The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), the watchdog set up to police doping in athletics, said Thursday it had received testing data from a Moscow laboratory at the centre of a vast doping conspiracy.
The independent body founded by the IAAF, athletics' world governing body, said it had received around 110,000 files from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on June 18.
The data, collected by WADA inspectors from the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) of the Moscow Laboratory, concerns testing samples analysed in the period 2012 to 2015.
"The AIU will start analysing the LIMS data immediately with a view to reporting its findings to the IAAF Council in due course," the watchdog said in a statement.
The AIU said that no deadline had been set for the completion of the task.
Russia was banned from world athletics in 2015 following revelations of a state-backed doping programme dating back years.
Although the governing bodies of other sports have re-admitted Russia, the IAAF ...

Athletics doping watchdog receives Moscow test files

PTI Automatic

A Turkish court on Thursday gave life sentences to 24 people in one of the biggest trials over the 2016 failed bid to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, state media reported.
Of the 24, the judge gave 17 accused 141 aggravated life terms each over the deaths of 139 people, for "violating the constitution" and "attempting to assassinate the president", state news agency Anadolu reported.
Such sentences carry harsher prison conditions.
Former air force chief Akin Ozturk and Mehmet Disli, the brother of former ruling party lawmaker Saban Disli, who since September has served as Turkey's ambassador to the Netherlands, were among the 17.
There was a tense atmosphere minutes before the judge issued his verdicts with dozens of people including relatives of those killed during the coup bid in July 2016, lambasting the court for not allowing them to enter.
Saliha Arigan, whose son was killed on the night of the failed overthrow, pressed herself against the gates, crying and shouting to .

Turkey sentences 24 to life in 'coup ringleaders' trial

Regime bombardment killed 14 civilians including two rescue workers in an ambulance in embattled northwest Syria on Thursday, a Britain-based war monitor said.
Those killed also included seven children in various areas of the jihadist-run Idlib province, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
A regime air strike targeted an ambulance in the town of Maaret al-Noman, killing two rescue workers inside, it said, in the latest deadly bombardment on the wider region of some three million people since late April.

Two rescuers among 14 civilians killed by Syria regime fire: monitor

Turkey is set to send a new ship on Thursday to search for oil and gas off Cyprus, in a move expected to escalate tensions after the EU called on Ankara to stop its "illegal drilling activities".
The region near the divided island is believed have rich natural gas deposits, triggering a race between Turkey and the internationally recognised Cyprus, which also plans to ramp up its exploratory activities in the eastern Mediterranean.
Turkish officials said the new vessel is the 229-metre (750-feet) Yavuz, which has previously drilled in the waters off several countries including Kenya, Tanzania and Malaysia.
The European Union on Tuesday lashed at Turkey over its plans to drill in the area, warning it was preparing "appropriate measures" in response.
The appeal came after Turkey's first drilling vessel, Fatih, started searching for gas and oil in the waters considered part of Cyprus' exclusive economic zone.
Cyprus has issued arrest warrants for Fatih's crew members and accused the ship 

Turkey to send new ship to search for gas off Cyprus as tensions mount

Four human traffickers involved in the gruesome deaths of 71 migrants in a truck abandoned on an Austrian highway in 2015 were jailed for life Thursday, in a case that sparked international revulsion.
Prosecutors at an appeal court in Szeged, 160 kilometres south of the Hungarian capital Budapest, successfully argued that the initial 25-year jail terms delivered last June were too lenient.
The victims -- from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan -- were among hundreds of thousands of desperate people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere in 2015, triggering Europe's worst migrant crisis since World War II.
Hungary took over the proceedings from Vienna after it emerged that the migrants had suffocated on Hungarian soil.
The sentences of gang ringleader Afghan national Samsoor Lahoo and two Bulgarian accomplices, including the truck's driver, were increased to life without parole.
A fourth man, also Bulgarian, was also given a life sentence and must serve a minimum term of 30 .

