The United States has voiced disappointment at the failure of Muslim nations to jointly take a stand against China's treatment of its Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang province.
"We are, I can say, disappointed about the lack of response from members of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation), and the lack of outspoken concern," said US Ambassador Kelley Currie, who heads the State Department's Office of Global Criminal Justice.
Currie was speaking to reporters ahead of a US-sponsored event at UN headquarters in Geneva focused on allegations of mass-internment of Uighurs in China's restive Xinjiang province.
While she applauded Turkey for its recent strong criticism of China's treatment of its Muslim minorities, she said Washington had hoped the IOC would have collectively condemned the situation in Xinjiang as it has done regarding rights abuses against Muslims in Myanmar and Syria.
A statement from OIC foreign ministers earlier this month failed to reflect ...

US urges Muslim nations to condemn China's Xinjiang abuses

PTI Automatic

US actress Lori Loughlin appeared in federal court in downtown Los Angeles in connection with a massive college admissions scam involving other celebrities and top industry CEOs.
Bail for the "Full House" star was set at USD 1 million, the same amount as for her husband, designer Mossimo Giannulli, who has also been charged in the case.
The couple, who are to appear in federal court in Boston on March 29, allegedly paid USD 500,000 in bribes to ensure their two daughters were recruited to the University of Southern California rowing team even though the pair did not participate in crew.
Loughlin, 54, surrendered to FBI agents early Wednesday after returning from Vancouver, where she was filming.
Judge Steve Kim told the star in setting her bail that she would still be allowed to travel for work as long as the court was made aware of her plans.
The couple were among 50 people indicted on Tuesday in a scam to help children of the American elite gain entry into top US ...

Bail set at USD 1 million for US actress implicated in bribery scandal

The US Senate dealt a stinging bipartisan rebuke of Donald Trump's foreign policy and his alliance with Riyadh, voting to end support for the bloody Saudi-led war effort in Yemen.
By a 54 to 46 tally, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled chamber approved on Wednesday a historic curtailment of presidential war powers, citing congressional authority under the decades-old War Powers Resolution to direct Trump "to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities in or affecting the Republic of Yemen."
The text now heads to the Democrat-led House of Representatives, which approved a similar measure that stalled earlier this year, and which is likely to pass the latest effort. The White House has threatened a veto.

Defying Trump, Senate votes to end US support for Yemen war

Russian air strikes killed at least 13 civilians, including six children, Wednesday in Idlib province, in the first such raids since a September truce deal, a monitor said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said around 60 people were also wounded in the air strikes that struck several areas in the northwestern province, which is Syria's last major rebel bastion.
"Over the past 24 hours Russian aircraft have carried out dozens of raids targeting several regions in Idlib province, including the city of Idlib and the town of Saraqeb," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
"These are the first Russian air strikes against the province" since an accord struck by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in September last year.
The truce deal was meant to stave off a planned offensive by the regime and its Russian backers that aid groups feared could spark the eight-year-old Syrian conflict's worst humanitarian crisis to ...

Russian air raids kill 13 civilians in Syria: monitor

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced a plan to ground all Boeing 737 MAX aircraft amid intense international and political pressure following the second deadly crash in less than five months.
"We're going to be issuing an emergency order of prohibition regarding all flights of the 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9," Trump told reporters the White House.

Trump announces plan to ground all Boeing 737 MAX planes

NASA's administrator said Wednesday its next heavy-lift rocket, the SLS, is running into additional development delays, and the space agency now wants to use private launchers for its next Moon mission.
Boeing has spent years developing the SLS, or Space Launch System, which would be the most powerful rocket ever built, with the goal of resuming manned space missions to the Moon. A capsule for astronauts, Orion, is being built by Lockheed-Martin and Europe for the missions.
After a three year delay, a first unmanned mission around the Moon and back, dubbed EM-1, has been scheduled for June 2020.
But NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told a Senate hearing that the "SLS is struggling to meet its schedule" and won't be ready in time for the EM-1 mission.
"Last week it came to our attention that we're not going to be able to maintain the schedule," he told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
It is the first time that NASA has clearly acknowledged the extent of the .

