Five women went on trial Monday in an alleged plot to detonate a car bomb in front of Paris' Notre-Dame cathedral when France was battling a wave of Islamist attacks that have killed over 250 people since 2015.
It is the first time women have appeared on charges of jihadist terrorism in an assize court, which handles the most serious crimes in France.
Four of the women risk up to life in prison and the fifth a 30-year sentence for the September 2016 plot at the mediaeval cathedral, which in April 2019 was ravaged by an accidental fire.
A sixth woman is also being tried for not alerting authorities to the planned attack.
The women were arrested after an empty Peugeot 607 sedan was found parked near the bustling square outside Notre-Dame, where a bar employee noticed a gas cylinder in the back seat and alerted the police.
That cylinder was found to be empty but five full cylinders were discovered in the car boot.
Prosecutors say that on the night of September 3-4, Ines Madani and ...

Trial opens for five women in 'plot' to bomb Notre-Dame

PTI Automatic

A massive data breach at Indonesian airline Lion Air that affected millions of customers was the fault of staff at a contractor in India, the airline's Malaysia subsidiary said Monday.
Malindo Air said two former employees of GoQuo accessed and stole the data at the e-commerce company's Indian office.
"The matter has been reported to the police both in Malaysia and India," the airline said in a statement.
Malindo did not provide any further details on the staffers but said that no customer payment details were leaked.
Up to 35 million people had their names, birthdays, addresses and other details stolen in the breach, the Jakarta Post reported.
Malindo said the incident was not related to server host Amazon Web Services.
An auto-reset of all customer passwords has been carried out and security experts have been brought in to review the airline's data systems, the airline added.

Lion Air data leak came from contractor's ex-staff, airline says

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced Monday a probe into "inconsistencies" in laboratory data provided by Russia, raising the possibility of a fresh ban on the country in the build-up to the Tokyo Olympics.
WADA said it had given Russia three weeks to respond after problems with the data came to light.
The revelation opens the door for fresh sanctions against Russia, which was banned from the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics over doping.
"Ensuring the authenticity of the Moscow (laboratory data) was one of the critical conditions imposed by the ExCo for RUSADA to maintain its compliance," said a statement after WADA's Executive Committee meeting in Tokyo.
WADA has previously warned that it would take the "most stringent sanctions" if any of the data was found to have been tampered with.
Russia handed over thousands of files and samples from its Moscow anti-doping laboratory in January, fulfilling a key condition for its reinstatement by WADA last September.
The Russian ...

World sport anti-doping body says to probe Russia 'inconsistencies'

Australia opener Cameron Bancroft is to return to Durham for the 2020 season after impressing during his first spell with the English county side.
The wicketkeeper-batsman, who played in the first two Ashes Tests in August, captained the county in both the County Championship and the One-Day Cup before being called up by Australia.
Durham's director of cricket Marcus North said: "We are delighted to welcome Cameron back to Emirates Riverside for our 2020 season.
"He has had a huge impact on the field with his leadership and undoubted quality through his performances.
"Cameron has also had an impact off the field as an ambassador for the club with a number of community projects."
Durham recruited Bancroft, 26, after he had served a nine-month ban imposed for his involvement in the ball-tampering scandal in South Africa that rocked Australian cricket in 2018.
He scored 726 runs at an average of more than 45 in the County Championship and added 377 more at 94.25 in the one-day ...

Australia's Bancroft to return to Durham for 2020 season

Afghanistan is investigating reports that 40 civilians, including children, were killed in an airstrike during a wedding celebration in southern Helmand province, officials said Monday.
The defence ministry said it would "share the result of the investigation" into the deaths overnight in Musa Qala district, which come less than a week after a drone killed at least nine civilians in Nangarhar province east of Kabul.
Helmand's governor said 14 Taliban fighters and six foreigners "were killed in airstrikes conducted by the Afghan special forces", adding in a statement that authorities were investigating the claims of civilian casualties.
Residents and local officials in Helmand said an evening ceremony, part of a wedding celebration, was underway when security forces launched a ground and aerial operation against suspected militants.
Majeed Akhundzada, a member of the Helmand provinical council, told AFP that both Afghan and foreign forces had been involved in the fighting.
"Some 40 ...

