of advisers to Anbar to help Iraqi forces eventually recapture Ramadi, which fell to the IS jihadists last month.
	The advisers and other US troops headed to Anbar will operate out of Taqaddum Air Base, which is located only 22 miles from Ramadi.
	Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren told reporters that the new hub at Taqaddum could be the first of a number of new bases across the country for US military advisers, depending on how things turn out in ..

US mission could expand to more bases in Iraq: Pentagon

Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a meeting with Pope Francis today discussed decades of abuse suffered by aboriginal children at Catholic boarding schools in Canada, a government statement said.
	Harper's meeting with the pontiff at the Vatican wraps up nearly a week of travel for the Canadian leader, including his participation at the G7 summit in Germany.
	Harper did not, however, ask the pope to apologise for what a truth and reconciliation commission report recently called the "spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse" of students at Church-run institutions.
	Canada's aboriginal affairs minister, in advance of Harper's visit to the Vatican, sent a letter to the Holy See outlining the truth and reconciliation commission's 94 recommendations, including the call for a papal apology, which is widely supported by Canadian tribal chiefs.
	Beginning in 1874, 150,000 Indian, Inuit and Metis children in Canada were forcibly enrolled in 132 boarding schools run by ...

Canada: Harper, Pope Francis discuss school abuse scandal

The Islamic State group today released a propaganda documentary marking a year since it captured Mosul and recounting its surprise at how easily it took over Iraq's second city.
	The film glamorises the founding moment of the "caliphate" IS proclaimed less than three weeks later as an epic conquest but it also further documents the collapse of Iraq's security forces.
	The 29 minutes of often previously unreleased footage shows the jihadists being welcomed by Mosul residents, prisoners being freed and soldiers desperately attempting to flee in vehicles.
	"It was unthinkable that the advance would be so much greater than was planned," said the narrator of the video, which was published on social media on Thursday.
	"The operation began with cutting the supply lines of the members of the Safavid army," after which the attack was announced, the narrator says, using a term meaning that Iraqi soldiers are beholden to Iran.
	"Three convoys of military vehicles entered the outskirts of the ...

IS releases 'anniversary documentary' on Mosul capture

Dozens of penguins have shown up dead over the past three days on the coast of Uruguay, a government official said today.
	One group of young specimens was found in the Rocha area 210 km east of Montevideo, and then another at a beach in the resort town of Punta del Este, said Graciela Fabiano of the National Directorate of Water Resources.
	The agency has no penguin monitoring program but at this time of year penguins do tend to show up on the coast, sometimes dead, and the movement is associated with migratory patterns, she said.
	The dead birds that wash up have usually succumbed to natural causes, but the cases should be investigated anyway, Fabiano added.
	The Atlantic waters are going through a rough season so the number of penguins washing up dead is expected to increase, she added.

Dozens of penguins wash up dead on coast of Uruguay

Three investigative judges are taking over a probe into the Germanwings crash in the French Alps to determine if anyone can be held liable for the tragedy, a disaster support group said today.
	Brice Robin, the prosecutor of the southern French city of Marseille, announced the next step in the probe to some 200 family members who flew to Paris for an update, said Stephane Gicquel, the head of the support group.
	According to Gicquel, the judges would be investigating a case of "manslaughter".
	Investigators say that 27-year-old German co-pilot Andreas Lubitz intentionally downed the plane en route from Barcelona to Duesseldorf on March 24 in the crash that left 150 people dead.
	Gicquel, who attended the meeting between French officials and the victims, said the "stakes" in the expanded probe were to find out if there had been errors in tracking the mental state of the co-pilot, who had a history of severe depression.
	He said Lubitz had consulted "more than 40 doctors and notably ...

French investigators expand Germanwings probe: victims' group

A top Chinese military officer met with US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter at the Pentagon today, but Beijing asked for limited media attention around the visit amid strains over the South China Sea.
	Carter had invited General Fan Changlong, vice-chairman of China's Central Military Commission, to the Pentagon but unlike some previous trips, including one last year, there was no joint press conference.
	"The Chinese did request that there not be a lot of media attention around this trip," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said, without giving further details.
	Carter and other top US officials have recently castigated China over its push to build artificial islands in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
	At a recent security conference in Singapore, Carter called for an immediate end to land reclamation by countries in the region, and accused China of being out of step with international rules.
	Prior to visiting Washington, Fan went to California and Texas. His trip 

Top Chinese officer meets with US defense secretary

Sri Lanka's new government plans to borrow up to USD 2.0 billion from overseas, the finance minister said today, just two weeks after raising a billion through its first international bond issue.
	Minister Ravi Karunanayake said the government was seeking at least USD 1.0 billion with a five-year tenure, but may increase the loan amount to USD 2.0 billion depending on the market response.
	"Tomorrow we will advertise and call for bids. We hope to collect USD 1.0 billion in a couple of days. It would even go up to USD 2.0 billion," Karunanayake said.
	The move to raise foreign cash comes amid rising domestic spending and shortfalls in revenue collection, the minister said, while accusing the previous administration of overstating revenues and under estimating expenditure.
	"We want to borrow at low interest rates to pay off the high interest loans taken by the previous government," the minister told the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Sri Lanka.
	The Central Bank of Sri Lanka ...

