At least 16 Iraqi border guards were killed today in a dawn assault by the Islamic State jihadist group on their post near the Syrian frontier, provincial and security officials said.
	"Sixteen border guards, including a captain, were killed and four wounded in an attack targeting their headquarters in Al-Walid, near the Syrian border," Faleh al-Issawi, deputy head of Anbar provincial council, told AFP.
	He said the attack occurred at around 6:00 am (local time).
	A commander in the Iraqi border force and a police major confirmed the death toll.
	The Al-Walid crossing is one of the country's most remote outposts and lies near the westernmost point in Anbar province where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan meet.

IS jihadists kill 16 border guards in western Iraq

PTI Automatic

Foul weather in Morocco has killed up to seven people a week after a previous storm left 36 dead, media reports said today.
	Storms again lashed the south of the kingdom, with the resort of Agadir experiencing the equivalent of an entire year's rainfall - more than 250 millimeters (10 inches) - between Friday and yesterday.
	The bad weather, which finally eased overnight, led to many rivers bursting their banks and causing widespread damage, especially in the Guelmim region 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Agadir, which has been declared a disaster area.
	No official death toll has yet been released.
	"Another catastrophe: floods kill seven," headlined the Arabic-language daily Al-Massae.
	Both it and At-Tajdid, which cites "anonymous official sources", said two college students drowned on Friday in the Azilal region of the Anti-Atlas mountain range, and a youth was swept away southwest of Marrakesh.
	Al-Massae and Akhbar al-Youm also reported a woman and her child killed when a ...

Up to 7 dead in Morocco storms: reports

At least three Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 14 injured in the past 24 hours as fighting intensifies for control of Donetsk airport, a military spokesman said today.
	Fierce battles resumed in the past three days around the ruins of the airport in eastern Ukraine, said spokesman Andriy Lysenko.
	The airport is under government control and has been a flashpoint for clashes with pro-Russian rebels who hold the city.
	Lysenko said there were no precise details yet on the number of casualties at the airport.
	It was not immediately clear if the three soldiers were killed at the airport or elsewhere in the conflict zone.
	Government reinforcements have also been sent to Stanitsa Luganska near the city of Lugansk, another separatist stronghold, in response to reports of a build-up of heavy weaponry by rebels in the area, Lysenko said.
	Meanwhile, artillery shells damaged around a dozen sites overnight in Donetsk.
	AFP journalists reported a residential building was badly damaged. .

Three Ukraine soldiers killed while fighting rages at airport

Two explosions ripped through a market in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri today, witnesses said, nearly a week after two female suicide bombers attacked the same area, killing more than 45 people.
	"A middle-aged woman approached the site where chicken sellers attend to customers but vigilantes who stood nearby insisted on checking the luggage she was carrying," said witness Ahmad Sanusi.
	"The woman refused, arguing that what she held were her wares. While the argument ensued, some people gathered at the scene and that was when she detonated the explosive," he told AFP.
	The Monday Market was hit last Tuesday by two women who detonated explosives hidden under their hijabs. The same market was attacked on July 1 and at least 15 people died.
	A police bomb squad on Friday defused a suspected remote-controlled improvised explosive device buried in the dirt near another market in Maiduguri.
	Boko Haram militants were suspected and it was thought the bomb was intended to hit worshippers at 

Two blasts at market in Nigeria's Maiduguri: witnesses

Left-arm spinner Taijul Islam became the first cricketer to claim a hat-trick on his debut in a One-day International as he set up a five-wicket victory for Bangladesh over Zimbabwe today.
     The win in Dhaka gave Bangladesh a clean sweep in the five-match ODI series against their fellow cricketing minnows.
     The whitewash came after the hosts recorded a 3-0 win against the visitors in the preceding Test series.
     Taijul bowled Tinashe Panyangara in the last ball of his sixth over and returned to trap John Nyumbu leg before and bowl Tendai Chatara in the first two balls of his next over to complete the hat-trick.
     Taijul, who finished with 4-11, is only the fourth Bangladeshi to claim a hat-trick in an ODI after Shahadat Hossain, Abdur Razzak and Rubel Hossain.
     Shakib Al Hasan took the last wicket to return figures of 3-30 as Zimbabwe collapsed after a fine start. They  lost their last nine wickets for 33 runs and were dismissed for 128 in 30 overs.
     Leg-spinner ..

