The Taliban have announced a 14-member negotiating team ahead of talks this month with US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been meeting with the insurgents to try to end America's longest war.
Mullah Abbas Stanikzai heads the Taliban team announced Monday, which includes five former inmates of the US prison in Guantanamo Bay who were released in 2014 in exchange for a captured American soldier.
The team also includes Anas Haqqani, the jailed younger brother of the leader of the Haqqani network, a powerful Taliban faction.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Haqqani, who is being held in Kabul, "should be released to start work on the negotiating team." The Taliban refuse to meet with the US-backed government in Kabul.

Taliban name negotiating team ahead of new talks with US

PTI Automatic

Thailand and the United States have hosted the opening ceremony for the annual Cobra Gold military exercise, the biggest activity of its type in the Asia-Pacific region with 29 nations taking part as participants or observers.
Seven nations in addition to Thailand and the United States are active participants: Singapore, Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea.
The acting head of the US diplomatic mission in Thailand, Peter Haymond, said at the ceremony Tuesday in northern Thailand that the aim of the exercise, first held in 1982, is to strengthen cooperation and inter-operability.
There are three major components of the exercise, which ends February 22: military field training, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief training.

Thailand and US launch annual Cobra Gold military exercise

Members of the Uighur Muslim ethnic group are calling on China to post videos of their relatives who have disappeared into a vast system of internment camps.
The social media campaign, launched early Tuesday under the hashtag #MeTooUyghur, follows the release of a state media video showing famed Uighur musician Abdurehim Heyit, who many believed had died in custody.
"China, show us their videos if they are alive!" Halmurat Harri, a Finland-based Uighur activist, wrote on Twitter. He urged the government to also release videos to prove that others believed detained are in good health amid reports of neglectful and sometimes brutal conditions in the camps.
China has come under increasing scrutiny for the camps holding an estimated 1 million minority Muslims in its far west Xinjiang region. Former detainees who fled overseas say that while they were held captive, they were ordered to renounce their faith and pledge loyalty to the ruling Communist Party through indoctrination tactics ...

Uighurs to China: Post a video of my missing relatives,

Sheriff's officials say five members of an East Texas family, including a 15-month-old child, have been found dead at the family's home.
Polk County sheriff's officials say two men were found dead inside the house while two women and the infant girl were discovered outside the residence.
Chief Deputy Byron Lyons identified the deceased as Ashley Delaney and husband Randy Horn, as well as Delaney's grandparents, Carlos and Lynda Delaney.
The child's identity hasn't been released, but Lyons says a woman was found safe locked in a bedroom closet. She told investigators that she awoke about 5:30 am.
Monday to a disturbance described as popping noises. She called her son, who alerted authorities about 10:30 am.
Lyons says a firearm was recovered from the house about 75 miles northeast of Houston and that no suspects were being sought. However, he declined to characterise the incident as a multiple homicide and suicide.

5 members of Texas family, including infant, found shot dead

Schools closed across Washington state and the Legislature cancelled all hearings Monday with winter snowstorms pummeling the Northwest again as a larger weather system wreaked havoc in the region and even brought snow to Hawaii.
Seattle's metro area had already been hit by three snow storms this month and the National Weather Service reports that Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has received 20.2 inches (51 centimeters) of snow so far in February, the snowiest month in more than 50 years.
The storm that hit Seattle Sunday dumped up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) of snow. More than 6 inches (15 centimeters) of snow fell on Monday with rain and snow expected Tuesday as a lingering jet stream drives cold arctic air into the normally temperate region, and was part of a larger cycle that has also driven snow as far away as Hawaii.
In the state capital of Olympia, lawmakers cancelled meetings and the University of Washington in Seattle and Washington State University in Pullman called ...