Four traffickers in Hungary migrant truck deaths jailed for life

Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic said Thursday he was "99 per cent" sure a Paris summit aimed at reviving talks with Kosovo would be cancelled, as the former war foes remain stuck in an acrimonious diplomatic deadlock.
Belgrade and Pristina leaders were expected to meet in Paris in early July in an effort to reboot the dialogue aimed at normalising relations.
Twenty years after they were divided by war, the Balkan neighbours still have a tense relationship as Belgrade refuses to recognise the independence that Kosovo, a former province, unilaterally declared in 2008.
"I can say with 99 percent certainty that the Paris (meeting) will not take place," Vucic was quoted as saying by Beta news agency.
He said he expected the summit to be cancelled after Kosovo signalled that "Europeans are not the ones who should solve the Kosovo problem." In recent weeks Pristina leaders have been insisting on the need for involvement from the United States, their top ally, in a dialogue that so far ...

Serbia president '99% sure' Kosovo talks will be dropped

Gay rights groups said Thursday they had filed a complaint with the European Commission alleging discrimination by France over its ban on blood donations by gay men unless they abstain from sex for a year beforehand.
The move came three years after France lifted a 30-year ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood, on condition they practise sexual abstinence for 12 months to guard against HIV transmission.
"This rule, which is still in place, effectively excludes 93.8 percent of gay men from donating blood," said a joint statement by Stop Homophobie, Mousse, ELCS (Local officials against AIDS), SOS Homophobie and Familles LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender).
The complaint was lodged Thursday with the commission in the hope that the policy will be formally recognised as illegally discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.
Until July 2016, gay and bisexual men had been completely barred from donating blood under a ban which went into force in 1983 shortly after the HIV ..

Gay rights activists complain to EU over French blood donor sex ban

Iran's Revolutionary Guard said Thursday it had shot down a US "spy drone" which violated Iranian airspace near the Strait of Hormuz, in the latest incident to stoke tension in the strategic sea lane.
There was no immediate reaction from the United States.
The US-manufactured Global Hawk surveillance drone was hit with a missile "after violating Iranian air space" over the waters of Hormozgan province, the Guard said in a statement.
The Iranian military did not immediately publish images of the drone.
The incident comes at a time of growing antagonism between Iran and the United States following two waves of still unexplained attacks on Gulf shipping, which Washington has blamed on Tehran.
Iran has denied any involvement and hinted that the US might have orchestrated them itself to provide a pretext for the use of force against the Islamic republic.
Shooting down the drone on Thursday was "a clear message" that Iran will defend its borders, the head of the Revolutionary Guard ...

Iran says shot down US drone over its territory

More than 100,000 South Koreans are demanding the dismissal of a judge who reduced the prison sentence of a child rapist to three years.
Lee, identified only by his surname, was jailed in November for eight years for raping a 10-year-old child after making her drink an alcoholic beverage at his house in 2018.
The 35-year-old, who runs a private tutoring company, claimed the sex was "consensual" and that he believed the victim was much older than South Korea's age of consent, which is 13.
Last week, Seoul high court judge Han Kyu-hyun reduced the sentence to three years, saying there was "insufficient evidence" -- other than the child's testimony -- that Lee assaulted her.
Women's rights activists and the public protested the verdict, saying child victims of sexual violence were not being protected.
"The victim was a 10-year-old, and it seems like the appeals court treated the case as if she were an adult," said Chun Jung-ah, a lawyer who has represented many victims of sexual ...

100,000 South Koreans call for judge to be sacked over child rape case

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet arrived in Venezuela Wednesday as part of a visit to review the country's ongoing economic and political crisis.
She is set to meet with both President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaido before making a final statement to the media on Friday.
Bachelet tweeted that she was looking forward to "working with all actors to promote and protect all human rights for all Venezuelans".
According to the UN, some four million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015 as basic goods have become elusive, public services and health systems have collapsed and hyperinflation has taken hold.
Bachelet first met with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza on Wednesday night, who said he expressed the government's willingness to work with the high commissioner to "correct what needs to be corrected... in order to preserve the human rights of Venezuelans".
The pair also discussed the impact of "illegal" US ...

