A journalist in Kyrgyzstan was beaten and robbed in an attack he said on Friday was punishment for his reporting on corruption, and which drew condemnation from the United States.
A police spokesman in the capital Bishkek told AFP that the crime, which saw journalist Bolot Temirov attacked outside his media outlet's office on Thursday, had been registered as a theft.
Temirov -- editor-in-chief of investigative website Factcheck.kg -- said two assailants inflicted several injuries to his face, damaged a tooth and stole his telephone.
"Unknown people tried to find out from neighbours where our office was," Temirov wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.
The attackers ignored his laptop and other items of value, he said, labelling the incident "an attempt to frighten" him.
The US embassy in Bishkek called for a "prompt investigation", adding: "Press can only be free when journalists are able to work without intimidation and threats."
Factcheck.kg was briefly disabled last month by a ...

Kyrgyz journalist 'beaten for reporting on corruption'

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Australia's bushfire emergency has sparked an online disinformation campaign "unprecedented" in the country's history, researchers told AFP Friday, with bots deployed to shift blame for the blazes away from climate change.
The fires have claimed at least 26 lives and destroyed more than 2,000 homes across Australia.
And they have also prompted misleading online claims about the extent of the blazes and a concerted campaign to blame the crisis on arson, rather than climate change, drought or record high temperatures.
One hashtag in particular, #arsonemergency, has gained traction rapidly and conservative-leaning newspapers, websites and politicians across the globe have promoted the theory arson is largely to blame.
Timothy Graham, a digital media expert at the Queensland University of Technology, told AFP his research showed half of the Twitter users deploying the hashtag displayed bot- and troll-like behaviour.
Those accounts were created very recently, often without profile ...

Australia bushfires spark 'unprecedented' climate disinformation

Greek prisoners were the first to see a new Polish film about a reformed ex-convict, after the local distribution manager said on Friday he felt it should be shown to inmates.
Corpus Christi by Jan Komasa follows the story of a 20-year-old former convict who accidentally takes over as priest of a parish.
The film was shown on Thursday to a group of around 100 male inmates at the education facility of Korydallos Prison a few hours before its national release, said Michalis Zeis of the Filmcenter Trianon distribution company.
"When I saw this film, I said to myself that it had to be shown in prisons," Zeis told AFP.
A second viewing is now planned for the prison's female inmates, he added.
Greek jails are notoriously overcrowded, violence-prone and vulnerable to drug smuggling.
There is also a shortage of re-integration programmes into Greek society.
On Friday, seven people were hurt in a brawl between Afghans, Albanians and Greeks in a juvenile prison on the outskirts of the capital, ..

Polish film gets Greek debut in a prison

The United States said Friday it would not discuss pulling troops from Iraq after its caretaker prime minister asked Washington to send a delegation to begin withdrawal arrangements.
"At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership -- not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East," State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said.

US refuses Baghdad request to discuss Iraq troop withdrawal

Dutch intelligence has information that a Ukrainian airliner that crashed in Iran was probably hit by a missile, a minister said on Friday, becoming the latest western country to suggest the plane was brought down.
Canada and Britain have already suggested that the crash -- in which all 176 people on board the plane were killed -- was caused by an accidental missile strike by Iranian forces, but Tehran has dismissed the claims.
"Based on the information from the MIVD (Dutch military intelligence), we can state that it is likely that an Iranian anti-aircraft missile has led to the crash of the aircraft," defence minister Ank Bijleveld was quoted as saying by a spokesman after a cabinet meeting.
Bijleveld gave no further details of the information or how the Netherlands, which did not have any nationals on board the Ukrainian Boeing 737, obtained it.
The crash happened after Tehran launched missiles at US forces in Iraq in response to the killing of a top Iranian general in a US drone ..

Dutch blame Iranian missile for jet crash

The head of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach insisted on Friday that protests should be kept out of this year's Tokyo Games, saying that the Olympics should "unite" the world.
In a meeting of the IOC in Lausanne, Bach stressed the "importance" of a series of recently-adopted directives designed to clarify what is banned and the sanctions for those not respecting the ban, established under Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter.
"The Olympic Games are always a global platform for the athletes and their sporting performances. They are not, and must never be, a platform to advance political or any other potentially divisive ends," Bach said.
Athletes, coaches, trainers and officials are banned from political protests on the field of play, the Olympic Village, during the opening and closing ceremonies and on the medal podium.
Anyone who does not respect these rules will face sanctions from the IOC, their country's governing body for sport and their national Olympic committee.
"If ..

