Ireland president signs first Irish abortion bill into law

DUBLIN - Ireland's head of state has signed the country's first bill on abortion into law, legalizing the practice in exceptional cases where doctors deem a woman's life at risk.

President Michael D. Higgins surprised some analysts on Tuesday by signing the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill rather than referring it to Ireland's Supreme Court to determine its constitutionality.

The new law does amend the constitution's ban on abortion, so anti-abortion activists are likely to pursue a Supreme Court challenge.

The law permits abortions to alleviate life-threatening conditions, including a woman's own threat to commit suicide if refused a termination.

Until now, Ireland's only legislation on abortion was a handed-down British law from 1867, outlawing the practice with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The new maximum sentence is 14 years.

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Italy's top court begins Berlusconi case hearing

ROME: Italy's supreme court heard on Tuesday Silvio Berlusconi's last appeal against a jail sentence and ban from public office for tax fraud in a case which could threaten the survival of the shaky coalition government.

If five top judges hand down the first definitive conviction to the four-times prime minister in dozens of court cases against him, it will mark the end of two decades in which he has dominated politics through his media power and political skill.

It could also plunge the government - an uneasy coalition of Enrico Letta's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) - into crisis and bring renewed uncertainty to the euro zone third's largest economy, with potential fallout right across the bloc.

The judges called a one-hour lunch adjournment on Tuesday after one of them delivered a summing up of the legal arguments and the judgements from two lower courts. After the break public prosecutor Antonello Mura will present his case.

Berlusconi's chief lawyer, Franco Coppi, told journalists it was very unlikely the court would reach a decision on Tuesday because of other cases facing the judges. Experts say it could take as long as Thursday.

Coppi also said the defence would not request that the case be postponed until September - one possible outcome - although the judges might decide to do that on their own account.

Moderate politicians have urged the court to delay the ruling for the sake of political stability, due to the uncertain consequences if Berlusconi is convicted.

The judges of the Court of Cassation are hearing a final appeal by the 76-year-old media magnate against a four-year jail sentence, commuted to one year under an amnesty, and a five-year ban from office handed down by lower courts for the fraudulent purchase of broadcasting rights by his Mediaset media empire. Three other people were also convicted in the case.

If definitively convicted, Berlusconi would not normally go to prison because of his age but would have to do community service or serve his sentence at home.

Berlusconi accuses leftwing magistrates of abusing their powers to try to bring him down in more than two dozen court cases since he stormed to power for the first time in 1994.

The case was fast-tracked to be heard by a special summer session of the supreme court to avoid part of any sentence being annulled by the statute of limitations.

Although they are waiting for a signal from Berlusconi, PDL hawks have called for everything from a mass resignation of its government ministers to blocking Italy's motorways if the court rules against him.

Fabrizio Cicchitto, a senior PDL parliamentarian, said the media magnate had faced 30 trials. "If this is not a political use of justice what is?"

The departure of Berlusconi from parliament if he is convicted would also raise major questions about the future of his party, which depends on his charisma and wealth.

A greater risk to the government could come from Letta's faction-ridden PD, with many members already deeply unhappy about being in a coalition with their old enemy. Some may refuse to continue if he is found guilty.

CHAOTIC

However, both President Giorgio Napolitano, who dragged the parties into a coalition in April after a two-month crisis that followed inconclusive elections, and Letta himself are adamant that Italy cannot afford more instability as it struggles to climb out of its worst postwar recession.

Both major parties may be reluctant to precipitate an election that might produce an even more chaotic result than the February vote in which the populist 5-Star Movement of comedian Beppe Grillo surged to prominence.

Berlusconi has kept his party hawks on a tight leash for months, saying the government must continue. Political sources say this stance was influenced by his lawyers, keen to avoid upsetting the supreme court judges. The mercurial magnate's reaction if he is found guilty is uncertain.

Berlusconi's lawyers have filed 50 objections to the supreme court, which will rule only on legal procedure and whether the lower appeals court properly justified its sentence.

The court has three choices: convict Berlusconi, acquit him or send the case back to the appeals court due to legal errors.

Even if Berlusconi is found guilty, the ban from holding public office depends on a vote by his peers in the Senate which could take weeks or months.

The scandal-plagued mogul is also appealing in a lower court against a seven-year jail sentence in June for abuse of office and paying for sex with Moroccan-born nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug, alias "Ruby the Heartstealer", when she was underage.

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Kerry's mystery trip to Pakistan in offing

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State John Kerry may visit Pakistan this week -- or he may not. Or he may not visit but say he will. Or he may visit and wish he had not. Or wish he did, but may not. It's all a part of the comical/farcical engagement between Washington and Islamabad that has plumbed ludicrous levels.

High-level US visits to Pakistan are a high-wire act, involving not just diplomatic sensitivities between the two sides that are at war in all but formal declaration, but also deep security concerns for visiting VIPs. Between bomb blasts, prison breaks, natural disasters, the ritual killing of minorities, and Pakistan's own foreign engagement priorities (where China and Saudi Arabia rank at 1 and 2), it's tough to get a clear window in which the US can engage Pakistan.

Then there is always the drone factor -- any visit will have to be squeezed in between two drone strikes. Although they are now reduced to less than one per week, it's still a tight window, not to speak of the awkwardness that comes with the denials and obfuscation from both sides on the drone issue.

Pakistan says it is against drone strikes and wants it stopped. Increasingly and vehemently, Pakistan's foreign office has begun protesting such attacks. But US keeps leaking cables and information suggesting Pakistan has privately acquiesced to the strikes and is making a pretense of its public protests. Pakistan says that is not true. The Americans say that is true which is why the drones are not being shot down. No one knows the exact truth in this smoke and mirror exercise.

No public statement emerging from the two capitals can be taken at face value. The US had announced that President Obama would visit Pakistan in 2011 after Islamabad went into a sulk over his visit to India in 2010. The White House even issued a statement saying, ''The president explained (to visiting Pakistani officials who complained about the unequal treatment) that he would not be stopping in Pakistan during his trip to Asia next month, and committed to visiting Pakistan in 2011.''

But 2011 came and went, as did 2012, without any presidential visit, even though Obama came within sniffing distance, to Kabul, in May 2012. Meantime, even vice-president Biden came to the region but did not stop by in Pakistan. Compounding all this, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is again visiting Washington in September, in a further signal that the US has removed Pakistan from the US-India ambit.

Orphaned thus by its principle patron, Pakistan has been spitefully leaking details of a proposed Kerry visit -- kept secret for security reasons -- forcing the State Department to repeatedly postpone the trip. This happened again over the weekend.

Between the scheduling spat, neither side has been able to identify any precise deliverables from such as visit. Pakistan does not even have a full-fledged foreign minister after Hina Rabbani Khar; Sartaz Aziz is the acting foreign minister, nor a full-time ambassador in Washington. Even if it did, Washington understands that it is the Pakistani military that calls the shots which is why Kerry has interacted mostly with Army chief Kayani on the outcomes from the trilateral talks over Afghanistan.

It's all one awful mess, and Kerry, who has devoted immense amount of energy for a breakthrough in the Middle-East (to where he has made some half-dozen trips since becoming secretary of state, seems to have little time for Pakistan, which the US has previously said is the most dangerous country in the world. If and when he visits this red-flagged state -- possibly in a wig and dark glasses -- the world might not know till he gets in, or even till he gets out.

