Iran's government vowed Monday to be transparent after being accused of covering up the deadliest coronavirus outbreak outside China, dismissing claims the toll could be as high as 50.
The authorities in the Islamic republic have come under mounting public pressure since it took days for them to admit to "accidentally" shooting down a Ukrainian airliner last month, killing 176 people.
The government said on Monday that Iran's coronavirus death toll had jumped by four to 12 - by far the highest outside China -- as its neighbours closed their borders and imposed strict quarantine measures.
But Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, a lawmaker from the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, alleged the government was "lying" about the full extent of the outbreak.
The ILNA news agency, which is close to reformists, said the lawmaker spoke of "50 deaths" in Qom alone.
"The rest of the media have not published this figure, but we prefer not to censor what concerns the coronavirus because people's lives are .

Iran denies virus coverup and claim of 50 deaths

PTI Automatic

Togo's President Faure Gnassingbe on Monday hailed a crushing election victory that gave him a fourth term in office, as his main rival insisted he had won and called on people to "defend" their votes.
The incumbent leader took 72 percent of the vote in the first round of Saturday's presidential poll, the election commission said overnight, far ahead of former prime minister Agbeyome Kodjo on 18 per cent.
The opposition alleged widespread fraud including ballot stuffing and the use of fake polling stations to skew the results in Gnassingbe's favour.
The widely expected win extends more than a half century of dynastic rule over the former French colony by Gnassingbe's family despite broad disillusion over its failure to drag many out of poverty.
"The truth has just come to light after the announcement of the results which place us far ahead of our adversaries," Gnassingbe, 53, told celebrating supporters.
"Those who wanted to get agitated got agitated, they announced imaginary figures, 

Togo leader hails vote win as opposition urges 'resistance'

The remaining parties to the Iran nuclear deal will meet in Vienna on Wednesday, the EU's diplomatic service announced, after Britain, France and Germany launched a dispute process over Iran's successive pullbacks.
The office of EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell -- who is tasked with convening the commission under the dispute mechanism -- said the get-together would be chaired on his behalf by senior official Helga Schmid.
The meeting comes as the European parties try to find a way to persuade Iran to come back into line with the deal after Tehran made a series of steps away in protest at the US pulling out and reimposing sanctions.
The 2015 agreement to curb Iran's nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief has been slowly crumbling since US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018, describing the accord signed by his predecessor Barack Obama as a bad deal.
The EU has led efforts to try to save the deal, arguing that it is vital for international security, but after 

Iran nuclear deal commission to meet in Vienna

London-born midfielder Nico Yennaris, the first naturalised footballer to play for China, was surprisingly dropped from new coach Li Tie's national squad on Monday.
The 26-year-old was not named in Li's squad for a training camp in the UAE ahead of World Cup qualifiers in Thailand next month against the Maldives and Guam.
It was not immediately clear why Yennaris, who now goes by the Chinese name Li Ke and plays for Beijing Guoan, misses out.
The former Arsenal and England youth player made history when he made his debut for China in June last year. Yennaris, whose mother is Chinese, has won five caps.
Brazil-born forward Elkeson, the first player with no Chinese blood to represent China, was included in Li's 26-man squad and will hope to win his fifth and sixth caps against Maldives on March 26 and Guam on March 31.
Also included is Espanyol forward Wu Lei, widely regarded as China's best player.  The World Cup qualifiers -- Li's first matches since being permanently named as coach ..

History-maker Yennaris dropped from China football squad

Football chiefs in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland on Monday announced a ban on heading in training for children up to the end of primary school, to take place with immediate effect.
The three football associations issued a statement confirming changes to their heading guidance, which followed a study that showed former footballers were 3.5 times more likely to die from neurodegenerative disease.
The changes stated there would be no heading at all in the "foundation phase" -- for primary school children -- and a graduated approach to heading in training in under-12s to under-16s football.
There will be no change in terms of heading in matches, taking into consideration the limited number of headers.
The study, led by the University of Glasgow, did not state that heading a ball was the cause of the increased prevalence of neurodegenerative conditions among footballers, but the decision to update the guidelines has been taken to "mitigate against any potential risks", the FA said 

