Migrants hired as extras for an Italian film set in Malta were subjected to ill treatment allegedly in order to create more realistic scenes, the Times of Malta has reported.
Under the direction of Italian comedic filmmaker Checco Zalone, around 70 African migrants living in Malta, including four children, were hired for a movie titled "Tolo Tolo", the newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The paper cited members of the film crew as saying that 60 of the migrants, most of whom could not swim, were left without water for six hours on a boat in the sun without being allowed to take toilet breaks.
At one point a pregnant woman began to panic and the crew took her to shore. At least four crew members resigned after the incident, the Times of Malta reported.
"Their lives were at risk," one of them told the paper. "I was terrified for their safety."
Maltese production company Halo Pictures, which is coordinating the filming in Malta, denied any ill treatment, saying local employment law was ...

Migrant extras mistreated on Malta film set: Report

PTI Automatic

The United Arab Emirates withdrew on Thursday a complaint it made to the World Trade Organization accusing Qatar of imposing discriminatory trade restrictions on its goods.
"Qatar withdrew the measures in question, in order to address the claims" which led Abu Dhabi to discontinue its action against Doha, the UAE foreign ministry said in a statement.
The UAE, whose complaint was referred to a WTO dispute resolution panel in May, has enforced a complete economic embargo of Qatar along with Saudi Arabia and other regional allies since June 2017.
The Saudi-led bloc, which also includes Bahrain and Egypt, accuses Doha of supporting Islamist movements and backing Iran, a claim Qatar rejects.  The UAE previously said the measures it challenged "appear to be inconsistent" with WTO agreements.
"Qatar's discriminatory measures against goods... originating from the United Arab Emirates, imposed in May and June 2018, violated Qatar's obligations and commitments as a member of the WTO," added the 

UAE pulls WTO trade complaint against Qatar

China on Thursday denounced rules unveiled by the US that ban technology giant Huawei and other Chinese firms from government contracts as "abuse of state power" in the latest move in the escalating China-US trade war.
The interim rule, which will preclude any US federal agency from purchasing telecom or technology equipment from the firms, is part of a sweeping effort by Washington to restrict Huawei, which officials claim is linked to Chinese intelligence.
"The abuse of state power by the United States to unscrupulously and deliberately throw mud at and suppress specific Chinese enterprises seriously undermines the image of the United States and its own interests," said Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
"We firmly support the relevant Chinese companies in taking up legal weapons to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests," she said in an online statement.
The ban on Chinese tech firms comes amid a heated dispute between the two economic powers over ...

China decries US ban on Chinese firms as 'abuse of state power'

A Nigerian court on Thursday ruled security forces can hold a former presidential candidate for 45 days without trial after he was detained for calling for a revolution.
Omoyele Sowore, a fierce critic of President Muhammadu Buhari, was picked up over the weekend by the Department of State Services (DSS) secret police after calling for protests under the banner "#RevolutionNow".
Several dozen of Sowore's supporters still gathered in Lagos on Monday for the protest, but were quickly dispersed by police firing teargas.  Several demonstrators were also arrested.
On Tuesday, the DSS filed an application before the federal high court in Abuja seeking to keep the 48-year-old activist and founder of online Sahara Reporters for 90 days.
Judge Taiwo Taiwo in his ruling said he would allow the DSS to keep Sowore for an initial 45 days, but that could be renewed "if investigation is not concluded".
The judge said he was granting the detention order based on evidence including video of Sowore ...

Nigeria court prolongs detention of ex-presidential candidate

Tottenham made the headlines on a busy final day of the Premier League transfer window with deals in the pipeline for Giovani lo Celso and Ryan Sessegnon, but their hopes of signing Paulo Dybala are fading.
Across north London, Arsenal are expected to complete moves for Celtic left-back Kieran Tierney and centre-back David Luiz from Chelsea.
Manchester United striker Romelu Lukaku's prolonged transfer to Inter Milan is also close to completion after the clubs reportedly agreed on a deal that could rise to 80 million euros (?74 million, $90 million).
Lukaku arrived in Milan early on Thursday, leaving United facing a race against time to find a replacement despite interest in Juventus forward Mario Mandzukic.
Spurs chairman Daniel Levy has been under pressure from manager Mauricio Pochettino to build on the progress made on and off the field as Tottenham moved into a new 62,000-capacity stadium and reached the Champions League final last season.
They have made just one summer signing so 

