The United Arab Emirates has confirmed it launched air strikes on Yemen's interim capital Aden, after furious accusations from the internationally recognised government which has lost control of the city to UAE-backed separatists.
In the face of charges it targeted government troops, Abu Dhabi said it acted in self-defence against "terrorist militias" threatening the Saudi-led military coalition against Huthi rebels in which the UAE is a key partner.
A foreign ministry statement was issued late Thursday, hours after the separatists regained control of Aden, forcing government troops who had entered the southern port city a day earlier to withdraw.
Air strikes on Wednesday and Thursday that reportedly left dozens dead hit "armed groups affiliated with terrorist organisations", Abu Dhabi said, in a reference to Islamists it believes make up part of Yemeni government forces.
The operation "was based on confirmed field intelligence that the militias prepared to target the coalition forces 

UAE air raids raise tensions with Yemen govt

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Bangladesh Cricket Board on Friday announced a 15-man squad for the one-off Test against Afghanistan, with the selectors resting paceman Mustafizur Rahman.
Afghanistan arrived in Dhaka Friday morning for their maiden Test against Bangladesh, starting September 5 in Chittagong.
"Mustafizur has a light injury. Since we have only one Test match, we did not want to take any risk. Moreover, we have many matches coming. This is why we rested him," chief selector Minhajul Abedin told AFP.
Opening batsman Tamim Iqbal was also rested for the Test following a request from the player, who wanted the break to refresh after his recent bad patch.
Skipper Shakib Al Hasan returned to the Test side. Pacer Taskin Ahmed and all-rounder Mosaddek Hossain were also recalled.
Pace bowler Khalid Ahmed was dropped.
Chief selector Minhajul said wicketkeeper-batsman Liton Das will take Tamim's opening slot in the Test.
Afghanistan will also play a tri-nation Twenty20 tournament from September 13 with Zimbabwe ..

Bangladesh rest Mustafizur for Afghanistan Test

Turkey on Friday said Ankara wanted to witness itself the withdrawal of Kurdish fighters from parts of northern Syria after such claims by Syrian Kurdish authorities this week.
"There is information from the Americans that the YPG has withdrawn, that some emplacements were destroyed but these must be confirmed," Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said, referring to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia.
"We want to see all of this for ourselves," Akar added.
The semi-autonomous Kurdish administration on Tuesday said its forces started to withdraw from outposts along the Turkish border including the Ras al-Ain area.
Turkey and the United States this month agreed after difficult negotiations to set up a buffer between the Turkish border and Syrian areas controlled by the YPG.
While the YPG worked closely with the US against the Islamic State (IS) extremist group, Ankara says the militia is a "terrorist" offshoot of Kurdish insurgents in Turkey.
As part of the US-Turkey ..

Turkey says Syria Kurds withdrawal 'must be confirmed'

Last season's runners-up Arsenal were placed in the same section as Eintracht Frankfurt in the draw for the Europa League group stage in Monaco on Friday, while Manchester United face a long trip to Kazakhstan.
Unai Emery's Arsenal side lost to Chelsea in the final in Baku after Eintracht had been eliminated by the same side on penalties in the last four.  Ten-time Belgian champions Standard Liege and Portugal's Vitoria Guimaraes are also in Group F.
United, Europa League winners in 2017, will face Astana of Kazakhstan as well as Partizan Belgrade and former finalists AZ Alkmaar of the Netherlands in Group L.  Wolverhampton Wanderers, the third English team in the draw, will take on Turkish side Besiktas in Group K.
In their first European campaign since 1980, Wolves have already come through three ties just to reach the group stage, including defeating Torino 5-3 on aggregate in the play-offs.
Nuno Espirito Santo's team will also take on Braga of Portugal and Slovan Bratislava of ...