UN rights commissioner arrives to survey Venezuela crisis

A Yemeni rebel strike targeted a desalination plant in the southwestern Saudi province of Jizan, a Riyadh-led military coalition fighting the rebels said Thursday.
The projectile struck near the plant in the Al-Shuqaiq area of Jizan late Wednesday, coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki was quoted as saying by the official Saudi Press Agency.
It reported no casualties or damage, adding that they were investigating the nature of the projectile.
Late Wednesday, Yemen's Iran-aligned Huthi rebels said they fired a missile at a power station in Jizan province.
The White House said on Thursday that President Donald Trump had been briefed about reports of a missile strike on Saudi Arabia, without offering details.
The rebels, who have faced persistent coalition bombing since March 2015 which has exacted a heavy civilian death toll, have stepped up missile and drone attacks across the border in recent weeks.
Last week, a rebel missile attack on the international airport in the southwestern city .

Yemen rebels target Saudi desalination plant: coalition

Fighting raged in northwest Syria on Thursday with clashes between regime forces and jihadist-led fighters killing 130 combatants in two days, a war monitor said.
The Idlib region, home to some three million people, is supposed to be protected by a months-old international truce deal, but it has come under increased bombardment by the regime and its Russian ally since late April.
On the southwestern edges of the jihadist-run enclave, bombardment and fierce fighting since Tuesday have killed 89 anti-regime fighters and left 41 dead on the government side, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
This included at least 14 anti-regime fighters and 21 pro-government forces killed early Thursday, it said.
The fighting has centred around the village of Tal Meleh in the north of Hama province, according to the Britain-based monitoring group.
"The clashes are ongoing," with both regime and Russian war planes pounding the area, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
On Wednesday, 17 ...

130 fighters killed in 48 hours in northwest Syria: monitor

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to Pyongyang on Thursday on a historic visit to burnish an uneasy alliance, with the two men each facing challenges of their own with US President Donald Trump.  Xi is the first Chinese president to visit North Korea in 14 years, after relations between the Cold War era allies deteriorated over Pyongyang's nuclear provocations and Beijing's subsequent backing of UN sanctions.
But as he embarked on a flurry of diplomacy last year, Kim ensured that Xi -- the leader of his country's key diplomatic supporter and main provider of trade and aid -- was the first head of state he met.
The North Korean has now visited his older ally four times in China and Pyongyang has been increasingly keen for Xi to reciprocate, while according to diplomats Beijing has been biding its time to see how nuclear talks between Kim and Trump play out.
But Beijing's own trade negotiations with Washington hit a wall last month and some analysts ..

Xi meets North Korea's Kim ahead of Trump talks

Egypt's foreign minister on Thursday condemned as "irresponsible" accusations by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that his ousted Egyptian counterpart Mohamed Morsi had been killed.
In a statement, Sameh Shoukry strongly condemned the "repeated, irresponsible accusations by the Turkish president about Egypt," following Morsi's death on Monday after falling ill during a court hearing.

Egypt says Erdogan claims over Morsi death 'irresponsible'

Malaysia's prime minister on Thursday criticised the "ridiculous" decision to charge three Russians and a Ukrainian with murder over the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.
International investigators charged the men on Wednesday, the first people to face justice over the tragedy five years ago in which 298 people were killed.
The Boeing 777 was travelling between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur when it was hit by a missile over part of eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian rebels.
"We are very unhappy because from the very beginning it became a political issue on how to accuse Russia of wrong-doing," Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told reporters in administrative capital Putrajaya.
"It is a ridiculous thing," he added.
"As far as we are concerned we want proof of guilt. So far there is no proof. Only hearsay." The Malaysian foreign ministry said in an earlier statement that it "appreciates" the announcement by the Dutch-led investigation team.
But it added that ...

Malaysian PM criticises 'ridiculous' charges over MH17

Protestors in Bangkok on Thursday dumped plastic waste in front of a government building and called on Southeast Asian leaders to ban imports of trash from developed countries.
The protest comes ahead of a weekend meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with many countries struggling to deal with the flood of plastic waste unleashed by China's decision last year to stop importing recyclables from abroad.
Countries in ASEAN now receive more than a quarter of global plastic waste, most of which comes from developed economies like Canada, the US, Australia, and Japan.
A group of about 50 Thai activists, some holding placards reading "No Space for Waste", joined Greenpeace campaigners to call for an end to all trash imports to Southeast Asia.
"The communities are here today to reclaim... the right to live in a sustainable environment in Thailand," said Tara Buakamsri of Greenpeace Thailand.
They called for ASEAN countries to ban the export of waste "from ..

