The Kremlin today urged restraint in Syria, saying that countries should avoid taking action that could further destabilise the war-torn country, as the US considered missile strikes over alleged chemical attacks.
"As before we would hope that all sides will avoid steps that in reality are not provoked by anything and that could destabilise the already fragile situation in the region," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
"The situation is tense," Peskov said, adding that Russia is calling for an "unprejudiced and objective investigation before making judgements" on the suspected use of chemical weapons.
Russia yesterday at the United Nations Security Council vetoed a US-drafted resolution on setting up a panel to identify the perpetrators of toxic gas attacks after chemical weapons were allegedly used in the rebel-held town of Douma.
Russia has said its military specialists found no evidence of a chemical attack on Saturday in Douma and suggested that rebels staged or ...

Kremlin warns against moves that 'could destabilise' Syria

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The Gold Coast's iconic meter maids, famous for their flowing locks and gold bikinis, have accused Commonwealth Games organisers of booting them off the streets during the competition.
The scantily clad women have been a feature of the Australian holiday hotspot since the 1960s, topping up parking meters to help beach-goers avoid fines.  But trouble is brewing in paradise and meter maids chief Roberta Aitchison has slammed Games organisers for allegedly preventing her staff from working.
"The Commonwealth Games for the meter maids has been a bullying experience," the 63-year-old told AFP.
"The meter maids have been around for 53 years and are iconic to the whole of the Gold Coast. We add that little bit of sex appeal, glitz and glamour to the beautiful beaches," added Aitchison.
"(The organisers) have directed the council to get us off the streets. We feel a little bit like homeless people." Games chief organiser Peter Beattie denied the claims about the meter maids, who were once ...

Gold Coast meter maids cry foul over Commonwealth Games

Five athletes from conflict-hit Cameroon have gone missing from the Commonwealth Games in Australia, team officials said Wednesday.  Three weightlifters and two boxers have not been seen since Tuesday, triggering suspicion they had fled with no intention of returning home. The matter has been reported to Australian police.
Cameroon press attache Simon Molombe told AFP that he was shocked to learn weightlifters Olivier Matam Matam, Arcangeline Fouodji and Petit Minkoumba, along with boxers Christian Ndzie Tsoye and Simplice Fotsala, had apparently fled.
"It came as a complete surprise," he said. "We have no idea where they are. There were no worries this kind of thing might happen.
"Their team-mates informed us they had left," he added.
"We are cooperating with the police. We are praying this doesn't happen again and doing everything we can to make sure it doesn't." Commonwealth Games organisers called for competitors to respect the law, mindful of the fact that more than 100 athletes .

Cameroon athletes go missing from Commonwealth Games

Esther Qin and Georgia Sheehan snatched women's 3m synchro springboard gold after a rival Aussie pair crashed from first place to last with a disastrous final dive at the Commonwealth Games on Wednesday.
Qin and Sheehan jumped from fourth to the top of the standings with their inward 2-1/2 somersaults last dive to clinch the gold with a total of 284.10 points.
England's Alicia Blagg and Katherine Torrance took silver with 276.90 points, with Malaysia's Mun Yee Leong and Nur Dhabitah Sabri getting the bronze with 264.90 points.
The competition, beset by windy conditions and technical difficulties in the outdoor pool, turned dramatically in the fifth and final round.
Australia's Maddison Keeney and Anabelle Smith were leading but bombed out of contention with a botched forward 2-1/2 somersaults with two twists dive which earned them no points and left them in seventh and last position.
Chinese-born Glasgow Games springboard champion Qin and Sheehan seized their opportunity with a 71.10 .

'All over the shop' - Aussies go from first to last with botched dive

A former South Korean presidential contender was indicted today on charges of raping his aide multiple times in the highest-profile case of the country's growing #MeToo movement.
Ahn Hee-jung -- who was widely seen as a strong contender to replace President Moon Jae-in when his term ends in 2022 -- was formally charged with rape and sexual harassment by abuse of power, a spokesman at the Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office said.
The spokesman said Ahn's first hearing is expected next month. Prosecutors opened an investigation into Ahn after his aide said in a television interview that he had raped her four times since she was hired last June.
Fighting back tears, Kim Ji-eun, who was Ahn's personal assistant before becoming an aide in civil affairs, said last month that she had been unable to reject her boss in the rigid hierarchy of her office.
The 54-year-old politician has since stepped down from his post as the governor of South Chungcheong province and issued a formal ...

