Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters rallied outside a controversial train station linking the territory to the Chinese mainland on Sunday, the latest mass show of anger as activists try to keep pressure on the city's pro-Beijing leaders.
The rally was the first major large-scale protest since last Monday's unprecedented storming of parliament by largely young, masked protesters -- which plunged the international financial hub further into crisis.
Hong Kong has been rocked by a month of huge marches as well as a series of separate violent confrontations with police, sparked by a law that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.
The bill has since been postponed in response to the intense backlash but that has done little to quell public anger, which has evolved into a wider movement calling for democratic reforms and a halt to sliding freedoms in the semi-autonomous city.
Organisers said some 230,000 people snaked their way through streets in the harbour-front ...

Hong Kong protesters march on station to 'educate' Chinese mainlanders

PTI Automatic

England spearhead James Anderson has just under a month to prove his fitness for the first Ashes Test against Australia after suffering a "low-grade calf muscle tear" while playing for county side Lancashire.
Anderson, England's all-time leading Test wicket-taker, will miss Lancashire's next two four-day County Championship matches against Northamptonshire and Sussex after leaving the field during a match against Durham on July 2 due to tightness to his right calf.
The 36-year-old Anderson underwent an MRI scan on Friday, with an England and Wales Cricket Board spokesman saying Sunday: "The MRI confirmed that Anderson has suffered a low-grade calf muscle tear.
"As a result of the injury, he will commence a rehabilitation programme with the England and Lancashire CCC medical teams."
The spokesman confirmed fast-medium bowler Anderson would miss Lancashire's next two Championship match before adding: "He will be reassessed on an ongoing basis regarding his availability for the ...

England's Anderson in Ashes fitness race after calf injury

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called an announcement by his country's arch-foe Iran that it would breach the uranium enrichment cap set by an endangered nuclear deal a "very dangerous step".
"This measure is a very dangerous step, and I call on my friends, leaders of France, Britain, Germany: You signed the deal and said the moment they'd take this measure, harsh sanctions would be imposed," Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.
Iran said Sunday it was set to breach the uranium enrichment cap set by the nuclear deal within hours as it seeks to press signatories into keeping their side of the bargain.
The Islamic republic also threatened to abandon more commitments unless a solution is found with parties to the 2015 agreement.
The move to start enriching uranium above the agreed maximum purification level of 3.67 percent comes despite opposition from the European Union and the United States, which has quit the deal.
Netanyahu opposed the nuclear deal ..

Netanyahu calls Iran plan to breach uranium cap 'dangerous step'

Saudi Arabia's King Salman hosted British finance minister Philip Hammond for talks in the western city of Jeddah on Sunday, state media said, amid renewed prospects of an overseas stock listing of oil giant Aramco.
The leaders discussed ways to "strengthen economic and financial cooperation" and also reviewed security matters in the wake of "Iranian threats" to regional waterways, the Saudi Press Agency said.
Hammond's visit comes after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reiterated last month that state-owned Aramco's much-delayed initial public offering -- dubbed as potentially the world's biggest stock sale -- would take place in late 2020 or early 2021.
Saudi Arabia has not announced where the listing will be held, but London, New York and Hong Kong have all vied for a slice of the much-touted IPO.
Hammond was accompanied by London Stock Exchange chief David Schwimmer and investment minister Graham Stuart on his two-day visit to Jeddah that began on Saturday, according to a ...

Saudi king hosts British finance minister for talks

The United States on Sunday called for Germany to send ground troops to northern Syria, pushing Berlin to ramp up its military involvement in the fight against the Islamic State group as Washington looks to withdraw from the region.
"We want ground troops from Germany to partly replace our soldiers" in the area as part of the anti-IS coalition, US special representative on Syria James Jeffrey told German media including the Die Welt newspaper.
Jeffrey, who was visiting Berlin for Syria talks, added that he expects an answer this month.
Last year US President Donald Trump declared victory against IS and ordered the withdrawal of all 2,000 American troops from Syria.
But a small number have remained in northeastern Syria, an area not controlled by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and Washington is pushing for increased military support from other members of the international coalition against IS.
"We are looking for volunteers who want to take part here and among other coalition 

US calls on Germany to send ground troops to Syria

Oman's top diplomat met Sunday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Muscat said, in the Gulf official's second visit to the war-wracked country since conflict broke out in 2011.
Assad met with Oman's state minister for foreign affairs Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah to discuss bilateral relations and regional security, the sultanate's foreign ministry said in a statement.
It added that Abdullah also met with his Syrian counterpart, Walid Muallem.
Oman is one of the few Arab states to have maintained ties with Damascus over the past eight years.
Syria was suspended from the Arab League in 2011 for its deadly crackdown on an uprising against Assad's rule, and fellow Arab countries, including Gulf powerhouse Saudi Arabia, have supported the opposition.
Oman's Sultan Qaboos adheres to a strict policy of non-interference in regional affairs, maintaining relations with rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran -- a key backer of Assad.
Abdullah visited Damascus in 2015, Syria's official SANA .

