Kurdish protesters hurled rocks Friday at Turkish military vehicles in northeastern Syria during a patrol in which one civilian died when he was run over by a personnel carrier.
A small group of people pelted the convoy with rocks and shoes as it drove by near the town of Maabda, close to the Turkish border, AFP correspondents reported.
A young man was run over by one of the large armoured vehicles and rushed to hospital in the town of Derik.
"He died there of internal bleeding," the monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Kurdish villagers have given a similarly tough reception to joint Russian-Turkish patrols in other locations.
Turkish forces and their proxies -- former Syrian rebels hired as a ground force by Ankara -- launched a deadly offensive against Kurdish forces in Syria on October 9.
The push was aimed at seizing a roughly 30-kilometre (20-mile) deep strip of land along the 440-kilometre border between the two countries.
Turkey's defence ministry said ...

Kurds hurl rocks at Russian-Turkish Syria patrol

PTI Automatic

British no-frills airlines EasyJet and Jet2.com on Friday said they had bought UK take-off and landing slots that belonged to collapsed travel group Thomas Cook.
EasyJet has paid GBP 36 million (USD 46 million, 42 million euros) for 12 summer and eight winter slot pairs at London's Gatwick airport -- and for seven slot pairs in total at Bristol airport in western England.
Separately, Jet2.com acquired for an undisclosed amount several slots at Stansted airport, northeast of London, as well as at Birmingham and Manchester airports further north.
EasyJet said it would provide more details of its purchases in the airline's full-year results statement on November 19.
On the deal struck by Jet2.com, its chief executive Steve Heapy said: "The acquisition of these key UK... slots will play an important role in supporting our continued growth at Birmingham, London Stansted and Manchester airports."
Thomas Cook, whose demise in September sparked 22,000 job losses worldwide, had struggled ...

EasyJet, Jet2.com buy Thomas Cook airport slots

Israel's Premier Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that Naftali Bennett would be appointed defence minister and their parties would unite, as the political system remained deadlocked after two inconclusive elections.
Netanyahu, who has so far failed to form a coalition after a September 17 poll, had in the past refused to give the security-oriented Bennett this coveted portfolio.
But wary of his main challenger Benny Gantz attempting to collect the support of 61 lawmakers necessary to form a coalition and become prime minister himself, the incumbent has changed course.
In doing so, he effectively locked in the three lawmakers of Bennett's New Right to his ruling Likud party.
A statement by Likud said that Netanyahu had "offered to appoint (Bennett) as defence minister, and Naftali Bennett accepted the offer".
"Bennett agreed that if a new government is formed" without a third election, "a different person will be appointed defence minister", the statement read.
The two also agreed that ..

Israel PM appoints new defence minister, boosting Likud party

Eager to be reunited with her jailed lover, the girlfriend of Brazilian ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva tweeted "I'm coming for you, wait for me," shortly after a Supreme Court ruling that could free him.
Rosangela da Silva, a 52-year-old sociologist from Sao Paulo nicknamed "Janja," reportedly began dating Lula before he was incarcerated at the federal police headquarters in Curitiba in April 2018.
He is serving a nearly nine-year sentence for corruption and money laundering.  Rosangela da Silva was a weekly visitor at the facility, though Lula reportedly complained that the couple -- friends since the 1990s -- were not given conjugal rights.
Lula, whose wife of more than 40 years died in February 2017, has spoken several times in recent months of his love for "Janja" and his plan to marry her after he is released.
Using the Twitter handle @JanjaLula, da Silva posts frequently about her famous boyfriend.
For his 74th birthday last month, she tweeted a photo of the leftist ...

Lula's lover tweets 'wait for me' after Brazil court ruling

Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth claimed victory Friday in the Mauritius election, with official preliminary results showing his alliance taking a comfortable lead over rivals in the Indian Ocean nation.
With 80 percent of votes counted at 22:00 local time (1800 GMT), projections from the Electoral Commission gave a large lead to a coalition led by Jugnauth, who took the helm of one of Africa's wealthiest countries when his father stepped down in 2017.
Partial results from the state-run commission forecast Jugnauth's centre-right Morisian Alliance will win 38 of 62 possible seats in parliament -- enough to secure the outright majority needed to form government alone.
Jugnauth said he would be prime minister for all Mauritians after claiming to have won a popular mandate in Mauritius, a prosperous archipelago nation that prides itself as a stable democracy in a sometimes volatile neighbourhood.
The 57-year-old leader was hand-picked for the top job when his father quit two years before .

