Three rescuers from the French lifeboat service died Friday when their vessel capsized in rough seas caused by a giant storm pummelling the country's Atlantic.
"In late morning, a boat from the SNSM capsized 800 metres from the coast around the Sables d'Olonne with seven people on board," the local prosecutor's offices said in a statement sent to AFP.
Three of them died while four managed to swim to shore, the statement added.
Three helicopters and around 60 firefighters were attempting to find the bodies of the rescuers near the site of the accident about 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of the port of La Rochelle.
The team from the National Society of Sea Rescue (SNSM) had been attempting to help a fishing boat which was struggling in the giant swell caused by storm Miguel, which is packing winds of up to 120 kilometres an hour (75 mph).
Photos from the scene show waves crashing over the front of the small rescue boat as it headed out.
After capsizing, it ended up upside down on the ..

Capsized lifeboat leaves three dead in French storm

PTI Automatic

Defending champion Rafael Nadal powered past Roger Federer in the French Open semi-finals on Friday, to move within one victory of a record-extending 12th Roland Garros title after handing his oldest rival his worst Grand Slam defeat in 11 years.
The 33-year-old produced a masterful performance to get past Federer 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 in the last four on Court Philippe Chatrier and set up a final clash with either world number one Novak Djokovic or Austrian fourth seed Dominic Thiem on Sunday.
It will be Nadal's 12th appearance in the championship match, which he has never lost before.
"It's incredible to play with Roger here," said Nadal.
"Congratulations to him -- to be at his level at 37, it's incredible. I say thank you to the Parisian fans, because it's magnificent for me to be in another final.
"It's always a pleasure to play with him. It's always a difficult match against him."
The third seed now has an stunning 92-2 win-loss record on the Paris clay, having beaten Federer for the ...

Nadal hands Federer worst Slam loss in 11 years to reach 12th French Open final

An estimated 3.3 million people have fled the crisis in Venezuela since the start of 2016, including one million who have left the country since November, the United Nations said Friday.
"The pace of the outflow from Venezuela has been staggering," the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a joint statement.
Economically-devastated Venezuela is suffering from shortages of food, medicine and other essentials amid a power struggle between President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has been recognised as interim president by more than 50 countries including the United States.
American actress and UNHCR goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie will travel this weekend to a Colombian region on the Venezuela border "to assess the humanitarian response to exodus," the agency said.
Colombia is hosting about 1.3 million people displaced from Venezuela, the most of any country, followed by Peru, Chile and Ecuador.
The joint UNHCR-IOM 

3.3 million people have fled Venezuela crisis: UN

A Lebanese monkey who breached the border with Israel was returned to its owner Friday by United Nations peacekeepers after cavorting for more than a week in enemy territory.
Its owner, a French nun who describes herself as a "virgin hermit", was quick to see the primate's escapade across one of the world's most tense borders as a message of peace.
Tachtouch escaped late last month, prompting its owner Beatrice Mauger who runs a peace project in southern Lebanon to launch an appeal on Facebook.
"Please Tachtouch come back to Ark of Peace!" she wrote on June 1, with a promise that the village children would hand out bananas as a reward.
But Tachtouch was far away, having slipped across the militarised frontier into the Jewish state.
The monkey was spotted in multiple locations but evaded capture for more than a week.
"We have captured the Lebanese monkey in good health," the Yodfat Monkey Forest in northern Israel said on Facebook late Thursday.
The capture took five days of stalking ..

'Tachtouch' returns to Lebanon after monkeying around in Israel

Greece's leftist government on Friday said an official mosque in Athens, over a decade in the making, would open by September to satisfy a longstanding demand by tens of thousands of Muslims in the capital.
"We hope the first prayer will be in September," Education Minister Costas Gavroglu said after inspecting the nearly-completed complex that can accommodate some 350 people.
The mosque's imam, Zaki Mohammed, said construction had been completed but staff required for its operation would be hired after national elections on July 7.
Athens is the only European capital without an official mosque.
The project began in 2007 amid strong opposition from the influential Orthodox Church of Greece and nationalist sentiment against neighbouring Muslim Turkey.  Greece was under occupation by the Ottoman Empire for centuries.
There have been several laws passed on creating an official mosque in Athens since 1890.
Supervised by the Greek state, the minaret-less mosque is situated in the ...

