Riot police were dispatched to the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios on Monday as the government prepared to launch the construction of new controversial migrant camps.
In both islands, police deployed at the harbour to facilitate the landing of security force reinforcements from the mainland, state agency ANA said.
There are over 38,000 migrants crowded into camps on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos despite an official capacity of 6,200.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis over the weekend insisted that the plan would go ahead despite local opposition.
"The works will begin immediately and will be completed. There is no turning back," he told conservative party cadres on Sunday.
Work on the new camps on Lesbos and Chios, with a capacity of up to 7,000 each, is to begin this week.
Island officials and residents have told the Greek government that after five years on the front lines of the European migration crisis, they are no longer prepared to accept thousands 

Riot police on Greek islands over migrant camp controversy

PTI Automatic

An Arctic "doomsday vault" is set Tuesday to receive 60,000 samples of seeds from around the world as the biggest global crop reserve stocks up for a global catastrophe.
The seeds are to be deposited in the vault inside a mountain near Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen Island in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from the North Pole.
"As the pace of climate change and biodiversity loss increases, there is new urgency surrounding efforts to save food crops at risk of extinction," said Stefan Schmitz, who manages the reserve as head of the Crop Trust.
"The large scope of today's seed deposit reflects worldwide concern about the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss on food production," Schmitz added.
"But more importantly it demonstrates a growing global commitment -- from the institutions and countries that have made deposits today and indeed the world -- to the conservation and use of the crop diversity that is crucial for farmers in their efforts to 

Arctic 'doomsday vault' stocks up on more food seeds

The Pentagon announced Monday it has adopted "ethical principles" for the use of artificial intelligence by the armed forces, a measure aimed at convincing US tech giants to collaborate with the military.
"AI technology will change much about the battlefield of the future, but nothing will change America's steadfast commitment to responsible and lawful behavior," Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in a statement.
The Pentagon, which regularly criticizes the use of facial recognition technology by police in China, has pledged to establish "explicit, well-defined uses" for AI technology, according to the statement.
Such technology, which learns through experience the skills necessary to complete its assigned tasks, will also be "reliable" and have transparent systems of use, the Pentagon statement said.
As a result, AI technology will be "governable": the military will have "the ability to disengage or deactivate deployed systems that demonstrate unintended behavior."
The question of .

Pentagon adopts 'ethical principles' for artificial intelligence use

- An ambush on a police patrol in northern Burkina Faso on Monday left four people dead, three of them officers, police said.
The attack, carried out in the morning by unidentified gunmen, killed a police lieutenant, two sergeants and a civilian, a police statement said.
Another five people were wounded, the statement added, without saying if they were police officers or civilians.
Monday's attack happened on the Pissila-Gibga axis of the Sanmatenga province, in the West African country's Centre-Nord region.
An attack last Tuesday killed three soldiers from a detachment at Kelbo, in the farther north Soum province, in the Sahel region bordering Mali.
Burkina Faso, which shares a border with Mali and Niger, is caught up in an Islamist insurgency in which repeated attacks have claimed 750 lives since 2015.
Under-equipped and poorly trained, the country's security forces have not been able to counter the deadly raids in their territory, despite the help of foreign soldiers, notably ...

Burkina Faso ambush kills four, including three officers: police

Upcoming matches in Italian Serie A and the Europa League will be played behind closed doors to combat the spread of coronavirus, the Italian sports minister announced on Monday evening.
"Following the demands of the sports world and knowing that the ban on sporting events open to the public remains in force in six regions of northern Italy, we have agreed to the holding of matches behind closed doors," said Sports Minister Vincenzo Spadafora after a meeting of the Council of Ministers.
The Europa League game between Inter Milan and Ludogorets on Thursday will be affected, but the minister did not specify which Serie A matches at the weekend would be included in the ban.
There are six games in the regions he mentioned, including the clash on Sunday evening between leader Juventus and third-place Inter.
Italy reported its fifth death from the virus on Monday and it has the most confirmed cases in Europe.
Napoli's Champions League match against Barcelona on Tuesday is not at risk.
The ..

Coronavirus forces fan ban at Italian football games

Upcoming matches in Italian Serie A and the Europa League will be played behind closed doors to combat the spread of coronavirus, the Italian sports minister announced on Monday evening.
"We have agreed to the holding of matches behind closed doors," said Vincenzo Spadafora after a meeting of the Council of Ministers.
The Europa League game between Inter Milan and Ludogorets on Thursday and, most likely, six Serie A matches will be affected.

