Russia said an unmanned supply ship set for the International Space Station will fall back to Earth Friday and burn up in the atmosphere, after the spacecraft suffered a communications failure.
	The Progress supply ship is expected to "end its existence on May 8," between 1:23 am and 9.55 pm, Moscow time," the Russian space agency said in a statement released today.
	"The space ship will completely burn up in the layers of the atmosphere and only a few small parts of elements of its construction could reach the surface of our planet," the space agency said.
	It said the crash would be similar to a planned descent. Russia sends three or four such spacecrafts per year to supply the ISS. They then fall back to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean.
	The spacecraft, a Soviet design generally known for its reliability, blasted off for the ISS on April 28 carrying cargo including oxygen, water and spare parts for the orbiting space laboratory with a crew of six ...

Russia's space cargo ship to burn up in atmosphere Friday

PTI Automatic

One man was killed and more than 30 people injured when a tornado and violent storms hit northern Germany, ripping tiles off roofs, downing trees and overturning cars, emergency services said today.
	Worst hit was the town of Buetzow near the northern port of Rostock, where bricks lay scattered in the streets after flying debris had badly injured one person and hurt dozens of others yesterday.
	Eyewitnesses spoke of a "tornado" that ripped through the town of 7,800 people, where the local hospital was also damaged and a sports hall was used as a temporary shelter for people forced to leave their homes.
	A 26-year-old man was killed in the northern port city of Hamburg when parts of a roof toppled onto his car in the downtown harbourside area, also badly injuring his pregnant girlfriend who was seated next to him.
	Trees crashed onto roads and rail lines in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and disrupted public transport in Hamburg, where five ...

One killed, 30 hurt as 'tornado' hits north Germany

Three people were killed in a cross-border mortar bomb and rocket attack by Iran-backed Yemen rebels on a city in southern Saudi Arabia, Riyadh's interior ministry said.
	It did not specify if those killed were civilians or troops.
	A Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes on anti-government rebels in neighbouring Yemen on March 26, sparking sporadic border clashes with Saudi troops.
	Fighting along the frontier has killed 12 soldiers and border guards but no civilian casualties have so far been reported.
	"Three dead after Najran region attacked by mortar rounds and random Katyusha rockets from Yemen territory," the interior ministry said in a tweet sent late Tuesday.
	Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri told state television that rebel fire hit "hospitals, schools and civilian homes" in the city and surroundings.
	He said casualties occurred at a field hospital outside the city.
	Saudi news channel Al-Ekhbariya showed footage of cars with windows blown out, chunks torn from ...

Three killed in bombardment of Saudi border city: ministry

Seamer Mohammad Shahid and left-arm spinner Taijul Islam struck early as Bangladesh reduced Pakistan to 70-2 by lunch on the first day of the second Test in Dhaka today.
     Shahid justified Bangladesh captain Mushfiqur Rahim's decision to bowl first at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium when he forced Mohammad Hafeez to edge a catch in the fourth over.
     Hafeez, who hit a double-century in the drawn first Test in Khulna, made just eight as Rahim completed the catch behind the stumps.
     It could soon have been 38-2 when Azhar Ali edged Shahid to third slip, but TV umpire Ranmore Martinesz repreived the batsman by declaring a no-ball.
     Azhar, who was then on 18, moved to 36 by the break. Younis Khan was the other batsman at the crease on one.
     Bangladesh suffered a blow when seamer Shahadat Hossain was ruled out for the rest of the Test after sending down just two deliveries in the first over of the match.
     Shahadat, who replaced the injured Rubel Hossain for the decisive ...

Bangladesh grab early wickets in Pakistan Test

Lunch scores on the opening day of the second and final Test between Bangladesh and Pakistan at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium in Dhaka today:
     Pakistan 1st innings:
     Mohammad Hafeez c Rahim b Shahid 8
     Sami Aslam c Shahadat b Taijul 19
     Azhar Ali 36 not out
     Younis Khan 1 not out
     Extras (lbl, w1, nb4) 6
     Total (for two wickets, 28 overs) 70
     Fall of wickets: 1-9, 2-58
     Bowling: Shahadat 0.2-0-4-0, Soumya 5.4-1-13-0, Shahid 10-2-24-1, Taijul 10-0-25-1, Shuvagata 1-0-2-0, Shakib 1-0-1-0.

