A small airplane crashed in a wooded area on the north shore of Lake Ontario in eastern Canada on Wednesday evening, killing all seven people on board, Canada's transport safety agency said on Thursday.
The US-registered single-engine Piper PA-32 plane was travelling from Toronto's Buttonville Airport to Kingston, Ontario when it went missing at around 5 pm local time (2200 GMT).
Emergency services, including police on all-terrain vehicles and a military search and rescue helicopter, were dispatched to locate the downed plane, which was found just short of its destination in an area that is hard to reach due to thick brush.
All seven people on board, including the pilot, died in the crash, Transportation Safety Board spokesman Alexandre Fournier told AFP.
The government agency sent a team of investigators to gather evidence on the cause of the crash.
They were busy throughout the day "taking pictures of the wreckage, looking at the condition of the engines and the general condition of 

Seven dead in small plane crash in Canada

PTI Automatic

Iraq's protest-hit cities saw one of their bloodiest days yet as a government crackdown killed nearly 40 demonstrators following the dramatic torching of an Iranian consulate.
The country's capital and south have been rocked by the worst street unrest since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, with a protest movement venting fury at the government and its backers in neighbouring Iran.
Thursday's violence brought the total death toll since early October to more than 390, with more than 15,000 wounded, according to an AFP tally.
The highest toll was in the flashpoint southern city of Nasiriyah, where 25 people were killed when security forces used "excessive force" to break up rallies, according to the Iraqi Human Rights Commission.
Another two protesters were killed in Baghdad and ten died in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf, where demonstrators had torched the Iranian consulate late on Wednesday.
Crowds outraged at Tehran's political influence in Iraq had stormed and ..

Iraq crackdown kills nearly 40 after Iran mission torched

Britain's governing Conservative Party complained to the broadcasting regulator after its chosen representative was shut out of a general election television debate on climate change on Thursday.
Channel 4 said their one-hour live debate was for party leaders only but Prime Minister Boris Johnson declined to take part.
Cabinet minister Michael Gove, a former environment secretary, showed up to represent the centre-right party instead but was not allowed on.
Johnson was replaced by a melting ice sculpture of planet Earth with his party's logo on, as was Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, who also declined to attend.
"Denying the Conservative Party any opportunity to contribute to this cross-party event is unfair and breaches the requirements to 'preserve' impartiality," Lee Cain said in a letter to Ofcom on behalf of the Conservatives.
"There is clear precedent for such cross-party debates to take place without party leaders necessarily contributing." Cain called the ice statue a ...

Johnson replaced by melting ice on UK TV climate debate

US President Donald Trump said Thursday that the US had resumed talks with Taliban insurgents as he made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with US troops.
"The Taliban wants to make a deal and we're meeting with them and we're saying it has to be a cease fire and they didn't want to do a cease fire and now they do want to do a ceasefire," he told reporters.

Trump says US has resumed talks with Afghan Taliban

US President Donald Trump made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan on Thursday to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with US troops at the Bagram airbase outside the capital Kabul.
In a visit due to last about two-and-half hours, he served turkey to troops in a cafeteria, posed for photographs and delivered remarks in a hangar, as well as meeting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
About 13,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan, 18 years after the United States invaded in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The United States earlier this year reached a deal with the Taliban insurgents to pull troops from the country and wind down America's longest war in return for security guarantees.
But Trump made a shock move in September, describing the year-long talks as "dead" and withdrawing an invitation to the insurgents to meet near Washington due to the killing of a US soldier.
The US president has more recently suggested that negotiations could get underway again.
The Taliban have refused 

Trump makes unannounced Thanksgiving trip to US troops in Afghanistan

A notorious militia killed a total of 27 people  in a massacre in eastern DR Congo on Wednesday, police said, updating the death toll.
The victims were hacked to death with machetes in Oicha, about 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the city of Beni, according to a local official.
The police tweeted on Thursday that there were "27 bodies in the morgue" at Oicha, taking to 107 the number of people killed in and around Beni since November 5.
The vast majority of the killings have been carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a militia that has plagued eastern DR Congo since the 1990s.
The massacres have sparked protests against the local United Nations peacekeeping mission, known by its French acronym MONUSCO.
On Thursday, the envoys of Britain, Canada, Switzerland and the United States, wrote a joint letter condemning the attacks against MONUSCO.
The envoys expressed "full backing for the UN Secretary General's Special Representative in these difficult times".
"The armed groups ...