First Athens mosque to open by September: govt

Sri Lanka will ban imports of chainsaws and shut timber mills within five years to protect forests, President Maithripala Sirisena's office said Friday.
Sirisena highlighted his determination to clamp down on illegal logging and increase the amount of territory devoted to forests at an environmental conference.
"I have instructed officials to ban the import of chainsaw machines and blades from next week," Sirisena told the conference on Thursday, his office said.
Four months ago, Sirisena compelled all users to register chainsaws with police and 82,000 units were recorded within three weeks.
The president, who is also environment minister, did not say if he will totally ban machines already in use, but that carpenters and loggers will have five years to shut timber mills and find alternate employment.
He said there has been rapid deforestation in recent years, but gave no figures. Sirisena said however the new measures were aimed at raising the country's forest cover to 32 percent of .

Sri Lanka to ban chainsaws, timber mills: president

Fierce clashes between government forces and jihadists have left 83 combatants dead in northwestern Syria in the past 24 hours, a Britain-based war monitor said Friday.
The clashes on the edge of the jihadist-controlled Idlib region have killed 44 government loyalists and 39 jihadists and Islamist fighters since Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The region of some three million people -- almost half of them displaced from other parts of the country -- is dominated by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance led by Al-Qaeda's former Syrian affiliate.
It administers a region that spans most of Idlib province as well as adjacent slivers of the neighbouring Latakia, Aleppo and Hama provinces.
Late Thursday, the jihadists and allied rebels launched a counterattack against regime forces in the northwest of Hama province.
They have since seized the villages of Tal Maleh and Jibeen there, the Observatory said.
"Violent clashes are ongoing, accompanied by regime and Russian air .

Syria flare-up leaves 83 fighters dead: monitor

Banning Huawei and fellow Chinese equipment maker ZTE from Europe's roll-out of 5G telecom networks would cost EU mobile operators up to 55 billion euros (USD 62 billion), according to an industry body's internal assessment seen by AFP Friday.
The operators would also face delays of up to 18 months in getting next-generation 5G out to their customers, according to the impact assessment drawn up by the GSM Association, which represents mobile network operators around the world.
The evaluation feeds into a debate triggered by US demands that companies in Europe and other allied nations shun Huawei as a 5G equipment supplier because of Washington's fears it could compromise intelligence services.
The GSMA assessment notes that Huawei and ZTE account for around 40 percent of the EU market supplying mobile equipment, and Huawei "is currently a pioneer in 5G technology".
European rivals Ericsson of Sweden and Nokia of Finland, as well as South Korea's Samsung, do not have the capacity to ...

Banning Huawei would cost EU telcos up to 55 bn euros: industry body

A Russian court on Friday fined a fishing firm for illegally capturing killer whales and keeping them in an overcrowded "jail" in the country's far east.
The company that supplies sea mammals to aquariums is one of four firms keeping 10 killer whales and 87 Beluga whales in a controversial facility near the port town of Nakhodka.
Media have nicknamed it a "whale jail" due to its crammed pens and the company's controversial plans to sell the animals to aquariums om nearby China.
A district court in the far eastern city of Vladivostok ruled that the White Whale company violated fishing regulations when it captured three killer whales, also called orcas, and ordered it to pay a fine of 28.1 million rubles (USD 432,000), news agencies and activists said.
Local environmental activist Dmitry Lisitsyn, coordinator of Sakhalin Watch group, said he expected similar decisions about the rest of the killer whales and eventually Belugas.
The fate of the Russian orcas and Belugas -- highly ...

Russia fines fishing firm running 'whale jail'

Former foreign minister Boris Johnson, the frontrunner to replace Theresa May as Britain's prime minister, on Friday won his bid to block a lawsuit accusing him of knowingly lying during the Brexit referendum campaign.
The decision removes a hurdle for Johnson in his leadership bid, with his lawyers persuading a London court that the private prosecution was "politically motivated and vexatious".
They asked the High Court to throw out a judge's decision last month to allow a summons ordering Johnson to appear in court over allegations of misconduct in public office, arguing the decision had "erred in law".
"We are quashing the decision of the district judge to issue the summonses," Michael Supperstone, one of two High Court judges hearing the case, said following a hearing Friday, at which Johnson was not present.
The case, brought by businessman Marcus Ball in a crowd-funded initiative, concerned Johnson's claim that Britain sends 350 million pounds ( USD 440 million, 400 million ...