NASA chief acknowledges more trouble with SLS rocket

Dozens of children were among scores of people feared trapped on Wednesday after a four-storey building collapsed in Nigeria's economic capital Lagos, rescuers told AFP, with at least four dead bodies pulled from the rubble.
The children were attending an "illegal school" inside the residential building when the structure collapsed, officials said.
"Dozens of children were trapped inside," said Adesina Tiamiyu, head of Lagos state emergency management agency (SEMA), which is supervising the rescue operation.
So far, emergency workers had pulled 40 people alive from the rubble, some of them badly injured, he said.
But they had also recovered "more than four dead bodies", Tiamiyu said without giving an exact figure.
Police said they believed scores of people were trapped under the rubble of the building which collapsed mid-morning in an area near Itafaji market on Lagos Island.
"We are getting additional cranes to be able to go deeper than where we are now to rescue more lives," said ...

Dozens of children trapped in collapsed Lagos building

Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty in California on Wednesday, granting a reprieve to 737 condemned inmates -- the largest death row population in the United States.
Newsom, a Democrat who took office in January, has been a staunch opponent of the death penalty, last carried out in California in 2006.
"The death penalty has been an abject failure. It discriminates based on the color of your skin or how much money you make," he told a news conference. "It's ineffective, irreversible, and immoral.
"It goes against the very values that we stand for -- which is why California is putting a stop to this failed system." Newsom said that as he spoke, the execution chamber at California's San Quentin State Prison was being dismantled and stressed that his order does not mean that any inmates already on death row would be released.
"Those people are not going to be let out by this act, they will be held to account," he said. "We don't want to join Saudi 

California suspends death penalty

A French court on Wednesday found the Paris airports operator guilty of involuntary manslaughter over the 2004 terminal collapse at Charles de Gaulle airport less than a year after it opened, killing four people.
Aeroports de Paris (ADP) was ordered to pay the maximum fine of 225,000 euros (USD 254,000) by the court in Bobigny, just north of the capital.
Three subcontractors -- the construction company which built the vaulted glass-and-concrete roof at Terminal 2E, and engineering and inspection firms -- were ordered to pay fines of 100,000 to 150,000 euros.
The accident occurred early on May 23, 2004, 11 months after the building, designed by award-winning French architect Paul Andreu, was inaugurated to widespread acclaim.
Six concrete arches and walkways stretching over 30 metres (100 feet) crashed down as passengers waited to board flights at the ultra-modern, 650-million-euros terminal that ADP boasted was a "showcase for France".
Two people from China and one each from Lebanon ..

Paris airport operator fined over fatal 2004 terminal collapse

The US Senate on Wednesday confirmed another of Donald Trump's controversial picks for a powerful federal judgeship, as the president leaves an increasingly prominent mark on the nation's courts.
Neomi Rao was confirmed on a party-line vote of 53-46 in the Senate, where Trump's Republicans hold the majority, despite her past writings that some critics have interpreted as blaming survivors of sexual assaults for being attacked.
At 45, Rao now becomes a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most powerful benches in the country, replacing Brett Kavanaugh who endured a bitter confirmation battle last year after Trump named him to the US Supreme Court.
During that hearing Kavanaugh faced allegations of sexual abuse dating back to his time high school.
In Rao's own hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she distanced herself from some of her early writings, saying she penned them during "a time of exploration."
"If a woman drinks so much that she cannot choose, well, .