No protests at Tokyo Olympics, demands IOC chief Bach

Global stock markets were mostly steady Friday, comforted by an easing of geopolitical tensions and a looming US-China trade deal which allowed investors to shrug off a weaker-than-expected American jobs report.
The US economy generated 145,000 new jobs in December, around 20,000 short of consensus forecasts, a relatively minor miss.
The slowdown sparked some talk of an easier Fed policy, but overall the figures were seen as confirmation that the US economy is still solid.
On Wall Street, where stocks had jumped to new records Thursday, the DJIA index was steady at Friday's opening.
"The continued fading of recently ramped-up geopolitical concerns and expectations of a signed US-China 'phase one' trade deal next week are appearing to help counter a softer-than-expected December non-farm payroll report," said analysts at Charles Schwab.
Earlier, most Asian stock markets closed higher but investors struggled to maintain a rally triggered by easing US-Iran tensions the previous day.
The .

Stocks steady as markets shrug off soft US jobs report

Rafael Nadal suffered an upset singles loss but made amends in the doubles to keep Spain alive at the ATP Cup Friday, with Novak Djokovic also surviving a scare before rallying to guide Serbia into a semi-final against Russia.
After Roberto Bautista Agut swept past Kimmer Coppejans 6-1, 6-4 in the first singles match, Nadal had the chance to wrap up a last four berth  against David Goffin.
But the 19-time Grand Slam winner struggled in the heat and humidity of Sydney, crashing 6-4, 7-6 (7/3) to the 11th-ranked Belgium. It was a rare defeat while playing for his country, who he helped to victory in the Davis Cup in November.
It sent the tie to a decisive doubles match, with Nadal returning to partner Pablo Carreno Busta against Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen in a gritty 6-7 (7/9), 7-5, 10-7 win.
"It was tough, because for us it was a big change from Perth to here, not much time to adapt and the conditions were heavy, the humidity and playing against big players," said Nadal.
"But as a .

Spain scrape into ATP Cup semis despite Nadal defeat

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp believes Jose Mourinho remains a world class coach and a threat to his side's unbeaten Premier League record when the European champions travel to Tottenham on Saturday.
A massive 28-point gap separates the sides that contested the Champions League final just seven months ago with Liverpool running away with the title, while sixth-placed Spurs' ambition is just to make it back into the top four.
Mourinho's honeymoon period in north London is over after a run of just two wins in Tottenham's last seven games, but he has consistently been a thorn in Liverpool's side with Chelsea and Manchester United in the past.
"Jose Mourinho is a world-class manager with a specific mindset. I would say he wants to win with all he has. I respect that a lot," said Klopp.
"That means each situation his team is in, he tries to use for his team."
Klopp picked up his fourth Premier League manager of the month prize of the season on Friday as reward for navigating a gruelling ..

Klopp wary of 'world-class' Mourinho

Tottenham manager Jose Mourinho said he would get "depressed" if he wallowed in the news that Harry Kane is to be missing for at least three months.
The Spurs striker has undergone surgery on a torn hamstring that will see him miss the majority of the remainder of the season at club level and in a race to be match fit to lead England at Euro 2020.
"If I speak too much about Harry, I get a bit depressed and then you are going to say he is miserable and in a bad mood," said Mourinho, ahead of Premier League leaders Liverpool's visit to north London on Saturday.
"Harry is irreplaceable. You know that we cannot play like we normally play when Harry Kane is in the team. We cannot do it the same way as we do with Harry."
Spurs have been linked with a move for AC Milan's Polish striker Krzysztof Piatek as cover for Kane's absence with Tottenham needing to chase down a six-point gap to Chelsea to qualify for the Champions League next season.
However, Mourinho said he is willing to wait until .

Kane absence has Mourinho down in the dumps

Baton-wielding police broke up a protest in Algiers on Friday, cracking down on demonstrators vowing to keep up the anti-regime movement that has rocked Algeria for nearly a year.
Police charged a group of several dozen people chanting anti-regime slogans, after demonstrators were blocked from gathering at the central Algiers rallying point of the weekly protest marches, now in their 47th week.
"Civil state, not military state," shouted protesters, a week after President Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced the formation of a new government.
Police had been deployed in force in the centre of the capital and several protesters were arrested, according to witnesses.
"The Hirak (protest movement) must continue until the complete removal of the 'gang' -- these traitors who sold out the country and hurt the future of our youth," said protester Farida Loukam.
"This Tebboune was designated, he was not chosen by the people," Loukam told AFP after she was violently shoved as police tried to tear ...