Bangladesh's Taijul grabs hat-trick on debut in Zimbabwe rout

A Bangladesh court today delayed its verdict in the case of a British journalist who was charged with contempt after questioning the official death toll from the 1971 independence war.
	The hearing had been listed for today, but lawyers who showed up at the court were told it would instead be held a day later.
	No reason was given for the delay.
	"The International Crimes Tribunal said the verdict will be on December 2," defence lawyer Mustafizur Rahman told AFP.
	David Bergman was charged with contempt of court after he questioned the government's assertion that three million people died in the war, in a 2011 post on his blog about the International Crimes Tribunal.
	Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose late father was Bangladesh's independence hero, has justified the war crimes trials on the grounds that the scale of the bloodshed demands that perpetrators be brought to justice.
	Most independent estimates say the true toll is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands.
	The case is ..

Bangladesh court delays British reporter verdict

The Israeli army shot and wounded a Palestinian woman today after she stabbed an Israeli civilian near a Jewish settlement bloc in the southern West Bank, the military said.
	The civilian suffered minor injuries in the stabbing at a major crossroads near the Gush Etzion bloc, south of Bethlehem, the army said in a statement.
	"Security forces on site overpowered the suspect and transferred her for further medical assistance," the statement said.
	Police said in an initial statement that the woman was shot after stabbing a soldier.
	The incident came as tensions run high in Israel and the Palestinian territories, after a series of deadly attacks in Jerusalem in November, and the fatal stabbing of an Israeli soldier in Tel Aviv.
	Israeli security forces killed the perpetrators of most of those attacks at the scene.

Palestinian woman shot after stabbing Israeli: army

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said Egypt will never return to the past and is charting a new future, after a court dismissed murder charges against former leader Hosni Mubarak.
	A Cairo court Saturday dropped the charges over the deaths of hundreds of protesters during the 2011 uprising that ended three decades of autocratic Mubarak rule.
	Seven of his security commanders, including feared former interior minister Habib al-Adly, were also acquitted over the deaths of some of the roughly 800 people killed during the revolt.
	Corruption charges against Mubarak's sons Alaa and Gamal were also dropped.
	In a statement issued late yesterday, Sisi said "the new Egypt, which emerged from the January 25 and June 30 revolutions, is on a path to establish a modern democratic state based on justice, freedom, equality and a renunciation of corruption".
	"It is on an aspirational path to the future and can never go back to the past."
	Sisi said he had instructed Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab .

Sisi sees new future for Egypt after Mubarak verdict

A Japanese-built facility in China today began destroying the largest cache of World War II chemical weapons abandoned in the country, Tokyo officials said, in a rare case of co-operation between the two countries.
	The facility has been built in Harbaling in the northeast, where some 300,000 to 400,000 chemical weapons are believed to have been left behind, a government official at Japan's Cabinet Office told AFP.
	Both Japanese and Chinese staff work at the facility, the official said, adding, "As our responsibility, we will sincerely proceed with the disposal by paying great attention to the safety of local people and the environment."
	Relations between Tokyo and Beijing are at their worst for years over a territorial dispute in the East China Sea, and the continuing legacy of Japan's brutal 20th-century occupation.
	"Abandoning these weapons was one of the severe crimes Japanese militarist invaders committed during their invasion of China," China's official news agency Xinhua ...

Japan starts chemical weapon destruction in China

China today defended its refusal to allow a group of British MPs into Hong Kong, describing their planned trip to the former colony as "overtly confrontational" in words echoing those of the legislators' leader.
	The move comes amid continuing protests by pro-democracy campaigners in Hong Kong who have been demanding the right to choose their own leaders without interference from Beijing.
	The Foreign Affairs Committee, a panel of lawmakers who scrutinise the Foreign Office's work, is looking into Britain's relations with the Chinese special administrative region 30 years after the 1984 Joint Declaration, which set out the terms of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong.
	A group of MPs had planned to visit the Asian financial hub but were informed by the Chinese embassy in London they would be refused entry, said committee chairman Richard Ottaway.
	Under the Joint Declaration Hong Kong is governed according to a "one country, two systems" principle, enjoying freedoms not known on the ...

