Insurers are setting aside USD 300 million in provisions for the air crash in the French Alps that killed 150 people, German airline Lufthansa said on today.
	The sum includes financial compensation for the families of the people who died and the cost of the Airbus A320 jet itself, which belonged to the low-cost carrier Germanwings, a spokeswoman for parent company Lufthansa told AFP.
	She was confirming a corresponding report in the financial daily Handelsblatt.
	The current list price of an Airbus A320 jet is USD 93.9 million.
	According to Handelsblatt, the consortium of insurers is headed by German giant Allianz.
	When contacted by AFP, Allianz was not immediately prepared to comment.
	The Germanwings flight en route from Barcelona to Duesseldorf crashed a week ago.
	Investigators evaluating voice recorder data say co-pilot Andreas Lubitz apparently locked his captain out of the cockpit and slammed the plane into a French mountainside.
	The flight crashed at a speed of 700 ...

Insurers set aside USD 300 mn for Germanwings crash: Lufthansa

PTI Automatic

The United Nations today praised a draft ceasefire deal aimed at ending Myanmar's decades of civil war, hailing the text agreed between the government and an array of ethnic armed groups as "historic and significant".
	The UN, which has acted as an observer to months of peace negotiations, said the tentative deal was a "milestone" for Myanmar, after the country's president signed the draft national ceasefire with armed rebel groups today.
	"For the government of Myanmar and 16 Ethnic Armed Groups to reach a ceasefire agreement after more than sixty years of conflict is a historic and significant achievement," it said in a statement on behalf of UN Special Adviser Vijay Nambiar.
	A full agreement can only be signed after a conference of the ethnic armed groups for which no date has yet been set.
	Myanmar's quasi-civilian regime has set nationwide peace as a key goal of its reforms ahead of crucial elections expected in November.

Myanmar ceasefire draft 'historic and significant': UN

An Iranian journalist for a reformist news outlet who travelled to Lausanne to report on nuclear talks has applied for political asylum in Switzerland, the foreign ministry in Tehran said.
	Amir Hossein Motaghi, who worked for the Iran Student Correspondents Association (ISCA), was sacked on March 24 after his bosses learned of his defection, a ministry statement said.
	After his defection Motaghi, reportedly a media aide for President Hassan Rouhani during his successful 2013 election campaign, spoke to foreign media about sensitive political issues, an act deemed unacceptable for reporters working in Iranian media.
	Iranian news websites reported Motaghi's dissatisfaction with the conditions facing journalists in Iran. Media outlets meanwhile wrote articles blaming ISCA management for sending him to Lausanne.
	Motaghi has repeatedly posted about sensitive issues on his Instagram account, including a picture of Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post's correspondent in Iran, who was ...

Iran reporter sent to nuclear talks seeks political asylum

Peru's Congress has sacked the prime minister, Ana Jara, over alleged spying against lawmakers, reporters, business leaders and everyday citizens.
	Supreme executive power in Peru is held by the president, in this case Ollanta Humala. It is the biggest crisis in his four years in power.
	This is the first time the congress of Peru has deposed a prime minister since 1968. With a year left of his term, Humala must now name a prime minister for the seventh time.
	The censure vote against Jara was 72 to 42, with two abstentions.
	On March 19, the magazine Correo Semanal published a list of Peruvians who had allegedly been investigated by the National Intelligence Directorate, or DINI.
	These people included politicians and their families, journalists, business people and thousands of everyday citizens.
	After the news broke, Jara, who in July completed her first year in the post, was summoned to Congress.
	She said she had asked for an investigation and said the data search against the ...

Peru sacks PM over alleged domestic spying

Meteorologists warned today that a storm reported to have left several casualties in Micronesia was building into a super typhoon as it swept across the central Pacific and headed towards the Yap group of islands.
	The island of Chuuk, part of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), received a direct hit late on Sunday from Typhoon Maysak with the Yap group next in its path.
	"Chuuk was devastated," lawyer Kembo Mida said in an email to the Ayuda Foundation relief organisation which is based in Guam about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) away.
	"Houses were blown away and trees snapped in half. It was very dangerous and scary... A ship sank too."
	Guam meteorologists said Maysak had sustained winds of 230 kilometres per hour and "is expected to gradually intensify during the next 24 hours and could become a super typhoon this afternoon".
	The director of the FSM National Emergency Management Office, Andrew Yatilman, told Radio New Zealand the typhoon scored a direct hit on the most ...