Former South Korean presidential hopeful indicted for rape

One of China's most popular news apps issued an abject apology today and pledged to increase its internal censorship staff to 10,000 after it and three other apps were temporarily banned by the government in a widening content crackdown.
Chinese media reports earlier this week said the four apps, led by news and content aggregator Jinri Toutiao, had been ordered removed from app stores for up to three weeks.
They are the latest victims in a tightening wave of censorship by the ruling Communist Party aimed at expunging anything deemed in conflict with "core socialist values".
Zhang Yiming, the founder and CEO of Toutiao, said in an apology issued Wednesday on one of its social media feeds that he was "consumed by guilt and remorse, and have not slept all night" over the ban.
Toutiao is owned by Beijing-based technology group Bytedance, which boasts more than 200 million users and is one of the world's largest internet startups with a valuation over $20 billion, according to Bloomberg ..

Top China news app self-criticises after government crackdown

A Myanmar minister today toured one of the Bangladesh camps struggling to provide for some one million Rohingya Muslims, the first such visit since a Myanmar army crackdown sparked a massive refugee crisis.
Social welfare minister Win Myat Aye visited the giant Kutupalong refugee camp near the border city of Cox's Bazar, part of a three-day trip to Bangladesh, officials said.
It is the first time a Myanmar cabinet member has visited the fetid and overcrowded camps since a military crackdown that began last August in response to a spate of insurgent attacks forced some 700,000 of the Muslim minority to flee across the border.
They added to the 300,000 Rohingya refugees Bangladesh already hosted from previous bouts of violence.
Win Myat Aye was "meeting officials at the camps," local police chief Abul Khaer told AFP, adding that International Organisation for Migration representatives were involved in the talks.
Rohingya leaders in the camps said they would welcome the opportunity to ...

Myanmar minister makes landmark visit to Rohingya camp

Palestinian parkour experts have performed a special show on the Israeli-Gaza border, close to a site where mass protests and deadly clashes have occurred since late March.
Dozens of Gazans last evening watched four members of a parkour team flip and twist their way around the site of the camp of what Palestinians have dubbed the Great March of Return.
Israeli soldiers in military observation towers or behind sand barriers surveyed the scene, with the performance several hundred metres from the border fence in Rafah in southern Gaza.
"We came here in the camp of return in Rafah to show our parkour," said 27-year-old Naji Muammar. "This is our message to the world that we will return to our country and practise our sport there." Mohammed abu Jihad, another of the performers, said "we don't have anything to resist with except parkour."
Gazans have set up tents in five main areas along the Gaza border for the Great March of Return, which is calling for Palestinian refugees to be able to .

Palestinians practise parkour on Gaza-Israel border

Six people died today when a helicopter operated by a local airline crashed in a city in far eastern Russia, investigators said.
The Mi-8 helicopter belonging to Vostok airline crashed on a street in the city of Khabarovsk at 11:30 am local time (0130 GMT), the Investigative Committee, which probes serious incidents, said in a statement.
The helicopter was carrying six crew members.
"As a result of the crash, there are no survivors," the regional emergency services said.
The helicopter crashed in a ravine in Khabarovsk, which is located more than 6,000 kilometres east of Mosco and is home to some 600,000 people.
No further casualties were reported on the ground.
Vostok airlines, which operates passenger and cargo flights, said the helicopter was in a training flight when it crashed around three kilometres from the landing pad and burst into flames.
Investigators said the most likely causes of the crash were poor weather, a technical fault or pilot error. They have opened a criminal ...

Russian helicopter crash kills 6 in far eastern city

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde today issued a stern warning to governments to avoid undermining global growth with protectionist trade policies.
In a less than thinly-veiled warning to US President Donald Trump, who has locked horns with China on trade, the head of the IMF said countries should open trade further by reforming their own domestic practices rather than putting up new barriers to trade.
And she said it was a mistake to view trade deficits as a sign of unfair trade practices - as Trump has repeatedly claimed, most notably in the current dispute with China.
Trump last month imposed steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and announced pending tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods in retaliation for alleged theft of intellectual property.
Since then Washington and Beijing have escalated threats of new import duties, raising the real risk of an all-out trade war.
Governments "need to steer clear of protectionism in all its forms," Lagarde ...