China defends block on British MPs' Hong Kong trip

"Terrorists" in Tunisia have abducted and decapitated an off-duty policeman, media reports today cited the interior ministry as saying.
	The officer and his brother were in a car in the Kef area of the northwest when gunmen seeking to rob them immobilised the vehicle.
	During the robbery, the attackers discovered that the man was in the police and they kidnapped and later killed him, radio stations Mosaique and Express-FM quoted a ministry spokesman as saying.
	The man's brother was not harmed in the attack which happened on Thursday but has only just been reported.
	Security forces are now engaged in a mopping up operation in the mountainous area, which is close to the frontier with Algeria.
	Since the revolution of January 2011, Tunisia has seen a rise in Islamist extremism. For the past two years, the army has been hunting jihadists in the border area.
	Deadly ambushes by gunmen on the police and army are common in the region, where cross-border smuggling of fuel and food is also ..

'Terrorists' behead off-duty Tunisia policeman: reports

The Kabul police chief who tendered his resignation after a string of attacks in the city will stay on in the role, officials said today, as Afghanistan struggles to respond to rising militant unrest.
	Zahir Zahir had been under pressure due to attacks in the capital targeting foreign guesthouses, embassy vehicles, US troops and a female member of parliament, as NATO ends its 13-war in Afghanistan.
	Kabul has been hit by at least nine attacks in the last two weeks, including a South African father and his two teenage children were killed by the Taliban at their home on Saturday.
	"Based on the request of high-ranking officials and in order to avoid disruption of security affairs, General Zahir was asked to continue his duties," Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanakzai told AFP.
	"His resignation was rejected and he continues his duties as the police chief of Kabul."
	Yesterday Stanakzai said that Interior Minister Omar Daudzai had accepted Zahir's resignation, but the decision was ...

Kabul police chief back in job despite militant attacks

Australian police today urged the mother of a baby girl, found dead and buried at a popular Sydney beach, to come forward as the city reeled from its second case of abandoned infants in days.
	Two young boys playing at Maroubra beach found the decomposed body in the sand yesterday morning, a week after another baby was found barely alive in a drain in western Sydney.
	New South Wales state police commissioner Andrew Scipione urged the mother of the dead child to come forward.
	"Come and talk to us, seek some advice, we need to talk with you," he said, while also pleading with anyone who thought they might know something to speak to authorities.
	"So if the particular woman won't come forward herself, please if you are a friend, a true friend, you will tell us because we think she might need some help."
	The naked baby's body was found buried about 30 centimetres (12 inches) in the sand.
	Police said yesterday, it was not known whether it had been stillborn or how it had died.
	Its sex 

Australia police appeal to mother of baby buried on beach

Vietnamese police said they had arrested a blogger for posting "bad content" about the government, as part of a long-running crackdown on online dissent in the communist country.
	Hong Le Tho, 65, was arrested in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday for posting articles "with bad content and incorrect information that reduce trust in state agencies", the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement released late Saturday.
	Tho's blog, called 'Nguoi Lot Gach' -- literally 'a brick layer' has run for at least three years and was regularly updated in Vietnamese, English and French with his commentary on social and political issues in Vietnam.
	Many of the posts were strongly anti-China, reflecting widespread animosity among many Vietnamese, including intellectuals, for the country's northern neighbour.
	Hanoi and Beijing are locked in a long-standing territorial dispute over fishing rights and island chains in the South China Sea.
	Vietnam's authoritarian rulers are sensitive to any criticism 

Vietnam arrests anti-China blogger for posting 'bad content'

Explosions and gunfire rocked the north Nigerian city of Damaturu today, in a suspected Boko Haram attack that targeted police, residents told AFP.
	The dawn raid came after a suicide bomb and gun attack on the central mosque in the northern city of Kano on Friday which bore all the hallmarks of the Islamists and left at least 120 people dead.
	The militants, who have been waging a five-year rebellion to create a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, have conducted similar dawn raids and attacked Damaturu before.
	Umar Sada, who lives in the Gujba Road area of the city, said the latest raid happened at about 4:45 am (local time).
	"I was awoken by huge blasts and the sound of heavy gunfire around the mobile police barracks," he said.
	"The gunmen came in numbers. They have burnt down the police barracks. They are now advancing towards two housing estates...
	"We have left our home. We are now in the bush. We don't know what's going to happen."
	Another local resident, a ...

Explosions, gunfire in Nigeria's Damaturu city: residents

A suicide attack at a funeral in northern Afghanistan today killed at least nine people, officials said, underlining nationwide insecurity as NATO troops end their 13-year war this month.
	"A suicide bomber on foot detonated his explosives among people who were attending a funeral ceremony in Burka district this morning," Aminullah Amarkhil, police chief of Baghlan province, told AFP.
	"Initial reports show nine people, including two police, were killed and around 18 wounded.