Football chiefs ban heading in training for young children

Mushfiqur Rahim hit his third Test double century as Bangladesh declared their first innings with a lead of 295 Monday in their one-off match against Zimbabwe.
Bangladesh ended their innings on 560 for six in the final session before spinner Nayeem Hasan then claimed two wickets in two balls in the first over in Dhaka.
The visitors reached nine for two at stumps on the third day, still needing 286 runs to make Bangladesh bat again on a wearing pitch at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium.
Mushfiqur, who became the became the highest run-scorer for Bangladesh in Tests, hit an unbeaten 203, while skipper Mominul Haque made 132, after the hosts resumed on 240 for three.
Mushfiqur and Mominul added 222 for the fourth wicket, while wicketkeeper-batsman Liton Das made 53 to give the hosts their highest-ever total against Zimbabwe.
Mominul declared the innings soon after Mushfiqur reached the 200-run mark after Ainsley Ndlovu past extra cover for a boundary.
Nayeem struck with the second ball 

Bangladesh's Mushfiqur hits double ton to corner Zimbabwe

A carnival in Croatia drew outrage on Monday after participants burned an effigy of a gay couple and child, weeks after a court granted same-sex couples the right to foster children.
Huge dolls depicting two men kissing and holding a small doll resembling a child were set ablaze in front of a crowd of several hundred people during a carnival in the southern town of Imotski on Sunday.
It came just two weeks after Croatia's top court said that same-sex couples should be able to foster children, an issue that has provoked heated debate in the staunchly Catholic country.
On Monday Rainbow Families, an association of same-sex parents, said they would file a legal complaint over the event, calling it a "public incitement to hatred and violence".
"Horrifying scenes from Imotski cannot be in any way justified by carnival tradition," said the group's leader Daniel Martinovic.
President Zoran Milanovic slammed the burning in a Facebook post as a "sad, inhumane and completely unacceptable act ...

Outrage over burning of effigy of gay parents at Croatia carnival

Hong Kong will bar non-residents arriving from South Korea from Tuesday morning in response to the growing coronavirus outbreak, the city's security chief said late Monday.
"Considering the development of the epidemic in South Korea, the Security Bureau will issue a red travel alert," John Lee told reporters.
"We also urge Hong Kong residents not to travel there unless necessary," he added.

Hong Kong to bar non-resident arrivals from South Korea over virus

Three units of Goldman Sachs pleaded not guilty Monday in Malaysia over the investment bank's alleged role in the multi-billion-dollar scandal at the country's sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, official media reported.
Huge sums were allegedly looted from the Malaysian fund in a globe-spanning fraud, which reportedly involved ex-leader Najib Razak and his inner circle.
Goldman's role has been under scrutiny as it helped arrange a series of bond issues worth USD 6.5 billion for the investment vehicle.
Malaysia in 2018 filed charges against the units -- Goldman Sachs International, Goldman Sachs (Asia), and Goldman Sachs (Singapore).
They were accused of giving false statements that led to large sums being misappropriated in relation to the bond issues.
A Goldman Sachs representative entered not guilty pleas at Kuala Lumpur High Court, Malaysia's national news agency Bernama reported.
The judge said the trial would begin in November.
Goldman has previously vowed to fight charges against it ...

Goldman pleads not guilty in Malaysia 1MDB case: report

Pakistan began quarantining at least 200 people near the Iranian border, officials said Monday, as fears spiralled over the growing toll from the coronavirus in the region amid allegations of a coverup in Iran.
The quarantine announcement came hours after Pakistan sealed off its land border with Iran while neighbouring Afghanistan said it had detected its first infection.
It also came as Iranian authorities denied allegations of an official coverup following reports that dozens of deaths had gone unreported in the country.
In Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province authorities moved fast to quarantine at least 200 people after Shiite Muslim piligrims returning from Iran entered the country and briefly interacted with other residents.
"We have decided not to take a chance and keep all of them under observation for the next 15 days," Najeebullah Qambrani, assistant commissioner at the Taftan border crossing, told AFP, saying 250 people were being quarantined.
Balochistan's ...

Pakistan quarantines 200 near Iran border on virus fears

Two more officials sent to a cruise ship quarantined off Japan to help with on-board efforts to contain the deadly coronavirus have contracted the illness themselves, authorities said Monday.
The announcement came as experts warned the next one to three weeks would be "crucial" to preventing widespread infections and as fears deepen that the isolation of the virus-stricken Diamond Princess has been ineffective.
A quarantine officer in his 50s and a health ministry official in his 40s both tested positive and are in hospital, the ministry said, after they were dispatched separately to the vessel earlier this month.
The new infections come after Japan Sunday reported a third death among people who spent time on the ship -- a man in his 80s who died from pneumonia.  Six officials linked to containment work on the boat have now tested positive, fuelling doubts about the effectiveness of the quarantine.
"We don't know at the moment through what routes the infections occurred. We'll find ...