DR Congo massacre death toll rises to 27: police

Facebook suffered an outage Thursday because of what it called a software problem, hindering access to the social platform and its other apps such as Instagram.
As of around 1800 GMT they had been down for several hours.
"Earlier today, an issue in one of our central software systems caused many people to have trouble accessing Facebook's family of apps," a Facebook spokesperson said in an email.
"We quickly investigated, started restoring access, and we're now monitoring for full recovery," this person added.
Many users, often wryly, took to Twitter to comment on the crash.  Downdetector, which monitors outages on the Internet, said users of all Facebook platforms started having trouble at 1345 GMT.
As is often the case with these outages, this one seemed to hit randomly around the world, with some regions affected and others not.  Facebook says it has 2.45 billion active monthly users across its array of products.

Facebook and associated platforms report outage

Libya's National Oil Company said Thursday production had resumed at a key field in the southwest a day after it was interrupted by fighting there.
"Following the cessation of military activity at the (Al-Feel) oilfield, production has resumed," the NOC said in a statement on its website.
Forces backing eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar, who seized Al-Feel earlier this year, on Wednesday accused "militias" who back the Tripoli-based unity government of attacking the site.
Haftar's forces said they had carried out air raids in response.
No side has yet claimed the original attack.
On Wednesday evening, Haftar's forces said there had been a "withdrawal of armed groups" after the air raids, without elaborating.
Haftar's spokesman Ahmad al-Mesmari confirmed on Facebook that his forces were in control of the site.
Announcing the resumption of output Thursday, the NOC reported "some minor damage" but said no employees had been harmed.  NOC chairman Mustafa Sanalla condemned the ...

Production resumes at strife-hit Libya oilfield

A bid by Russia to block funding for a new team that will identify culprits behind toxic attacks in Syria failed Thursday with member states at the global chemical watchdog overwhelmingly approving a new budget.
Moscow and its allies were trying to block next year's budget for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons -- a move which would potentially have left the entire agency unable to operate -- if it included money for the new Identification and Investigations Team (IIT).
But 106 member states voted in favour of the new budget on Thursday, broadly seen as a confidence vote in the OPCW's activities, while only 19 countries including Russia and China voted against.
"In light of this result the budget for 2020 is adopted," the Conference of State's Parties chairman said to applause.
The United States earlier accused Russia of a "cover-up" of the use of chemical weapons by its ally Damascus, at a tense annual meeting of the OPCW's 193 member countries in The ...

Russia loses bid to block new Syria chemical weapons probe

A UN envoy on Thursday offered technical expertise to Bangladesh to assess arrangements on an island where the South Asian country plans to shift about 100,000 Rohingya refugees.
Kelly Clements, a deputy high commissioner of the UNHCR, told reporters in Dhaka that the UN wanted to be "engaged" in the proposed refugee relocation, which has been criticised by rights groups.
"We have offered and told the government that we'd like to be engaged and understand better their plans. We have offered our technical experts to come... and assess and see what arrangements have been made," she said.
Nearly a million Rohingya, including some 740,000 who fled a 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state, are now living in squalid camps in Cox's Bazar, southeastern Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has constructed facilities for some 100,000 people on Bhashan Char, an island in the cyclone-prone coastal belt, and says it is ready to shift the refugees from the crowded settlements.
But aid agencies and ...

UN offers to assess Bangladesh's refugee island plan

Europe must help tackle a crisis situation in Greece where roughly 5,000 child migrants live in danger of exploitation and violence, the UN refugee chief said on Thursday.
"There is a children emergency in this country... that needs to be tackled," UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi told reporters after a two-day visit.
Hundreds of migrants arrive on the Greek islands from Turkey every day, adding to roughly 39,000 already housed in island camps and 22,000 more on the mainland.
Last week, the Greek government said it had failed to persuade other EU countries to help host around 3,000 of the children.
"Frankly... if Europe does not feel that it has to share responsibility on children that have no homes, no families and no future, I'm worried about Europe," Grandi said.
Rights groups have criticised Greece's new conservative government for its response to the situation.
The government has sped up asylum procedures and last week unveiled plans to build larger closed camps on the islands, leading 