Top Oman diplomat meets Assad in rare Syria visit

Injury-hit Australia have called up Matthew Wade and Mitch Marsh to their World Cup squad as cover for Usman Khawaja and Marcus Stoinis.
Top-order batsman Khawaja suffered a left hamstring injury in Australia's shock 10-run defeat by South Africa at Old Trafford on Saturday.
Stoinis was also hampered by a side complaint, an issue which had already sidelined the all-rounder for two group stage matches.
With reigning champions Australia due to play England in the semi-finals at Edgbaston on Thursday, Wade and Marsh have been added to the squad.
Marsh links up with the group for a second time as cover for Stoinis, who missed Australia's wins over Pakistan and Sri Lanka before returning against Bangladesh.
Both Khawaja and Stoinis will undergo scans on their injuries but, in the meantime, Wade and Marsh will leave the Australia A group currently in Sussex, southern England.
Australia captain Aaron Finch admitted Khawaja was unlikely to recover in time for the rest of the tournament when ..

Injury-hit Australia call up Wade, Marsh for World Cup

A round-the-clock webcast starring two beloved baby dugongs in Thailand named Mariam and Jamil went live Sunday, allowing a more in-depth look at the celebrity sea cows.
Mariam captured hearts in viral social media posts last month showing her playfully nuzzling up to rescuers in shallow waters off southwestern Thailand, while Jamil washed ashore further up the coast a week ago.
The orphaned dugong duo are being held separately, but anyone with an internet connection can now see them through a 24-hour livestream that uses eight camera angles and scheduled feeding times.
"We show them live because we don't want people to disrupt them by going to see them at the current locations," said Kongkiat Kittiwatanawong, director of the Phuket Marine Biological Center.
He added cameras will also help with monitoring their recovery.
A little after 2pm Jamil was seen splashing away in a small pool in the Phuket center.
Normally dugongs don't leave their mothers until they are a little more than a .

The Dugong Show: 24-hour webcast shows star Thai sea cows

Dozens of shipwrecked migrants disembarked in Italy early Sunday after their rescue boat docked on the island of Lampedusa, the second vessel in a week to defy efforts to stop them by far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.
Some 41 people were finally allowed to step off migrant rescue charity Mediterranea's Italian-flagged Alex, which arrived at the port on Saturday in an overnight operation that saw the ship temporarily seized by authorities.
The boat's captain Tommaso Stella is being investigated for allegedly aiding illegal immigration, according to the Italian news agency Agi.
It is the second vessel in just over a week to defy Salvini's attempts to block Italian ports to rescue ships, as tensions increase over the international response to the migration crisis.
A third boat that had also been waiting off Lampedusa, the German charity Sea-Eye's vessel Alan Kurdi carrying 65 migrants, was sailing towards Malta on Sunday, even though it has not received permission to enter ...

Migrants disembark in Italy after rescue boat defies ban

Thousands of anti-government protesters began a march in Hong Kong Sunday that will end outside a controversial train station linking the territory to the Chinese mainland, as activists try to keep pressure on the city's pro-Beijing leaders.
The rally is the first major large-scale protest since last Monday's unprecedented storming of parliament by largely young, masked protesters -- a move which plunged the international financial hub further into crisis.
Hong Kong has been rocked by a month of huge marches as well as a series of separate violent confrontations with police, sparked by a law that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.
The bill has since been postponed in response to the intense backlash but that has done little to quell public anger, which has evolved into a wider movement calling for democratic reforms and a halt to sliding freedoms in the semi-autonomous city.
Thousands mustered at the rally's start on Sunday afternoon at a park in Tsim Sha Tsui, a ...

China station next target for Hong Kong protesters as new rally begins

A suspected Palestinian car-ramming attack in the occupied West Bank has wounded five Israeli soldiers and the alleged assailant has been arrested, the Israeli army said Sunday.
The troops were stationed on a roadside near the Palestinian town of Hizma as part of "operational activity" on Saturday night when the driver of a car rammed his vehicle into them, the army said.
Three soldiers were moderately injured and two hurt lightly in the incident near the town, which is located close to a checkpoint dividing the West Bank from Jerusalem, it said in a statement.
Soldiers later arrested the driver and his father at a checkpoint, it added.  It said an initial inquiry "suggests that the incident was a car-ramming attack" and not an accident.
Israeli army raids in the West Bank regularly set off tensions with Palestinian residents.
Palestinians have carried out sporadic car-ramming, knife and gun attacks against Israeli soldiers in the territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day ...