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Israel and Palestinian teams leave for US talks

JERUSALEM: Israeli and Palestinian teams headed to Washington on Monday for preliminary talks on resuming formal negotiations after five years of stalemate.

Both sides emphasized that many obstacles stand between them and a final deal on setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Talks will be complex, said Israel's chief negotiator, Tzipi Livni. She said she was heading to the Washington meetings, which are to begin later Monday, "cautiously, but also with hope."

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian spokeswoman, said the upcoming talks are being held under more difficult conditions than previous negotiations. She cited the Palestinian political split, with Western-backed moderates and Islamic militants running rival governments, and the more hawkish positions of Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, compared to his predecessor.

"But I think there is a recognition of the urgency," she said. "If we don't move fast and decisively, things could fall apart."

The preliminary talks in Washington were made possible after Israel's Cabinet on Sunday agreed in principle to release 104 long-held Palestinian prisoners, convicted of offenses including the killing or wounding of Israelis and the killing of suspected Palestinian collaborators.

The prisoners are to be released in four stages, with each release linked to progress in negotiations.

The resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian contacts was a result of six months of shuttle diplomacy by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

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Wave of car bombings in Iraq kills 55

BAGHDAD: Seventeen car bombs exploded in Iraq on Monday, killing at least 55 people in predominantly Shiite areas in some of the deadliest violence since Sunni insurgents including al-Qaida stepped-up attacks this year.

Police and medical sources said the attacks, which appeared to be coordinated, were concentrated on towns and cities in Iraq's predominantly Shiite south, and districts of the capital where Shiites reside.

The car bomb attacks in busy streets and crowded markets underscore deteriorating security in Iraq, where nearly 4,000 people have been killed since the start of the year, according to violence monitoring group, Iraq Body Count.

The violence has raised fears of a return to full-blown conflict in a country where Kurds, majority Shiite, and minority Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable way of sharing power.

At least 10 people were killed when two car bombs blew up near a bus station in the city of Kut, 150km (95 miles) southeast of the capital, police said.

Four more were killed in a blast in the town of Mahmoudiya, about 30km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, and two bombs in Samawa, further south, killed two.

The rest of the bombings took place in regions of Baghdad, in Sadr city, Habibiya, Hurriya, Bayaa, Ur, Shurta, Kadhimiya, Risala, Tobchi and Abu Dsheer neighbourhoods.

In July, more than 810 people were killed in militant attacks. Iraqi forces patrolling alone since US-led troops left in 2011 are struggling to contain a resurgent al-Qaida, which has been regrouping and striking with a ferocity not seen in years.

Sectarian tensions across the region have been inflamed by the civil war in neighbouring Syria, which has drawn Shiites and Sunnis from Iraq and beyond into battle on opposite sides.

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Deliberations continue is WikiLeaks court-martial

FORT MEADE, Maryland: A military judge continues deliberating in the court-martial of an Army private charged with aiding the enemy for giving U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks.

Col. Denise Lind is beginning her third day of deliberations in the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning at Fort Meade. Manning faces a possible life sentence if convicted of the charge.

The 25-year-old Oklahoma native also faces 20 other counts, including espionage, computer fraud and theft for admittedly sending hundreds of thousands of classified documents and some battlefield video to the anti-secrecy website while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.

In closing arguments last week, the defense portrayed Manning as a naive whistleblower who wanted to expose war crimes. Prosecutors call him an anarchist hacker and a traitor.

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3 million pack Brazil beach to hear Pope

LONDON: Up to three million people packed Copacabana beach in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro city to hear Pope Francis address their all-night vigil, BBC reported on Sunday.

In his address, the Pope urged the pilgrims not to be "part-time" Christians but to lead full, meaningful lives.

On his first overseas trip as pontiff, Francis also attended the Catholic World Youth Day.

Speaking from a huge stage at the four-km-long beach where a mock church structure was built, the Pope referred to street protests taking place in Brazil for more than a month against corruption, poor public services and the high cost of events like the 2014 World Cup.

"The young people in the street are the ones who want to be actors of change. Please don't let others be actors of change," he said.

"Keep overcoming apathy and offering a Christian response to the social and political concerns taking place in different parts of the world."

By the time the Pope's car had reached the stage, the back seat was filled with football shirts, flags and flowers thrown to him by pilgrims lining the route, the report said.

Almost every inch of the beach was occupied as most of the young people stayed on, pitching tents or sleeping in the open.

On Saturday, in a speech to 1,000 bishops and clerics in Rio's cathedral, the Pope said they should go to the shanty towns.

"We cannot keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our communities, when so many people are waiting for the Gospel," he said.

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Pope wraps up trip with Copacabana Mass

RIO DE JANEIRO: Pope Francis wrapped up a historic trip to his home continent on Sunday with a Mass on Copacabana beach that drew a reported 3 million people, who cheered the first Latin American pope in a remarkable response to his message that the Catholic Church must shake itself up and get out into the streets to find the faithful.

Nearly the entire 4 kilometer (2.5 mile) crescent of Copacabana's broad beach overflowed with people, some of them taking an early morning dip in the Atlantic and others tossing t-shirts, flags and soccer jerseys into the pontiff's open-sided car as he drove by. Francis worked the crowd, kissing babies, taking a sip of mate tea handed up to him and catching gifts on the fly. Even the normally stern-faced Vatican bodyguards let smiles slip as they jogged alongside his car, caught up in the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Many of the crowd had spent the night on the beach, an all-night slumber party to end World Youth Day that had a festive Latin air, with pilgrims wrapped in flags and sleeping bags to ward off the cold. They danced, prayed and sang - and stood in long lines in front of the armadas of portable bathrooms along the beachfront.

"We were dying of cold but it was worth it," said Lucrecia Grillera, an 18-year-old from Cordoba, Argentina, where Francis lived for a time before becoming pope. "It was a tiring day, but it was a great experience."

The Vatican said more than 3 million people were on hand for the Mass, based on information from World Youth Day organizers and local authorities.

That was far higher than the 1 million at the last World Youth Day vigil in Madrid in 2011 or the 650,000 at Toronto's 2002 vigil.

Many of those at the vigil had tears in their eyes as they listened to Francis' call for them to not be "part-time Christians" and to build up their church like his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, was called to do.

"Jesus offers us something bigger than the World Cup!" Francis said, drawing cheers from the crowd in this soccer-mad nation.

After Sunday's Mass, Francis was meeting with the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as holding a thank-you audience with some of the 60,000 volunteers who organized the youth festival. He was leaving for Rome Sunday night.

"It was such an excellent week, everybody was in such good spirit, you could just feel a sense of peace," said Denise da Silva, a Rio de Janeiro Catholic who was sitting alone on the beach Sunday morning, a Brazilian flag painted on her face. "I have never seen something here in Rio so marvelous as what we have just lived."

Saturday night's vigil capped a busy day for the pope in which he drove home a message he has emphasized throughout the week in speeches, homilies and off-the-cuff remarks: the need for Catholics, lay and religious, to shake up the status quo, get out of their stuffy sacristies and reach the faithful on the margins of society or risk losing them to rival churches.