Two more Japan officials aboard ship contract coronavirus

EU envoys meet on Monday to finalise a negotiating mandate for Brexit trade talks with Britain, with France insisting on strict red lines to uphold European standards.
Establishing the foundation for new ties with Britain is the next chapter in the Brexit saga, with signs pointing to several months of acrimonious talks between London and Brussels with the outcome highly uncertain.
Britain left the European Union on January 31, but entered a transition phase until the end of the year to give time to hammer out a new basis for relations on trade, security and defence.
But there are doubts the two sides will bridge their differences in that time, with French President Emmanuel Macron warning at the weekend he was "not sure" a deal would be struck by the end of December.
Trade will be the biggest flashpoint, with the remaining 27 EU countries especially nervous that Britain will backslide on standards to win a competitive edge against European businesses.
Fishing is also a hot-button ...

EU envoys meet to seal Brexit talks red lines

Islamic Jihad fired a further volley of rockets and mortars from Gaza towards Israel Monday, following a flare-up between the group and the Jewish state that triggered school, road and train closures in southern Israel.
Israel's army said in a statement that 20 "projectiles" had been fired from the Palestinian enclave on Monday, 18 of them intercepted by its air defence systems.
Israeli police images showed that at least one of the projectiles landed in an empty children's playground.
On Sunday, in response to Israel's killing of a militant along the border, Islamic Jihad launched more than 20 rockets from Gaza into Israel.
Israel's military said it responded to the rockets with airstrikes targeting "terror sites" throughout Gaza as well as near the Syrian capital.
The Damascus strike killed two Islamic Jihad fighters and four other Iran-backed militants allied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor.
Since the start of .

Islamic Jihad launches new round of rockets towards Israel

Angela Merkel's centre-right CDU will choose a new leader at a special congress on April 25, sources told AFP on Monday, as the party scrambles to prepare for the veteran German chancellor's departure.
Merkel's Christian Democratic Union was plunged into turmoil after her heir apparent, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, resigned as party leader this month over her supposed failure to stop regional lawmakers from cooperating with the far right.
The surprise move threw open the race to succeed Merkel, who has been in power for more than 14 years and plans to bow out at the next general elections slated for 2021.
Kramp-Karrenbauer, widely known as "AKK", held top level talks with party grandees in Berlin on Monday to decide the way forward.
Sources close to the talks told AFP that they had agreed to hold an extraordinary congress on April 25 to anoint a new chairman, who would then be almost sure to become the party's candidate for chancellor.
The top-level deliberations came a day after the ..

Germany's CDU to decide on Merkel successor in April

Two environmental groups said on Monday they were trying to take the Norwegian state to the Supreme Court for granting oil licences in the Arctic.
Greenpeace and Natur og Ungdom (Nature and Youth) say oil drilling licences granted to companies in 2016 should be cancelled because they violate Norway's constitution, which includes a right to a healthy environment.
They say emissions from oil activities and fossil fuels jeopardise the objectives of the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit warming from climate change to less than 2 degrees Celsius, compared with pre-industrial temperatures.
However, the organisations have already suffered two legal setbacks in both an Oslo district court and an appeals court, which ruled that their concerns were hypothetical as there was no certainty fossil fuels would be discovered.
However, the appeals court judges said CO2 emissions from Norwegian oil should be taken as a whole -- meaning not only emissions from the production but also from the use of .

NGOs take Norway to Supreme Court over Arctic oil

Italy reported on Monday its fifth death from the new coronavirus, as the number of people contracting the disease continued to mount and officials called for calm.
The death of an 88-year-old man was the fourth 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 effort to sit out the virus.
Angelo Borrelli, head of the country's civil protection agency, said 219 people had now tested positive in Italy, which has the most confirmed cases in Europe.
Five people have died of the virus in the past four days, including one in the Veneto region.
An Alitalia flight from Rome was being held in Mauritius Monday, after 40 people from Lombady and Veneto were told they could not disembark unless they consented to being placed in quarantine.
Alitalia said it was arranging for their immediate repatriation ...