Suicide attack at Afghan funeral kills nine: police

When Islamic State group fighters swept into northern Iraq's second city Mosul in a lightning June offensive, their propaganda trumpeted a better life for the people under jihadist rule.
	Now, nearly six months later, residents there are suffering from a lack of clean water and also a shortage of medicine to treat illnesses caused by it.
	The very name "Islamic State" is a clear pointer that the group seeks to rule as well as to conquer: IS has declared a cross-border Islamic "caliphate" spanning parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
	But despite spearheading the June offensive that also overran the surrounding Nineveh province and swathes of other territory, IS has been unable to provide basic services in these areas, ultimately undermining the state to which it aspires.
	"The impression given in IS propaganda is a group offering a better quality of life than before that is also more just for locals," said Aymenn al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum who is an expert on ...

Water-borne disease plagues IS-held city in Iraq

It was Rio's biggest mass wedding: a total of 1,960 couples who exchanged vows in a hall next to the famous Maracana stadium.
	The big event yesterday brought out a whopping 12,000 people, between brides and grooms, friends and family and authorities -- including a pack of judges, a Catholic priest and an evangelical Christian pastor.
	Dubbed "I Do Day," the event was sponsored by authorities to encourage many people who might not be able to afford to marry if they had to pay for licenses and banquet halls.
	The megacrowd gathered in the venue which is often used for major concerts, couples tied the knot and friends took in a concert by samba star Dudu Nobre.
	Guests also got a free ride on local trains -- nicknamed the "I Do Day Train" just for the occasion.

A whole lot of love in Rio: nearly 4,000 tie the knot

A major US air force base in South Korea went into full lockdown for more than an hour today after what appeared to be a false alarm about a shooter at the facility's high school.
	"The security forces sweeps are now complete. There were no reported injuries or suspicious activity found," the 51st Fighter Wing stationed at Osan Air Base said in a post on its official Facebook page.
	"Everyone is safe. The lockdown has been lifted," it added.
	Osan Air Base, some 65 miles south of Seoul, is one of a number of facilities housing the 28,500 US military personnel permanently based in South Korea.
	The facility went into lockdown shortly after 11:00 am (0200 GMT) as a precautionary measure following what high school principal Morgan Nugent suggested was a possible hoax call.
	"One of our teachers received a call that sounded automated saying that there was an active shooter drill taking place," Nugent said.
	"There was no scheduled school shooter drill on base, so we have decided to err on 

US air base in S Korea lifts lockdown after shooter alarm

New Zealand today named batsman Kane Williamson as stand-in captain for the upcoming limited overs series against Pakistan, allowing regular skipper Brendon McCullum to take a break.
     The move confirmed Williamson's status as McCullum's long-term successor, with chief selector Bruce Edgar saying it would give the 24-year-old valuable experience in charge for five one-dayers and two T20 matches to be played in the United Arab Emirates.
     Edgar said McCullum, along with pacemen Tim Southee and Trent Boult, would return to New Zealand to prepare for a series against Sri Lanka beginning on December 26.
     "Managing players' workloads will be an important part of our summer's plans and this is simply an example of that," he said, stressing that the decision to rest the trio was taken before last week's death of Australian batsman Phillip Hughes, which rocked the entire team.
     "On the flip side, it gives us a chance to assess and evaluate other players in contention for the ...

Black Caps make Williamson stand-in skipper

Veteran Australian motor racing driver Mark Webber was injured in a high-speed crash at the Six Hours of Sao Paulo event.
     Webber, racing for Porsche in the World Endurance Championship after quitting Formula One last season, was stretchered off the Interlagos circuit yesterday after his car collided with the Ferrari of Matteo Cressoni.
     Footage showed both cars crashing into a concrete barrier at speeds estimated at around 300km/h with Webber's vehicle catching fire before it came to a stop with the car wrecked.
     "Cressoni was checked by the medical staff at the side of the track and cleared, while Mark Webber, who was awake and alert, was taken to the circuit medical centre for further examination," said a statement from the organisers.
     Webber, 38, gave a thumbs-up to the crowd as he was taken to the medical centre although there was no immediate word of his condition.
     Porsche team boss Fritz Enzinger later said Webber was recovering in a Sao Paulo hospital.
   

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