Sri Lanka to raise up to USD 2 bn in foreign borrowings

For centuries, women and sometimes men have squeezed their feet into tiny shoes or balanced on towering heels to feel sexy, empowered and to show their wealth and status.
	Now their sacrifice is being celebrated in a new exhibition, 'Shoes: Pleasure and Pain', which opens at the V&A museum in London on Saturday.
	From a 2,000-year-old pair of Egyptian gold sandals to child-like Chinese slippers for bound feet, to Christian Louboutin's red-soled stilettoes, the 250 exhibits reveal how fashionable shoes have always been more than footwear.
	"The exhibition is about the obsession of shoes. It's looking at the power of shoes, how they can tell about status and privilege," curator Helen Persson told AFP.
	Luxury shoes have long been the preserve of the rich and idle. Regardless of the cost, high heels, sumptuous fabrics and delicate designs have no place in the field or factory, or indeed in running for a bus.
	Where women today have Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo, 19th-century Egyptians ...

London exhibition explores footwear fashion

Boko Haram gunmen killed at least 43 people and burnt down three villages in northeast Nigeria, residents said today, the latest in an upsurge of attacks by the Islamist militants.
	Dozens of rebels on motorcycles stormed Matangale, Buraltima and Dirmanti in restive Borno state on Tuesday, opening fire on villagers before looting and burning homes, fleeing residents said.
	News of the assault was slow to emerge due to poor communication in the region after Boko Haram destroyed telecoms masts in previous attacks.
	"They came around 4:00 pm (1500 GMT) on 20 motorcycles, three gunmen on each, and attacked Matangale before proceeding to Buraltima and Dirmanti," said resident Dala Tungushe.
	"They killed 43 people and burnt all the houses in the three villages after looting food supplies," Tungushe, who fled Matangale to Biu, some 90 kilometres (56 miles) away.
	Matangale was worst hit by the attack as the attackers opened fire at an open well outside the village where residents had ...

Boko Haram kills 43 in NE Nigeria raids: residents

Greece's creditors piled pressure on cash-strapped Athens today as the IMF pulled its team out of talks and the EU warned Athens to stop gambling with the possibility of default and a messy exit from the eurozone.
	The International Monetary Fund said an agreement remained far-off after a five-month stalemate with Greece's anti-austerity government, which faces being unable to pay huge debts at the end of the month.
	Eleventh-hour talks in Brussels between Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker meanwhile broke up without reaching a deal on reforms in exchange for bailout cash.
	"There are still major differences between us in most key areas," IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters in Washington. "There has been no progress in narrowing these differences recently. Thus we are well away from an agreement."
	The fund said its Greek talks team had returned to Washington from Brussels and that the "ball is very much in Greece's court right ...

IMF, EU pour cold water on Greek debt deal hopes

A teacher in northwest Pakistan accidentally shot dead a 12-year-old pupil today while cleaning his pistol in the staff room, police said.
	Teachers in northwest Pakistan were given permission to carry firearms in the classroom after Taliban militants massacred 132 students at a school in the city of Peshawar in December.
	Today's deadly incident happened on the outskirts of Mingora, around 180 kilometres northeast of Peshawar.
	"Majid Khan, a teacher at the private Sangota Model School was cleaning his pistol in the staff room when it fired a bullet by accident, hitting a student passing through the corridor," local police official Fazl Rabi told AFP.
	He said the student died on the spot.
	Saleem Khan Marwat, the area police chief, confirmed the incident and said the teacher had been arrested.
	Northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province allowed teachers to carry guns -- and began giving them firearms training -- in January, saying it could not provide police guards for every ...

Pakistani teacher accidentally shoots pupil dead

Embattled FIFA president Sepp Blatter has rejected calls from the European Parliament for him to stand down immediately, a FIFA spokesman said today.
     Blatter, who resigned last week despite being re-elected as head of football's world governing body, intends to continue in office until a successor is designated, probably by the end of the year.
     "FIFA is surprised at the European Parliament resolution," the spokesman said. "The FIFA president has already decided to bring an end to his mandate during an extraordinary electoral congress."
     The European Parliament had earlier called on Blatter to step down immediately and allow for an interim leader to launch reforms in global football's governing body.
     In a show of hands, members of parliament overwhelmingly voted for the resolution during a plenary session in Strasbourg, France.

Blatter dismisses calls for immediate stand-down

Ornette Coleman, one of jazz's most groundbreaking artists who brushed aside convention with his prophetically titled 1959 album "The Shape of Jazz to Come," died today. He was 85.
	His death was confirmed to AFP by his publicist, Ken Weinstein. Coleman was born and raised in Texas but died in New York, where he had become both dapper fixture on the social circuit and an opinionated voice of the direction of music.
	Coleman, along with John Coltrane, was one of the original forces behind so-called "free jazz" that broke down traditional structures of harmony and allowed a more free-flowing form of expression.
	Best known as an alto saxophonist, Coleman cast away traditional notions that a musician needed to stay within chord progressions and instead pursued solos that detractors considered chaotic but gradually became commonplace in jazz and rock.
	Coleman said that jazz needed to "express more feelings than it has up to now," saying that chord structures were confining and ...

Ornette Coleman, legend behind free jazz, dead at 85

An Egyptian court today sentenced a police officer to 15 years in jail over the shooting of a leftist female protester during a peaceful rally, a court official said.
	Shaima al-Sabbagh, a 34-year-old mother of a five-year-old, was shot dead with birdshot in January as police dispersed a small march on the fourth anniversary of the uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

AFP

AFP

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