Mauritius premier claims victory in legislative ballot

White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney snubbed demands by House impeachment investigators to testify Friday, claiming immunity as a top aide to President Donald Trump.
As Trump again blasted the probe as "corrupt" and a "witch hunt," Mulvaney rejected a subpoena from the House Intelligence Committee to appear for a closed-door interview.
The brush-off came days ahead of Democrats taking their impeachment investigation public with what promises to be highly contentious open hearings in Congress starting next Wednesday.
The investigation has gathered evidence that Mulvaney was a key player in Trump's alleged extortion of Ukraine to further his personal political goals.
Democrats accuse the president of withholding $391 million in military aid to pressure strategic ally Ukraine into producing damaging information on Trump's Democratic rivals, including former vice president Joe Biden.
Mulvaney, who is also acting head of the White House budget office, allegedly froze the money ..

Top Trump aide snubs impeachment probe subpoena

The father of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Friday he worried his son would die in prison after nine years of "persecution" for daring to reveal US "war crimes".
John Shipton told reporters in Geneva that he had visited his son in a British prison two days ago and needed to "face the bitter truth" that he "may die in jail".
"This is not the bitter disappointment of a father, this is simply fact," he said.  Assange used WikiLeaks to publish classified military and diplomatic files in 2010 about US bombing campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq that proved highly embarrassing to the US government.
Since then, he has been entangled in a web of judicial proceeding, and is currently fighting a US bid to extradite him from Britain on charges filed under the Espionage Act that could land him a sentence of up to 175 years in a US prison.
The 48-year-old whistleblower is currently being held at a top-security British prison since April after police sensationally dragged him out of the ...

Assange 'may die in jail', father warns

The Islamic State group on Friday claimed responsibility for a deadly attack against a Tajik border post this week, but Central Asia watchers cast doubt on the jihadists' claim as well as official Tajik statements on the incident.
"By the grace of Allah the Almighty, the soldiers of the Caliphate attacked a border guard post of the Tajik apostates in the Ishkobod area, near the Tajik-Uzbek border," the IS group said in a statement released online.
Tajik authorities on Wednesday said that fifteen jihadists were killed during an attack on a border post that officials blamed on members of the Islamic State group who crossed over from Afghanistan.
The overnight assault also left a soldier and policeman dead, authorities in the ex-Soviet republic said.
The Islamic State group claimed that its fighters killed 10 soldiers in the clashes.
In a separate statement, Amaq, the IS propaganda agency, said that all the IS attackers were killed but did not specify how many or where they had come ...

IS claims deadly Tajik attack as doubts swirl

A Syria summit will be held in early December between the leaders of Turkey, France, Germany and Britain in London, the Turkish presidency said Friday.
"It was decided to organise this four-way summit on the sidelines of the NATO summit scheduled in London on December 3 and 4," Anadolu state news agency quoted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's advisor Ibrahim Kalin as saying.
Erdogan is expected to sit down with Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson at a time of high tensions in the NATO alliance over Turkey's offensive last month against Kurdish militants, who had been a key ally for the West against the Islamic State group.
Erdogan has accused Western governments of "siding with terrorists" over their NATO ally.
Turkey sees the Syrian Kurdish militants as an off-shoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and is considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and United States.
The Turkish .

Turkey, Britain, France, Germany to hold Syria summit

An Iranian beauty queen sought by Tehran on criminal charges has been granted political asylum in the Philippines, an official said Friday, ending a three-week standoff at Manila airport.
Bahareh Zare Bahari, based in the Philippines since 2014, was denied entry into the Southeast Asian nation on October 17 when she returned from Dubai, with Philippine authorities citing an Iranian warrant for her arrest.
Claiming Tehran wanted to punish her for opposition to Iran's theocratic regime, Bahari then sought refugee status, holed up in a room at Manila's international airport and using social media to rally support from the international community -- including a plea to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
"They will kill me", Bahari told Britain's Telegraph newspaper last month, referring to Iranian authorities.
Philippine Justice Undersecretary Markk Perete told AFP that she had been granted political asylum, adding that she was detained because Iran had asked Interpol for help in ...