Afghan officials investigate reports of 40 civilians killed in airstrike

The Democratic Republic of Congo will introduce a second Ebola vaccine next month, the World Health Organization said Monday, as a top medical charity accused the UN agency of rationing doses.
DRC's latest Ebola epidemic, which began in August 2018, has already killed more than 2,100 people in the country, making it the second deadliest outbreak of the virus, after the West Africa pandemic of 2014-2016.
Ebola fighters have been hindered by chronic insecurity in the affected provinces of eastern DRC, but much of the controversy surrounding the response has centred on the use of vaccines.
More than 223,000 people living in active Ebola transmission zones have received a vaccination produced by the pharma giant Merck.
WHO has for month been pushing the Kinshasa government to approve the use of a second experimental product, made by Johnson and Johnson, to protect those living outside of direct transmission zones.
The J&J vaccine had been rejected by DRC's former health minister Oly ...

DRC approves use of second experimental Ebola vaccine

Six years after a same-sex marriage law that triggered months of mass protests, French President Emmanuel Macron risks roiling French conservatives again with plans to allow single women and lesbian couples to access fertility treatment.
Under current French law, only heterosexual couples have the right to use medically assisted procreation methods such as in vitro fertilisation, commonly known as IVF.
Lesbians and single women who want to have children often travel abroad to fertility clinics for treatment, a situation they say is discriminatory.
On Tuesday, parliament will start debating a bill that would give all women access to treatments such as IVF and artificial insemination in the face of opposition from conservative political groups and senior Catholic figures.
For lesbian couples, the child's birth certificate would state the names of the "mother and mother" instead of the "mother and father".
It is the first major social reform proposed by Macron's centrist government, and .

Macron moves to extend IVF to lesbians, single women

Set in 2019, cult 80s movie "Blade Runner" envisaged a neon-stained landscape of bionic "replicants" genetically engineered to look just like humans.
So far that has failed to materialise, but at a secretive research institute in western Japan, wild-haired roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro is fine-tuning technology that could blur the line between man and machine.
Highly intelligent, self-aware and helpful around the house -- the robots of the future could look and act just like humans and even become their friends, Ishiguro and his team predict.
"I don't know when a 'Blade Runner' future will happen, but I believe it will," the Osaka University professor told AFP.
"Every year we're developing new technology -- like deep learning, which has improved the performance of pattern recognition," he added.
"Now we're focusing on intention and desire, and if we implement them into robots whether they become more human-like." Robots are already widely used in Japan -- from cooking noodles to helping 

Japan roboticists predict rise of the machines

China voiced support Monday for negotiations between the US and Taliban after Chinese officials met the Afghan militants in Beijing, two weeks after US President Donald Trump called off talks on a proposed deal with the insurgents.
Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China "hopes that the United States and the Afghan Taliban will maintain the momentum of negotiations".
Geng also said Beijing "supports the internal dialogue and negotiations among the Afghans in order to achieve national reconciliation, peace and stability at an early date".
The Taliban said in a tweet that Beijing officials had supported the proposed US-Taliban deal, which could have seen Washington begin withdrawing troops.
Trump called off talks earlier this month following the death of an American soldier in a bomb blast in Kabul.
The Taliban's chief negotiator has since said the group's "doors are open" to resuming dialogue.
Suhail Shaheen, spokesman for the Taliban's political office in Qatar, tweeted that 

Beijing gives support to US-Taliban talks

Nine people have been killed in two attacks in northern Burkina Faso, a region bearing the brunt of a jihadist revolt, officials said on Monday.
"Six people were killed by armed men overnight Saturday at Pissele, near Bourzanga," a security official said.
Bourzanga is located about 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Djibo, a hotspot for jihadist attacks.
A local administrative official said three people "were shot dead in the village of Bool-Kiiba," and their bodies were found after the assailants left.
Others were unaccounted for, the official said, adding that the attackers also looted possessions, including motorbikes.
A security official confirmed that an attack on Bool-Kiiba had taken place but was unable to give a toll.
Burkina Faso has become part of a seven-year-old jihadist insurgency in the poor, fragile Sahel region.
More than 580 people have been killed since early 2015, according to an AFP toll.
Many of the attacks have been attributed to groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda, and 

Nine killed in two attacks in Burkina Faso

France's medicines watchdog joins pharmaceutical firm Servier in the dock Monday on fraud and negligence charges linked to the deaths of hundreds of people who were prescribed a diabetes pill for weight loss despite safety concerns.
At least 500 people are thought to have died of heart valve problems in France after taking the drug Mediator, in a major health scandal that was the subject of a 2016 French movie called "150 Milligrams".
The film is based on the work of real-life pulmonologist Irene Frachon who was instrumental in bringing the alleged wrongdoing to light through her campaigning and investigation.
She is expected to testify against the company and the medicine, which was on the market for 33 years and was used by about five million people.
Experts have projected it may cause as many as 2,100 deaths in the long term.
The criminal trial against Servier, nine subsidiaries, and the ANSM medicines watchdog -- known at the time as Afssaps -- is expected to last six months.
It ..