Fifth coronavirus death in Italy as infections mount

The remaining parties to the Iran nuclear deal will meet in Vienna on Wednesday, the EU's diplomatic service announced, after Britain, France and Germany launched a dispute process.
The meeting comes as the European parties try to find a way to persuade Iran to come back into line with the deal after Tehran made a series of steps away in protest at the US pulling out and reimposing sanctions.

Iran nuclear deal commission to meet Wednesday in Vienna

World stock markets and oil prices tumbled Monday, with Milan and Seoul falling hardest on growing fears of a coronavirus pandemic, as gold hit a seven-year peak on safe-haven buying, dealers said.
In late morning deals, Milan's stock market dived almost five per cent following reports of a fourth death amid the COVID-19 epidemic, an 84-year old man in the northern Lombardy region.
It was the third death in Lombardy, where villages have been sealed off and security measures enforced to stem the spread of the disease.
Traders' screens were awash with red elsewhere in Europe too, with Frankfurt falling 3.7 per cent, London losing 3.5 per cent, Madrid down 3.3 per cent and Paris shedding 3.8 per cent.
Brent oil prices slumped four per cent as the burgeoning crisis sparked global energy demand worries.
Conversely, on the London Bullion Market gold surged to USD 1,689.31 per ounce -- a level last seen in January 2013 -- as investors snapped up the precious metal as a safety measure amid ...

Stocks, oil prices tumble on pandemic fears, as gold soars

Lesotho Prime Minister Thomas Thabane appeared in court on Monday over the murder of his estranged wife after a weekend in which he was said to be receiving emergency medical care in South Africa.
In the latest twist of a saga that has gripped the southern African kingdom, the 80-year-old premier attended the magistrates court in the capital Maseru, an AFP correspondent reported.
Charges had been expected to be formally read out to him for allegedly acting in "common purpose" in the June 2017 killing of 58-year old Lipolelo Thabane, whom he was in the process of divorcing.
But after a brief sitting, the matter was deferred to the High Court and the prime minister was not formally charged.
He was accompanied by his current wife Maesaiah Thabane, 42, whom he married two months after Lipolelo's death and who is considered a co-conspirator in the murder case.
She has already been charged with murder and is out on bail.
Defence lawyer Qhalehang Letsika argued that Thabane should not be ...

Lesotho PM in court over murder of estranged wife

A Mona Lisa as puzzling as the smile of Leonardo da Vinci's muse -- made out of nearly 300 Rubik's Cubes -- sold for nearly half a million euros at auction in Paris on Sunday evening.
Created by the French street artist Franck Slama, famous for the pixellated Space Invader mosaics that have popped up on city streets around the world, the "Rubik Mona Lisa" sold for 480,000 euros (USD 521,000), a record for the artist, Artcurial auction house said.
Its guide price was 120,000 to 150,000 euros.
Slama, who works under the pseudonym "Invader", has playfully styled himself the founder of a new school of art that uses the iconic 1980s puzzle as the medium: "Rubikcubism".
The 2005 "Rubik Mona Lisa" was the first in a series of pieces inspired by the great paintings in history.
Slama has also produced pixellated reproductions of Edouard Manet's 1863 masterpiece "Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe" (The Luncheon on the Grass) as well as Gustave Courbet's "L'Origine du Monde" (The Origin of the World).

Rubik's Cube Mona Lisa fetches 480,000 euros at Paris auction

Almost 600,000 members of Britain's main opposition Labour party began voting on Monday for a new leader to replace leftist Jeremy Corbyn in the wake of a devastating election defeat.
Three candidates -- all members of parliament -- are on the ballot paper, with the final result due to be announced on April 4.
Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer is currently the frontrunner, viewed as more moderate than his main rival, Corbyn ally and business spokeswoman Rebecca Long-Bailey.
The third candidate, Lisa Nandy, is well-regarded in Westminster but has a low public profile.
Corbyn was elected Labour leader in 2015 in a shock result, after a political career spent on the sidelines of a party where few MPs share his staunch socialist views.
Now 70, he drew an enthusiastic following among young people but was forced to step down after a second general election defeat in December.
Labour suffered its worst result since 1935 while Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson triumphed with his promise ..

AFP

AFP

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