Tottenham, Arsenal to splash cash on Premier League deadline day

A 5.8-magnitude earthquake was recorded in southwestern Turkey on Thursday, according to the US Geological Studies Institute, with reports of collapsed buildings but no serious casualties.
The earthquake was recorded in the province of Denizli near the town of Bozkurt at 1125 GMT, with a depth of around seven kilometres according to Turkish emergency services.
"Some roofs collapsed, there were deep fissures, several houses collapsed," Bozkurt mayor Birsen Celik told TV station NTV.
"No one was killed. There were no serious injuries," he added.
Turkey lies on major faultlines and has suffered several quakes in the west and southwest of magnitude 5 and above since the start of the year.
The country is about to mark 20 years since the devastating twin quakes in 1999, both over magnitude-7, that hit a highly populated zone in the northwest, leaving some 20,000 dead.

Strong quake hits southwest Turkey

Hundreds of Beatles fans came together outside London's Abbey Road Studios on Thursday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band making one of the most iconic album covers of all time.
Fans mobbed the pedestrian crossing exactly five decades on from the moment when Britain's legendary Fab Four walked across for the photo that was used on the sleeve of their final studio album, "Abbey Road".
The shot of John Lennon leading band mates Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison over the zebra crossing is instantly recognised all over the world.
Beatles tribute band Fab Gear pulled up in a psychedelic Rolls-Royce and recreated the moment, as fans halted the traffic.
Mary Anne Laffin, 66, flew in from New York to be at what she called a "holy shrine".
As a youngster, she ran on the pitch when The Beatles played at New York's Shea Stadium in 1966.
"I was 12 years old, saved up USD 5.50 to get a ticket and it was like being in heaven for 38 minutes," the midwife said.
"I was ...

Beatles fans come together for 50th anniversary of Abbey Road

"Boss", a Brahman bull born in the USA but raised in Bangladesh, has been sold for a record price as the country prepares to sacrifice over 10 million animals to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha next week, officials said Thursday.
Tens of millions of Bangladeshis travel back to their homes across the country to celebrate the annual three-day religious holiday, which is known as the festival of sacrifice.
Muslims slaughter an animal -- a goat, sheep, cow, or camel -- during the festivities in a ritual stemming from the story of the prophet Abraham, commanded by God to slaughter his beloved son Ismail.
The meat is distributed in equal parts to the poor, relatives, and consumed by the family themselves. Millions of hides are donated to poor people and orphanages.
Raising animals for Eid al-Adha is a major job creator, and there is fierce competition among farmers throughout the South Asian nation to rear the best-looking and heaviest cattle.
"Boss", imported from the United ..

Born in the USA, 'Boss' the bull fetches record price in Bangladesh

A fleet of Chinese ships has left Vietnam's exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, Hanoi said Thursday, ending a tense month-long stand off in the resource-rich waterway claimed by both sides and others.
A Chinese survey vessel and several accompanying ships entered the waters around the Spratly Islands early last month, drawing ire from Hanoi, the US and the EU over Chinese increasing aggression in the resource-rich seas.
Hanoi on Thursday confirmed the vessels had left its exclusive economic zone, after weeks of repeated demands to vacate.
"On August 7, 2019, the group of Haiyang 8 vessels belonging to China ended its geological survey operation and left Vietnam's exclusive economic zone," foreign affairs ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang told reporters.
She added that Vietnam has been "expressing and showing goodwill to use dialogue with relevant countries to solve disputes".
Beijing has not confirmed the presence of its ships in the area.
China claims the majority of ..

Hanoi says China ships have left disputed sea after month-long standoff

Russia on Thursday froze the assets of an anti-corruption group that top opposition figure Alexei Navalny set up to expose the questionable wealth of top government officials, his spokeswoman said.
The ruling comes amid a crackdown on the opposition that has seen Navalny jailed and thousands of people detained at a series of rallies in Moscow calling for free and fair elections.
The Foundation for Fighting Corruption (FBK) has published reports detailing the lavish lifestyles of figures close to Russian President Vladimir Putin including Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
A Moscow district court froze 75 million rubles ($1.1 million) held in accounts of the FBK and those of several staff members, Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on Twitter.
"This is the amount that they considered to be 'laundered'," she wrote on Facebook.
Investigators said that the FBK knowingly used a large amount of money that was gained by third parties through crime. A spokeswoman said it was around one ...

