The mayor of South Africa's biggest city Johannesburg resigned on Monday, saying he was stepping down from the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) over the party's approach to racial inequality.
When Herman Mashaba was elected in 2016, he became the city's first mayor not from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) since apartheid ended in 1994.
The 60-year-old millionaire, who made his fortune in black hair products, was one of the most senior politicians in the pro-business DA, long considered a party for middle-class white people.
But on Monday he quit the DA, which means he can no longer serve as mayor.
"I cannot reconcile myself with a group of people who believe that race is irrelevant in the discussion of inequality and poverty in South Africa," Mashaba told a press conference in Johannesburg.
He said his decision was sparked by the election of former DA leader Helen Zille as the party's federal council chairperson at the weekend.
The DA has been engulfed by a power ...

Johannesburg mayor quits over party's approach to racial inequality

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Thailand's King Maha Vajiralongkorn has stripped his 34-year-old consort of all titles, the palace announced Monday, a shock move less than three months after she was bestowed with a position that had not been used for nearly a century.
Former army nurse Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi was dismissed from the rank of "Chao Khun Phra" for "disloyalty to the king," the Royal Gazette said, as well as "acting against the appointment of the Queen (Suthida)... for her own ambitions.

Thai king strips 'disloyal' royal consort of all titles: palace

France believes an additional delay to Britain's exit from the EU is "in nobody's interest," a government spokeswoman said Monday, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson seeks support from MPs for a new divorce deal.
"It's now up to the British parliament to say what it thinks, it's no longer up to the European Union," Sibeth Ndiaye told journalists after a cabinet meeting.
"So a vote needs to be taken on the heart of the matter, not just stalling tactics to gain time," she said.

French govt says new Brexit delay 'in nobody's interest'

Afghans should not misconstrue America's sudden, contentious and near-total withdrawal from parts of Syria as a precursor to a similar move in Afghanistan, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Monday.
The US last week announced the withdrawal of 1,000 American troops from northeast Syria, days after Turkey launched an offensive against the previously US-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers a terrorist group.
The move provoked outrage from observers and even members of President Donald Trump's Republican Party, who saw the sudden withdrawal as a betrayal of the same Kurdish fighters the US had been training and arming for years to fight Islamic State jihadists in Syria.
Speaking at NATO's Resolute Support mission headquarters in Kabul, Esper said America maintains a "longstanding commitment" to Afghanistan, which it invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban, and noted US policy direction for the country is completely different.
"All these things should ...

No Syria-type pullout planned for Afghanistan: Pentagon chief

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has handed his long-ruling predecessor significant control over key appointments, a state website said Monday, amid rumours of tensions in the Central Asian country's leadership.
Tokayev, 66, became president after the shock resignation in March of Nursultan Nazarbayev, 79, who spent three decades in power and is still viewed as Kazakhstan's top decision-maker.
An October 9 presidential order published on the state website of official legal acts, says the president should consult Nazarbayev before appointing heads of state organs and ministers except those holding the foreign, interior and defence portfolios.
The powerful Committee for National Security (KNB), a successor to the Soviet-era KGB, is among the agencies whose head can now only be appointed with consent from Nazarbayev.
Tokayev's presidential website had not reposted the presidential order on Monday afternoon.
Nazarbayev is chairman of both the national security council and the ruling 

Kazakh president hands key powers to predecessor Nazarbayev

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees is waiting anxiously on the outcome this month of a probe into alleged mismanagement that has dented its already severely depleted funding, one of its top officials said Monday.
The UN Relief and Works Agency hopes the results of the investigation will enable it to get past the scandal that has worsened a cash crunch threatening the school and health services it provides to five million Palestinians.
UNRWA's director for West Bank operations Gwyn Lewis told AFP in Brussels: "We're waiting with bated breath because it obviously has financial implications."
She said the conclusions of the probe are expected to be delivered "around the end of October" to UN chief Antonio Guterres, who would then issue public and internal "follow-up steps".
The timing is crucial as the agency's three-year mandate is up for renewal this month, and money is tight.
UNRWA has been skating on very thin financial ice since last year, after US President Donald Trump decided 

Cash-strapped UN agency on tenterhooks over probe

Czech police and intelligence services said on Monday they had busted a Russian espionage network operating through its Prague embassy.
It was allegedly set up to attack Czech and foreign targets through computer servers.
"The network was completely destroyed and decimated," Michal Koudelka, head of the Czech Republic's BIS intelligence service, said in parliament, quoted by the Czech CTK news agency.
He said it was part of another chain created by Russia in other European countries, without naming them.
"It was created by people with links to Russian intelligence services and financed from Russia and the Russian embassy," Koudelka said.
The National Organised Crime Centre (NCOZ), which helped bust the network, refused comment when contacted by AFP, citing ongoing criminal proceedings in the matter.
In September, the Czech intelligence agency NUKIB said Russia and China posed the biggest threat to cybersecurity in the Czech Republic, an ex-communist country that joined NATO in ...