Iranian beauty queen wins asylum in Philippines

A landmark trade deal between the EU and Singapore, a major hub for European businesses in Asia, will go into effect on November 21, a statement said on Friday.
Both sides have praised the deal as a strong rebuke to the rising protectionism that has been championed by US President Donald Trump in Washington.
Export powerhouse Singapore is by far the EU's largest trading partner in Southeast Asia, with a total bilateral trade in goods of over 53 billion euros ($59 billion) and another 51 billion euros of trade in services.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker hailed the deal as "a building block towards a closer relationship between Europe and one of the most dynamic regions in the world," a statement said.
S. Iswaran, Singapore's trade minister, said the deal's entry into force "is a strong signal by two like-minded partners on the need to continue upholding open and rules-based trade," Bloomberg reported.
The parties have also agreed an investment protection agreement, ..

EU-Singapore trade deal takes effect November 21

The EU on Friday formally established its first standalone border force, boosting the Frontex service with a new permanent corps that will number 10,000 officers by 2027.
The adoption by EU member states means Frontex -- the border and coast guard agency for the bloc's Schengen area -- will have personnel wearing its uniform and on its payroll who can be deployed to the EU's external borders to handle crises or general management.
Frontex currently has up to 1,500 officers active at any time but they are seconded to the agency by member states for short missions, along with ships and aircraft.
The EU regulation adopted Friday also expands the agency's mandate, which "will allow Frontex to play a bigger role in supporting member states in border control, on returns and in cooperating with third countries," said Maria Ohisalo, interior minister of Finland, which presently holds the EU's rotating presidency.
Frontex, whose headquarters is in Poland's capital Warsaw, has been called on to 

EU establishes standalone border force

British police on Friday named the 39 Vietnamese people who died in a refrigerated truck last month, with the youngest aged just 15 and many of them from the same province.
Ten teenagers including two 15-year-old boys were among the victims whose bodies were found on October 23 in a container in the southeastern English region of Essex.
The majority of victims, 20, were from the central Vietnamese region of Nghe An, with another 10 from Ha Tinh. The victims were from a total of seven different provinces.
One of the youngest was Nguyen Huy Hung, a 15-year-old boy from Nghi Xuan district in Ha Tinh province.
He left his rural village for Britain where his parents both live. His sister, who lives in South Korea, posted on Facebook that her younger brother was missing.
Another victim was Hoang Van Tiep, an 18-year-old from Dien Chau district, Nghe An province, left a year ago for France where he worked as a dishwasher.
On October 21, two days before the truck was found, he wrote to his ...

UK police name 39 Vietnamese in truck deaths

The UN's top court said on Friday it had jurisdiction to hear a case brought by Ukraine accusing Russia of supporting rebels in war-torn eastern Ukraine.
Russia had asked the International Court of Justice in September 2018 to throw out Kiev's case, saying the tribunal had no right to deal with the matter.
Ukraine dragged Russia to the Hague-based court in 2017 saying it had breached a UN convention on the financing of terrorism by funnelling arms and cash to pro-Russian fighters.
ICJ president Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said the court "finds that it has jurisdiction... to entertain the claims made by Ukraine."
Kiev is seeking damages for attacks blamed on the pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine, where more than 13,000 people have died since the war broke out more than five years ago.
These include 298 people killed when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over rebel territory in July 2014.
A Dutch court is due in March 2020 to begin the trial .

Ukraine case against Russia over war can proceed: UN court

Kenya's world reigning 3,000 metres steeplechase champions Conseslus Kipruto and Beatrice Chepkoech say the decision to remove their race from the "core" events in the 2020 Diamond League could hold back their career.
World record-holder Chepkoech, who won the Diamond League for the second time this season and claimed her first world title in Doha, said the move came as a complete surprise.
"It came as a total shocker for me when I heard that the women's steeplechase will not feature in the calendar next season," she told AFP.
"This is the time when I feel I am at the top of my running career.
"But it will come to nothing if I am not able to compete at the Diamond League, which I consider as the most lucrative competition and helps us to develop into well-rounded athletes."
Two-time world champion and Olympic gold medallist Kipruto says the race's omission will hit the development of Kenyan athletics.
"I'm so disappointed that the IAAF has taken such a drastic step to scrap the 3,000m 

Kenyan steeplechase world champions criticise Diamond League omission

Manchester City suffered a huge blow ahead of Sunday's top-of-the-table clash at Premier League leaders Liverpool with goalkeeper Ederson ruled out through injury.
The Brazilian international came off at half-time during Wednesday's 1-1 Champions League draw at Atalanta with a muscular problem.
"He's not able to play," said City manager Pep Guardiola at his pre-match press conference.
City ended that game in Milan with right-back Kyle Walker in goal after Ederson's replacement Claudio Bravo was sent off 10 minutes from time for bringing down Josip Ilicic outside his box.
Bravo endured an error-strewn first season in England back in 2016/17 when City finished third in the Premier League.
The Chilean has been replaced by Ederson as Guardiola's first-choice stopper over the past two seasons as City have won the league.
However, Guardiola rejected suggestions that Bravo will be a liability at Anfield on Sunday.
"We have another top 'keeper," added Guardiola.
"You have to respect this guy. 