Snow slams Northwest again and even Hawaii gets some

A wildlife monitoring group says Malaysian authorities have seized a record 30 tons of pangolin and pangolin products in eastern Sabah state, the biggest such bust in the country.
The monitoring network Traffic says Sabah police this month uncovered two major pangolin processing facilities, throwing a spotlight on Sabah's role in the sourcing and trafficking of the endangered scaly mammal.
Sabah police said over the weekend they had seized three refrigerated containers containing 1,800 boxes filled with frozen pangolins, another 572 frozen pangolins in separate freezers, 61 live pangolins and 361 kilograms of pangolin scales. A 35-year-old Malaysian has been detained.
Traffic said in a statement received Tuesday that in total, Sabah has been implicated in over 40 tons of pangolin smuggling since August 2017.

Wildlife group: Malaysia seizes record 30-ton pangolin haul

Sibghatullah Mujadidi, who was Afghanistan's first president following the withdrawal of invading Soviet troops from Afghanistan and the collapse in 1992 of Kabul's pro-communist government, has died. He was 93.
His former spokesman Sharif Yusufi says Mujadidi died overnight Tuesday in the Afghan capital.
During the 10-year invasion by the former Soviet Union that ended in 1989, Mujadedi led perhaps the smallest and most moderate of the guerrilla groups, backed by the United States. Its members included former President Hamid Karzai.
Following the collapse of the communist government, Mujadidi served for two months as Afghanistan's president. His successor Burhanuddin Rabbani was to serve for four months, but stayed for four years overseeing a brutal war between rival mujahedeen groups that ended with the Taliban taking power in 1996.

Anti-communist guerrilla who became Afghan president dies

An award-winning Brazilian television news anchor has died in a helicopter crash in Sao Paulo.
TV Band says Ricardo Boechat was en route to a university in the city of Campinas when the helicopter crashed onto a truck on one of Sao Paulo's main highways on Monday. It says the pilot also died.
The 66-year-old Boechat anchored TV Band's main nightly news, as well as hosting a radio program and writing a column for IstoE magazine.
Boechat had won three of Brazil's most prestigious journalism awards for his reports on corruption.

Brazilian TV anchor dies in helicopter crash

A 16-year-old boy was arrested after he briefly took control of a small plane during a short commercial flight over western Alaska, authorities said.
The teen was in the front passenger seat of the Piper Cherokee Six on a recent Yute Commuter Service flight from Napakiak to Bethel, KYUK-AM reported last week.
The flight between the two remote communities usually takes about four minutes.
The teen grabbed the aircraft controls shortly after takeoff, causing the "plane to enter a steep climb and then a dive toward the ground," Alaska State Troopers said.
A woman sitting behind the teen grabbed him around the neck, pulling him away from the controls, authorities said.
The pilot stabilised the aircraft and returned to Napakiak.
An agent for the regional airline contacted the village public safety officer to detain the teen.
He slipped away before the officer could take him into custody, but was arrested the next day in Bethel.
Authorities have not released the teen's name because he is a .

Troopers: Teen arrested for taking control of Alaska flight

A delegation representing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido has meet with Vatican officials as the Holy See weighs a request from socialist President Nicholas Maduro to intervene in the country's political crisis.
The Vatican said Monday that officials from the Secretariat of State expressed Pope Francis' proximity to all Venezuelans who are suffering.
Spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said "the grave concern was underlined that a just and peaceful solution be urgently sought to overcome the crisis, respecting human rights and seeking the good of all of the inhabitants of the country and avoiding bloodshed."
The Vatican didn't say who participated.
Secretariat of State Cardinal Piero Parolin is the Vatican's former ambassador to Caracas.
Maduro has asked the Vatican to help launch talks. Francis has said both sides must request external mediation.

