The body of a 21-year-old British tourist was found floating in the sea more than a week after she went missing from a Cambodian island, police told AFP on Thursday.
Amelia Bambridge was discovered in waters near the Thai border, said Chuon Narin, police chief of Preah Sihanouk province.
"We found the body of the missing British woman," Narin said, adding it would be taken to nearby Sihanoukville.
He did not speculate what happened to her after she disappeared from a beach party on the island of Koh Rong on October 24, but earlier this week said she may have drowned.
Brother Harry Bambridge confirmed in a Facebook post that he had identified the body.
"It's my little sister Amelia," he wrote.
"There's nothing more I wanted (than) to bring her back alive," he said.
"I'm sorry to you Amelia Bambridge the round is on me when we meet again in heaven."
The discovery brings a tragic end to a desperate search involving more than 100 members of the police, army, navy and Bambridge's ...

Body of missing British tourist found off Cambodia coast

PTI Automatic

The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, will undergo surgery in November to treat an aneurysm, members of his inner circle told AFP on Thursday.
The 64-year-old former Luxembourg premier had been due to retire on Friday from EU's executive arm.
But that has been postponed until at least December, because his successor Ursula von der Leyen has failed to win parliamentary approval for her commission.
Juncker "will undergo surgery on November 11 to treat an aneurysm," his spokeswoman said.
According to AFP's sources, Juncker is suffering from an aortic aneurysm in his abdomen, or an AAA in medical parlance.
Juncker's duties will be covered by commission vice president Frans Timmermans and the president expects to be back at work in time to attend the handover to Von der Leyen.
If untreated an AAA can rupture with potentially fatal consequences. It was not immediately clear how serious Juncker's case was.
In August, Juncker cut short a vacation to undergo urgent ...

EU's Juncker to undergo aneurysm surgery on Nov 11

Declassified KGB documents on display in Russia describe future President Vladimir Putin as a "conscientious and disciplined" spy at the start of his career.
"Comrade Putin... is constantly raising his ideological, political and professional level," said the one-page document released to Russian media, written while the intelligence agent turned politician was in his 20s.
Now 67, Putin worked for the secret service from the mid-1970s and was posted in Dresden, then East Germany, from 1985 to 1990, as Soviet power was crumbling.
In the Kremlin he has surrounded himself with many former employees of the secret service and the FSB, the successor to the KGB, remains a powerful agency.
The KGB profile is part of an exhibition at the Central Archive of Historical and Political Documents in Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg, featuring other declassified files.
The young Putin also received "congratulations from his seniors" in the organisation "for his well organised work and ...

Putin was 'conscientious and disciplined' spy: KGB documents

The Louvre museum has made an "offer" to the owner of the world's most expensive painting to allow it to be displayed in a Leonardo da Vinci exhibition in Paris, a French cultural body chief said Thursday.
The world-famous Salvator Mundi has not been seen in public since it was sold for USD 450 million at a Christie's auction in 2017, amid speculation that it was purchased on behalf of Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler.
Organisers of the blockbuster Louvre exhibition, which opened last week, have not ruled out a last-minute appearance for the painting.
"To have the painting in the exhibition in the Louvre would have been a win-win situation for all parties involved. I am sad... but the doors are still open," said Chris Dercon, president of the French government-run cultural body Rmn Grand Palais.
"I have all reasons to believe that the directors and the curators of the Louvre... made an offer to the owner or owners of this fantastic Salvator Mundi. There is still a way to share this work .

Louvre in push to display 'missing' Da Vinci: culture expert

Facebook on Wednesday reported that its quarterly profit grew along with its user base as it grapples with concerns ranging from political ads to cryptocurrency.
The leading social network said its profit topped $6 billion on revenue that climbed 28 percent to $17.4 billion in the quarter that ended on September 30.
Meanwhile, the number of active monthly users increased eight percent from a year ago to 2.45 billion.
"We had a good quarter and our community and business continue to grow," said Facebook chief and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.
"We are focused on making progress on major social issues and building new experiences that improve people's lives around the world."
Facebook shares rose more than four percent in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures, which beat Wall Street expectations.
"Advertisers continue to support Facebook, despite the many controversies swirling around the company, and the user base also continues to expand around the world," ...