Pacific islands brace for possible super typhoon

A roadside bomb killed seven members of an Afghan family including three children in the restive south, officials today said, the latest civilian casualties ahead of the Taliban's traditional spring fighting season.
	The explosion occurred on Monday as the family was heading home in a minivan after a shopping trip in Ghazni province, a provincial spokesman said.
	"The minivan hit a landmine planted by the Taliban, killing seven members of a family, including three children, three women and one man," Shafiqullah Nang told AFP.
	Qasem Disiwal, district chief of Andar, where the explosion occurred, confirmed the incident saying the area was heavily mined by the Taliban after they retreated following an Afghan army operation.
	"Taliban have planted thousands of mines in Andar. Afghan forces defuse 20-30 landmines every day," Disiwal said.
	No group has so far claimed responsibility for the blast, but roadside bombs have been a weapon of choice for the Taliban in their their battle against 

Roadside bomb kills seven members of Afghan family

Australia captain Michael Clarke said his next target after winning the World Cup in his last one-day international was to take his team back to the top of the Test rankings.
     Clarke hit 74 as Australia defeated New Zealand by seven wickets in a one-sided final in front of a record crowd of 93,013 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
     Australia bowled out the Black Caps for 183 and then galloped to victory in the 34th over to win one-day cricket's showpiece event for the fifth time, with this World Cup triumph their first on home soil.
     The 33-year-old Clarke, who announced his retirement from the one-day international format on the eve of the final, added 112 runs for the third wicket with his likely successor Steve Smith, who made an unbeaten 56 and struck the winning boundary.
     Australia are currently second in the International Cricket Council's Test rankings, six ratings points behind South Africa.
     But leaving the 50-over format will give Clarke -- whose career ..

Clarke reveals Test aim after World Cup win

Legspinner Fawad Ahmed, batsman Adam Voges and wicketkeeper Peter Nevill were all called up by Australia today for upcoming tours of the West Indies and England.
     But there was no room in the 17-man squad for all-rounders James Faulkner and Glenn Maxwell, who were part of Australia's one-day World Cup winning side.
     Joe Burns was also overlooked, despite scoring two half-centuries in Australia's last Test, against India in January.
     Paceman James Pattinson missed out with a hamstring injury, opening the door once again for Peter Siddle.
     Australia play two Tests in the West Indies from June 5, with their five-Test Ashes series starting in England on July 8.
     Pakistan-born Ahmed, who sought asylum in Australia in 2010, got the nod ahead of Ashton Agar as the second spinner behind Nathan Lyon after a stellar Sheffield Shield season in which he took 48 wickets.
     Voges won his place on the plane for similar reasons, with the 35-year-old Western Australian captain ..

Ahmed, Voges get Windies, Ashes call up

Hundreds of US paratroopers will train Ukrainian soldiers from April 20 as Kiev battles to contain pro-Russian separatists in the country's east, Ukrainian interior minister Arsen Avakov has said.
	"290 US paratroopers will arrive on April 20 at the Yavoriv military zone" in the government-controlled western region of Lviv, near the Polish border, Avakov wrote on his Facebook account yesterday.
	Soldiers from the US 173rd Airborne brigade, based in Italy, will instruct around 900 troops from the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU) in three waves of training, each lasting eight weeks, followed by joint war games.
	The NGU is made up of reservists, and was reformed in 2014 to bring volunteers and militia under government control following the Maidan protests that brought down the pro-Russian government of Victor Yanukovych, sparking conflict between those loyal to Kiev and Moscow.
	US-led manoeuvres in a country neighbouring Russia are likely to provoke anger in Moscow. President Vladimir ..

290 US paratroopers to train Ukraine forces

Nigeria's opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari earned a massive victory in the key northern state of Kano, beating his rival, President Goodluck Jonathan, by nearly 1.7 million votes, official presidential election results have said.
	Buhari's victory in Kano in the polls held Saturday and Sunday had been expected, with the margin of victory seen as crucial to his chances nationally.
	The 72-year-old former army general is from neighbouring Katsina state and like most in Kano is a Muslim from the Hausa-Fulani ethnic group.
	Buhari won 1,903,999 votes in Kano, which is Nigeria's second most populous state after Lagos, the southern economic capital, official presidential election results said yesterday.
	Jonathan, who hopes to contain his losses in the north, won 215,799 votes.
	Buhari beat Jonathan in Kano by roughly a million votes in 2011.
	Kano is among the Nigerian states hit hardest by Boko Haram Islamists, where many have criticised Jonathan's handling of the insurgency.
	Aside ...