Police disperse protesters in Algerian capital

Three people died after a Turkish fishing boat and a Russian-flagged tanker collided on Friday off Istanbul's northern coast, local media reported.
The Turkish boat sank after the collision at around 0330 GMT, the coastguard said in a statement.
Three people were rescued and emergency teams hunted for three others onboard the fishing vessel around Kilyos, where the Bosphorus meets the Black Sea.
Divers found their bodies in the sunken ship later in the day at a depth of 80 metres, according to broadcaster NTV.
The Russian tanker named GLARD-2 was travelling to the Aegean region of
Izmir from Russia, the coastguard said.
The cause of the incident was not immediately clear.

Three die as Turkish fishing boat hits Russian tanker

Less than a week after Austria's new conservative-Green coalition took power, it has already become a target for far-right supporters, who have railed against the country's first minister with a refugee background.
Justice Minister Alma Zadic, who was born in Bosnia and fled the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s with her family at the age of 10, has faced a wave of social media abuse -- and even death threats.
The abuse has often appeared under posts from politicians from the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) -- a junior coalition partner until May -- revealing racist attitudes some say were fostered by the party during its time in office.
"A criminal Muslim woman becoming justice minister. Sharia (Islamic law) is coming soon," read one such contribution.
In response Zadic, of the Green Party, has received support from across the political spectrum.
Conservative chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who also headed the coalition with the FPOe, vowed on Thursday to "fight online hate -- ..

Far-right targets Austria's first refugee minister

Taiwan's presidential rivals held massive rallies Friday night in a final push to convince voters on the eve of a closely watched election that looks set to infuriate China and send ripples far beyond its borders.
Some 19 million people are eligible to vote on Saturday to choose between two leaders with very different visions for Taiwan's future -- in particular how close the self-ruled island should tack to its giant neighbour.
Beijing views Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to one day retake the island, by force if necessary.
But China is also Taiwan's largest trade partner, leaving it in a precariously dependent relationship.
President Tsai Ing-wen, who is seeking a second term and is the frontrunner, has pitched herself as a defender of Taiwan's liberal values against the increasingly authoritarian shadow cast by Beijing under President Xi Jinping.
Her main competitor Han Kuo-yu, 62, favours much warmer ties with China -- saying it would boost the island's fortunes -- .

Huge rival rallies on final day before Taiwan votes

Iran's civil aviation chief denied Friday that a missile downed a Ukrainian airliner which crashed killing all 176 on board, dismissing claims of a catastrophic mistake by Tehran's air defences.
The declaration came as Tehran faced mounting international pressure to allow a "credible" investigation into the crash, which Britain and Canada suggested was caused by an accidental missile strike.
"One thing is for certain, this airplane was not hit by a missile," Iran's civil aviation chief Ali Abedzadeh said.
The Boeing 737 crashed on Wednesday shortly after Tehran launched missiles at US forces in Iraq in response to the killing of a top Iranian general in a US drone strike in Baghdad.
It is Iran's worst civil aviation disaster since 1988 when the US military said it shot down an Iran Air plane over the Gulf by mistake, killing all 290 people on board.
The majority of the passengers on Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 were dual national Iranian-Canadians but they also included 

Iran denies missile downed Ukrainian plane

A French appeals court has ordered the son of a renowned Ferrari collector to pay his siblings millions of euros over the disputed sale of a coveted racer considered the storied Italian automaker's "Mona Lisa".
Patrick Bardinon was sued for breach of trust after auctioning off the rare 1964 Ferrari 250 GTO to a Taiwanese buyer in 2014 for 38 million euros (USD 42 million at current rates) -- a record at the time.
He says it was a gift from his father Pierre Bardinon, a descendent of the family behind luxury fur and leather house Chapal, after Patrick was in an horrendous racing accident.
"My father thought I had died that day," he said last March when the lawsuit first came to court.
But Anne and Jean-Francois Bardinon claim their brother secretly removed the car from their father's collection and unlawfully sold the crown jewel of their shared inheritance.
The pair lost their initial challenge, but the appeals court in Limoges ruled Wednesday in the siblings' favour, Anne Bardinon's .