Arsenal drawn with Eintracht in Europa League, Man Utd head to Kazakhstan

Russia on Friday announced that Syrian government forces would cease fire in the northwestern province of Idlib from Saturday morning.
An agreement was reached on "a unilateral ceasefire by Syrian government forces in the Idlib de-escalation zone, from 6:00 am on August 31," the Russian Reconciliation Centre for Syria said in a statement.
The announcement came after Russian-backed regime forces advanced in the jihadist-held bastion, one of the last holdouts of opposition to President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
The statement said the ceasefire aimed "to stabilise the situation" in Idlib and urged anti-government fighters to "abandon armed provocations and join the peace process".
After months of intense bombardment, regime forces launched a ground offensive against Idlib earlier this month.
Syria's war has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011.
Russia launched a military intervention in support of Assad's regime in 2015, helping his forces to ...

Russia announces ceasefire in Syria's Idlib from Saturday

The Chinese government has not renewed the press credentials of a foreign journalist who wrote an article about one of President Xi Jinping's cousins, the news organisation said Friday.
It amounts to the effective expulsion of Chun Han Wong, a Singaporean national who has worked for the Wall Street Journal's Beijing bureau since 2014.
"We can confirm that Chinese authorities have declined to renew Chun Han's press credentials. We continue to look into the matter," a Dow Jones spokesperson told AFP.
Wong - together with fellow journalist Philip Wen - published a story in July detailing how Australian law-enforcement and intelligence agencies were probing the activities of Ming Chai, one of Xi's cousins.
The article was part of a wider investigation into organised crime, money-laundering and alleged Chinese influence-peddling.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying rejected the allegations at the time the report was published, saying, "I don't know where these journalists go .

China expels WSJ reporter who wrote about Xi's cousin

The British Museum said Friday it had returned to Iraq a collection of 156 cuneiform tablets believed to have been looted following the US-led invasion of the country.
The items mostly dated from between 2,100 BC and 1,800 BC, the London museum said in a statement.
They were impounded by customs officials at a freight company near London Heathrow Airport in 2011.
The tablets are mostly economic documents but also include letters, legal and school texts and a mathematical document.
Many of them come from Irisagrig, an area that was heavily looted in the aftermath of the war.
The tablets were handed over to the Iraqi ambassador Saleh Altamimi and will be sent on to the Iraq Museum.
"The protection of Iraqi heritage is the responsibility of the international society which we hope to continue for future generations," Altamimi said in the statement.

British Museum hands looted ancient tablets to Iraq

A gas mask lovingly adjusted, a hand squeezed before approaching police lines and a frantic search through swirls of tear gas - Abby and Nick's relationship has blossomed on the barricades during Hong Kong's long summer of protest.
Most of the frontline protesters driving the months-long pro-democracy demonstrations are students -- so-called "braves" facing pepper spray, rubber bullets and arrest in defence of their city's values.
Like Abby and Nick -- who are keeping their real names under wraps -- many are young, bookish and should be on the fast-track to well-paying jobs in the city's financial services sector.
Instead a political awakening has thrust them onto the frontlines.
For endless weeks they have fended off tear gas and run from police baton charges, an unlikely band of rebels -- labelled "rioters" by Hong Kong police and "terrorists" by China -- who have forged tight bonds over a long holiday of demonstrations.
Nick, 20, met Abby, a year his junior, at university in June ..

Love in a time of tear gas: politics and romance on Hong Kong's barricades

Three separatist fighters were killed Friday in a suicide bombing in Aden, the first such attack since Yemeni government forces were expelled from the southern city on August 10, security sources said.
"A suicide bomber crashed his bomb-laden motorbike into a vehicle of the Southern Transitional Council on a roundabout in the Sheikh Saad district" of northern Aden, one of the sources told AFP.
Three of those on board the vehicle were killed and an unknown number wounded.

Suicide attack kills 3 separatists in Yemen's Aden: security

Draft international guidance on how industry measures its efforts to fight global warming will not include untested geoengineering technology, the body compiling the advice said Friday.
The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), a global, industry-driven non-profit comprising more than 160 member states, is currently working on guidance for business over how to quantify their climate impact.
AFP last week reported on the draft, which uses a concept known as "radiative forcing" -- how much energy from the sun remains in the atmosphere after some is bounced back into space -- and the substances that effect it.
These include greenhouse gases, water vapour and particulate matter, the ISO said.
Environmental groups and climate scientists raised concerns over the draft guidance, which appeared to allow for businesses to employ techniques such as solar radiation management and carbon dioxide-removal as part of their climate action.
Solar radiation management (SRM) entails ...