In the longest and most important speech of his four-month pontificate, Francis took a direct swipe at the "intellectual" message of the church that so characterized the pontificate of his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Speaking to Brazil's bishops, he said ordinary Catholics simply don't understand such lofty ideas and need to hear the simpler message of love, forgiveness and mercy that is at the core of the Catholic faith.

"At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people," he said. "Without the grammar of simplicity, the church loses the very conditions which make it possible to fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery."

In a speech outlining the kind of church he wants, Francis asked bishops to reflect on why hundreds of thousands of Catholics have left the church for Protestant and Pentecostal congregations that have grown exponentially in recent decades in Brazil, particularly in its slums or favelas, where their charismatic message and nuts-and-bolts advice is welcome by the poor.

According to census data, the number of Catholics in Brazil dipped from 125 million in 2000 to 123 million in 2010, with the church's share of the total population dropping from 74 percent to 65 percent. During the same time period, the number of evangelical Protestants and Pentecostals skyrocketed from 26 million to 42 million, increasing from 15 percent to 22 percent of the population in 2010.

Francis offered a breathtakingly blunt list of explanations for the "exodus."

"Perhaps the church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their concerns, perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas," he said. "Perhaps the world seems to have made the church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions. Perhaps the church could speak to people in their infancy but not to those come of age."

Francis asked if the church today can still "warm the hearts" of its faithful with priests who take time to listen to their problems and remain close to them.

"We need a church capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy," he said. "Without mercy, we have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a world of 'wounded' persons in need of understanding, forgiveness and love."

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Mali holds first poll since coup; rebels warn voters

KIDAL, Mali : The United Nations peacekeepers deployed here did their best to paint over independence slogans emblazoned on the concrete wall surrounding one of the main polling stations in this contested city, the epicenter of last year's rebellion against Malian rule. The white paint they used wasn't thick enough though, and the slogans were still legible to the voters who lined up outside.

"Mali is the cause of our problems," said one. "Why should we remain colonized when we have all we need to be independent?" said another of the dozens of slogans.

Only a timid trickle of residents in Kidal, a city at the feet of the Sahara desert, showed up to vote Sunday in Mali's first presidential election since last year's coup and subsequent rebellion.

Those voting in Kidal are among a minority of people in this vast province, spanning an area the size of Iowa, who recognize Mali as their legitimate ruler. And even those who chose to come with the intention of voting were often unable to cast their ballots because of the various technical glitches which have plagued the hastily-organized poll.

The vote is meant to be a new beginning for a country that was once an example of democracy in West Africa. But officials fear that the legitimacy of the election will be undermined by low voter turnout, technical lapses that prevent people from voting, and the contested status of Kidal where the rebels remain in control of numerous government buildings. The lapses, some fear, could lead to a new rebellion.

Mohamed Ag Sidi squatted on the ground and tried to find his name on the voter list outside one polling booth in Kidal. The metallic door on which the list had been posted was torn down overnight by the punishing desert wind, and election officials had put the torn pieces of paper on the floor, held in place by rocks. In the rush to hold the election, the government printed voter ID cards with only the name of the voter and not the address of the polling station where they're expected to vote.

A 64-year-old woman arrived at the secondary school that serves as a vote bureau well before the opening time, and unlike many others, found her name on the list. She was assigned to Polling Station No. 3. But after traipsing across the complex, she failed to find No. 3, and could only find No. 2 and No. 4.

"I know only of the nation of Mali, and that's why I came to vote," said the woman, Fatina Walet Alitine, a member of the Tuareg ethnic group, whose members have led four rebellions against the state in the past half-century.

She pointed to a group of young Tuareg men who were loitering inside the grounds of the polling station, all members of the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, or NMLA, the separatist movement that launched the most recent rebellion last year, seizing and briefly holding a France-sized chunk of northern Mali, which they declared was the new Tuareg nation of Azawad.

"See them?" she said. "They don't like this. They told us not to vote. They told me that if I vote, they will break my arms. So I said, `Well, then you better break my arms."'

Overnight, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, one of the al-Qaida-linked groups which seized part of Mali's north on the heels of the Tuareg separatists, said they planned to attack polling stations, according to the Nouakchott Information Agency, a Mauritanian website used by the jihadists to post messages.

The Tuareg rebellion set off a chain reaction of events which plunged the country into ruin. Soldiers in the faraway capital, angered by the government's inept handling of the north, mutinied, overthrowing the democratically elected President Amadou Toumani Toure in a March 2012 coup. The country has been without a legitimate leader since then, and the election Sunday is supposed to return the nation to constitutional rule.

A total of 6.8 million people registered to vote in this West African nation of nearly 15 million. They are choosing from 28 candidates on the ballot, including veteran politician Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, known by his initials IBK, who was both a former prime minister and ex-president of the country's parliament. Other top contenders include Soumaila Cisse, an ex-finance minister and the current head of the West African Monetary Union, as well as Dramane Dembele, the candidate of the country's largest political party.

In the southern portions of the country including in the capital, voter turnout appeared to be far higher, reflecting the north-south split which has bedeviled Mali since its independence from France 53 years ago. It was then that the Tuaregs, the lighter-skinned nomads of the north, petitioned their colonial ruler, asking to be granted their own territory separate from the rest of Mali. They pointed to the linguistic, cultural and racial differences which have long made them different from the black ethnic groups that make up the Malian majority, said Ambeiry Ag Rhissa, the acting head of the NMLA rebel movement in Kidal.

"We had nothing in common with Bamako," he said, referring to Mali's capital located 950 miles (1,500 kilometers) away to the south. "We have been stepped on, we have been humiliated, we have been vexed, we have been massacred by the Malians," Ag Rhissa said.

"Our nomadic people have lost all hope that they will ever be listened to," he said.

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Spain driver held for reckless homicide

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain/Galicia: The driver of a speeding train that hurtled off the rails killing 78 people in Spain was detained for "reckless homicide", interior minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said on Saturday.

"He has been detained since 7:40pm on Thursday for the alleged crimes of reckless homicide," the minister told reporters in the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela where the accident happened.

Police said Friday that they had detained the driver, accusing him of "recklessness" in Wednesday night's devastating crash but gave no further details.

They said the driver, identified by media as Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, 52, refused to answer their questions Friday in his hospital bed and the case has been passed to the courts.

The driver will be questioned by a judge on Sunday, the interior minister added.

Under Spanish law, a suspect can be detained for a maximum of 72 hours before being heard by a judge.

"There are reasonable grounds to consider that he may have been responsible for what happened, which must be established by a judge and the investigation which has been opened," he said.

The train was said to have been travelling at more than twice the speed limit on a curve when it hurtled off the rails and slammed into a concrete wall, with one carriage leaping up onto a siding.

The grey-haired driver, who reportedly boasted of his love for speed online, has been under police surveillance in hospital since the accident but he was discharged on Saturday and taken to a police station.

He reportedly suffered head injuries in the accident that required stitches.

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Life 'intolerable' for majority of Bulgarians: Survey

SOFIA (Bulgaria): Almost three quarters of Bulgarians consider their country "intolerable", according to a new survey released on Saturday by the Open Society Institute, following weeks of protest against the government and a worsening economy.

The survey of 1,155 people by the public policy charity found that 72 per cent thought Bulgaria's political situation was "intolerable", with 22 per cent judging it was just "bearable".

Only two per cent of those surveyed described the current state of the nation as normal.