Boris Johnson wins court challenge over misconduct summons

2018 was a "golden year" for natural gas with demand surging worldwide, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Friday, prompting concern from environmental groups over the climate impact of the world's new favourite fuel.
Demand for gas grew 4.6 percent last year -- the fastest rate since 2010 -- and gas accounted for nearly half of the total increase in worldwide energy consumption, according to the IEA's annual report on the fuel.
The surge in natural gas, which while cleaner than coal remains a fossil fuel that contributes to manmade emissions, was put down to ballooning production in the US and an insatiable demand for alternatives to coal in China.
"In 2018, natural gas played a major role in a remarkable year for energy," the IEA's executive director Fatih Birol said.
"Global energy consumption rose at its fastest pace this decade, with natural gas accounting for 45 percent of the increase, more than any other fuel." The IEA, the global authority on energy, said that gas had 

Gas surges globally as green groups cry foul

Russia and the United States on Friday accused each other of dangerous manoeuvres after their naval ships came close to collision in the East China Sea.
On Friday morning, Russia's Pacific Fleet said that the USS Chancellorsville guided-missile cruiser suddenly cut across the course of its Admiral Vinogradov anti-submarine ship, passing in front of it at a distance of just 50 metres (164 feet).
The Russian ship had to carry out an emergency manoeuvre to avoid collision, the navy said, adding that it had sent a message of protest to the US cruiser's commanders.
Admiral Viktor Kravchenko, Russia's former navy chief of staff, accused the US of "hooliganism" in comments to Interfax news agency.
In a later statement, the US seventh fleet attributed the incident to an "unsafe" manoeuvre by the Russian ship, which it said had accelerated from behind to sail within 50 to 100 feet of the Chancellorsville, "putting the safety of her crew and ship at risk."
"We consider Russia's actions during ..

Russia, US trade charges after near naval collision

Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Friday renewed calls to revisit the role of the US dollar in global trade, speaking at an economic forum alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping.
"It is obvious that profound changes call for the adaptation of international financial organisations (and) rethinking the role of the dollar which... has turned into an instrument of pressure by the country of issue on the rest of the world," Putin said.

Putin says 'role of dollar' should be revisited in global trade

An North Sea oil platform off Norway had to be mostly evacuated overnight after a water supply-ship struck it, damaging several lifeboats, the Equinor company that operates it said Friday.
Helicopters carried off 218 of the 276 personnel on the Statfjord A platform and dropped them off on nearby installations, it said.
No injuries nor environmental damage were caused by the collision, the company said.
For reasons not yet known, the PSV Sjoborg supply ship ran into the platform as the ship was pumping over drinking water, according to Equinor. The platform was in maintenance mode at the time and was not pumping oil.
After the incident, the supply ship made it to the Norwegian port of Mondstad under its own power. None of the crew members was hurt, according to its owner, the company Skansi Offshore located in Denmark's Faroe Islands.

Oil platform off Norway evacuated after ship collision

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday slammed US moves against Chinese tech giant Huawei, which has signed a deal to develop a 5G network in Russia.
Speaking at an economic forum also attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Putin condemned "the situation around the company Huawei that they are attempting not just to squeeze but to unceremoniously push out of the global market." "In some circles this is even being called the first technological war of the dawning digital era," Putin said.
Despite international concerns that it could present a security risk, Huawei on Wednesday signed an agreement with Russian telecoms company MTS to develop a 5G network in the country, on the sidelines of a meeting between Putin and Xi in Moscow.
The Chinese telecom giant has been in turmoil since May, when US President Donald Trump's administration banned US companies from selling high-tech equipment to Huawei over suspicions it is spying for Beijing.
Several companies have already distanced ...

Putin slams attempts to 'push' Huawei from global markets

Sweden's teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg was Friday awarded a prestigious Amnesty International prize for mobilising world public opinion on the looming peril of global warming.
The 16-year-old issued a statement declaring it "a huge honour to receive Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award," saying it was recognition for everybody inspired by her "Fridays for Future" movement that has seen students strike from school to take part in climate protests.
"To act on your conscience means that you fight for what you think is right," she said.
To AFPTV, she said "it's amazing to get recognition like this".
Thunberg, a fierce campaigner with a gift for public speaking, has become a figurehead for young climate activists internationally.
International organisations often invite her to climate change events in an effort to put a human face on the fight to curb carbon emissions.
Last week, she appeared alongside actor and former politician Arnold Schwarzenegger at a ...

Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg gets Amnesty prize

China's central bank chief said Friday the country has plenty of policy tools left to handle the trade war with the United States.
There is "tremendous" room to counter the deepening trade war, People's Bank of China governor Yi Gang said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
"We have plenty of room in interest rates, we have plenty of room in required reserve ratio rate, and also for the fiscal, monetary policy toolkit, I think the room for adjustment is tremendous," Yi said on Bloomberg TV.
Ties between China and the US have deteriorated sharply after trade negotiations stalled last month without a deal to lift bruising tariffs on goods worth USD 360 billion in two-way trade.
China said Thursday that it would soon release detailed information about a planned blacklist of "unreliable" foreign companies and individuals, that analysts expect will target firms cutting off supplies to Chinese tech giant Huawei.
Last month the US Commerce Department placed Huawei and dozens of its affiliates 

China has tools to handle trade war: central bank chief

Russia on Friday accused a US naval ship of carrying out a dangerous manoeuvre by sailing within 50 metres of a Russian naval vessel in the East China Sea.
The USS Chancellorsville guided-missile cruiser suddenly turned early Friday while sailing alongside Russia's Admiral Vinogradov anti-submarine ship, and cut across the course of the Russian vessel, Interfax news agency reported, citing the press service of Russia's Pacific Fleet.
The ships passed at a distance of just 50 metres (164 feet), the fleet said.  The Russian ship had to carry out an emergency manoeuvre to avoid collision, the navy said, adding that it had sent a message of protest to the US cruiser's commanders.
Admiral Viktor Kravchenko, Russia's former navy chief of staff, accused the US of "hooliganism" in comments to Interfax news agency.  Russia and the US regularly accuse each other of carrying out dangerous naval or aerial manoeuvres.
In June 2016, Moscow and Washington traded accusations after their naval ships ..

Russian navy accuses US ship of nearly causing collision

Suspects linked to the jihadist attacks that struck the Paris region in January 2015 will stand trial from April to July next year, a legal source said on Friday.
A special Paris criminal court will hear the case against 14 people accused of helping the attackers who killed 17 people in a three-day series of attacks.
The victims included 12 people killed at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by Cherif Kouachi and his brother Said on January 7, 2015.
Over the following two days the third gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, shot dead a young policewoman and killed four people at a Jewish supermarket.
All three gunmen were killed by police.
The suspects going on trial next year are accused of providing them with logistical support.
The three attackers had claimed allegiance to jihadist groups.
The source told AFP the trial would run from April 20 to July 3, 2020.  Since those killings, more than 250 people have died in a series of jihadist-linked attacks in France.

France January 2015 attacks trial set for 2020: source

Australia's professional female footballers secured a landmark pay rise Friday that will see them receive the same minimum wage as their male counterparts in a win for gender equality.
Under a new collective bargaining agreement unveiled on the eve of the World Cup in France, the base annual pay for players in the W-League was hiked 33 percent to Aus$16,344 (US$11,393).
Their season is much shorter than the A-League, but pro-rata it matches the men's minimum salary.
Australia has emerged as a champion for equality in the sports arena with netballers and women cricketers also winning better pay deals in recent years.
Football Federation Australia hailed the move as "an outcome that delivers on the gender equity principle of 'same base pay for same base work'".
The deal means that players in both leagues "will receive the same minimum remuneration hourly rate", said FFA Head of Leagues Greg O'Rourke.
Up until two years ago many players in the W-League were considered amateur and ...

Australian female footballers to earn same base pay as men

More than a dozen car manufacturers, including Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen have officially asked US President Donald Trump not to relax emission limits, to avoid a fragmentation of the car market, US media reported.
Trump's administration last year proposed to roll back fuel efficiency standards introduced under former president Barack Obama, sparking warnings of a legal fight with California and other states that favor more aggressive environmental policies.
In a letter sent to the White House and revealed by the New York Times on Thursday, the firms called for a compromise between the Trump administration -- looking to support the car industry by relaxing emission limits -- and the country's most populous state.
A move to water down controls could see California and more than a dozen other states take the matter to court. Manufacturers fear a divided and complicated US car market would result, in which companies would have trouble making decisions on pricing ..

AFP

AFP

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