IMF's Lagarde: Trade protectionism threatens economic growth

New Zealand ordered a top-level inquiry today into allegations its special forces killed six civilians, including a three-year-old child, during a botched 2010 raid on an Afghan village.
The New Zealand military vehemently denies the accusations, which were first made in a book "Hit and Run" published last year.
The book alleged an elite SAS squad staged the raid as a "revenge attack" after a New Zealand soldier was killed, but faulty intelligence meant it targeted villagers rather than insurgents.
It also claimed the military covered up the raid's failure, falsely saying nine insurgents had died when it knew otherwise.
The centre-left Labour Party called for an independent inquiry while in opposition and Attorney-General David Parker reviewed the case following last year's election win.
Parker today appointed former prime minister Geoffrey Palmer and Supreme Court judge Terence Arnold to head the probe.
"Bearing in mind the need for the public to have confidence in the NZDF, I have ..

New Zealand to probe deadly SAS raid in Afghanistan

Kostas Manolas sent Roma through to the semi-finals of the Champions League after an incredible 3-0 victory over Barcelona at the Stadio Olimpico on Tuesday saw them overhaul a 4-1 first-leg deficit and advance on away goals.
The superb Edin Dzeko set the ball rolling in the sixth minute, and after Daniele De Rossi converted a penalty 13 minutes after the break to get the home fans believing, Manolas glanced home a brilliant header with eight minutes left to send the Roma supporters into raptures and leave Barca wondering what had hit them.
Just as they were at the Camp Nou, Roma were aggressive from the off, and Dzeko gave the home side a deserved lead after just six minutes, brilliantly bringing down De Rossi's clipped through ball, holding off Samuel Umtiti and poking the ball past Marc-Andre ter Stegen.
Patrik Schick had the best chances to double Roma's lead before half-time on his Champions League debut, but continued the poor form in front of goal that has blighted his ...

Roma send Barca out after miracle comeback

A man has been found dead and several people are missing after a landslide engulfed houses in southern Japan today, local officials said.
"A man's body has been recovered" at the site of the landslide in a mountainous area of Nakatsu city, a municipal official said.
Local officials said the body had not yet been identified, but Japan's NHK television said the man was among six people who had been reported missing by a local resident.
The landslide hit in the early hours of Wednesday, and rescuers were searching for five women and one man reported missing after dirt engulfed three local homes.
Local television footage showing rescuers and a digger clearing rocks and mud more than 10 hours after the disaster.
Landslides are not uncommon in Japan during the country's rainy season, when heavy rain can dislodge earth.
But there was no indication that bad weather had preceded the landslide on Wednesday.

One killed as landslide engulfs houses in Japan

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde today issued a stern warning to governments to avoid undermining global growth with protectionist trade policies.
In a less than thinly-veiled warning to US President Donald Trump, who has locked horns with China on trade, the head of the IMF said governments "need to steer clear of protectionism in all its forms."
The multilateral trade system has "helped reduce by half the proportion of the global population living in extreme poverty," while barriers prevent trade from "playing its essential role in boosting productivity.

IMF's Lagarde urges government to 'steer clear of protectionism'

A Myanmar court today rejected a motion to drop a case against two Reuters journalists arrested months ago while reporting on the Rohingya crisis, pushing ahead with hearings that have sparked global outrage and fears of shrinking press freedoms.
"The court decided that the proposal from the defendants' lawyer to release the defendants...has been rejected," judge Ye Lwin told a courtroom in the commercial capital Yangon packed with supporters, family and media.
Reuters reporters Wa Lone, 32 and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27 were arrested in December and accused of violating the country's Official Secrets Act for possessing material relating to security operations in conflict-hit Rakhine state.
Myanmar has faced global condemnation and accusations of extrajudicial killings, ethnic cleansing and genocide as some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Rakhine to Bangladesh following a military crackdown on insurgents.
The government rejects the allegations and says it was defending itself against attacks .

Myanmar court refuses to drop case against Reuters journalists

China will send a Communist Party official with an art troupe to North Korea for a festival celebrating the country's founder, state media said today, as the neighbours seek to heal battered relations.
The delegation will leave on Friday to attend the April Spring Friendship Art Festival at the invitation of North Korea's Workers' Party, China's official Xinhua news agency said in a brief report.
Song Tao, the head of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee's international department, will lead the mission.
Song had visited Pyongyang late last year to brief officials about the party's October congress.
The festival is held in Pyongyang as part of the commemorations for the anniversary of the birth of the North's founder Kim Il Sung on April 15, 1912.
Both North Korean and foreign artists take part, and this year's week-long event includes concerts, dance performances and acrobatics.
China has sent art troupes to every festival since 1986, except in 2016.
Beijing is North Korea's 