The 72 per cent of respondents denouncing Bulgaria's political quagmire is at a six-year high, and up 15 percentage points from July 2012.

The survey also found that almost 40 per cent of the population wanted the immediate resignation of the government of Plamen Oresharski, whose minority cabinet took office in late May.

Two-thirds of Bulgarians said the economic situation had worsened in the last year, the Open Society report said, though 70 per cent said they were happy to be members of the European Union.

In contrast, 67 per cent said they did not want Bulgaria to adopt the euro.

On Tuesday, 2,000 protestors trapped around 100 ministers, MPs and others in parliament for eight hours before being dispersed by baton-wielding riot police after 40 days of anti-government protests.

Many in former communist Bulgaria, the poorest country in the European Union, see politicians as corrupt, inefficient and indifferent to the plight of ordinary people.

Just 13.4 per cent of the Bulgarian population earns the 566 leva (290 euro) a month minimum required to sustain an adequate standard of living, according to a study released on Saturday by the country's KNSB trade union.

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China and Russia to conduct anti-terror exercise

BEIJING: Chinese military personnel on Saturday left for Russia to participate in a 20-day anti-terrorism drill, the second joint exercise by the two countries this month.

The exercise, dubbed " Peace Mission 2013" and scheduled to run from July 27 to August 15, will be carried out in Chelyabinsk in Russia's Ural Mountains region.

The joint drill does not target any third party and is meant to enhance mutual trust and cooperation between the two sides and to improve their capability to combat terrorism, the Chinese command headquarters said.

Earlier this month, the navies of the two countries held a joint exercise.

The Chinese troops attending the drills include an infantry combat group of 350 personnel, an air force combat group of 50 personnel, a 196-strong logistics group, a 20-member planning panel and a 30-member command force.

Six hundred Russian troops will join the wargame, which will be held in three phases, including troop deployment, war planning and campaign drills.

The Chinese officers and soldiers will be sent to the drill venue in seven batches, with four travelling by air and three by train.

Two Mi-171 military transport helicopters and four Z-9 armed helicopters with 72 personnel on board took off from an airport in Hailar in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region this morning.

They will travel more than 5,000km with several stopovers and are expected to arrive at the drill venue in five days, state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

According to the schedule, five fighter-bomber JH-7A jets will set out from Urumqi in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on July 31 and arrive in Russia the same day.

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Osama's AK-47 on display at secret CIA museum

WASHINGTON: Osama bin Laden's AK-47 rifle, found next to his body after he was killed in a daring midnight raid by US Navy SEALs in Pakistan, is on display at an ultra-secret CIA museum.

The AK-47 is a recent addition to a collection housed at a museum inside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The museum displays the gadgets, artifacts and trophies of 70 years of spycraft, from World War II through to the War on Terror.

The museum is closed to the public and is only visited by employees and invited guests.

The Russian-made assault rifle, identified on a simple brass plaque as "Osama bin Laden's AK-47," shares a glass case with an al-Qaida training manual found in Afghanistan soon after 9/11.

"This is the rifle that was recovered from the third floor of the Abbottabad compound by the assault team," curator Toni Hiley was quoted by NBC News as saying.

"Because of its proximity to (bin Laden) there on the third floor in the compound, our analyst determined it to be his. It's a Russian AK with counterfeit Chinese markings," he said.

Neither Hiley nor the agency disclose how the AK-47 got to the museum, with Hiley just saying that Leon Panetta, "asked that it come into the museum collection".

A source was quoted by NBC as saying that it came from the "dark side" of the agency, the operations staff that worked with the SEALs on the May 2011 raid.

The agency also does not comment on the specifics of how the weapon was recovered or whether it was loaded when retrieved.

"I wasn't there," said Hiley. "So I can't confirm or deny exactly where the weapon was. I just know that I have it in my museum and I'm happy to have it."

Hiley said the weapon is in good working condition, but that the origin of the Chinese markings is a mystery. She said it's not the weapon seen at Osama's side in many propaganda videos.

The CIA's private museum, which was started in the early 1990s, fills three corridors in two buildings at the CIA campus just outside Washington. Agency officials call it "the coolest museum you'll never see."

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Defense to give closing in Manning-WikiLeaks case

FORT MEADE (Maryland): The defense gets the chance on Friday to sum up its case in the court-martial of Bradley Manning, the Army private who sent hundreds of thousands of US government documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Manning's civilian defense attorney David Coombs was scheduled to give his closing argument in the eighth week of the trial at the Fort Meade Army base outside Baltimore. The case will then go to the judge for deliberations, who has said she could rule anytime in the next several days.

"Tomorrow, you're going to hear what truth sounds like," Coombs told supporters on Thursday night after a lengthy and bruising final argument by the prosecution.

Speaking for more than five hours Thursday, with several breaks through the day for people to use the bathrooms and eat lunch, Maj Ashden Fein told the court Manning was a traitor with one mission as an intelligence analyst deployed in Iraq in 2009 and 2010: to find and reveal government secrets to a group of anarchists, then bask in the glory as a whistleblower.

"The government has its job, but there is nobody who could believe what they said - much less them," Coombs told a group of some 40 supporters after Thursday's session.

"If it takes six, seven hours to go on a diatribe and try to piece together some convoluted story ... if it takes you that long to get your point across, you know it isn't true," Coombs told supporters in the courtyard of the court building as they were leaving for the day.

He said his closing arguments would likely last about two hours Friday and that he is "going to speak from the heart - it won't be hard for me to rebut."

Coombs has said the soldier was troubled by what he saw in the war - and at the same time was struggling as a gay man in the era of "don't ask don't tell". Those struggles made him want to do something to make a difference and he hoped revealing what was going on in the war zone and US diplomacy would inspire debate and reform in American foreign and military policy, Coombs has said.

Fein said Manning betrayed his country's trust and spilled classified information, knowing the material would be seen by the terrorist group al-Qaida.

"WikiLeaks was merely the platform which Pfc. Manning used to ensure all the information was available for the world, including enemies of the United States," Fein said.

Manning, 25, is charged with 21 offenses, but the most serious is aiding the enemy, which carries a possible sentence of up to life in prison. Manning has acknowledged giving WikiLeaks some 700,000 battlefield reports, diplomatic cables and videos. But he says he didn't believe the information would harm troops in Afghanistan and Iraq or threaten national security.

A military judge, not a jury, is hearing the case at Manning's request. Army Col Denise Lind will deliberate after closing arguments.
The verdict and any sentence will be reviewed, and could be reduced, by the commander of the military district of Washington, currently Maj Gen Jeffery S Buchanan.

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Ex-BBC broadcaster jail term doubled

LONDON: British appeals judges have doubled the jail time of former BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall for sex offenses after ruling that his 15-month sentence was inadequate.

After initially denying the charges, Hall pleaded guilty in May to 14 counts of indecent assault against girls as young as 9 between 1967 and 1986.

Appeals judges in London upped Hall's sentence to 30 months on Friday, with justice Igor Judge saying that the broadcaster's previous denial was a "seriously aggravating'' feature of the case.

The 83-year-old Hall, who listened to the proceedings via video link from prison, showed no reaction when the decision was announced.

Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who had challenged the 15-month sentence, said the ruling showed "that historical sexual offences are always taken very seriously.''