Bangladesh v Pakistan second Test scoreboard

US President Barack Obama has met the head of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region at the White House, courting a vital ally on the frontline of the fight against Islamic militants.
	Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met Massud Barzani yesterday to discuss the campaign to regain Iraqi territory lost to the Islamic State group.
	A US-led coalition has carried out more than 3,000 air strikes over Iraq since September in a bid to dislodge the jihadists.
	On the ground, battle lines have been drawn in Anbar province and the northern city of Mosul, where Kurdish fighters are likely to play a key role in a looming offensive.
	The city, a short distance from the Kurdish capital Arbil, holds special significance for the Islamic State militants.
	It was there that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed his "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria.
	Some 4,000-6,000 Iraqis - many of whom fled the IS capture of Mosul - are now being trained in Iraqi Kurdistan for the upcoming battle to retake the ..

Obama meets Iraqi Kurd leader

An unknown number of peacekeepers have been killed in an ambush near the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo city Beni, the head of the UN mission, Martin Kobler has said.
	"It is with sadness and anger that I have just learned of the deaths of peacekeepers in an ambush near Beni," a trading hub in the north of troubled North Kivu province, Kobler said yesterday on his Twitter account, without stating the number killed.
	Kobler told AFP he "firmly condemned these attacks against the Blue Helmets", adding that an investigation was under way and the death toll was as yet unknown.
	Local administrator Amisi Kalonda said Ugandan rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) staged the ambush targeting a convoy of Tanzanian peacekeepers in the UN force known as MONUSCO.
	He said the attack occurred around Oicha, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Beni.
	Earlier yesterday, a DR Congo military spokesman said army troops killed 16 ADF rebels in two days of clashes in the region.
	It said .

UN peacekeepers killed in eastern DR Congo ambush

French judges re-examining the evidence surrounding the 2004 death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have concluded their investigations, the prosecutors office in the Paris suburb of Nanterre has said.
	"The judges have closed their dossier and it was sent to the prosecutor on April 30," he said yesterday.
	The prosecutor now has three months to prepare his submissions on whether to dismiss the case or put it forward to court.
	In the meantime interested parties can produce written depositions. However if, as is currently the case, there is no defendant's name attached to the proceedings, the case is likely to be dismissed.
	Arafat died aged 75 on November 11, 2004, at the Percy de Clamart hospital, close to Paris. He had been admitted there at the end of October that year after developing stomach pains while at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where he had lived since December 2001, surrounded by the Israeli army.
	Arafat's widow Suha lodged a complaint at a ...

French judges end enquiry into Arafat's 2004 death

The United States authorized commercial ferry services to Cuba for the first time in more than a half-century today, another major step in improving relations between the two countries.
	The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control lifted the ban and at least one Florida company confirmed it had been licensed to launch boat services to Cuba.

US authorizes commercial ferry services to Cuba

At least two workers died today as an oil maintenance platform tilted over the sea off Mexico's east coast, forcing the evacuation of 101 employees, the Pemex energy firm said.
	The jackup rig, owned by a Pemex contractor named Typhoon Offshore, began to list in the Sound of Campeche area of the Gulf of Mexico after a "failure" in one of its movable legs, the company said in a statement.
	Three Pemex employees and 98 Typhoon employees were removed from the platform, which was still tilting in the early afternoon.
	The platform was positioning itself to conduct maintenance work for the wells of another rig when it began to lean. A jackup rig has movable legs that can raise its hull over the sea.
	"Regrettably, two external company workers were reported dead, and another was injured," Pemex said.
	In another incident in the same area last month, a Pemex rig caught fire on the Sound of Campeche, killing four workers and leaving three missing.
	A Pemex spokesman was unable to give details 

Two dead in new Mexico oil rig accident

The world's largest particle smasher resumed colliding protons today as it gradually reboots following a two-year upgrade, Europe's physics lab CERN said.
	The low-energy collisions took place in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Tuesday morning, CERN said in a statement.
	The protons collided at an energy of 450 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), allowing the scientists to fine tune LHC's detectors as they prepare to crank the power up to allow collisions at an unprecedented 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV), it said.
	Experiments at the collider are aimed at unlocking clues as to how the universe came into existence by studying fundamental particles, the building blocks of all matter, and the forces that control them.
	In 2012, the LHC was used to prove the existence of Higgs Boson, the particle that confers mass, earning the 2013 Nobel physics prize for two of the scientists who, back in 1964, had theorised the existence of the so-called "God particle".
	Today's collisions at the giant lab, housed in 