Facebook profit climbs along with user base

The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, will undergo surgery on November 11 to treat an aneurysm, members of his inner circle told AFP on Thursday.
Juncker had been due to retire on Friday as head of the EU's executive arm. But that has been postponed because his successor Ursula von der Leyen failed to win parliamentary approval for her commission.

EU's Juncker to undergo aneurysm surgery November 11

The situation for migrants in camps on Greek islands is "explosive" and "on the edge of catastrophe", the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights said Thursday.
"The situation of migrants, including asylum seekers, in the Greek Aegean islands has dramatically worsened over the past 12 months. Urgent measures are needed to address the desperate conditions in which thousands of human beings are living," Dunja Mijatovic told reporters at the end of a five-day visit.
Greece has once again become the main point of entry for people seeking asylum in Europe, and the country is struggling to accommodate over 70,000 migrants and refugees on its soil.
Despite regular relocations to the mainland, there are over 34,000 people living in overcrowded Greek island camps.
Mijatovic, who visited camps on the islands of Lesbos and Samos and in Corinth, said she was "appalled" by the unhygienic conditions in which asylum-seekers live on the islands.
"There is a crying lack of medical care and ..

Migrants on Greek islands 'on edge of catastrophe': Council of Europe

One protester killed. Then five. Suddenly, more than 40.
As Iraq's anti-government demonstrations turned bloody, a network of rights defenders and medics began documenting deaths to fill a gag order on casualty numbers.
Remarkably, the watchdog at the heart of the effort is itself a government entity: the Iraqi Human Rights Commission, created in 2012 but now facing its most important -- and politically sensitive -- mission yet.
When protests erupted on October 1, the first casualty report of one protester shot dead and 200 more wounded in the capital was released by the health ministry.
But as more reports came in of live rounds and alleged indiscriminate force used against protesters across Baghdad and the south, the government clammed up.
It released no further tolls, imposed an internet blackout and halted information-sharing with the commission.
"The ministries of health and interior stopped giving us numbers," said Faysal Abdallah, a journalist by training and commission member .

In Iraq protests, counting the dead is a dangerous job

Iraq's leaders scrambled on Thursday to produce a solution to mounting protests demanding the ouster of Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi that have so far left more than 250 dead.
Demonstrations first erupted on October 1 over corruption and unemployment and have since ballooned, with protesters now insisting on a government overhaul.
Their demands have been backed by populist cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose parliamentary bloc Saeroon has been gathering support to force the premier to come in for questioning.
The lawmakers are set to meet on Thursday for a fourth consecutive day as the executive branch, too, tried to find a political solution.
On Thursday, President Barham Saleh held closed-door talks on the premier's ouster with Iraq's main political figures, a source in the presidenti's office said.
"Things are heading towards a resolution," another senior Iraqi official told AFP.
But protesters appeared undeterred.
Across the country's Shiite-majority south, demonstrators came out in ...

Iraq leaders scramble to respond to mounting rallies

An Indonesian man working for an organisation which helped draft strict religious laws ordering adulterers to be flogged was himself publically whipped Thursday after he was caught having an affair with a married woman.
Flogging is a common punishment for a range of offences in the deeply conservative Aceh region on Sumatra island, including adultery, drinking alcohol, and having gay or pre-marital sex.
Aceh is the only region in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation that imposes Islamic law, part of a 2005 autonomy deal with the central government that ended a decades-long separatist insurgency.
On Thursday, a masked religious officer rained down 28 lashes on the back of Aceh Ulema Council (MPU) member Mukhlis after he was caught canoodling with a married woman last month.
Mukhlis, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, grimaced and flinched during the punishment in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, before his married companion was flogged with a rattan cane some 23 ...

Indonesia religious body staffer falls foul of own laws

China's Communist Party elite concluded a key meeting in Beijing Thursday with a promise to protect the "stability" of Hong Kong, which has been rocked by months of unrest.
The Fourth Plenum of the Party's Central Committee is a closed-door meeting of high-ranking officials where the country's future direction is discussed, and this week's meet was the first since February 2018.
This plenum came as Chinese President Xi Jinping battles a number of international and domestic challenges, including months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, a slowing economy, and a lingering trade war with the United States.
In the communique published Thursday, the government admitted that China was "facing a complicated situation of significantly increased risks and challenges domestically and abroad".
Semi-autonomous Hong Kong -- which was returned to China in 1997 -- has rights unseen in the mainland, including free speech, and is governed by the Basic Law, its mini-constitution.
But the city has .