Untested tech not part of climate fix guidance: industry group

The WHO announced Thursday it will create a global registry to track research into human genetic manipulation, after a call to halt all work on germline genome editing -- used in China last year to genetically modify twin baby girls.
"New genome editing technologies hold great promise and hope for those who suffer from diseases we once thought untreatable," the World Health Organization's Director General for told the body's genome editing oversight committee meeting in Geneva.
"But some uses of these technologies also pose unique and unprecedented challenges -- ethical, social, regulatory and technical," he added.
Chinese scientist He Jiankui's announcement last November that he had altered the DNA of twins girls in southern China by using molecular scissors -- ostensibly to prevent them from contracting HIV.
He was then fired from his university, put under police investigation and ordered to halt his work.
But his announcement provoked a global backlash from scientists saying the ...

WHO launches genetic research register after designer-baby scandal

European countries will step up diplomatic efforts to save the beleaguered Iran nuclear deal, Germany's foreign minister said Friday after talks with Britain and France.
Tensions have spiked recently in the Gulf, where Iran has seized Western tankers as Tehran and Washington have locked horns over the 2015 deal.
US President Donald Trump last year unilaterally pulled out of the accord that handed Iran relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its atomic programme.
The move alarmed European powers, which see the deal as the best way to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and infuriated the Islamic republic.
The foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany -- the three European parties to the deal -- were joined by EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini for talks on the sidelines of an EU meeting in Helsinki.
Germany's Heiko Maas said the trio wanted to build on momentum from last weekend's G7 summit, where Trump indicated willingness to talk to Iran.
"Our priority is to open ...

Europe to step up diplomatic efforts on Iran crisis: Germany

Opponents of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's move to suspend parliament in the final weeks before Brexit lost the first of several legal bids to stop him on Friday.
Scottish judge Raymond Doherty rejected the request for a temporary injunction pending a full hearing in the case on September 6.
"I'm not satisfied that there's a need for an interim suspension or an interim interdict to be granted at this stage," Doherty said in his ruling.
Queen Elizabeth II has already given the go-ahead to shutter parliament between mid-September and October 14 -- just two weeks before the Brexit date of October 31.
The move was widely seen as limiting the time for parliamentarians to move against Johnson, who has said Britain must leave the EU with or without a deal.
Legal bids to halt the suspension have also been launched in Belfast and London.
Former prime minister John Major, a strong supporter of EU membership, has said he will seek to join the London legal action.
Johnson announced the surprise .

Judge rejects first bid to block UK parliament suspension

Ex-Germany goalkeeper Oliver Kahn will join Bayern Munich's board in January to be groomed to replace club chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the Bundesliga giants announced Friday amid a backroom upheaval.
The appointment of Kahn, who played for Bayern from 1994 until 2008, was approved by Bayern's board late Thursday, just hours after club president Uli Hoeness, 67, officially informed the club that he is stepping down in November.
Current chairman Rummenigge, 63, will eventually hand the reins to Kahn on December 31, 2021, after showing his successor the ropes, while former Adidas boss Herbert Hainer is poised to replace Hoeness as club president in the November elections.
Kahn, a former captain of both Germany and Bayern who made more than 600 appearances for the club, will sign a five-year contract and will join the club's board from January 1, 2020, serving a two-year apprenticeship before taking over from Rummenigge.
Hoeness sees Kahn as the "perfect solution" to replace ...

Oliver Kahn to replace Rummenigge as Bayern chairman

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed more than 2,000 lives, out of a total of 3,000 recorded cases since August last year, health officials said Friday.
"In total, there have been 2,006 deaths (1,901 confirmed and 105 probable)," officials said in a bulletin dated Thursday.
"Since the start of the epidemic, the number of cases is 3,004, including 2,899 confirmed and 105 probable," it added.