Russia freezes assets of Kremlin critic Navalny's anti-graft group

As hundreds die in a severe dengue outbreak in the Philippines, many of them children, President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday he was open to lifting his government's blanket ban on the Dengvaxia vaccine.
Manila prohibited the import, sale and distribution of the drug -- manufactured by French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi -- after parents blamed it for the deaths of several dozen children who were among more than 700,000 people immunised in a state-run trial programme.
After the Dengvaxia scare caused Filipinos to shy away from vaccines, the country was hit with measles and dengue outbreaks that have so far killed nearly a thousand people this year. The government declared a dengue epidemic on Tuesday.
While he was "in a quandary" regarding the use of Dengvaxia, Duterte said the perceived risk had to be weighed against the 662 deaths from out of the 146,000-plus dengue cases monitored by the government so far this year.
"Yes, I am open to the use of Dengvaxia again. So many people are ..

Philippines 'open' to dengue vaccine as outbreak kills hundreds

Five-year-old Mohammad Ahnaf lies in a makeshift bed in the balcony of a major hospital in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, fighting for his life as dengue fever ravages his little body.
But his mother Shimul Akhter knows he is one of the lucky ones as Bangladesh grapples with its worst-ever outbreak of the viral fever -- 23 have died and many cannot get access to medical help at all.
Since January, almost 30,000 people have been hospitalised with the disease nationwide, and in the past week some 2,000 patients a day have been admitted to hospitals.
"The situation is like an epidemic. But no-one is admitting it," one expert, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP adding the real number of those with dengue was likely to be several times higher than official figures, which are based on limited data.
Panic is setting in. Such is the terror of those with symptoms that medical staff have been attacked as they try to stretch the meagre resources around and in some cases armed guards have been .

'We are scared': Deadly dengue outbreak overwhelms Bangladesh

Iran's defence minister said Thursday that the formation of a US-led flotilla in the Gulf would "increase insecurity" and any Israeli involvement would have "disastrous consequences" for the region.
Tehran and Washington have been locked in a battle of nerves since US President Donald Trump withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran last year and reimposed sanctions.
Tensions have soared in the region, with drones downed and tankers mysteriously attacked in Gulf waters.
Washington and its Gulf allies have accused the Islamic republic of the tanker attacks, which Tehran denies.
In response, the US has been seeking to form a coalition whose mission-- dubbed Operation Sentinel -- it says is to guarantee freedom of navigation in the Gulf.
Britain, which already has warships on protection duty in the Gulf after a UK-flagged tanker was seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has said it will join the planned operation.
But other European countries have kept out, for fear it might .

Iran says US Gulf mission will 'increase insecurity'

China demanded Thursday that US diplomats based in Hong Kong "stop interfering" in the city's affairs, after reports that they met with pro-democracy activists.
The foreign ministry said it had expressed "strong dissatisfaction" with US authorities, citing local media reports that a US official from Hong Kong's US consulate general had met with a local "independence group".
In a statement Thursday, the ministry urged the diplomatic office to "immediately make a clean break with various anti-China rioters" and "stop interfering in Hong Kong's affairs immediately."
A report in Hong Kong newspaper Takungpao said there had been a meeting between members of the political party Demosisto -- including prominent democracy activist Joshua Wong -- and Julie Eadeh, political unit chief of the US consulate general in Hong Kong.
When contacted by AFP for comment, a State Department spokesperson said representatives of the US government "meet regularly with a wide cross section of people across ...

China tells US diplomats in Hong Kong to stop interfering

Kyrgyz special forces on Thursday launched a fresh raid to capture the former president, an official said, a day after an attempt to storm his compound left one officer dead and a police chief in a critical condition.
Central Asian Kyrgyzstan, which has seen two revolutions in less than two decades, is on the brink of full-blown political crisis amid a standoff between ex-leader Almazbek Atambayev and his protege-turned-foe President Sooronbai Jeenbekov.
On Wednesday the confrontation escalated when the security service announced an operation to seize Atambayev from his compound outside Bishkek, capital of the Muslim-majority nation of six million people.
Now "a second raid has just begun," lawmaker Irina Karamushkina, an ally of Atambayev's in contact with his compound, told AFP by telephone on Thursday.
Around a thousand police and special forces officers were taking part, while the same number of supporters of Atambayev were defending the residence, she said.
Atambayev has ignored .