US Senate confirms Rao, latest of Trump's controversial judge picks

As US authorities continued to resist pressure Wednesday to ground the Boeing 737 MAX following the latest deadly crash, reports from American pilots surfaced who reported issues with the plane late last year.
At least four pilots made reports following the October crash of a Lion Air flight in Indonesia shortly after takeoff, all complaining that the aircraft suddenly pitched downward, according to documents reviewed by AFP on a flight safety database.
The incidents seem to involve the flight stabilization system designed to prevent the aircraft from stalling, the "MCAS," which was implicated in the fatal accident in the Lion Air crash that killed 189 people shortly after takeoff.
After the latest accident Sunday of another 737 MAX 8 from Ethiopian Airlines, shortly after takeoff, killing 157, numerous airlines and governments around the world grounded the aircraft or banned it from their skies, including Canada which just took the step on Wednesday.
However, the Federal Aviation ...

US pilots reported problems with Boeing 737 MAX

Two assailants opened fire inside a school near Sao Paulo on Wednesday, killing eight people including four children before turning their weapons on themselves, authorities said.
Military police Colonel Marcelo Sales said two assailants burst into the school grounds in the early morning, armed with a .38 caliber revolver and a "medieval weapon that looked like a bow and arrows."
After shooting at students in the yard, the killers headed to the language centre where several pupils were hiding and "committed suicide in a corridor," Sales said.
"Eight people died at the scene, including the two assailants," a state military police spokesman said. "Two injured people died after being taken to hospital."
Around 15 others were injured in the shooting, which took place at the Raul Brasil public school in Suzano, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo in southeast Brazil.
Sao Paulo State Governor Joao Doria said four children and two members of staff were among the dead.
"It's saddest thing I've ever .

Eight killed in Brazil school shooting, two suspects dead

Britain's Brexit divorce deal with the European Union is "not negotiable", French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday, urging London to break an impasse over its looming exit from the bloc.
"The withdrawal deal is not negotiable," Macron told journalists on a trip to Kenya, adding that any request to delay Brexit would have to be justified.
"We cannot renegotiate an accord that we negotiated over several months and which we have said is not renegotiable.

Brexit withdrawal deal not 'negotiable': Macron

Volkswagen chief executive Herbert Diess Wednesday apologised for making a play on words with a Nazi slogan at a company meeting, insisting he was keenly aware of the German firm's roots in the Third Reich.
Diess told business magazine Wirtschafts Woche he had not aimed to cause offence when he said "EBIT macht frei" during a VW management gathering on Tuesday.
EBIT refers to earnings before interest and taxes and Diess said he wanted to emphasise their importance to the company's bottom line.
But the phrase echoed the infamous slogan on the main gate of the Auschwitz death camp "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work will set you free").
"It was in no way my intention to put my statement in the wrong context -- I honestly didn't think it would at the time," he said.
"It was in fact a very unfortunate choice of words and if I unintentionally hurt any feelings, I am truly sorry." Diess added that he, the company and its staff were "aware of the particular historical responsibility of Volkswagen in .

VW chief apologises for Auschwitz pun

The Ashes urn will make its first journey to Australia in 12 years later this year when it is displayed in the State Library Victoria in Melbourne, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) announced Wednesday.
The urn, which traditionally resides in the MCC museum at its Lord's ground headquarters, regardless of the result of an England-Australia Test series, will be on display in the Library's 'Velvet, Iron, Ashes' exhibition from December 2019 until February 2020.
By then the latest Ashes series between Test cricket's oldest rivals will have been completed, with England staging a five-match series from August 1 to September 16 as they look to atone for a 4-0 away drubbing in 2017/18.
This will be only the third time the urn has travelled to Australia; it was exhibited for less than a week during the country's 1988 Bicentennial celebrations and visited six cities in three months during the 2006/07 Ashes series.
England and Australia played what is now considered to be the first men's cricket ...