Large Hadron Collider resumes collisions after upgrade

The White House today said it was too early to link the Islamic State group to an attack in Texas targeting an exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed organized by an anti-Muslim right-wing group.
	White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the attack by two gunmen was "still under investigation," adding it's "too early to say at this point" whether Islamic State fighters were responsible.
	"This is still under investigation by the FBI and other members of the intelligence community to determine any ties or affiliations that these two individuals may have had with ISIL or other terrorist organizations around the world," Earnest said.
	The Islamic State group had earlier in the day claimed responsibility for the attack, saying "two of the soldiers of the caliphate" had carried it out.
	Earnest cautioned that extremists sometimes make claims of responsibility for propaganda purposes "to try to communicate with individuals around the world, including inside the United States.

White House says 'too early' to link IS to Texas attack

Austria lodged a legal complaint today following media claims that Germany helped the United States spy on European targets.
	The complaint against an unnamed party was lodged concerning "secret intelligence to the detriment of Austria," Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner told the APA news agency.
	On the basis of confidential documents, the German press has accused the German intelligence agency BND of spying for the US National Security Agency on European businesses and monitoring senior European, and especially French, politicians.
	The small Alpine republic called for "full clarification" from its large neighbour and would also use "diplomatic channels" to this end, said Mikl-Leitner.

Austria files complaint after reported German espionage

Ten-year-old Ranju Giri wrings her hands as she describes how she cowered terrified under a bed with her younger brother when a massive earthquake rocked their home in Kathmandu.
	Like many children in the Nepalese capital, Ranju survived the earthquake physically unharmed. But she bears the mental scars of a disaster that has devastated the country, killing thousands and leaving many more homeless.
	"We were so scared, we went under the bed to protect ourselves. And after that we went to an open area. It took a long time to console my brother," said Ranju, whose mother was out working when the quake hit on April 25.
	Since that day, Ranju's family has been camping out with hundreds of others on Kathmandu's Tundikhel parade ground, where UNICEF has set up tents to provide a space for children to play safely and begin to overcome their ordeal.
	The UN children's agency says the trauma of surviving an earthquake has been compounded by children being left homeless and by the aftershocks .

Nepal quake leaves children traumatised

Iran's president denounced western countries for taking pride in arms sales today, after France signed a warplanes deal with Qatar, saying weapons agreements add to Middle East instability.
	Although he did not name France, Hassan Rouhani's comments came after it agreed a 6.3-billion-euro (USD 7-billion) contract with Qatari defence officials in Doha.
	French President Francois Hollande was at the signing ceremony prior to a Gulf Cooperation Council leaders' meeting in Riyadh, the first time a western head of state has attended a GCC summit.
	"Good choice," Hollande said yesterday as the deal, which includes an order for 24 Rafale fighter jets with an option on a further 12, was signed.
	However Rouhani, in a speech carried live on state television, said that given the turmoil wracking the region, large military equipment or arms deals would not help the situation.
	"The world should not smile at the problem of our region. Some American or European nation should not be proud of ...

Iran's Rouhani denounces boasting over arms deals

Turkish authorities today formally arrested and charged with "terrorism" two dozen people detained during May Day demonstrations in Istanbul, state media said.
	According to official figures, police on May Day detained 366 people in various parts of the city following clashes.
	An Istanbul court placed 24 detainees under arrest while releasing the rest pending trial, state-run Anatolia news agency reported.
	Those arrested have been charged with a number of offences including "belonging to a terrorist group," destroying public property," and "possession of explosives," Anatolia said.
	The May Day demonstration was the first major gathering after parliament passed a controversial security bill this year giving the police greater powers to crack down on protests.
	On May 1, police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing protesters as they attempted to defy a ban on demonstrations on Istanbul's Taksim Square protest hub, around which most of the detentions ..