Buhari wins massive majority in north Nigerian state of Kano

Marathon talks aimed at curtailing Iran's nuclear programme stretched into the night today as negotiators grappled with the remaining "tricky issues" blocking a deal with a deadline just hours away.
	"There still remain some difficult issues," Kerry told a CNN reporter in his luxury lakeside hotel in the Swiss town of Lausanne.
	"We are working very hard to work those through. We are working late into the night and obviously into tomorrow."
	Global powers are racing against the clock to nail down the final pieces of a framework deal aimed at stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb by tomorrow midnight deadline.
	Adding to the drama, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov left the crunch talks with Iran in Switzerland after a series of meetings, Russian media reported.
	He will only return if there is a "realistic" chance of a deal, his spokeswoman said earlier.
	Kerry said there was "a little more light ... Today, but there are still some tricky issues. Everyone knows the meaning .

Iran talks stretch into the night hours before deadline

The Palestinians formally gain membership of the International Criminal Court on Wednesday with the aim of pursuing Israelis for war crimes, despite uncertainty over the move's wider ramifications.
	The accession is another step in the Palestinian diplomatic and legal international campaign, which gained steam in 2014.
	It has uncertain consequences, not only because it is highly unlikely Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israelis will find themselves being tried at the ICC, but also because it constitutes a new deterioration in the strained relationship.
	But the Palestinians are beyond caring.
	Exasperated after decades of failed negotiations with Israel, with no perspective for the state they have been yearning, they have decided to take their case to the international arena.
	On January 2, the Palestinians moved to join The Hague-based court in a process that will be finalised on April 1, setting the scene for potential legal action against Israeli officials for alleged .

Palestinians join ICC with Israelis in sights

US President Barack Obama today enlisted his predecessor John F. Kennedy in defense of contentious nuclear talks with Iran that are now coming down to the wire.
	Speaking at the dedication of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the US Senate in Boston, Obama said the negotiators led by Secretary of State John Kerry were "standing up for a principle that Ted and his brother, President Kennedy, believed in so strongly."
	"'Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate,'" he said citing a famous line from JFK's inaugural address.
	Kerry had served in the Senate with Ted Kennedy as a member of the Massachusetts delegation and is currently in Switzerland negotiating measures to curb Iran's nuclear program.
	The Obama administration has come under fire from Republicans, Arab allies and Israel for the proposed deal, which would offer Iran sanctions relief.

Obama invokes JFK as Iran talks hit deadline

Boys and girls are equal in number at conception, but more female fetuses die during pregnancy, leading to a slightly higher number of males being born, researchers said today.
	The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is based on the largest dataset ever analyzed in the search to explain what is known as the human sex ratio, which has been poorly understood until now.
	Documentation came from the United States, and included "the sex ratios of fetuses at different gestational ages, including three-to-six-day-old embryos produced by assisted reproductive technologies, induced abortions, chorionic villus sampling, amniocentesis, and United States census records of fetal deaths and live births," said the PNAS report, authored by researchers at Harvard University and Oxford University.
	Scientists found that the human sex ratio is equal at conception, but that during gestation, there were certain times when male embryos were more likely to die than females, ...

Boys, girls are equal in number at conception: study

An overnight curfew was imposed in Nigeria's southern Rivers state as tensions ran high over local results of the country's general election, the state government said today.
	Information commissioner Ibim Semenitari said the lock-down, from 7:00 pm (1800 GMT) to 6:00 am was "to prevent the breakdown of law and order because of the tense political situation".
	Rivers state in the oil-producing Delta is considered a key battleground for the presidential election, which is seen as the closest in the country's history.
	The national main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) has alleged vote-rigging by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and election officials at the weekend vote.
	Some 2,000 female APC supporters attempted to register their complaints with electoral officials in the state capital, Port Harcourt, but were teargassed by police, AFP reporters said.
	Armed police and soldiers prevented the women, who were all dressed in black, from entering the offices, forcing ..

Election tensions prompt protests, curfew in Nigeria's Rivers

Gunmen today shot dead a top Ugandan state prosecutor whose cases include the trial of 13 men accused of involvement in Al-Shebab bomb attacks that killed 76 people in 2010, police said.
	Joan Kagezi, acting assistant director of public prosecution, was assassinated by men on a motorbike early Monday evening as she was driving home in a suburb of the capital, Kampala police spokesman Patrick Onyango said.
	"They were trailing her on a motorcycle.... They shot her dead," Onyango said.
	The July 2010 suicide bombings targeted football fans watching the World Cup final at a restaurant and a rugby club in Kampala. Somalia's Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab militants claimed responsibility for the attack, the group's first outside Somalia.
	The trial of the accused -- -- seven Kenyans, five Ugandans and one Tanzanian -- began earlier this month at Uganda's High Court on a range of charges including terrorism, murder and membership of a terrorist organisation.
	All but one have also been charged .