Europe must help Greece fix child-migrant crisis: UN

Bolivia said Thursday it is restoring diplomatic relations with Israel, which it severed in 2009 under then president Evo Morales over Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Foreign Minister Karen Longaric made the announcement in a meeting with foreign reporters, without giving a date for the establishment or giving any other details.
Morales resigned November 10 and fled to Mexico after a disputed election triggered days of deadly street protests.
He cut off relations with Israel in December 2008 after an Israeli offensive in Gaza in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed. He also classified Israel as a terrorist nation and cancelled an accord under which Israelis could visit Bolivia without a visa.
"It was a political measure that did not take into effect the collateral effects, such as economic and trade issues," said Longaric, adding that restoring these ties would be good for the Bolivian tourism industry.
Bolivia has recognized Palestinian statehood since the 1980s.

Bolivia restores relations with Israel

The ruling Broad Front candidate in Uruguay's presidential election Thursday conceded defeat to Luis Lacalle Pou of the center-right National Party, bringing an end to 15 years of leftist rule.
The trend witnessed in an ongoing vote recount after Sunday's cliffhanger election "isn't changing, and therefore we greet the elected president Luis Lacalle Pou," Daniel Martinez wrote in a tweet.
"We will continue to defend democracy with more force than ever," he added.
The National Party acknowledged victory in a tweet saying: "Now it's our turn, let's celebrate everybody's Uruguay!" The news set off a cacophony of horn blowing in downtown Montevideo by Lacalle Pou supporters.
Martinez refused to concede on Sunday when the election was deemed too close to call by the electoral court, with just 30,000 votes separating the candidates.
The court ordered a recount on the grounds that the number of provisional or contested votes -- around 35,000 -- exceeded the margin between the ...

Ruling party candidate concedes defeat in Uruguay presidential election

Earthquake rescue teams in Albania clung to hope Thursday of finding missing people in "survival pockets" rubble, as the death toll rose to 46 with some entire families found dead beneath their crumbled homes.
The 6.4 magnitude quake, the deadliest in decades, tore down buildings near the Adriatic coast while people were sleeping just before 4:00 am (0300 GMT) on Tuesday.
Experts from around Europe have arrived to help shovel away slabs of collapsed apartments and search beneath the wreckage with dogs and specialised cameras.
In the hard-hit coastal city of Durres, Italian rescue workers on Thursday unearthed the corpses of a mother and three children lying in a bed together beneath the ruins of their flattened home, a witness at the scene told AFP.
Only one member of the Lala family who lived there, a young man rescued on Tuesday, has been pulled out alive.
Four other relatives were earlier found dead at the site of the shattered four-storey building.
Nearby on the perimeter of a ...

Rescuers hold out hope for survivors of Albanian quake

Some 128 Huthi rebels detained in Saudi Arabia were flown to the Yemeni city of Sanaa and released on Thursday, as efforts to end the five-year conflict gain momentum.
The prisoners arrived on three International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) planes and were met inside the airport by rebel commanders and some family members, an AFP correspondent saw.
The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen said earlier this week that it would release 200 Huthi prisoners and also allow patients needing medical care to be flown out of Sanaa airport, which has been closed to commercial flights since 2016.
Riyadh and its allies intervened in the Yemen war in March 2015 to back the internationally recognised government, shortly after the Iran-backed Huthi rebels seized Sanaa.
"The ICRC sees the release as a positive step and hopes that it will spur further releases and repatriations of conflict-related detainees," it said in a statement.
It said the Yemen Red Crescent transferred some of the released 

Huthi prisoners freed in Saudi Arabia, flown to Yemen

Iran said Thursday European parties to the 2015 nuclear deal such as France could not trigger a dispute mechanism in the agreement that could lead to UN sanctions being reimposed.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian raised the possibility Wednesday of invoking the mechanism, but Iran's foreign ministry said this would not be permissible.
The deal "does not allow the European parties to invoke the mechanism as Iran is exercising its legal right in response to the United States' illegal and unilateral actions", ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said, quoted by semi-official news agency ISNA.
The nuclear deal -- known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA -- has been unravelling since May 2018 when the United States unilaterally withdrew from it and began reimposing sanctions on Iran.
The three European countries still party to the deal -- Britain, France and Germany -- have been trying to salvage it.
But their efforts have borne little fruit, and one year ...