Turkey arrests 24 May Day protesters on 'terror' charges

Qatar is to build seven "cities" to house more than a quarter of a million migrant labourers building major infrastructure and projects for the 2022 World Cup, officials said today.
	Government officials said all seven should be built by the end of 2016 and that the largest, "Labour City" for 70,000 people and complete with its own 24,000-seat cricket stadium, will begin housing workers in the next few weeks.
	The move to construct more modern facilities comes amid continued criticism of the accommodation provided by Qatar for the vast number of migrant workers and with Doha admitting that sub-standard and illegal living conditions are still being used.
	In total, 258,000 workers -- some 25 per cent of Qatar's migrant labourer population -- will be housed, officials said.
	Dr Abdullah bin Saleh al-Khulaifi, labour and social affairs minister, told AFP the new accommodation centres were the "future".
	"That's the blueprint," he said of Labour City.
	"There are in the pipeline (several) 

Qatar to house 250,000 labourers in new 'cities'

Saudi Arabia's King Salman warned at a summit today of a threat from Iran as guest of honour President Francois Hollande said France was "by the side" of Gulf nations.
	The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit in Riyadh came amid mounting international concern over the Saudi-led air war on Shiite rebels in Yemen, the threat from jihadists and Gulf worries over their Shiite rival Iran.
	In a clear reference to Iran, the Saudi monarch spoke of the need to confront an external threat that "aims to expand control and impose its hegemony", threatening regional stability and creating "sectarian sedition".
	Hollande, the first Western leader to attend a GCC summit, said France shares the dangers facing the region and he had come "to affirm the commitment of France to be by your side".
	The Riyadh summit brought together leaders from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
	All but Oman are in the Saudi-led Sunni coalition that on March 26 launched air ...

Saudi King Salman warns of Iran threat to Gulf states

Three Bangladesh garment factories that suffered cracks during Nepal's big April 25 earthquake that shook the region have been ordered to shut down, a safety inspector said today.
	Scores of factories were inspected following the powerful quake that devastated Nepal and was felt in Bangladesh, where two people were killed and panicked residents and office workers poured into the streets.
	A group of European retailers ordered the checks amid heightened concern about the structural safety of factories following the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 that left more than 1,100 people dead.
	"We have inspected 61 garment factories after the Nepal earthquake and found cracks of concern in at least three of them," said Brad Loewen, chief safety inspector of the group of 200 retailers formed after the 2013 tragedy.
	"We've asked the factories to halt work so that structural engineers can have a look," he said, adding his group -- the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety -- planned to carry 

Bangladesh garment factories suffer cracks after Nepal quake

Gulf monarchs gather today for an extraordinary summit amid growing international concern over the Saudi-led air war against Shiite rebels in Yemen and a deepening regional threat from jihadists.
	French President Francois Hollande will become the first Western leader to sit in on the Sunni-dominated Gulf Cooperation Council meeting, which is also expected to air concerns over a potential final nuclear deal with Shiite Iran.
	The Riyadh summit brings together leaders from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
	All but Oman are in the Saudi-led coalition that launched air strikes in Yemen in late March against Iran-backed Huthi rebels and their allies who seized control of large parts of the country including the capital Sanaa.
	Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled a rebel advance on his southern refuge of Aden, and is now in Riyadh.
	Anti-government forces have refused to concede territory or lay down their weapons despite international ...

Gulf leaders gather amid growing concern over Yemen

France and Saudi Arabia are discussing economic projects worth tens of billions of euros, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said today.
	"If concluded, these 20 projects would be worth tens of billions of euros," Fabius told reporters in Riyadh.
	French President Francois Hollande is also in Saudi Arabia to attend a Gulf leaders' summit today, a day after he oversaw the signing of a warplanes deal with Qatar worth 6.3 billion euros (USD 7 billion).
	Fabius said that some of the projects were in the armament sector and "will be finalised in the coming months".
	Energy deals -- "mainly in the field of solar power" -- and prospects for nuclear power cooperation are also being discussed, he added.
	Fabius said that agreements on transport, including civil aviation, and other infrastructure projects were on the table, as well as health services.
	"These are extremely important prospects that show that the partnership is moving at a new speed with some concrete results," the minister ..

AFP

AFP

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