Beijing ends key conclave with promise to protect Hong Kong

US forces patrolled part of Syria's border with Turkey on Thursday in the first such move since Washington withdrew troops from the area earlier this month, an AFP correspondent reported.
Five armoured vehicles bearing US flags patrolled a strip of the frontier north of the town of Qahtaniyah, an area where regime forces were expected to deploy as part of a deal with Turkey, the correspondent said.
The patrol was accompanied by Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main US ally in the years-long battle against the Islamic State group.
US forces used to patrol the section of  border north of Qahtaniyah before Washington announced its pullback on October 6.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it is part of an eastern stretch of the frontier where US forces are seeking to maintain a presence.
"They want to prevent Russia and the regime from reaching parts of the border that lie east of the city of Qamishli," the de-facto capital of Syria's Kurdish ..

US conducts first NE Syria border patrol since pullback: AFP

Olympic boxing officials said they were confident that a new judging system could improve transparency in the scandal-hit sport as it went on trial on Thursday ahead of next year's Tokyo Games.
The new, computerised system makes the judges' scoring visible in real time, in a bid to avoid the sort of controversy that plagued Rio 2016 when dozens of officials and referees were suspended over alleged match-fixing.
Boxing, one of the sports contested at the original Olympics in ancient Greece, was later threatened with expulsion from the Games over mismanagement by governing body AIBA, which was stripped of the right to organise the competition at Tokyo 2020.
Under the new system, on trial at the venue for next year's boxing competition, the five judges push a button for each scoring punch, with their marks appearing on a screen that is monitored by a supervisor.
The live scoring may also be made visible to the crowd, with officials due to make a decision at a later date.
"Distrust of ...

Hit by scandal, boxing trials new judging system for Tokyo Olympics

Triple Olympic rowing champion Pete Reed has been left paralysed from his chest down following a spinal stroke, he announced.
The 38-year-old -- a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy -- won the coxless four Olympic gold in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012 before adding a third when the eight triumphed in Rio de Janeiro three years ago.
Reed had tweeted earlier this month he had suffered a spinal stroke which he added is "very rare" and he took to Instagram to reveal the fall-out from it.
"There is a very small chance I will make no recovery and a very small chance I will make a full recovery," he said in his post.
"Much more likely it will be somewhere in between. To what extent depends on the extent of the damage (which we can't see) and how well I rehab."
A spinal stroke is a disruption in the blood supply to the spinal cord and five-time world champion Reed says doctors do not know what caused his.
"It was in the middle of my spine so I'm currently paralysed beneath my chest," 

Three-time Olympic rowing gold medalist Reed paralysed

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Thursday hailed as a "landmark" the first meeting of a committee comprising Syrian government and opposition negotiators, tasked with amending the war-torn country's constitution.
On Wednesday, the two sides sat face-to-face in Geneva for the launch of the constitutional review committee's work.
"Yesterday's first meeting of the Constitutional Committee was a landmark, a foundation for progress," Guterres told a conference on mediation in Istanbul organised by the Turkish government.
"I hope this will be the first step towards a political solution that will end this tragic chapter in the lives of the Syrian people, also to create the opportunity for all Syrians to return to their places of origin, in safety and dignity, to end their status as refugees," he said.
The United Nations-brokered committee includes 150 delegates -- divided equally among President Bashar al-Assad's government, the opposition and civil society.
However, there is little .

UN chief hails 'landmark' meeting on Syria constitution

Hong Kong on Thursday confirmed it had plunged into its first recession since the global financial crisis as months of seething pro-democracy protests and the US-China trade war exact a heavy toll on the financial hub.
The semi-autonomous Chinese city has been upended by nearly five months of huge, often violent, pro-democracy demonstrations with little end in sight as Beijing and city leaders adopt a hardline approach.
Clashes between protesters hurling bricks and petrol bombs at police wielding tear gas and rubber bullets have become a weekly occurrence, hammering the city's once-solid reputation for stability and safety.
The unrest has hit the city's tourist and entertainment industries hard, compounding economic woes that were already being caused by the global trade war.
Figures released by the government on Thursday showed gross domestic product shrank 3.2 percent in the third quarter compared with the previous period, when it saw a 0.4 percent drop.
That means the city is ...