French drugmaker, watchdog on trial over weight loss pill deaths

Zimbabwe's founding president Robert Mugabe had "advanced cancer" when he died in hospital in Singapore on September 6, the state-owned newspaper reported on Monday.
The former guerilla leader, who died aged 95, came to power at the end of white minority rule in 1980 and ruled Zimbabwe uninterrupted for 37 years and seven months.
He was toppled on November 2017 in a military-backed coup, ending an increasingly iron-fisted rule marked by political oppression and economic ruin.
Mugabe's health deteriorated rapidly after the ousting and he made regular trips to Singapore to seek treatment.
"Mugabe had advanced cancer, and had to be taken off chemotherapy treatment because it was no longer effective," said The Herald on Monday.
The information was revealed by President Emmerson Mnangagwa during an address to party supporters in New York on Saturday, according to the paper.
"Doctors had stopped treatment... because of age and also because the cancer had spread and it was not helping ...

Mugabe died of cancer, says Zimbabwe media

Turkey said Monday it would support local businesses impacted by the collapse of British tour operator Thomas Cook, adding that 21,033 of its customers were currently in the country.
"The tourism and finance ministries are working on a 'credit support package' to be put in place as soon as possible to help (affected) businesses," the tourism ministry said on Twitter.
Antalya in Turkey was one of Thomas Cook's top destinations, along with Bodrum and Dalaman.
The 178-year-old British operator failed to get a last-ditch rescue deal over the weekend and declared bankruptcy on Monday, leaving 600,000 tourists stranded worldwide.
Some 150,000 of those passengers are Britons seeking help from London to return home.

Turkey to back businesses hit by Thomas Cook collapse

Seven children died and scores were injured early Monday when a school building collapsed in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, a government spokesman said, in an accident blamed on shoddy construction.
"So far we can confirm that we have seven fatalities and 57 others are in hospital," government spokesman Cyrus Oguna said at the scene.
Hundreds of angry residents of Dagoretti, a poor suburb where many live in makeshift homes, swarmed around the site where rescuers picked through the rubble.
"Seven pupils dead, several injured after a classroom collapsed at (the Precious) Talent Academy in Dagoretti," St John Ambulance, whose teams were deployed in search and rescue, wrote on Twitter.
An AFP reporter at the site said books and desks were strewn through the debris of the two-storey building, a semi-permanent structure made of concrete, iron sheeting and timber.
"I had just dropped my son to school, and heard screams on my way back, and that is when I found people assisting them out to ...

Seven children killed, scores hurt in Kenya school collapse

Condor, the German airline subsidiary of British travel giant Thomas Cook, said Monday it would continue flying even after its parent company declared bankruptcy.
Underlining that it had been "profitable for many years," the airline added that "to prevent liquidity bottlenecks at Condor, it has applied for a state-guaranteed bridging loan" which is being examined in Berlin.
"We're continuing to concentrate on what we do best: flying our guests safely and punctually to their holidays," said managing director Ralf Teckentrup.
Thomas Cook declared bankruptcy Monday after failing to secure a last-ditch rescue deal worth 200 million pounds ($250 million, 227 million euros) from private investors to avert collapse.
Some 600,000 tourists are reportedly stranded worldwide, with the British government hiring planes to fly home some of its roughly 150,000 affected citizens.
The fall of the 178-year-old operator will put around 22,000 people worldwide out of a job.
It has long struggled against .

Thomas Cook airline Condor says to keep flying

Li Na, who blazed a trail for a generation of women tennis players in China, says the country's men are now in desperate need of an inspirational role model.
Li sparked unprecedented interest in tennis across China after becoming Asia's first Grand Slam singles champion at 2011 French Open. She retired in 2014 after adding a second major at that year's Australian Open.
There are currently four Chinese women in the world's top 50. By contrast the country's top-ranked male, the unheralded Bai Yan, is 222nd on the ATP Tour rankings.
"I wish to see the men's side do well. That would be great," Li told reporters at the WTA Tour's Wuhan Open in her home city this week, where a special ceremony was held to celebrate her induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
"I think for the men's side, they need one player to grow up and show everyone 'I can make it' and give confidence for other young athletes." That could be a male version of herself, it was suggested. "Yes," Li smiled.
At .