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22 killed in coordinated attack on police: Mexico

MEXICO CITY: Heavily-armed men assaulted Mexican federal police units in a carefully planned attack in which 22 people were killed, most of them assailants, in six towns, the government announced.

The gunmen concealed themselves in hills above checkpoints in Michoacan state, a western area tormented by drug cartels, and blocked at least four sections of highway before swooping on their targets, wielding grenades.

"So far, we have two federal policemen killed, 20 presumed criminals shot dead and another 15 people under arrest," the interior ministry's national security council said in a statement.

The attackers were equipped with high-powered rifles and grenades when they struck in the troubled Tierra Caliente region, a hot spot for gang violence, the council added, without stating how many police or gunmen had been wounded.

In May, Mexico's government promised to keep thousands of troops in Michoacan, which has 4.3 million citizens, until peace is restored.

Interior minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong at the time held a meeting of the national security team in the state capital Morelia with local officials, aimed at tackling a crime wave that led some towns to start vigilante groups.

Officials said 4,000 soldiers and marines and 1,000 federal police were deployed. Osorio Chong also said the forces would leave once security conditions have improved and the state government can hold its own.

Michoacan was the first state to see troops when former president Felipe Calderon decided to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers across the country to crack down on drug cartels in 2006.

But gang violence surged throughout Mexico, leaving 70,000 people in its wake when Calderon left office in December, and a powerful new cartel, the Knights Templar, emerged in Michoacan.

Osorio Chong has insisted that the strategy ordered by current President Enrique Pena Nieto will be different than his predecessor's, with a single command, close coordination between various authorities, greater use of intelligence assets, and an economic development program.

Pena Nieto took office in December vowing to switch the focus toward reducing the level of violence. He has since launched a crime prevention program but he says troops will stay until the murder rate declines.

Fed up with crime, vigilantes have appeared in recent months and clashed with the Knights Templar cartel, notably in Tierra Caliente.

Drug gangs have existed for decades in Michoacan, where they grow marijuana and opium poppies and produce synthetic drugs in makeshift labs before shipping them to the United States.

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Pope to celebrate Mass at Brazil's Catholic shrine

APARECIDA (Brazil): Argentine-born Pope Francis arrived Wednesday at Brazil's most revered shrine, where tens of thousand of pilgrims braved rain and cold to attend his first Mass in Latin America.

A helicopter carried the pope to the shrine from Rio de Janeiro, where he arrived Monday to attend World Youth Day, a major Catholic fest.

Pilgrims spent the night in the streets despite the foul weather, hoping for a glimpse of the first Latin American and Jesuit pontiff.

An estimated 15,000 people were to hear the Mass inside the basilica while another 200,000 outside were to expected outside, with 5,000 police and soldiers providing security.

"I arrived early to be sure to get a place and I will stay as long as necessary to see the pope," said 62-year-old Tereza Souza, who traveled from Minas Gerais state.

"It is very important for me to see him, He is such a nice man, very simple, a saint," she added.

Joaquim Pedro dos Santos, 77, also arrived from Minas Gerais on Tuesday.

"I don't care about the rain, I want to see the pope in person even fleetingly in the street. I want to know him."

Brazil's ability to handle this week is seen as a test of its capacity to host the football World Cup next year and the Olympic Games in 2016.

The tumultuous welcome for the pope in Rio was plagued by security and logistics problems.

On Tuesday, Rio's subway broke down, causing chaos for throngs of pilgrims at a hugely attended welcome Mass led by the archbishop of Rio on the iconic Copacabana beach.

In Aparecida, a town of 35,000 people that sits halfway between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, there were huge welcome banners and the area has been spruced up.

"The pope is the best mayor we can get — in less than a week, he managed to have the streets repaved with asphalt," beamed local resident Maria Elena de Oliveira ahead of the event.

After Mass, the pontiff will travel in an open-top jeep to cover the more than two kilometers (1.2 mile) separating the shrine and the Bom Jesus seminary where he will rest and have lunch.

The 76-year-old Argentine previously visited the famous shrine at Aparecida — which houses a dark 18th-century statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary — during a bishops conference in 2007.

As Buenos Aires archbishop, he then chaired the panel which drafted the final document of the conference, a text that declared strong support for the poor in a region that is home to 40 percent of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

The pontiff's representatives have said the Catholic leader aims to reconcile the young with the message of a church able to renew itself at a time of crisis over a financial scandal and the sexual abuse of minors.

"He wanted to come to Aparecida by Marian devotion (a willingness to dedicate oneself to the Virgin Mary) and to officiate the first Mass with the Brazilian people, but by visiting the shrine he is also saluting the whole region," said priest Roni Dos Reis, a spokesman for the event.

"I think that for us Latin Americans, here in Aparecida he will also outline this social message of commitment to the poor, to give dignity and not paternalism to people," he added.

Those gathered at the historic site wanted to see the pope up close.

"He is charismatic and we want to be near him to feel the quality of his spirit. It's the way for the young to get closer to the church in Latin America," said Emanuel Robles, a 29-year-old Mexican.

Pedro Hernandez, 27, also Mexican, said: "I like his sensitivity and humility, two things which the Catholic church lacks."

Pope Francis arrived in Rio to a rock-star welcome Monday, on his first overseas trip since his March election.

Last year, 10 million pilgrims visited Our Lady of Aparecida, which was proclaimed Brazil's patroness in 1930 and is celebrated on October 12. Francis will become the third pope to visit the shrine — after John Paul II, in July 1980, and Benedict XVI, in May 2007.

But despite his popularity, the pope has faced protests over the $53 million spent on organizing his visit and World Youth Day.

Without referring to the criticism or to last month's nationwide street protests in Brazil to demand better public services and an end to corruption, Francis said: "I have neither gold nor silver, but I bring the most precious that has been given to me, Jesus Christ."

He called for a guarantee of basic human rights for the youths of the world, such as "security and education".

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95 killed in Guinea clashes, govt says

CONAKRY (Guinea): A government spokesman says recent clashes in Guinea's southeast forest region killed 95 and injured hundreds, a significant increase over numbers provided last week.

Albert Camara told Associated Press on Wednesday that the violence was partly due to the large flow of arms in the region, and he raised the possibility that former rebels from Liberia as well as fighters trained under a former Guinean junta leader were involved.

Witnesses said the violence began July 15 in a village outside N'Zerekore when members of the Guerze ethnic group beat a young Konianke man to death after accusing him of stealing from a gas station.

Officials previously put the death toll at 54. Residents began burying the dead in common graves shortly after the violence stopped, fueling rumors of higher fatalities.

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Al-Qaida claims deadly prison raids in Iraq

BAGHDAD: Al-Qaida's branch in Iraq claimed responsibility on Tuesday for audacious raids on two high-security prisons on the outskirts of Baghdad this week that killed dozens and set free hundreds of inmates, including some of its followers.

The statement issued in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq, was posted on an online jihadist forum. It said months of planning went into the highly coordinated assaults on the prisons in Abu Ghraib and Taji that began late Sunday.

The attacks, among the most stunning in Iraq since a surge in violence began in April, have provoked sharp criticism from opposition lawmakers of the government's efforts to keep the country safe. The spike in bloodshed is intensifying fears of a return to the widespread sectarian killing that pushed the country to the brink of civil war after the 2003 US-led invasion.