DR Congo Ebola death toll passes 2,000: official

Malaysian airline AirAsia X has ordered 42 Airbus aircraft worth a total catalogue price of five billion dollars, Airbus said Friday.
The Malaysian carrier has placed a firm order for 12 long-range A330neo planes and 30 medium-range A321XLR models, the European aircraft manufacturer said in a statement.
Major purchases are often finalised at a discount to the official catalogue price.

Airbus says Air AsiaX places USD 5 billion order

The same oceans that nourished human evolution are poised to unleash misery on a global scale unless the carbon pollution destabilising Earth's marine environment is brought to heel, warns a draft UN report obtained by AFP.
Destructive changes already set in motion -- some irreversible -- could see a steady decline in fish stocks, a hundred-fold or more increase in the damages caused by superstorms, and hundreds of millions of people displaced by rising seas, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "special report" on oceans and Earth's frozen zones, known as the cryosphere.
As the 21st century unfolds, melting glaciers will first give too much and then too little to billions who depend on them for fresh water, it finds.
Without deep cuts to manmade emissions, at least 30 percent of the northern hemisphere's surface permafrost could melt by century's end, unleashing billions of tonnes of carbon and accelerating global warming even more.
The 900-page ...

Draft UN report warns of rising seas, storm surges, melting permafrost

An Iranian tanker released after being detained for six weeks by the British overseas territory of Gibraltar is now headed for Lebanon, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday.
"This tanker is not heading actually to Eskerun (in Turkey), this tanker is heading to Lebanon," Cavusoglu said during a visit to Oslo, referring to the Adrian Darya 1 vessel.
The ship was suspected of transporting crude oil to Syria, in violation of European sanctions against the country, and the US has called for it to be seized.
The minister did not specify whether Lebanon was the tanker's final destination.
"We still buy gas from Iran, but we don't buy oil," he stressed, adding that Turkey was monitoring the vessel's progress "very closely".
A court in the British territory ordered the tanker's release on August 15 despite a last-minute legal bid by the United States to have it detained.
The Adrian Darya 1 set sail three days later for the eastern Mediterranean, carrying 2.1 million ...

Iran tanker released by Gibraltar headed to Lebanon: Turkey

A Scottish judge on Friday rejected a legal challenge to stop Prime Minister Boris Johnson suspending parliament, in a blow for opponents of the controversial move.
Judge Raymond Doherty dismissed the request from a cross-party group of parliamentarians for an interim injunction ahead of a full hearing on the case expected next week.

Judge rejects challenge by opponents of UK parliament suspension

Hormone therapy to relieve menopause symptoms slightly increases the risk of breast cancer, according to a large-scale study published Friday in The Lancet.
Other research has established a similar link, but the new study is the first to show that the risk remains elevated even ten years after treatment has stopped.
It also quantifies for the first time the level of risk associated with different types of menopause hormone therapy, or MHT.
The chance that a women between 50 and 69 who has never undergone MHT will contract breast cancer is about 6.3 in a 100.
By comparison, a woman in that age bracket who takes oestrogen and, intermittently, progestagen for five years stands a 7.7 in 100 chance of getting the disease.
If -- in the same scenario -- progestagen use is daily, the risk goes up again: 8.3 in 100.
Finally, an oestrogen-only regimen is closest to the no-hormones baseline, with a 6.8 out of 100 risk.
More prolonged use carries even higher risk, said co-author Gillian Reeves ...

Hormone therapies slightly increase breast cancer risk, even a decade later: study

Berlin from Friday eased rules allowing the descendants of people who fled Nazi Germany to reclaim citizenship.
Germany must "live up to its historical responsibility with regards to those affected," said Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.
While Germany already has rules allowing descendants of persecuted Jews to reclaim citizenship, the two decrees that came into force on Friday closed several loopholes that had previously shut others out.
The offspring of people who left Nazi Germany before their nationality was evoked by the regime can now reclaim it under the new decree.
People who previously would not have been accorded German nationality, because their father was a foreigner and whose mother lost her German citizenship under the Nazis, for example, can now also benefit from the new rules.
The ministry stressed that no one should be shut out because the Nazi-era injustice was too far back in time.
Second, third, fourth "and in some cases fifth generation" descendants can apply, ...

AFP

AFP

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