Vatican receives delegation from Venezuela's Guaido

A church official says an American missionary who was a hero in East Timor for founding children's shelters that have operated for more than two decades has been expelled from his Catholic congregation after admitting to sexual abuse of minors.
Media reports about the scandal have stunned East Timorese.
The Bishop of Dili, Virglio do Carmo da Silva, told reporters on Sunday that Richard Daschbach was expelled from the church last year and was no longer a priest.
Daschbach first came to East Timor 1966 when it was a Portuguese colony.
In 1992 he founded "Guide To Life" children's homes in Oe-Kusi Ambeno, an East Timorese enclave in the Indonesian-controlled western half of Timor.
A family member in the US said Daschbach left Oe-Kusi Ambeno last year but later returned.

American priest in East Timor embroiled in abuse scandal

A senior Russian diplomat says Venezuela hasn't asked Russia for military assistance amid the South American country's political crisis.
Alexander Shchetinin, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Latin America department, said Monday that Moscow hasn't received any such request from Caracas, according to Russian news reports.
Asked to compare the situation in Venezuela to Syria, where Russia has waged a military campaign to shore up President Bashar Assad's government, Shchetinin said "there is a big difference" between Syria and Venezuela but wouldn't elaborate.
At the same time, the Russian diplomat strongly warned the US against making calls on the Venezuelan military to drop support for President Nicolas Maduro, saying it represented an "unthinkable meddling into foreign affairs of a sovereign nation.

Russia: Venezuela hasn't asked for military assistance

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Hungary on the first leg of a five-nation European tour on which he'll raise concerns about China and Russia's growing influence in Central Europe.
Pompeo is to meet in Budapest on Monday with Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban to stress the importance of promoting democracy and the rule of law.
Officials say he'll make the case that such steps are key to countering Russian and Chinese efforts to pull Hungary and other countries in the region away from the West.
The officials say Pompeo will point to Central Europe's reliance on Russian energy and the presence of the Chinese high-tech telecom firm Huawei, particularly in Hungary.
The officials weren't authorised to publicly discuss Pompeo's travel and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Pompeo visits Hungary, to raise concerns about China, Russia

Egypt's parliament has rescheduled for this week its vote on proposed changes to the constitution that would allow President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to stay in office well beyond his current term, which ends in 2020.
Parliament spokesman Ahmed Saad el-Din said on Sunday that the legislature would hold the crucial vote on Wednesday, instead of a scheduled meeting on February 17.
The 596-seat assembly had given its preliminary approval to the changes last week.
The motion is near-certain to be overwhelmingly approved by the legislature, which is packed with el-Sissi's supporters, but the amendments would also need to be put to a national referendum to become law.
The proposed amendments also include the introduction of the role of vice president and the reintroduction of a Senate, or upper chamber.

Egypt parliament to vote to extend el-Sissi's rule this week

Authorities say five people have been killed in southern China after an explosion at an illegal fireworks stand.
Reports Sunday say the operator of the stand in the southern region of Guangxi has been formally arrested on the criminal charge of causing an accident through the use of dangerous articles.
Those killed in Tuesday's accident included three children and two adults.
Prosecutors say the stand's operator, identified only by his surname, Zhang, was negligent in storing the fireworks in a pile outside his grocery, leaving them prone to being easily ignited by a spark or stray cigarette.
China has cracked down heavily on the production and sale of fireworks, formerly a major part of celebrations for the Lunar New Year, which this year fell last week.

5 killed in China in Lunar New Year fireworks accident

A Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy after spending eight years on death row in Pakistan has been transferred from a secret location near the capital to another in Karachi, but is still unable to leave the country to join her daughters in Canada, a friend said Saturday.
Aman Ullah, who spoke to Aasia Bibi by telephone Friday, said the 54-year-old Bibi is being held in a room in the southern port city. He said Bibi, who faces death threats by radical Islamists, is frustrated and frightened, uncertain of when she will be able to leave Pakistan.
"She has no indication of when she will leave ... they are not telling her why she cannot leave," said Ullah, who fled the country Friday after receiving threats from extremists angered by his assistance to Bibi, which began while she was on death row.
Ullah has been a liaison between Bibi and European diplomats, who have sought to assist her. The Associated Press spoke to Bibi by telephone with Ullah's assistance following her October ...