China to send art troupe to North Korea festival

Up to a quarter of homes in Auckland were without power today after a wild storm packing winds of more than 200kmh (125mph) lashed New Zealand's largest city.
The storm hit the city of 1.5 million overnight, bringing down trees and peeling roofs from houses, with emergency services saying they were "inundated" responding to calls.
Auckland international airport closed temporarily due to high winds and Air New Zealand reported "significant" knock-on disruption for passengers nationwide.
At Hobsonville Point, in the city's north-west, the gale-force winds brought down scaffolding on an apartment building construction site, creating a spectacular mess of tangled metal.
The official Metservice forecasting bureau said wind gust readings reached 213kmh, equivalent to a category three severe tropical cyclone.
Auckland mayor Phil Goff revealed "an unprecedented 200,000 properties" lost power at the height of the storm and the local council said crews were working around the clock to fix the ..

Power down as fierce storm hits Auckland

On a clear sunny morning in eastern China, the surface of Qiandao Lake boils with tens of thousands of thrashing carp as they are swept into the nets of fisherman like Ye Zhiqing.
So begins the spring fishing season for Ye, who commands around 100 fishing vessels on the lake in Zhejiang province, a picturesque man-made freshwater reservoir whose name means "Thousand Island Lake" after its more than 1,000 wooded islets.
Covering an area nearly the size of Singapore and known for its clear waters, Qiandao Lake is a major aquaculture production centre for eastern China, and is notable for the unique methods of fishermen like Ye.
Though their peak season begins now and runs through summer, Ye and his crew live on the lake for ten months of the year, waking early to scan the surface for tell-tale ripples.
"We are like nomads on a prairie," Ye said.
"We go where the fish are."
Once the schools -- silver carp and bighead carp, popular with diners -- have been located on the maze-like lake, ..

Fishing 'nomads': corralling carp on China's Thousand Island Lake

US President Donald Trump welcomed the Emir of Qatar to the White House, barely one year after alleging his government funded terrorism at a "high level." Drawing a line under a spat that called into question the future of a key US air base in the Gulf State, Trump hosted Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani in the Oval Office.
"He's a friend of mine" Trump said effusively. "He's a great gentleman." And a readout of the meeting issued later by the White House said "the leaders discussed joint efforts to finalize new commercial deals that would create more than 50,000 American jobs" in addition to discussing Syria and "Iranian and Russian malign influence" there.
It did not elaborate on the nature of the commercial ventures.
A year ago the picture was very different. Trump had followed the lead of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in taking a hard line against Qatar, saying the country needed to scale back ties with Iran and stop funding extremism.
Qatar's neighbors had also been ...

Trump welcomes Qatari Emir in from the cold

The White House has insisted that Donald Trump has the power to fire special prosecutor Robert Mueller, stoking fears that the president may try to kill an investigation inching ever-closer to the Oval Office.
After months of denying Mueller's removal is under consideration, the change in tone came as Trump reacted furiously to an FBI raid of his private lawyer's offices on Monday.
Special counsel Mueller was appointed in May to investigate Russian efforts to tip the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favour.
Over the last year, he has increasingly dug into evidence of alleged money laundering, fraud and obstruction of justice inside Trump's inner circle.
Four Trump aides -- including his 2016 campaign chair Paul Manafort and former national security advisor Michael Flynn -- have already been indicted or pleaded guilty.
Now, Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen -- who holds secrets about many of the president's personal and financial dealings -- is in the crosshairs.
"We have been 

Trump can fire Russia prosecutor Mueller, says White House

Glenn Maxwell says the Australian team felt Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were treated like criminals during the ball-tampering scandal in South Africa, and the ordeal left them shellshocked.
Maxwell, who was one of three players rushed out to join the tour before the final Test in Johannesburg after the trio were sent home, said it had been extremely hard for the young squad to witness what happened to their teammates.
It was particularly tough for them to watch the televised emotional apologies from Smith and Bancroft on arrival in Australia, and chaotic scenes when Smith was booed and called a cheat while being escorted through Johannesburg airport.
"I think the way they saw it, it was obviously beaten up a fair bit and they've seen a couple of their mates treated like criminals," he told Melbourne's Radio SEN today.
"That is a hard thing for you to watch as a teammate, and to what they went through, especially Steve Smith at the airport, that was a hard thing for .

AFP

AFP

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