Top Ugandan prosecutor in Shebab bombing trial shot dead

At least 16 people were killed today when a bus went off a mountain road in southeastern Peru, plunging 1,000 meters into a ravine, police said.
	The bus belonging to the Sanchez line was on a road linking the cities of Nazca and Puquio in the region of Ayacucho when the accident occurred, highway police chief Orfiles Bravo told RPP radio.
	"It apparently went off the road and has fallen some 1,000 meters (3,000 feet)" he said.
	"There are 16 dead and 49 injured," he added.
	Earlier officials had given a toll of 12 dead and 20 injured.
	Bravo said the death toll may still rise, as some of the injured are in serious condition.
	Rescue efforts were hampered by heavy rains in the area, police reported.
	The accident came a week after 37 people were killed and at least 70 injured in a multiple-vehicle collision in northern Peru.

16 dead in Peru bus accident: police

Boko Haram was unable to disrupt elections in Nigeria but its allegiance to Islamic State shows the group has an agenda that reaches well beyond Africa's most populous country, a UN envoy said today.
	Mohammad ibn Chambas, the UN envoy for West Africa, told the Security Council that while Boko Haram fighters staged attacks on election day in Bauchi state, northeast Nigeria, "they didn't have an impact on the voting process."
	"Boko Haram was unable to disrupt the electoral process," he told the 15-member council.
	Nigerians voted Saturday and yesterday in presidential and parliamentary elections, one of the closest in the country's history, amid fears of violence.
	Chambas said that Boko Haram's announcement that it had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, "whether for publicity reasons or to tap into ISIL support," shows that "Boko Haram's agenda goes well beyond Nigeria."
	At least 1.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes in northeast Nigeria and in ...

Boko Haram failed to disrupt Nigeria elections: UN

The prosecution rested its case today in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the ethnic Chechen facing the death penalty for his role in the Boston Marathon bombings.
	Prosecutors yielded to the defense after summoning 92 witnesses to the stand over the past weeks as they built a case against the 21-year-old as an active and willing participant in the bombings that ripped through crowds gathered near the finish line of the famous race on April 15, 2013.
	Three people were killed and 264 others wounded in the blasts, the worst in the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
	The prosecution's final witness was forensic expert Henry Nields, who recounted in gruesome detail the injuries suffered by the youngest victim, eight-year-old Martin Richard, who was torn apart by the pressure-cooker bomb that Tsarnaev placed in the crowd near the finish line.
	The child's clothing was shown to jurors, some of whom were unable to hold back ...

Prosecution rests in Boston bombing trial

Two undercover federal agents in the investigation of Bitcoin market Silk Road extorted and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of the virtual currency for themselves, the US said today.
	The US Department of Justice said Carl Mark Force and Shaun Bridges kept a large amount of the Bitcoin from undercover transactions made as part of efforts in 2013 to find evidence against Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht, or "Dread Pirate Roberts."
	Force, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, was the lead undercover agent in communication with Dread Pirate Roberts in the probe, which aimed to build evidence that Silk Road was a platform for drug deals financed by the crypto-currency Bitcoin.
	But on the side, Force allegedly created unauthorized fake identities to communicate with Dread Pirate Roberts, using PGP encryption.
	With one of these identities he offered Dread Pirate Roberts protection from the FBI probe in exchange for USD 250,000 worth of Bitcoin, and with 

Federal agents stole Bitcoin in Silk Road probe: US

US Secretary of State John Kerry today said he and his global counterparts were going to work deep into the night seeking to resolve the remaining "tricky issues" as a deadline loomed within hours.
	"There still remain some difficult issues," Kerry told a CNN reporter as he walked in his luxury lakeside hotel in the Swiss town of Lausanne.
	"We are working very hard to work those through. We are working late into the night and obviously into tomorrow."
	A deadline for the framework of a deal expires at midnight on Tuesday and officials appealed to all parties to make a huge final effort.
	"We've been negotiating since September of 2013," said acting State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, referring to the first meeting between Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif "and it's sort of time to see whether they can make these decisions."
	With all eyes focused on Tuesday's deadline, Harf said she could not predict what would happen if the outlines of a deal were not ...

AFP

AFP

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