Suspected car-ramming attack wounds Israeli soldiers: army

Thousands of residents in Frankfurt have been evacuated on Sunday to allow German explosives experts to defuse a large unexploded World War II bomb found close to the European Central Bank headquarters.
The ECB building has been evacuated along with residential areas that are home to some 16,000 people within a roughly one-kilometre radius of the 500-kilogramme bomb.
A bank spokeswoman said that "we have made arrangements for our employees to be able to work from other locations if necessary," reported the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) daily.
The US fragmentation bomb with two detonators was found on June 25 during construction work in the centre of Germany's banking capital Frankfurt.
The ordnance clearance service determined that it spelled no immediate danger and scheduled the defusal operation for Sunday.
The evacuation zone stretches across both banks of the Main River and will force the suspension of several train services.
No-one will be allowed inside the area until the 

Frankfurt centre, ECB cleared to defuse WWII bomb

Iran said Sunday it was set to breach the uranium enrichment cap set by an endangered nuclear deal within hours as it seeks to press signatories into keeping their side of the bargain.
The move -- involving purifying beyond the 3.67 per cent allowed by the 2015 agreement -- comes despite opposition from the European Union and the United States, which has quit the deal.
President Hassan Rouhani's order to exceed the threshold would be implemented "in a few hours" after the last technical details were sorted, Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said live on state television.
Rouhani initially flagged the Islamic republic's intentions on May 8, exactly a year on from US President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoning the multilateral deal.
He has said the move is in response to a failure by remaining state signatories to keep their promise to help Iran work around biting sanctions reimposed by the US in the second half of last year.
French President Emmanuel ...

Iran set to exceed nuclear deal uranium enrichment cap

A Taliban car bomb in eastern Afghanistan killed at least five people and wounded scores more Sunday, Afghan officials said, in a blast that came amid ongoing peace talks in Qatar.
The Taliban are meeting with US negotiators and Afghan representatives in Doha as the US pushes to end its 18-year involvement in Afghanistan, but violence from the insurgents and the
US military has continued apace.
Sunday's suicide attack hit the eastern city of Ghazni and targeted an intelligence unit, Ghazni provincial governor spokesman Aref Noori told AFP.
He put the death toll at six, including two military personnel and four civilians.
Baz Mohammad Hemmat, the head of a Ghazni private hospital, said five were dead and 70 others wounded.
The Taliban claimed the attack in a WhatsApp message.
The seventh round of Taliban-US talks is aimed at forging a deal that would see the US military quit Afghanistan in return for various guarantees.
Both sides have reported substantial progress in the talks, which .

At least five dead in Taliban blast in Afghan city: officials

Stranded in Bosnia, thousands of migrants face yet one more hurdle on their journey towards the European Union: the scorching summer heat in the Balkans.
Under a leaden sky, Saleh Alhasan and his friends hurry to reach the shade of the woods after failing yet again to cross the border to Croatia, the last barrier on the long and tortuous road into the European Union.
"I tried more than 15 times... It has been 10 months that I try to pass. And I do not want to give up. I just want to see my son" born in Sweden, says the 33-year old Syrian architect.
"I only saw him in a photo."
His wife was among hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees who took the so-called Balkans route in 2015, before the EU borders closed for them.
On a dusty road, Saleh and his companions pass by red signs hanging on trees, warning that the field is mined: a legacy of the country's brutal 1992-1995 war.
They stop at a stream to refresh themselves, exhausted after walking in temperatures exceeding 35 Celsius 

Heatwave adds to the woes of migrants stranded in Bosnia

African leaders will meet Sunday in Niger for the African Union (AU) summit, to sign a landmark free trade agreement, and to discuss looming security and migration crises on the continent.
In a "historic" moment for the 55-member bloc, according to its chairman Moussa Faki, heads of state will officially launch the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) at the two-day summit in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.
The agreement comes after 17 years of tough negotiations, and was formalised at the end of April when the agreement had crossed the launch threshold, which required ratification by at least 22 countries.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and largest economy, announced this week it would after all join the pact in Niamey, having unexpectedly pulled back from the agreement last year.
Nigeria's chief trade negotiator, Ambassador Chiedu Osakwe, said President Muhammadu Buhari would sign the landmark agreement, "opening Africa up to abundant opportunities.
"We weren't ...