Former tennis great Li Na says China crying out for male star

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson accused Tehran of being behind attacks on Saudi oil installations, in remarks to reporters en route to New York where he will meet with Iran's president.
"I can tell you that the UK is attributing responsibility with a very high degree of probability to Iran for the Aramco attacks," he said, cited by Britain's Press Association news agency on Monday.
He is due to meet with President Hassan Rouhani at the UN General Assembly in New York.
He will also discuss the attacks at a joint meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"We think it very likely indeed that Iran was indeed responsible for using both UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), both drones and cruise missiles," Johnson told reporters.
"Clearly the difficulty is, how do we organise a global response? What is the way forward? And we will be working with our American friends and our European friends to construct a response that tries to de-escalate tensions 

UK's Johnson says Iran behind attacks on Saudi oil sites

Fresh unrest broke out in Indonesia's restive Papua region Monday as protesters burned down a government office and other buildings in Wamena city, according to an AFP reporter.
Houses and stores also went up in flames as hundreds took to the streets, while another demonstration erupted in the provincial capital Jayapura, where security forces fired warning shots above stone-throwing protesters at a university, according to another AFP reporter.
Monday's protests in Wamena -- mostly involving high schoolers -- were allegedly sparked by racist comments made by a teacher, according to Indonesia's Kompas.com.
Police said the situation was under control in Wamena, as an AFP reporter there said internet services had been cut.
"The army and police have successfully handled the incident in Wamena," said National Police spokesman Dedi Prasetyo.
"Security forces have also taken steps to prevent the riots from spreading," he added.
The latest unrest comes as Papua -- on the western half of New .

Buildings torched as fresh unrest erupts in Indonesia's Papua

Seven children died and others were injured when their classroom collapsed on Monday morning in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, medics said.
"Seven pupils dead, several injured after a classroom collapsed at Previous Talent Academy in Dagoretti," St John Ambulance -- whose rescuers were involved in the search and rescue -- wrote on Twitter.
Hundreds of angry residents of Dagoretti -- a poor area where many live in makeshift houses -- swarmed around the site where rescuers picked through the rubble of the classroom.
"Seven have lost their lives, it is very unfortunate," area police chief George Seda.
"We have others in hospital.

Seven children killed in Nairobi classroom collapse: medics

China's Fosun Group, which had led a last-ditch bid to rescue British travel firm Thomas Cook from bankruptcy, on Monday said it was "disappointed" that the effort had failed.
"Fosun is disappointed that Thomas Cook Group has not been able to find a viable solution for its proposed recapitalisation with other affiliates, core lending banks, senior noteholders and additional involved parties," Fosun said in a statement to AFP.
"Fosun confirms that its position remained unchanged throughout the process, but unfortunately other factors have changed."
"We extend our deepest sympathy to all those affected by this outcome."
Thomas Cook declared bankruptcy on Monday after the rescue effort fell through, triggering the UK's biggest repatriation since World War II to bring back stranded passengers.
Thomas Cook had announced last month that Fosun, which was already the biggest shareholder, would inject 450 million pounds (USD 560 million) into the business.
In return, the Hong Kong-listed ...

Top shareholder Fosun 'disappointed' over Thomas Cook collapse

Australia has lifted a temporary ban on controversial live sheep exports, with the first ship due to depart for the Middle East this week with about 60,000 animals on board.
The live export trade has been under scrutiny since horrific footage of dead and dying heat-stressed sheep on vessels bound for the Middle East was released in April 2018, prompting a public outcry and forcing sweeping reforms to the industry.
Though the government resisted calls to outlaw the practice entirely, a review led to a temporary embargo on live exports during the northern-hemisphere summer from June to September this year.
Rural Export and Trading WA, an exporter, said the ship is due to leave Fremantle, in Western Australia state, for Kuwait by Tuesday.
It is expected to be the first of many to depart in the coming months, much to the chagrin of animal welfare campaigners.
New guidelines introduced in 2018 required exporters to significantly increase cargo space for sheep and to ensure independent ...

AFP

AFP

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