Woman acquitted of blasphemy still can't leave Pakistan

Turkey's foreign ministry has called China's treatment of its minority Uighurs "a great cause of shame for humanity."
In a statement Saturday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said it's "no longer a secret" that China has arbitrarily detained more than a million Uighurs in "concentration camps."
He said the Turkic Muslim population faced pressure and "systematic assimilation" in western China.
Aksoy said Turkey has shared with China its position on "all levels" and urged authorities to close the detention facilities and respect human rights.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had once accused China of "genocide" but has since established closer diplomatic and economic relations with Beijing.
China has intensified a security crackdown on Uighurs that was put in place after a bloody 2009 riot. Droves of Uighurs have fled, many traveling to Turkey.

Turkey urges China to respect Uighur rights, close camps

The United States military says it has killed eight al-Shabab extremists with an airstrike in southern Somalia.
A US Africa Command statement says Friday's strike hit near Kobon, not far from the port city of Kismayo.
The US says Kobon has been used to stage attacks against Somali forces. Its statement says no civilians were killed in the airstrike.
The US military has carried out at least a dozen such airstrikes this year in Somalia against the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab, the deadliest Islamic extremist group in Africa.
The United States has dramatically stepped up airstrikes against al-Shabab since President Donald Trump took office. Experts say it will take more than airstrikes to defeat the extremists, who continue to carry out deadly attacks in the Horn of Africa nation and neighboring Kenya.

US says new airstrike in Somalia kills 8 al-Shabab fighters

US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian forces said Saturday they have launched a final push to defeat the Islamic State group in the last tiny pocket the extremists hold in eastern Syria.
Syrian Democratic Forces spokesman Mustafa Bali tweeted that the offensive began Saturday after more than 20,000 civilians were evacuated from the IS-held area in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour. An SDF statement said the offensive was focused on the village of Baghouz.
The SDF, backed by US air power, has driven IS from large swaths of territory it once controlled in northern and eastern Syria, confining the extremists to a small pocket of land near the border with Iraq.
Scores of IS fighters are now besieged in a small area consisting of two villages, or less than once percent of the self-styled caliphate that once sprawled across large parts of Syria and Iraq. In recent weeks, thousands of civilians, including families of IS fighters, left the area controlled by the extremists.
"The decisive battle 

US-backed fighters launch final push to defeat IS in Syria

A French yellow vest protester's hand was ripped apart Saturday during violent clashes in Paris as demonstrators tried to storm the French National Assembly in a 13th consecutive week of unrest.
Police said the injured protester lost four fingers as police swooped in to stop protesters from breaching the parliament's exterior. Police could not confirm French media reports that the demonstrator's hand was blown up by a grenade used to disperse unruly crowds.
As scuffles broke out in front of the National Assembly and French police responded with tear gas, paramedics huddled around the injured protester at the National Assembly gates, providing emergency treatment and stopping bystanders from getting too close.
Police used batons and fired tear gas in Paris to disperse demonstrators, some of whom threw debris at riot police hunkered down.
Fire department spokesman Gildas Lecoeur told The Associated Press that the injured man was taken to a hospital, but he couldn't confirm his current ..

French yellow vest anti-govt protests turn violent in Paris

Syrian opposition activists say Islamic State militants have attacked US-backed fighters near an oil field in the country's east, triggering airstrikes by the US-led coalition.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 12 IS gunmen attacked the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and clashed with them for several hours until most of the attackers were killed early Saturday.
Other activist collectives, including the Step news agency, reported the attack, saying some of the attackers used motorcycles rigged with explosives.
The fighting was concentrated near al-Omar field, Syria's largest.
The SDF, backed by US air power, has driven IS from large swaths of territory it once controlled in northern and eastern Syria, confining the extremists to a small pocket of land near the border with Iraq.

AP

AP

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