Italian games to be played in empty stadiums due to coronavirus: government

Turkish shelling killed nine regime fighters in northwest Syria Monday, a day when almost 100 were killed on both sides as Damascus attacks the country's last major rebel bastion, a monitor said.
Of those killed in the Turkish shelling, four lost their lives near the village of Nayrab while another five died near the town of Saraqeb, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Turkish shelling kills 9 regime personnel in NW Syria: monitor

Ontario police moved in Monday to clear indigenous protesters fighting a new pipeline who have caused major disruptions to the Canadian economy by blocking a key east-west rail artery for nearly three weeks.
The protesters, confronting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a political crisis, had mounted the blockade on a Canadian National Railway (CN) line east of Toronto and at other places in support of a small group fighting construction of a natural gas pipeline on indigenous lands in British Columbia.
Ontario Provincial Police began clearing the line at 8:15 am (1315 GMT) Monday morning after a midnight deadline for the blockade's removal passed unheeded.
"Unfortunately, all avenues to successfully negotiate a peaceful resolution have been exhausted," it said in a statement as the operation to enforce a court injunction got underway.
Televised images showed dozens of police officers taking away protestors in handcuffs one by one, after a few minor scuffles broke out.  "This is ...

Police move in to clear Canada rail blockade

The prosecutor for a Hague-based court has handed down the first indictments over alleged war crimes committed by Kosovo guerrillas during a 1990s conflict, a spokeswoman said Monday.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers did not identify the suspects but several former high-level officials from recent years have previously been summoned for questioning by the tribunal.
The EU-backed tribunal was established in 2015 to investigate crimes by independence-seeking ethnic Albanian guerrillas against mainly Serb civilians during the 1998-1999 war.
"I can confirm that the president has assigned a pre-trial judge to review indictments filed by the Specialist Prosecutor. The content is confidential," a spokesman for the court said.
"The pre-trial judge has a maximum of six months to either confirm or dismiss the indictments." The war pitted Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas seeking independence for the southern Serbian province of Kosovo against Serbia's forces, who withdrew from the territory after 

Kosovo war crimes prosecutor files first indictments

Italy reported its seventh death from the new coronavirus Monday, but officials called for calm and reported a lower rise in the number of infections after a spike over the weekend.
The number of cases now stood at 229, the head of Italy's civil protection department Angelo Borelli said at a press conference on Monday evening, the highest number in Europe.
However, this means that only ten new cases had been added since the previous total on Monday morning, a much slower rate than the previous few days.
"I think the numbers that we have registered in Italy and in the rest of the world have been confined to reasonable figures," Borelli said, adding that in his opinion the data did not point towards an impending pandemic.
Six of the dead have been in the northern Lombardy region, where villages have been put under lockdown and security measures enforced in a bid to stem the spread of the disease.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has said that residents could face weeks in lockdown in an ...

Italy authorities urge calm as coronavirus cases stabilise

Libya's rival camps announced Monday they had suspended their participation in UN-sponsored peace talks this week in Geneva, although a United Nations spokesman said negotiations would still go ahead.
A parliament based in eastern Libya, backed by strongman Khalifa Haftar, said it would not take part because the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) had not approved all its 13 representatives.
A rival authority in Tripoli, the High State Council -- the equivalent of a senate -- said it would also not participate in talks scheduled for Wednesday until progress was made in military negotiations.
"It is in light of conclusions (from military discussions) that the high council would decide to take part or not in political dialogue," the Tripoli body said.
Haftar's forces launched an offensive against Tripoli, seat of the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), last April.
Stalemate around the capital's southern suburbs has persisted for months since then.
A joint ...

Libya rivals announce will not take part in Geneva talks

- Five civilians were killed in Russian air strikes backing Syrian regime forces as they chipped away at the country's last major rebel bastion in fighting that cost dozens of lives Monday, a war monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air raids hit the Jabal al-Zawiya area on the edge of the jihadist-dominated northwestern province of Idlib.
In fighting on the ground, regime forces gained ground in the southern part of Idlib, the Britain-based monitor said.
They seized 10 towns and villages south of the M4 highway linking the coastal regime stronghold of Latakia to government-held second city Aleppo since Sunday, it said.
Nearly 50 fighters were killed on several fronts in the Idlib region, according to the Observatory, including 21 pro-regime fighters, as well as 27 jihadists and allied Turkey-backed rebels.
State news agency SANA, for its part, said "units of the Syrian army continued to progress in the south of Idlib" province.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel ..

Russia strikes kill 5 civilians as Syria regime advances: monitor

South Korea reported 161 more coronavirus cases Monday, taking the nationwide total to 763 and making it the world's largest total outside China.
The country has seen a rapid surge in the number of coronavirus cases since a cluster of infections emerged from a religious sect in the southern city of Daegu last week.
Most of the country's cases are connected to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in the southern city of Daegu, including 129 of Monday's confirmations, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.
Two more people had died, it added -- both of them connected to a second cluster around a hospital in Cheongdo -- taking the toll to seven.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Sunday raised the country's virus alert to the highest "red" level, in a bid to strengthen the government response to the spiralling outbreak.
The government has extended kindergarten and school holidays by one week nationwide and plans to enforce tighter two-week monitoring of ...

S Korea becomes biggest coronavirus centre outside China

Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman who spent years on death row after a 2010 conviction of blasphemy, said Monday that she was seeking political asylum from the French government.
"My great desire is to live in France," Bibi said in an interview with RTL radio, her first trip to France since fleeing with her family to Canada in 2018.
Her visit comes a few weeks after the publication of her book "Enfin Libre!" (Finally Free) in French last month, with an English version due in September.
"France is the country from where I received my new life... Anne-Isabelle is an angel for me," she said, referring to the French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet, who waged a long campaign for her release and later co-wrote Bibi's book.
On Tuesday, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is to bestow an honorary citizenship certificate granted to Bibi by the city in 2014, when she was still behind bars.
She said she did not have any meeting scheduled with President Emmanuel Macron, but "obviously I would like ...

Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi asks France for asylum

The World Health Organization on Monday said the new coronavirus epidemic had "peaked" in China but warned that a surge in cases elsewhere was "deeply concerning" and all countries should prepare for a "potential pandemic".
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the peak in China occurred between January 23 and February 2 and the number of new cases there "has been declining steadily since then.
"This virus can be contained," he told reporters in Geneva, praising China for helping to prevent an even bigger spread of the disease through unprecedented lockdowns and quarantines in or near the outbreak's epicentre.
An acceleration of cases in other parts of the world has prompted similar drastic measures. Italy has locked down 11 towns and South Korea ordered the entire 2.5 million residents of the city of Daegu to remain indoors.
It also caused falls of more than 3.0-percent in several European stock markets -- with Milan plunging 5.4 percent -- and a boost for safe-haven gold amid ...

Virus 'peaked' in China but could trigger global pandemic: WHO

Hillary Clinton on Monday denounced President Donald Trump as a "danger to democracy" and defended her scathing comments about former rival and Democratic primary frontrunner Bernie Sanders.
Clinton also warned that Russia would once again try to influence the presidential election in 2020, and said she would back any candidate taking on Trump.
"I will support the nominee of our party because I think that our current president is a clear and present danger to democracy and to our future," she told journalists at the Berlin film festival, where a new documentary about her life was being screened.
Yet she refused to endorse any specific candidate, saying she would "leave that to the voters".
The documentary has grabbed headlines for caustic remarks Clinton makes about Sanders, who took pole position in this year's race with a key win in Nevada on Sunday.
"Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician," she says in the four-part ...

Clinton calls Trump 'danger to democracy' at Berlin film fest

A Manhattan judge ordered Harvey Weinstein to remain in custody until his sentencing, scheduled for March 11, on a guilty conviction for sexual assault and rape.
Judge James Burke denied a defense request that the disgraced film producer remain out on bail for health reasons, but said he would ask that Weinstein be held in an infirmary unit.

Harvey Weinstein in custody until sentencing

EU envoys on Monday finalised a mandate for chief negotiator Michel Barnier to lead what promise to be stormy talks with Britain on its future relations with the bloc starting next week.
The text, setting out the European Union's demands and red lines, is to be formally adopted Tuesday at a meeting of the bloc's ministers.  Britain is working on its own negotiating mandate, which it is expected to be published on Thursday.
Britain ceased to be part of the EU at the end of last month under the terms of a Brexit deal that ushered in a transition period for the big negotiations to take place on trade, security and defence.
The extent to which Britain will align with EU rules on environmental, labour, health, taxation and other standards is set to be one of the thorniest issues.
One EU source told AFP that the ambassadors adopted the mandate by consensus, adding: "It's good news." The text "specifies that the agreement should allow us to have fair competition conditions over the long ...

EU envoys agree mandate for UK negotiations

Manhattan's top prosecutor Cyrus Vance praised the women who testified against Harvey Weinstein -- convicted Monday on two charges of sexual assault and rape -- for changing "the course of history" in prosecuting sex crimes.
"This is the new landscape for sexual violence survivors, it is a new day," Vance told reporters outside the New York courthouse where a 12-person jury found Weinstein guilty of sexual assault while clearing him on the most serious predatory charges.  "
Rape is rape," he said. "It's rape even if there is no physical evidence, and even if it happened a long time ago.

Women changed 'course of history' with Weinstein sex crimes trial: top prosecutor

Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein on was convicted Monday of sexual assault and rape but cleared of the most serious predatory sexual assault charges.
The jury of seven men and five women found the producer guilty of criminal sexual acts in the first degree and rape in the third degree, a partial victory for the #MeToo movement that considered the case a watershed moment.
The 67-year-old was found not guilty however of first-degree rape and predatory sexual assault charges that could have seen him jailed for life.

Weinstein found guilty of sexual assault, rape

Mars is a constantly tremoring "living" body, researchers said Monday as they unveiled measurements of seismic activity on the red planet showing similar tremble rates to Earth or the Moon.
For 15 months NASA's InSight robot craft scoured the surface of Earth's neighbour, and measured hundreds of so-called "Marsquakes".
These included several tremors that contained the same frequency patterns as tremors caused by the movement of Earth's own tectonic plates.
"This is the first mission focused on taking direct geophysical measurements of any planet besides Earth, and it's given us our first real understanding of Mars' interior structure and geological processes," said Nicholas Schmerr, an assistant professor of geology at the University of Maryland and a co-author of the study in Nature Geoscience.
Another team of researchers found that at least 20 of the quakes measured by the InSight lander had the equivalent strength of a magnitude 3-4 earthquake.
After a six-and-a-half-month voyage .

AFP

AFP

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