French court orders 52mn euro payout in 'Mona Lisa' Ferrari battle

A Belgian bus driver was stabbed 10 times, receiving wounds to the neck and stomach, but continued to follow his route for another hour, officials said Friday.
According to the prosecutor's office in Antwerp, on Thursday the driver found himself a few minutes early in the town of Kontich and disembarked to have a smoke.
At this point a suspect appeared out of nowhere and attacked the 58-year-old -- "apparently with a knife" -- stabbing him repeatedly before fleeing the scene on foot.
The driver, working for public bus company De Lijn, boarded his bus and -- "probably in a state of shock" -- followed his route for another 15 kilometres (eight miles) to Lierre.
From the terminus, he then returned without passengers to his depot in Willebroek and only then, around an hour after the alleged attack, realised that he had been wounded.
His colleagues called emergency services.
According to the prosecutor, he had received potentially fatal wounds to the lower torso, to the neck, to his arms ..

Belgian bus driver stabbed 10 times, continues route

The United States has approved the sale of up to 12 F-35 fighter jets -- one of the most advanced warplanes ever built -- to Singapore for around $2.75 billion, officials said Friday.
The city-state last year said it planned to buy four of the jets, with an option to purchase eight more, picking the Lockheed Martin model over rivals from Europe and China.
Despite its small size, Singapore has one of the region's best equipped armed forces and spends a large chunk of its national budget on defence.
The State Department had approved the jet sale, said the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, adding Congress had been notified and must now also give the green light.
"Singapore is a strategic friend and major security cooperation partner and an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Asia-Pacific region," said the agency.
It added that the deal "will not alter the basic military balance in the region".
The affluent city-state spent several years assessing ...

US approves $2.75 bn fighter jet sale to Singapore

Northern Ireland's rival parties neared a power-sharing government on Friday, three years after the last administration collapsed and left the volatile province vulnerable in the face of Brexit.
A draft deal for how the new executive would work was released late on Thursday by the UK's Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith and Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney.
"We have put in place a series of what I would regard as very fair compromises to move things forward," Coveney said on Friday.
"Now it's over to the parties and hopefully all five of them will decide that on the basis of this document, they can commit to functioning government again." The region's devolved assembly at Stormont has been without a government since January 2017, following a scandal over misspending.
Numerous rounds of increasingly acrimonious talks failed to find an agreement and basic services were left unattended -- eventually sparking workers' strikes.
The latest talks were launched in the wake of a ...

N Ireland rivals close in on power-sharing deal

The European Union on Friday demanded an "independent and credible" probe into the crash of a Ukrainian airliner in Iran which killed all 176 people on board.
Britain and Canada -- which lost 63 of its citizens in the disaster -- said there was intelligence to suggest that Iranian air defences mistakenly shot down the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 with a missile. Tehran has denied the claim.
The EU said that, so far, there was "no conclusive evidence of what caused the incident", which killed 10 Swedes, three Germans and three Britons.
"It is very important for us that the investigation that takes place happens through an independent and credible civil safety investigation conducted in line with the International Civil Aviation Organisation rules," European Commission spokesman Stefan de Keersmaecker told reporters.
The EU is ready to give "any necessary assistance" to the probe, he added, but declined to answer directly when asked whether the bloc trusted Iran to carry ...

EU demands 'independent, credible' probe into Iran crash

Spain on Friday named Arancha Gonzalez Laya, an international trade expert, as foreign minister replacing Josep Borrell who last year became the EU's foreign policy chief.
Gonzalez was Pascal Lamy's chief of staff at the World Trade Organization between 2005 and 2013, before becoming Executive Director of the International Trade Centre, her current job, where she has focused on raising the competitiveness of companies in developing economies.
In Spanish foreign affairs "economic diplomacy will be the priority", Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's office said announcing the appointment.
Gonzalez, who also speaks English, French, German, Italian and Basque, starts her job Monday along with the other cabinet members in the coalition government of Socialists and the leftist Podemos party.
Sanchez takes over as head of a minority coalition government after winning investiture by a razor-thin margin of just two votes.
But with only 155 of the parliament's 350 seats, the new government will ...

AFP

AFP

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