Ashes urn set for rare Australia visit

Tailender Isuru Udana hit a rapid half-century to lift a poor Sri Lankan batting performance in the fourth one-day international against South Africa at St George's Park on Wednesday.
Batting at number nine, Udana hit 78 in a Sri Lankan total of 189.
Sri Lanka, trailing 3-0 in the five-match series, faced humiliation when Udana walked in with his team reeling at 97 for seven after being sent in on what looked a good batting pitch.
But Udana, who has hit two centuries in first-class cricket, struck the ball cleanly in a 57-ball innings which included seven fours and four sixes.
Udana was particularly severe on fast bowler Anrich Nortje, one of the main destroyers in the early part of the innings.
Nortje took three for 19 in six overs in his first spell but the first three balls of his second spell were all hit for six by Udana, who plundered 37 runs off Nortje's last two overs.
The last wicket yielded 58 runs, 55 of them to Udana. There were three extras while last man Kasun Rajitha ...

Udana lifts Sri Lankan gloom

Neymar could be hit with a Champions League ban after UEFA opened an investigation on Wednesday into his foul-mouthed social media outburst about the refereeing during Paris Saint-Germain's controversial exit to Manchester United last week.
Injured Brazil forward Neymar told match officials to "Go fuck yourselves" on Instagram after watching on incredulous from the sidelines at the Parc des Princes as United were awarded a decisive stoppage-time penalty for a debateable handball via the video assistant referee (VAR) system, allowing Marcus Rashford to fire United into the quarter-finals on away goals.
"It's a disgrace. They get four guys who don't understand football to watch a slow motion replay in front of the TV," Neymar wrote in Portuguese on the social media website.
The Premier League outfit were given the spot-kick after Presnel Kimpembe was judged to have handled Diogo Dalot's shot, a decision that on Friday UEFA maintained was correct due to the distance the ball travelled ...

Neymar risks Euro ban after UEFA open probe into foul-mouthed ref rant

A shooting at a school near Sao Paulo on Wednesday left several people dead, police sources said, with initial reports putting the death toll as high as eight.
Sao Paulo's state military police department told AFP that "several people were shot" when "an individual" entered the institution in Suzano and opened fire.
Brazilian television channel Globo and website UO1 said eight people had died, including five children, a teacher and two teenagers believed to be the shooters.
UO1 said 17 people were also injured in the shooting.
Television pictures showed worried family members congregating outside the Raul Brasil school in the greater Sao Paulo area, alongside firefighters and security services.

Several dead in Brazil school shooting

If Britain leaves the EU on March 29 with a so-called hard Brexit, many supporters will likely be celebrating with Union Jack flags and countless bottles of Prosecco.
But worried winemakers in Italy fear potential new trade tariffs would put a huge dent in a market which sees a whopping 120 million bottles of Prosecco exported to the UK each year.
"There could be price rises," said Mattia Mattiuzzo, vice-president of regional farmers' union Coldiretti.
"Without a deal it will perhaps be difficult to find a placement for the product." The UK is the Italian fizz's top market.
Brits guzzle down 35 percent of exports of the sparkling white wine, made in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy with the DOC label, as well as the superior DOCG category.
But as it becomes increasingly clear that British Prime Minister Theresa May's withdrawal deal will not pass, the odds of a no-deal hard Brexit appear greater, along with all the trade uncertainty that would bring.
"It could create discontent 

Post-Brexit uncertainty looms for Italy's Prosecco

Fiat Chrysler will recall nearly 863,000 SUVs and sedans that failed to meet federal emissions standards, US regulators announced Wednesday.
The voluntary recall involves models of the Dodge Journey, Chrysler 200, Dodge Avenger and Dodge Caliber sedans as well as the Jeep Compass and Jeep Patriot SUVs produced for model years 2011 and 2016, according to a statement from the US Environmental Protection Agency.
The scale of the recall means it will be carried out in phases this year, beginning with the oldest vehicles, and owners may continue to drive their vehicles in the meantime, the agency said in a statement.
FCA will replace the catalytic converters on the affected vehicles. The recall comes two months after the auto giant agreed to pay US and local authorities for USD 515 million to resolve charges it had installed "defeat devices" on different cars to cheat on emissions tests -- something the company claimed at the time was unintentional.

AFP

AFP

Page 707 - Afp