In its statement, al-Qaida in Iraq dubbed the prison operation "Conquering the Tyrants," and described it as "a bold raid blessed by God" that followed a series of earlier attacks that "shook the pillars of the Safavid project", a reference to what some Sunni Muslims see as undue Iranian influence over Iraq and its Shiite-led government.

It said the operation involved 12 car bombs, military-style barrages of rockets and missiles, suicide bombers and help from prisoners who had managed to obtain weapons on the inside.

Iraqi officials have said at least 25 members of the Iraqi security forces were killed in the attacks, along with at least 21 prisoners and 10 militants.

Al-Qaida's statement provided a different tally. It said its men killed more than 120 government forces, and that on al-Qaida's side only the suicide bombers died in the clashes that raged for hours.

Iraq's interior ministry has said several prisoners managed to escape during the raid on Abu Ghraib, the infamous prison in Baghdad's western suburbs that was the site of well-publicized prisoner abuse at the hands of the US military following the 2003 invasion.

Several Iraqi officials, including members of parliament's security and defense committee, have said more than 500 inmates escaped. Both prisons house thousands of inmates, including convicted al-Qaida militants.

Al-Qaida said in its statement that the attack freed hundreds of detainees, including more than 500 mujahideen, or holy warriors.

Iraqi authorities locked down areas around the prison Monday as they carried out manhunts for the attackers and any prisoners who had managed to escape.

Al-Qaida also claimed responsibility in its statement for carrying out other unspecified attacks over the past four months in response to a heavy-handed crackdown by security forces on a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawija on April 23.

The Hawija raid killed 44 civilians and one member of the security forces, according to estimates by the United Nations. It followed months of rallies by Iraq's minority Sunnis against the Shiite-led government over what they contend is second-class treatment and the unfair use of tough anti-terrorism measures against their sect.

Violence in Iraq has spiked to the highest level in half a decade in the wake of the Hawija crackdown. More than 3,000 people have been killed since the start of April, including more than 500 since the start of July.

The bloodshed continued early Tuesday when insurgents bombed a local government building in the village of al-Rashad, which is outside the ethically disputed northern city of Kirkuk. The attackers kidnapped two anti-al-Qaida Sunni militiamen who were guarding the building and later shot them dead, according to Rashad mayor Lious al-Fandi.

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Clashes resurface in Egypt, 10 killed

CAIRO: At least 10 people were killed and over 80 injured in deadly clashes across Egypt between supporters and opponents of ousted president Mohamed Morsi as pressure grew on the country's new leadership to release the Islamist leader.

Clashes broke out on Tuesday when Morsi supporters en route to the US embassy attacked anti-Morsi protesters in nearby Tahrir Square. Rocks were exchanged as well as gunshots. One person died and at least 23 were injured during the violence.

Six people were killed in an area near Cairo University in Giza while three were killed in Qalioubiya governorate and Tahrir Square.

From the 86 injured, 12 people suffered minor injuries and were released from multiple hospitals, while 74 are still being treated, El-Khatib said in an official statement.

The military ousted Morsi, 61, on July 3 following days of massive street protests by millions of Egyptians demanding that the Islamist president step down.

His supporters are calling for his reinstatement and insist they won't join the military-backed political process until then.

The clashes late that night saw the use of birdshot, gunfire and molotov cocktails, witnesses said.

Police then intervened, firing tear gas to disperse the crowd.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the group from which Morsi hails, blamed "thugs" and police for the deaths.

The family of Morsi yesterday accused the powerful military of "abducting" the Islamist leader and vowed to take legal action against the army chief.

Morsi has been held at an undisclosed location, without charge, since being ousted from power on July 3.

About 100 people have died in violence since Morsi's removal.

Several countries, including the United States, have called for Morsi's release.

Earlier in the day, Adly Mansour, Egypt's interim president, renewed appeals for reconciliation.

"We want to turn a new page in the country's book with no hatred, no malice, no division," he said in a pre-recorded speech that also highlighted the importance of the army in Egypt's history.

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Donkey bomber kills 3 Nato soldiers in Afghanistan

GHAZNI (Afghanistan): A suicide bomber rode a donkey today into an Afghan and Nato military convoy, killing three Western soldiers and their Afghan interpreter, officials said.

Nato's International Security Assistance Force confirmed three casualties in a bombing in eastern Afghanistan but gave no details.

Afghan authorities said the attack happened in Wardak province, a hotbed of the Taliban insurgency just south of the capital Kabul.

Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial administration, told AFP that a suicide bomber riding a donkey blew himself up and killed three NATO soldiers and their Afghan interpreter.

Four Afghan soldiers who were also in the convoy in Sayedabad district were wounded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the Taliban are behind almost all the suicide attacks in the country.

Along with roadside bombings, the suicide attacks - often carried out by multiple insurgents storming buildings and government facilities in big cities - are the group's main tactic.

Wardak is traversed by the highway between Kabul and southern and western provinces, including the key city of Kandahar in the south.

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Suicide attack kills 25 in northern Iraq

MOSUL, Iraq: A suicide bomber attacked an Iraqi army convoy in the northern city of Mosul early on Monday, killing at least 22 soldiers and three passers-by, police said.

The bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives up to a military convoy in the eastern Kokchali district of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, before blowing himself and his car up.

"A suicide bomber was following the convoy and when it stopped in the middle of road, he detonated his vehicle right behind it," said a policeman at the scene who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

A separate attack in western Mosul killed four policemen, police said.

It was not clear who was behind the blasts, but suicide bombings are the hallmark of al Qaeda, which has been regrouping in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city and capital of the Sunni-dominated Nineveh province.

Insurgent groups such as al-Qaida have found willing recruits among Iraq's Sunni minority, which resents Shia domination since the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The attacks are the latest in a campaign of violence across Iraq that has raised fears of a return to full-blown conflict in a country where Kurds, Shia and Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable way of sharing power.

Relations between Islam's two main denominations have been put under further strain from the civil war in Syria, which has drawn in Shia and Sunni fighters from Iraq and beyond to fight against each other.

Nearly 600 people have been killed in militant attacks across Iraq so far this month, according to violence monitoring group Iraq Body Count.

That is still well below the height of bloodletting in 2006-07, when the monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.

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Norway honours victims of July 22 terror attacks

OSLO, Norway: Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg marked the second anniversary of the terror acts that killed 77 people by calling for a continued fight against all forms of extremism.

In a wreath-laying ceremony at the government headquarters on Monday, Stoltenberg said society has to stand up against "populist right-wing parties" that are on the rise in Europe, and extremist Islamists who continue to send out threats.

Far-right fanatic Anders Behring Breivik has confessed to the July 22, 2011, attacks in which he killed eight people in a bombing attack against the government headquarters and 69 others in a shooting spree at the left-wing Labor Party's youth camp on Utoya island. A ceremony will be held at Utoya later Monday.

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EU blacklits Hezbollah's military wing

BRUSSELS: The European Union placed the military wing of the Lebanese party Hezbollah on its terror list on Monday in a major policy change toward the Middle East.

The EU's 28 foreign ministers reached the decision unanimously at their monthly meeting, swiftly swaying the last nations that had any doubts.

It came after prolonged diplomatic pressure from the United States and Israel, who both consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

"The EU has sent a clear message that it stands united against terrorism," said British Foreign Secretary William Hague. "It shows that no organization can carry out terrorist acts on European soil."