Hong Kong plunges into recession as protests, trade war take toll

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent a message of sympathy to the South's President Moon Jae-in over the death of his mother, officials said Thursday, the pair's first contact in months with inter-Korean ties at a standstill.
Kang Han-ok, who was born and grew up in the North but was evacuated by US forces during the Korean War, died from a chronic illness on Tuesday. She was 92.
An unidentified North Korean official delivered Kim's written message at the Demilitarized Zone on Wednesday afternoon, presidential office spokeswoman Ko Min-jung said.
Kim expressed "his deep condolences... and consolation to President Moon", she said, adding the document was sent on to Moon at a Catholic church in Busan, where mourners had gathered.
The missive comes with relations between North and South at a standstill, with Pyongyang repeatedly excoriating Seoul following the collapse of Kim's nuclear summit with US President Donald Trump in Hanoi in February.
Moon's parents were North Korean refugees ..

N.Korea's Kim sends Moon condolences for mother's death

Peugeot-maker PSA and Fiat Chrysler unveiled Thursday a plan for a 50-50 merger of their operations they said would generate billions in savings without factory closures as it creates the world's fourth-largest car manufacturer.
In a joint statement the French and US-Italian carmakers said their boards of directors "have each unanimously agreed to work towards a full combination of their respective businesses by way of a 50/50 merger".
The merger, which the firms said will result in a company with combined sales of nearly 170 billion euros (USD 190 billion) per year and 11 billion euros of operating profits, would help produce the scale needed in an industry facing slowing demand and which must invest billions to develop electric vehicles.
The merger would be achieved via the creation of a parent company in the Netherlands in which the shareholders of each current group would own half.
The Dutch-based parent company would have balanced representation and a majority of independent ...

PSA and Fiat Chrysler unveil merger of equals

A young Afghan mother of seven sits on a red woollen rug alongside four other women who are slicing huge slabs of handmade, flowery soap into smaller bars.
She is one of about 20 female employees -- many of them recovering drug addicts -- working part time on an organic farm in Kabul, where they grow flowers and plants to turn into sweet-smelling soaps and creams.
The venture can be a lifeline in a patriarchal country that grows roughly 90 per cent of the world's illicit opium. Millions of Afghans struggle with drug addiction, and women addicts face particular discrimination.
"I am happy that I am working here because it's all women. There are no men here," said the mother, who requested anonymity, as she sat on the mini production line, tying ribbons around newly bagged soaps made from a type of charcoal that supposedly has special health benefits.
The business is the creation of local entrepreneur Marghuba Safi, who started making soaps and creams in her kitchen in 2016. Friends and 

Kabul soap factory helps former addicts stay clean

The once-mighty Mekong river has been reduced to a thin, grubby neck of water in stretches of northern Thailand -- record lows blamed on drought and a recently completed dam far upstream.
The USD 4.47 billion Thai-owned Xayaburi hydro-electric power plant went into operation this week in Laos after years of warnings over the potential impact on fish flow, sediment and water levels on a river which feeds tens of millions.
Along parts of Thailand's northeastern border at Loei, the kilometre-wide (3,300-foot) river has shrivelled to a few dozen metres, with boulders and bedrock encasing muddy pools of water.
From above, the encroaching banks of Laos and Thailand are now a thread of water apart, restricting fishing grounds to a slim channel.
Fishermen blame a combination of this year's weak monsoon and the Xayaburi dam, around 300 kilometres (185 miles) to the north.
"I don't want any more dam construction," said fisherman Sup Aunkaew, who tossed a meagre catch into his boat, adding that .

Mekong levels at lowest on record as drought and dams strangle river

Demonstrators kept up their roadblocks across Lebanon on Thursday, as their unprecedented protest movement demanding systemic political change entered its third week.
Traffic came to a standstill on major highways, as protesters erected metal barricades.
They waved through security and medical personnel, in a scene that has become routine since a proposed tax on calls via messaging apps first drew protesters onto the streets on October 17.
"I don't want to stand down," said Tarek Madhoun, 38, who was blocking a road in central Beirut.
The protest movement has swelled into a popular drive to remove a political elite which has remained largely unchanged since a devastating civil war ended three decades ago.
Euphoric protesters experiencing a rare moment of national unity have pilloried politicians of all parties, calling for better public services, an end to rampant corruption and a complete overhaul of Lebanon's sectarian-based politics.
Bowing to street pressure, Prime Minister Saad ..

AFP

AFP

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