Czech police, intelligence bust Russian spy network

Lebanon's teetering government met Monday to approve a belated economic rescue plan as thousands gathered for a fifth day of mass protests against the ruling elite.
A proposed tax on mobile messaging applications last week sparked a spontaneous, cross-sectarian mobilisation that has brought Lebanon to a standstill and put the entire political class in the dock.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in central Beirut and other cities Sunday to demand better living conditions and the ouster of a cast of politicians who have monopolised power and influence for decades.
Euphoric crowds partied deep into the night, leaving all political and sectarian paraphernalia at home to gather under the national cedar flag, dancing to impromptu concerts and chanting often hilarious anti-establishment slogans.
Lebanon's economy has been on the brink of collapse for some time and the initial grievances of the protesters were over proposed tax hikes.
But the demonstrations have evolved into a ...

Lebanon government in 11th-hour reform drive as protests swell

Newspapers across Australia ran heavily redacted front pages on Monday in protest against government secrecy and a crackdown on press freedom, a rare show of unity in a fractious media landscape.
National and regional mastheads including The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review hit newsstands Monday with most of their front-page news stories blacked out.
Advertisements have also been rolled out across the country's television networks, asking viewers to consider the question: "When the government hides the truth from you, what are they covering up?"
The campaign by the Right to Know coalition was sparked by federal police raids on the national broadcaster ABC and a News Corp journalist's home earlier this year over two stories that had proved embarrassing for the government.
It centres on six demands, including exemptions for journalists from strict national security laws that have created a complex web of provisions critics say too easily ensnare .

Australian papers censor front pages in press freedom campaign

Thousands protested against police across Bangladesh on Monday, a day after at least four people died when officers fired on a crowd in one of the country's deadliest religious riots to date.
Some 20,000 Muslims called for the execution of a young Hindu man on Bhola island Sunday for writing Facebook messages that allegedly defamed the Prophet Mohammed, with police saying they opened fire after rocks were thrown at officers.
Four people died and nearly 50 were injured, with at least seven in a critical condition in hospital.
Mob attacks over online posts perceived to be blasphemous have emerged as a major headache for security forces in Bangladesh, where Muslims make up some 90 percent of the country's 168 million people.
The deaths sparked a new round of protests late Sunday and on Monday as thousands of Muslims across several cities shouted slogans and called for the officers involved to be put on trial.
"This is not acceptable. Police have illegally and unconstitutionally opened ...

Thousands protest against Bangladesh police after deadly shootings

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday lashed out at Western states, accusing them of "standing by terrorists" in failing to support Turkey's operation against Syrian Kurdish fighters.
"Can you imagine the whole West stood by the terrorists and all attacked us including NATO member states and European Union countries?" Erdogan said in Istanbul.
"Since when did you start to side with terror? Did PYD-YPG (Syrian Kurdish forces) join NATO and we do not know about it?" he asked.
Ankara says the YPG is a "terrorist" offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.
The PKK is blacklisted as a terror group by Ankara, the US and the EU.
Ankara's military action against Kurdish forces who played a key role in the fight against the Islamic State group has drawn widespread international criticism and prompted some NATO countries to suspend new arms sales.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has repeatedly voiced "serious 

Erdogan accuses the West of 'standing by terrorists' in Syria

Voting began in Canada's general election Monday, with surveys predicting a minority government as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party risks losing its majority or even being toppled from office.
Polls opened at 1100 GMT in the provinces of Labrador and Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, the first of the country's six time zones. Polls will be open in far western British Columbia until 0200 GMT Tuesday, although the first results are expected from 2300 GMT.

First polls open in Canada's general elections

Chinese authorities have detained a Japanese man in Beijing, Tokyo confirmed Monday, following media reports that a university professor was being held on suspicion of spying.
"The Japanese embassy in China confirmed that a Japanese man in his 40s was detained by Chinese authorities in Beijing in September for (allegedly) violating Chinese laws," Japan's top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters.
He did not specify the charges against the man, but Japanese media have identified him as a professor from Hokkaido University who was held on suspicion of spying.
The man, who has not been named, worked previously for the National Institute for Defense Studies in the defence ministry and the Japanese foreign ministry, according to local media reports.
"Within the framework of protecting Japanese expatriates, we are holding meetings between (the man and) consuls and communicating with his family members, but we decline to comment on further details given the nature of this case," 

Japan says citizen held in China after alleged spying reports

The deadline for the withdrawal of Kurdish fighters from areas in northeastern Syria expires at 1900 GMT Tuesday, a Turkish military source said, as part of a 120-hour suspension agreed between Ankara and Washington.
"It started at 10pm Thursday... so it finishes at 10pm Tuesday," the source said.
Following the withdrawal, Turkey wants to set up a 120-kilometre (75-mile) "safe zone" between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain, they added, saying this will then be extended to 444 kilometres.