German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle also emphasized European unity. "We will not stand for terror in Europe," he said. "From no one."

The blacklisting entails asset freezes and paves the way for possible travel bans on individuals belonging to the military wing.

"I'm satisfied that we took this important step today, by dealing with the military wing of Hezbollah, freezing its assets, hindering its fundraising and thereby limiting its capacity to act," said Dutch foreign minister Frans Timmermans.

However, implementation promises to be complicated as officials will have to unravel the links between the different wings within Hezbollah's organizational network and see who could be targeted for belonging to the military wing.

Diplomats late Monday were working on pinpointing the entities and organizations that make up the military wing. Because of this legal uncertainty it was unclear how many assets could be involved, and how many individuals could be eventually be targeted.

The Iranian-backed group plays a pivotal role in Lebanese politics, dominating the government since 2011. It has since sent its members to bolster Syria's President Bashar Assad forces in their assault of rebel-held areas.

Walid Sukariyeh, a pro-Hezbollah legislator who belongs to the group's bloc, said the European decision came as a result of American pressure.

"Europe tried to have an independent stance away from America's diction but I believe by this stance it has abandoned its independence and the independence of its policy," he said.

"Hezbollah did not carry out any terrorist attacks, neither in Europe nor outside Europe. Hezbollah is a resistance movement that fought to liberate occupied land from the Israeli enemy," Sukariyeh said.

Israel welcomed the European decision. It fought a bitter month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006 and does not differentiate between the group's political and military wings. Israel has accused Hezbollah of carrying out attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets around the world. Hezbollah has denied involvement in some and not commented on others.

"Finally, after years of deliberation, the claim that Hezbollah is a legitimate political party has rightfully failed," said Israel's justice minister Tzipi Livni. "Now it is clear to the entire world that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization."

The group has been accused of involvement in last year's attack in the Black Sea resort of Burgas in Bulgaria, which killed five Israeli tourists and one Bulgarian. It has refuted that allegation.

Westerwelle said the evidence from the attack on EU member Bulgaria was enough of an impetus for the blacklisting. A Cyprus criminal court decision in March finding a Hezbollah member guilty of helping to plan attacks on Israelis on the Mediterranean island also galvanized EU diplomacy.

Several EU nations have pointed to Hezbollah's involvement in Syria as further reason for the move.

As Hezbollah's hand in the Syrian conflict has become public, Lebanon has seen a spike in Sunni-Shiite tensions that has sparked gun battles in several cities around the country. Many Lebanese Sunnis support the overwhelmingly Sunni uprising against Assad in Syria, while Shiites generally back Hezbollah and the regime in Damascus.

The EU only came to a united stand after it became clear that political channels would remain open with all players in Lebanon.

"Designation will do nothing to affect the EU's and the UK's strong relationship with, and support for, Lebanon," Hague said.

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Nepal parties allege foreign 'meddling'

KATHMANDU: The alliance of 33 fringe parties in Nepal led by the CPN-Maoist today alleged that some foreign missions were interfering in the country's internal affairs and appealed to the world community not to support the forthcoming Constituent Assembly elections.

The parties have claimed that foreign 'meddling' in Nepal's internal matters such as the electoral process and drafting of constitution, was 'weakening Nepal's sovereignty and democracy' and want the polls to be deferred.

The dissenting parties' call comes at a time when the CPN-Maoist has been invited by the government and the high level political committee for talks to resolve the prevailing political crisis in the country.

In a statement issued today on behalf of the 33 parties, CPN-Maoist secretary Dev Prasad Gurung described some foreign envoys' public speeches and political parleys with Nepali stakeholders as "increasing diplomatic manoeuvring and interference in domestic affairs of Nepal".

The alliance, in its statement, without naming any country, criticised what it called "diplomatic endorsement" of recent "unconstitutional, illegal and anti-nationalist moves" such as formation of the current dispensation under the leadership of a chief justice and distribution of citizenship certificates to immigrants with an "ulterior motive to reduce Nepalis to minority".

Claiming that the upcoming elections will not solve Nepal's problems, the dissenting parties have said that it would rather invite a bigger national crisis as the polls were announced by "an unconstitutional government" without ensuring consensus among political parties.

"The election is not a solution and it will invite a bigger national crisis. The recent movements have weakened our national sovereignty," says the statement.

The parties have been demanding that the current Khil Raj Regmi-led dispensation be replaced with a political party-led government and the election scheduled for November 19 be deferred.

The CPN-Maoist, the breakaway faction of Unified CPN-Maoist, is leading the alliance and is also demanding an all-party round table conference for ending the political stalemate.

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Iran opposes Israel-Palestinian peace talks

TEHRAN: Iran on Sunday voiced opposition to a US-mediated resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, predicting the Jewish state would never agree to withdraw from occupied Arab lands.

Tehran "along with Palestinian groups expresses its opposition to the proposed plan and it's certain that the occupying Zionist regime will utterly not agree to withdraw from the occupied lands," foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi said, quoted by Iranian media.

"Past experience shows that the occupying Zionist regime is basically not ready to pay the price for peace since war mongering and occupation lie at its very core," he added.

US secretary of state John Kerry announced on Friday that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators had agreed to meet to prepare a resumption of direct peace talks, stalled since 2010. The exact basis for Kerry's plan remains unknown.

The last round of direct talks between the two sides nearly three years ago broke down over the issue of Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned ministers on Sunday that renewed peace talks with the Palestinians would be tough, and he said any draft treaty would be put to a referendum.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has repeatedly stressed that his demands for a freeze to Israeli settlement building and the release of prisoners held by Israel must be met before talks can resume.

The Iran-backed Islamist movement Hamas which runs the Gaza Strip rejected a return to talks, saying Abbas had no legitimate right to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people.

Iran rules out a two-state solution and has its own vision of how to resolve the six-decade-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

"The end of occupation ... self-determination for the Palestinians, the return of all refugees to their ancestral land, and the creation of an integrated Palestine with Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital," Araqchi reiterated.

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French police, youths clash after veil incident

TRAPPES (France): About 250 people hurling projectiles clashed with police firing tear gas west of Paris, in apparent protest over enforcement of France's ban on Islamic face veils. Five people were injured and six detained in the violence, authorities said Saturday.

The interior minister urged calm and dialogue, insisting on both the need for public order and respect for France's Muslims. The incident in the town of Trappes on Friday night reflected sporadic tensions between police upholding France's strict policies of secularism and those who accuse authorities of discriminating against France's No. 2 religion.

A few garbage dumpsters in the area were torched and a bus shelter shattered in the Trappes unrest. Spent tear gas capsules lay on the road Saturday near the police station at the center of the violence.

A 14-year-old boy suffered a serious eye injury in the violence, from a projectile of unknown provenance, prosecutor Vincent Lesclous told reporters. Four police officers were injured and six people were detained in the violence, said an official with the regional police administration. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be named due to his department's rules.

On Saturday night, fearing new violence, riot police deployed around the town, but the atmosphere appeared calm.

The Friday night violence came after a gathering of about 200-250 people to protest the arrest of a man whose wife was ticketed Thursday for wearing a face veil. The husband tried to strangle an officer who was doing the ticketing, the prosecutor said.