Kyrgyzstan special forces launch fresh raid for ex-president

A prominent Lebanese daily on Thursday appeared on newsstands with a black front page in the second such protest by a local paper in less than a year over the country's lingering political crisis.
"Lebanon," read the cover of The Daily Star, the country's only English-language newspaper.
On 10 blank pages inside, it listed a string of woes including "government deadlock", "pollution" "unemployment", "illegal weapons" and "public debt".
"Wake up before it's too late!" it concluded on its back page, with the issue's single picture of a cedar, the country's national emblem.
The newspaper's Lebanon and online editor Joseph Habboush said the move sought to convey alarm to the ruling class.
"We wanted to deliver a warning to the politicians and officials that the situation has reached an alarming level," he said.
In October last year, the country's oldest newspaper An-Nahar printed an entirely blank issue to protest a political deadlock over forming a cabinet.
The government was formed in ..

Lebanon newspaper goes black to raise alarm over political crisis

Raging floods across Myanmar have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes in recent weeks, officials said Thursday, as monsoon rains pummel the nation.
Aerial images from Shwegyin township in Bago region showed how the area had become a vast lake of water.  Only the rooftops could be seen of many homes lining the Sittaung river.
Emergency services have been helping bring people to dry ground, many seeking shelter in local monasteries.
Others waded through waist-deep floodwaters or rowed on wooden boats with pets and any belongings they could take with them.
Than Aye, 42, who has diabetes and is partially-sighted, struggled to escape the deluge.
"I could not do anything when the flooding started but then the fire service came to rescue me by boat," he told AFP from the safety of the monastery that has been his home for the last five days.
The most severe flooding is currently in eastern Bago region and Mon and Karen states, according to the social welfare ministry.
"There ..

Myanmar floods force tens of thousands from homes

Two people were killed in an explosion at a military base used for missile tests in the far north of Russia on Thursday, the defence ministry said in a statement to news agencies.
"During the test of a liquid propellant jet engine, an explosion occurred and the equipment caught fire," the ministry said.
"As a result of the accident, six defence ministry employees and a developer were injured. Two specialists died of their wounds," it said, adding that radiation levels near the facility were "normal".
"There's no radioactive contamination," a spokeswoman for the Arkhangelsk region, where the base is situated, told AFP.
The accident is the second to hit the Russian military in less than a week, after a fire broke out in an ammunition depot in Siberia on Monday, causing huge explosions.
At least one person was killed and eight injured while thousands had to evacuated from their homes following the blaze at the depot in the Krasnoyarsk region.

Two dead in explosion at Russian military base

German sportswear maker Adidas warned Thursday that "everybody will lose" if a currency war ignites between China, the United States and other countries, while reporting continued strong earnings in its second quarter.
American tariffs on Chinese goods -- with another USD 300 billion in imports targeted by President Donald Trump last week -- are less harmful to the brand with the three stripes than a potential exchange rate battle, chief executive Kasper Rorsted said.
"What is much more severe is that we start to have a currency war between China, the US and the rest of the world, that's going to be a situation where everybody will lose," he told journalists in a telephone conference.
Since the tariffs announcement, Beijing has allowed the yuan to sink below a seven-to-the-dollar lower bound its central bank had previously defended, prompting the US Treasury Department to cry currency manipulation.
"Currency war will over time slow the economy down," Adidas chief Rorsted predicted, as 

Adidas fears 'everybody will lose' in US-China currency war

Two people were killed in an explosion during an equipment test at a military base in the far north of Russia on Thursday, the defence ministry said in a statement to news agencies.
"As a result of the accident, six defence ministry employees and a developer were injured. Two specialists died of their wounds," the ministry said, adding that radiation levels near the facility were "normal".

Two dead in blast during equipment test at Russian military base: Defence ministry

Damascus said Thursday it strongly rejects a proposed US-Turkish buffer zone for northern Syria, blaming the "aggressive" project on Syria's Kurds, who gave the proposal a guarded welcome.
Turkish and US officials agreed on Wednesday to establish a joint operations centre to oversee the creation of a safe zone to manage tensions between Ankara and US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria.
No details were provided on the size or nature of the safe zone, but the deal appeared to provide some breathing room after Turkey had threatened an imminent attack on the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which control a large swathe of northern Syria.
"Syria categorically and clearly rejects the agreement between the American and Turkish occupiers on the establishment of a so-called safe zone" in northern Syria, a foreign ministry source told state news agency SANA.
"Syria's Kurds who have accepted to become a tool in this aggressive US-Turkish project bear a historical responsibility," the source .

AFP

AFP

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