Iran: Europeans cannot invoke nuclear deal dispute mechanism

European Space Agency (ESA) members agreed Thursday a record 14.4 billion euros budget, promising to maintain Europe's place at the top table as the United States and China press ahead and industry disruptors such as Elon Musk's Space X present new challenges.
The budget is split, with 12.5 billion euros ($14.1 billion) committed for three years and the full 14.4 billion euros over five, representing an increase of some four billion euros over the previous spending plan.
"Its a surprise, even more than I proposed... this is good," ESA head Jan Woerner told a press conference after ministers from the 22 member states met in Seville for two days.
Woerner said the funding pledges meant the ESA could run a full series of programmes plus additional scientific work, citing moves to increase earth observation as part of efforts, among other things, to monitor climate change.
"It is a giant step forward for Europe," said Jean-Yves Le Gall, head of the French space agency.
Germany made the ...

European Space Agency agrees record 14.4 bn euros budget

A former Yugoslav spy chief who was convicted in Germany for the 1983 murder of a dissident was extradited Thursday to Croatia to serve his 40-year jail term, state-run HRT television reported.
Zdravko Mustac, former head of Yugoslav secret services and a former Croatian intelligence official, arrived at the Zagreb airport aboard a regular flight from Munich, HRT said.
The 77-year-old was transferred to a prison in the Croatian capital.  He was tried in Germany along with Josip Perkovic, a former Yugoslav secret service agent and ex-head of Croatia's military intelligence.
A Munich court sentenced the two men to life imprisonment in 2016 for complicity in the murder of dissident Stjepan Djurekovic.
But Croatian tribunals commuted their sentences as the Balkan country has no provision for life imprisonment.  Perkovic, whose sentence was cut to 30 years in jail, was extradited in July.
The case of the two men had strained Croatia's ties with the European Union, notably Germany, which ...

Germany extradites convicted ex-chief spy to Croatia

David Duckenfield, the police commander at the Hillsborough football stadium disaster, was found not guilty on Thursday of the gross negligence manslaughter of 95 Liverpool fans who were crushed to death.
The families of the victims fought a decades-long campaign to see Duckenfield prosecuted over the 1989 disaster, which was Britain's worst sporting tragedy with an eventual death toll of 96.
But the 75-year-old former officer was cleared by a jury following a six-week trial at Preston Crown Court in northwest England.
Gasps were heard from the public gallery as the jury foreman returned the verdict.
The tragedy happened on April 15, 1989 at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, held at the neutral venue of Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough ground.
The 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death on the standing terrace at the Leppings Lane end of the stadium.
Under the law at the time, Duckenfield was not charged over the death of one victim who died more than a .

Hillsborough disaster commander cleared of manslaughter

The head of the UN refugee agency on Thursday rejected as "offensive" a Guardian report alleging that the organisation was "starving" asylum-seekers in Libya.
"I find that accusation offensive," UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi told reporters in Athens.
"I don't know where you read that report. Us, starving refugees and migrants in Libya? When my colleagues, day in, day out, risk their lives to access people that are often detained by criminal gangs?" he said.
The British daily earlier Thursday said it had seen a document circulated among UN staff saying that UNHCR would "phase out" food catering in a Tripoli centre under its supervision from 31 December.
"After that, the facility will no longer be used as a transit centre, the document said, until the remaining refugees and migrants 'vacate voluntarily'," the daily said.
The Guardian said it had spoken to an aid worker who said "they're just trying to starve them to motivate them to leave" and that hundreds "have apparently been without ...

UN refugee agency denies 'starving migrants' report

Pim Verbeek, the man who guided Australia to the 2010 World Cup, has died from cancer at the age of 63, the Dutch media reported on Thursday.
Verbeek, who spent his entire professional playing career at Sparta Rotterdam before retiring when he was 25, also managed the South Korean and Oman national teams and was assistant coach of the Koreans at the 2002, when they reached the semi-finals, and 2006 World Cups.
Verbeek took over as coach of Australia in 2007, just weeks before the World Cup qualifying began after Dick Advocaat, who had already signed a deal to lead the Socceroos, chose instead to head for Zenit St Petersburg.
Guus Hiddink, who was South Korea coach in 2002, recommended Verbeek who duly took Australia to South Africa in 2010.
They lost their opening game 4-0 to Germany but went on to draw 1-1 with Ghana and beat Serbia 2-1, missing out on the knockout phase on goal difference.
He spent three years as the coach of the Morocco Under-23 team before taking over Oman in ...

AFP

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