Manchester City goalkeeper Ederson to miss Liverpool clash

Midfielders Leon Goretzka and Toni Kroos will return from injury for Germany in their upcoming Euro 2020 qualifiers after Joachim Loew named his squad on Friday.
The Germans will take on Belarus on November 16 before facing Northern Ireland in their final qualifying match three days later.
Loew still has problems to deal with at the back, with defenders Niklas Suele, Antonio Ruediger and Thilo Kehrer all injured and World Cup-winners Jerome Boateng and Mats Hummels still frozen out of the side.
Matthias Ginter, captain of Bundesliga leaders Borussia Moenchengladbach, is in the squad, alongside Freiburg's Robin Koch, who made his international debut last month.
Juventus midfielder Emre Can was named on the list, despite being sent off against Estonia in October while playing as a makeshift centre-half.
Germany can book their spot at Euro 2020 with victory over Belarus, if the Netherlands avoid defeat against Northern Ireland in Belfast on the same day.
The four-time world champions sit 

Goretzka, Kroos back for Germany, Hummels still in the cold

Swedish maritime archeologists have discovered two wrecks believed to be 17th century warships, and at least one is likely the sister ship of the iconic Swedish vessel "Vasa", which sank on its maiden voyage, the Swedish Museum of Wrecks said Friday.
"When I came down as the first diver... I saw this wall 5-6 metres high and I came up and there was a massive warship,"  diver and maritime archeologist Jim Hansson told AFP, adding that "it was a thrilling feeling." The two wrecks were found in the Swedish archipelago outside the town of Vaxholm in a strait leading into Stockholm.
At least one of the ships is believed to be the sister ship Sweden's most famous warship the "Vasa," a 69-metre ship carrying 64 cannons, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1628.
Named after one of Sweden's kings, it was originally meant to serve as a symbol of Sweden's military might but instead capsized after sailing just over 1,000 metres.
Vasa was salvaged in 1961 and is currently on display at the Vasa ...

Centuries old warships linked to 'Vasa' found in Sweden

Rafael Nadal is facing a race against time to be ready for the ATP Finals as he battles Novak Djokovic for the year-end number one ranking, admitting he is struggling with his serve.
The 33-year-old said he was happy to be in London after being forced to pull out of last week's Paris Masters at the semi-final stage with an abdominal strain, but admitted he was not serving at full tilt ahead of his opening match against defending champion Alexander Zverev.
"I need to see how things evolve every single day," he said. "I have good hopes to be 100 percent ready for Monday."
Nadal is bidding to clinch the year-end number one spot in the ATP rankings for a fifth time -- he is currently 640 points ahead of Djokovic ahead of the season-ending tournament in London, starting on Sunday.
The Spaniard, who has never won the ATP Finals despite his trophy-laden career, dethroned Djokovic from the top of the rankings this week.
He has often struggled with injuries towards the end of the season -- ...

Nadal racing to be fit for ATP Finals with No.1 up for grabs

The United States could postpone tariffs on Chinese goods that are scheduled to take effect in December, President Donald Trump's chief trade adviser said Friday, in a sign of a potential progress in fraught negotiations.
"What is on the table is tariffs coming in December, December 15," Peter Navarro told NPR radio. "We would be willing, I think it's up to the president, to postpone those tariffs.

US may postpone China tariffs due in December: Trump adviser

Turkey will start sending foreign jihadists back to their home countries next week, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told state news agency Anadolu on Friday.
"Now we are telling you that we are going to send them back to you. We are starting this on Monday," Soylu said, referring to members of the Islamic State group (IS).
Earlier this week, Soylu said Turkey had nearly 1,200 foreign members of IS in custody, and had captured 287 during its recent operation in northern Syria.
Turkey has criticised Western countries for refusing to repatriate their citizens who left to join IS in Syria and Iraq, and stripping some of them of their citizenship.
It remains unclear whether Turkey will be able to repatriate those who have lost their citizenship.
Although under the New York Convention of 1961, it is illegal to leave someone stateless, several countries, including Britain and France, have not ratified it, and recent cases have triggered prolonged legal battles.
Britain has stripped more ...

AFP

AFP

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