African leaders set to sign landmark trade deal at AU Summit

Pakistan paceman Shaheen Shah Afridi enjoyed a breakthrough World Cup campaign, prompting Wasim Akram to hail the teenager as a future star.
The teenager recorded Pakistan's best-ever World Cup bowling figures with a scintillating spell of 6-35 in Friday's win over Bangladesh at Lord's.
Despite that victory in their last group match, Pakistan failed to qualify for the semi-finals as they had an inferior net run-rate compared to fourth-placed New Zealand, who also had 11 points from nine matches.
But the gloom of not reaching the last four was lifted by a series of eye-catching performances from Shaheen and several other rising Pakistan stars that offered hope for the coming years.
Wasim, who starred in Pakistan's 1992 World Cup triumph, said he was delighted to have witnessed Shaheen's progress.
"Definitely, Shaheen is one for the future, a beacon of light for the next generation of fast bowlers," the former left-arm quick told AFP.
"Shaheen is hard-working and a quick learner so ...

High-flying Shaheen is future Pakistan star, says Wasim

Pakistan's Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi admits that playing at Wimbledon with a mixed doubles partner who has a twin sister can often leave him seeing double, but he's happy to remain bamboozled if it brings him and his country a first Grand Slam title.
Qureshi teamed up with Ukraine's Nadiia Kichenok at Roland Garros and they immediately clicked, reaching the semi-finals despite only squeezing into the draw at the last minute.
However, he admitted that with Nadiia also having twin sister Lyudmyla playing on the tour, it can lead to some embarrassing moments.
"At Roland Garros, I thought I saw her in the gym and I said 'hey, partner, how's it going?' She said 'I'm not your partner, it's the other one'," the 39-year-old Qureshi told AFP.
"Now I see the differences between the two although it's tough to tell how I know they are different.
"It's just the look and you kind of sense it. Maybe it's the way they greet me, I can sense straight away who my partner is."
Qureshi's recent fortunes have ..

Twin set: Pakistan's Qureshi hopes sister act can lead to Wimbledon victory

Australia captain Aaron Finch insisted he was "excited" by he prospect of a World Cup semi-final against England even though his reigning champions will go into Thursday's blockbuster match on the back of a 10-run loss to South Africa.
Had Australia defeated the Proteas in Manchester on Saturday they would have returned to Old Trafford on Tuesday for a last-four clash with New Zealand, who have lost their last three group games -- including an 86-run defeat by Finch's men.
But Saturday's narrow 10-run loss means Australia will head to Birmingham to face an England side who have beaten fellow semi-finalists India and New Zealand in their last two games.
Australia overwhelmed England in their group stage meeting at Lord's but, significantly, the hosts were without Jason Roy that day, with the opener now fit again and firing on all cylinders.
"You have to beat everyone, regardless of who it is or where it is," Finch told reporters.
"Playing well against England a couple of weeks ago ...

England semi-final 'excites' Australia captain Finch

Greek voters are casting their ballots on Sunday in the country's first national election of the post-bailout era, with leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's Syriza party expected to be ousted by the conservative opposition.
Polling stations opened at 07.00 am local time (0400 GMT)and will close at 07.00 pm with 9,903,864 Greeks having the right to vote, according to the Athens News Agency.
After nearly five years in power, Greece's longest-serving crisis premier -- as well as the youngest in more than a century -- is battling to overcome a 10-point deficit in opinion polls amid widespread dissatisfaction after years of high taxation.
As a trio of new opinion polls predicted a clear victory for the conservative New Democracy party, Tsipras has vowed that he can make "the biggest comeback in modern Greek history".
"The Greek people must not only vote, they must avert a theft of their sacrifices, a great crime against future generations," the 44-year-old premier told a crowd in Athens 

Greece heads to polls with voters expected to oust Tsipras

Eight-time Wimbledon singles champion Roger Federer posted yet more landmarks as all the main contenders encountered few problems in reaching the last 16.
Federer registered a record 350th win in Grand Slam matches in his 7-5 6-2 7-6 (7/4) victory over Lucas Pouille of France on Saturday and in the process reached the fourth round for an unprecedented 17th time.
"It's a nice number to achieve. I've enjoyed my time at the Slams," said Federer, who next plays Matteo Berrettini of Italy, of his Grand Slam record.
"It's been nice winning that much."
Earlier, his great rival and two-time Wimbledon champion Rafael Nadal had a much more enjoyable experience than his previous match as he eased into the last 16 with a 6-2 6-3 6-2 romp over French veteran Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
The ease with which Nadal made the fourth round for the ninth time was replicated on the women's side by Ashleigh Barty, who will be breaking new ground in appearing in the last 16 for the first time.
Seven-time women's ...

AFP

AFP

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