US-Turkey deadline on Syria expires 1900 GMT Tuesday: Turkish military source

Former world number one Andy Murray was rewarded for his victory in Antwerp at the weekend, with another dramatic rise in the ATP rankings which were released on Monday.
The Scotsman, who is on the comeback trail after career-saving hip surgery, climbed 116 places to 127 following his 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 win over Stan Wawrinka -- his first title in two years.
Murray, who has won three Grand Slam titles and spent 41 weeks at number one from November 2016 to August 2017, saw his ranking slip as low as 839 in July 2018 as his injured hip threatened to end his career.
At the end of September he was ranked down at 503, meaning he has climbed 376 places in three weeks.
He is now expected to take a break as his wife waits for the birth of their third child.
Novak Djokovic remains at number one, the 273rd week in his career that he holds the top spot, with Rafael Nadal just 320 points behind.
The only change in the top 10 sees the Japanese Kei Nishikori climbing one place from nine to eight with ...

Murray rise continues after Belgian triumph

French investigators have wrapped up their probe into the jihadist attacks that killed 130 people on a single day in Paris four years ago, prosecutors said Monday, paving the way for trial.
Prosecutors will now have a month to present their case to judges, who will then decide on a trial date.
Fourteen people have been charged over the November 13, 2015, attacks in which nine jihadists armed with assault rifles and explosives struck outside the national stadium during a France-Germany football match, and later at streetside cafes and the Bataclan concert hall.
Ninety people were killed at the Bataclan alone, and more than 350 wounded overall.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the killings, in which eight of the attackers died, seven in their own suicide bombings.
Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving suspected participant in the attacks, was arrested in Brussels and is being detained in France with 10 other people pending trial, which is unlikely to start within the next 

Probe into 2015 Paris jihadist attacks wraps up

Spain will remove the remains of dictator Francisco Franco from a grandiose state mausoleum northwest of Madrid on October 24, the government announced on Monday.
The long-awaited date was announced after Spain's Supreme Court last month overruled a string of objections from his family, who had tried to halt the exhumation.
On Thursday, the remains will be relocated to Mingorrubio El Pardo, a state cemetery 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the capital, and placed next to those of his wife.
"The exhumation and reburial (of his remains) will be done in an intimate manner with his family present," Justice Minister Dolores Delgado said in a statement.
Franco, who ruled with an iron fist following the end of the 1936-39 civil war, is buried in an imposing basilica carved into a mountain in the Valley of the Fallen, 50 kilometres (30 miles) outside Madrid.
Moving Franco's remains has been a priority for the Socialist government of Pedro Sanchez, which has said Spain should not "continue to 

Spain to exhume Franco's remains on October 24: govt

Chile is "at war", President Sebastian Pinera said Sunday, as the country reels from three days of violent demonstrations and looting that have left seven dead and almost 1,500 detained in the worst outbreak of social unrest in decades.
"We are at war against a powerful, implacable enemy, who does not respect anything or anyone and is willing to use violence and crime without any limits," Pinera told reporters after an emergency meeting with army general Javier Iturriaga, who has been placed in charge of order and security in the capital.
Santiago and nine other of Chile's 16 regions were under a state of emergency, Pinera confirmed late Sunday, with troops deployed onto the streets for the first time since Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship between 1973-1990.
The clashes, which have seen some 9,500 police and military fire tear gas and water cannon against protesters who have set fire to buses, smashed up metro stations and ransacked shops, were sparked by anger over price ...

Chile extends state of emergency as protest death toll hits seven

From shades of startling red to hues of vivid tangerine, brightly coloured beards have become a fashion statement on the streets of Bangladesh capital Dhaka.
Facial hair of sunset tones is now the go-to look for older men wanting to take off the years, with an array of henna options available to the style-conscious.
"I have been using it on my hair for the last two months. I like it," says Mahbubul Bashar, in his 50s, whose smile reflected his joy at his new look.
Abul Mia, a 60-year-old porter at a local vegetable market, agrees that the vibrant colouring can be transformative.
"I love it. My family says I look a lot younger and handsome," he adds.
While henna has been used widely in the country for decades, it has reached new heights of popularity. It is now virtually impossible to walk down a street in a Bangladesh city without seeing a coloured beard.
Orange hair -- whether it's beards, moustaches or on heads -- is everywhere, thanks to the popularity of the coloured dye produced .

Orange is the new grey for Bangladesh beards

Leading US pharmaceutical companies go on trial Monday charged with stoking the opioid epidemic that has ravaged communities and left hundreds of thousands dead or overdosed across the country.
Tens of billions of dollars is at stake after last-minute efforts failed to agree a settlement between the companies and the states, counties, towns and native American tribes who have brought massive civil lawsuit.
The trial could be the most costly since litigation against tobacco companies in the 1990s, which showed cigarette companies cynically hiding and exploiting the dangers of tobacco for profits.
The plaintiffs in the first federal lawsuit in the opioid addiction crisis say manufacturers and distributors knew the dangers of the highly addictive painkillers they pumped into communities in the past 15 years, ignoring warning signs as they reaped billions in profits.
The trial in Cleveland, Ohio, pits 2,300 plaintiffs against giants of the pharmaceutical world including drug distributors .

AFP

AFP

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