Protesters urge ASEAN leaders to ban trash imports

Fighting raged in northwest Syria on Thursday as clashes between regime forces and jihadist-led fighters killed more than 100 combatants in two days, a war monitor said.
The Idlib region, home to some three million people, is supposed to be protected by a months-old international truce deal, but it has come under increased bombardment by the regime and its Russian ally since late April.
On the southwestern edges of the jihadist-run enclave, strikes and fierce fighting since Tuesday killed 75 anti-regime fighters and left 29 dead on the government side, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
This included at least 14 anti-regime fighters and 19 pro-government forces killed early Thursday, it said.
The fighting has centred around Tal Meleh in the north of Hama province, according to the Britain-based monitoring group.
"The clashes are ongoing," with both regime and Russian war planes pounding the area, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.  On Wednesday, 16 civilians were ...

100 fighters killed in 48 hours in northwest Syria: monitor

The dollar and US Treasury yields fell, while Asian equities and oil rallied Thursday after the Federal Reserve indicated it could soon cut interest rates, adding to optimism of a breakthrough in the China-US trade row.
The softer slant from the US central bank provided more support to global investors, who were already in buoyant mood after Donald Trump flagged positive talks with China's Xi Jinping and said they would meet next week.
After a much-anticipated meeting, Fed boss Jerome Powell said officials felt the case for a reduction had "strengthened", citing the trade standoff with China and weak inflation, adding it would "act as appropriate" to support growth.
The bank also dropped the word "patient" in describing its assessment of economic data, fuelling speculation of a reduction as soon as July.
"The forward guidance from the Fed was no longer about being patient but being pragmatic," said Kerry Craig, global market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management.
"As inflation is ..

Dollar sinks, Asia stocks rally as dovish Fed spurs rush to risk

Qatar distributed USD100 grants to thousands of families in Gaza on Thursday, an AFP correspondent reported, part of an understanding with Israel intended to restore calm to the blockaded Palestinian enclave.
The gas-rich Gulf state, which is a longstanding ally of Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas, agreed to provide regular payments to needy families as part of an informal truce agreed between Hamas and Israel in November.
Qatari envoy Mohammed al-Emadi said Wednesday 60,000 families would receive the grants from post offices in the latest disbursement.
Previous disbursements had each involved 100,000 families but Emadi said the USD4 million saved would be allocated to other projects instead.
Several hundred people were waiting at a post office in central Gaza City for their USD100 grants, an AFP journalist said.
Emadi brought USD25 million in cash into Gaza on Sunday night, he told AFP. The rest of the money will be allocated to aid projects including cash-for-work schemes.
Despite the ..

Qatar distributes funds to Gaza families

Conservative MPs will decide Thursday who will join Boris Johnson in the final two battling to become Britain's next prime minister, with three contenders jostling for the second spot.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Interior Minister Sajid Javid are vying to join Johnson on the ballot paper to be put before 160,000 Conservative Party members.
Two rounds of voting are scheduled to whittle the four down to two, though Johnson, barring a spectacular collapse in support, already has more than enough backing to ensure he cruises through.
The last two will then face 16 hustings meetings around the country and two televised debates before Tory party members send in their postal votes to pick a new leader.
The winner will be announced in the week beginning July 22 and then take over from Theresa May as prime minister.
In Wednesday's third ballot of 313 MPs in the governing, centre-right Conservative Party, former foreign secretary Johnson came first with 

Tories pick final two in battle to become British PM

President Donald Trump's pick for ambassador to the United Nations promised Wednesday to allow climate diplomacy to move forward despite her family's fortune in coal.
Kelly Craft, at a Senate hearing to confirm her for the high-profile post that has been vacant for nearly half a year, said she would not participate personally in discussions at the United Nations in which coal is discussed.
"I will give you my commitment that where coal is part of the conversation within climate change at the UN, I will recuse myself," she told Democratic Senator Ed Markey, a leading environmentalist.
"I understand that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. I also understand that fossil fuels has played a part in climate change," she said.
But she showed no daylight with Trump on his decision to pull the United States out of the UN-backed Paris climate accord, which covers virtually every other country, saying: "We don't have to be part of an agreement to be leaders."
She also stopped short of ..

AFP

AFP

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