France has barred face veils since 2011. Proponents of the ban — which enjoyed wide public support across the political spectrum — argue the veil oppresses women and contradicts France's principles of secularism, which are enshrined in the constitution. In addition to small fines or citizenship classes for women wearing veils, the law includes a hefty 30,000 euro ($39,370) fine for anyone who forces a woman to wear one.

The law affects only a very small proportion of France's millions of Muslims who wear the niqab, with a slit for the eyes, or the burqa, with a mesh screen for the eyes. But some Muslim groups argue the law stigmatizes moderate Muslims, too. France also bans headscarves in schools and public buildings.

The Collective Against Islamophobia in France urged interior minister Manuel Valls, who recently joined Muslim leaders in a fast-breaking sundown feast for holy month of Ramadan, to crack down on insults and attacks against Muslims.

Valls urged calm after the Trappes violence, and pledged to stand against "all those who attack Muslim buildings or our compatriots of Muslim faith."

But he also came down firmly against those who attack police.

"There is no valid reason for the violence seen in Trappes," he told reporters in the southern city of Marseille, which has seen a wave of urban unrest. "The law should be applied, and applies to everyone."

The anti-Islamophobia collective said in a statement that it was contacted by the veiled woman ticketed in Trappes on Thursday, and that she said the police officer yanked her by the veil and pushed her mother.

Police argue they are doing their jobs and that veiled women are breaking a well-known law.

Trappes was among many towns around France that saw rioting in 2005 by disillusioned youth in neglected housing projects, many with origins in former French colonies in North and West Africa.

Valls acknowledged the "difficulty our fellow citizens have living in these working class neighborhoods, especially young people. What they need is jobs, hope, training."

"Only in dialogue can we find the solutions to the problems of our society, of joblessness, the sentiment of discrimination and exclusion," he urged. "Violence leads to nothing."

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Sri Lanka asks EU to help stop LTTE funding

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka on Saturday asked for sustained vigilance on the part of the European Union to stop funding of the LTTE by the outfit's front organisations.

Sri Lankan external affairs minister GL Peiris stressed on the issue during talks with a six-member EU parliamentarian team which is on a tour of the country, the ministry said.

Peiris was referring to Europol's Terrorist Situation and Trend Report this year which said the LTTE is still considered active and benefiting from support in countries with a significant diaspora.

The LTTE was banned as a terrorist outfit by the EU in 2007.

Peiris said he was happy that the EU delegation was able to see for themselves the progress made by the Sri Lankan government.

The parliamentarians for their part urged the government to conduct the September's provincial council election in the Tamil-dominated north in a civilian environment.

Sri Lanka has resisted international calls for de-escalation of the military presence citing national security imperatives.

The delegation also stressed the need for the full implementation of Sri Lanka's reconciliation commission (LLRC) recommendations in order to achieve comprehensive national reconciliation.

Most EU nations, along with India, had backed the two US-moved resolutions at the UN Human Rights Council which called for greater steps for rights accountability in Sri Lanka.

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Italy: 5 convicted for Costa Concordia shipwreck

GROSSETO, Italy: An Italian court on Saturday convicted five employees of an Italian cruise company for the Costa Concordia shipwreck that killed 32 crew and passengers after it accepted their plea bargains.

The longest sentence went to the crisis coordinator for Costa Crociere SpA, the cruise company, who was sentenced to two years and 10 months. Concordia's hotel director was sentenced to two years and six months while two bridge officers and a helmsman got sentences ranging from one year and eight months to one year and 11 months.

The plea bargains were handled separately from the trial of Costa Concordia Capt. Francesco Schettino, who is charged with manslaughter for causing the January 2012 shipwreck off the Tuscan island of Giglio and abandoning the vessel with thousands aboard. That trial opened this week.

The Concordia, on a week-long Mediterranean cruise, speared a jagged granite reef when, prosecutors allege, Schettino steered the ship too close to Giglio's rocky shores as a favor to a crewman whose relatives live on the island. If found guilty, he faces up to 20 years in prison. Schettino has denied the charges and insisted that the rock was not in nautical maps.

The reef sliced a 70-meter-long (230-foot) gash in the hull. Seawater rushed in, causing the ship to rapidly lean to one side until it capsized, then drifted to a rocky stretch of seabed just outside the island's tiny port.

Survivors have described a delayed and confused evacuation. The bodies of two victims were never found, but they were declared dead after a long search.

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Putin critic Navalny vows to contest mayoral poll

MOSCOW: Top opposition leader Alexei Navalny triumphantly returned home to Russia's capital on Saturday after his unexpected release from prison, saying he would push ahead with a bid to become Moscow mayor.

The chief opponent of President Vladimir Putin stepped off an overnight train from the provincial city of Kirov with his wife Yulia to a crowd of hundreds of supporters chanting his name as dozens of riot police stood watch.

"We are going to run and we will win," Navalny said through a megaphone to roars of approval from the crowd, many of whom clutched flowers and wore white T-shirts reading "Navalny" or "Navalny's brother".

"Ahead of us is a big, difficult electoral campaign. Seven weeks of non-stop work and it's just the start," he said.

Navalny was suddenly released Friday pending an appeal of his five-year sentence on fraud charges and has about a month to campaign, but it is unclear whether he will have enough time to actually participate in the September 8 ballot.

The guilty verdict disqualifies Navalny from politics, and the restriction will come into force if or when the verdict is upheld on appeal.

Although opinion polls say Navalny has almost no chance of beating the incumbent pro-Kremlin mayor in the ballot, observers say campaigning for the high-profile post will boost the charismatic leader's popularity.

"Let's fight for political power in the country," he said, pumping his fist in the air and leading the crowd in a chant of "We are the power" before fans hoisted him on their shoulders.

Navalny's conviction and sentencing to five years in a penal colony by a Kirov court on Thursday sparked protests in Moscow and Saint Petersburg from supporters of the charismatic 37-year-old who led unprecedented demonstrations against Putin in 2011-12.

Police said Saturday that vandalism charges would be pursued against whoever scrawled grafitti such as "Putin is gay" and "Putin is a thief" on the parliament buidling during the rallies.

In an unexpected move less than a day after his sentencing, a higher court in the sleepy industrial city 900 kilometres (560 miles) northeast of Moscow released Navalny from jail pending the appeal.

The court ruled that keeping the father of two behind bars would "limit his right to be elected" in the Moscow mayoral polls, for which he had already registered as a candidate.

Many observers described the surprise release as a sign of infighting among the country's ruling elite and uncertainty about how to handle Putin's popular opponent.

Some analysts have said the jailing of a high-profile Moscow mayoral candidate during the campaign was a huge embarrassment for the authorities.

'They have gone mad'

Security at the Yaroslavsky train station in central Moscow was tight with the deployment of dozens of riot police, a move supporters said showed the authorities' fear of the opposition leader.

"They have gone mad," activist Nikolai Lyaskin told AFP aboard the train minutes before it pulled into the station.

Navalny emerged as a key figure in the 2011-12 protests against Putin's return for a third term in the Kremlin.

He has said he wants to run in the next presidential election in 2018 and has vowed to jail Putin if he comes to power.

Navalny was found guilty of defrauding the government in the Kirov region of 16 million rubles ($500,000, 376,000 euros) in a timber deal while acting as an advisor to the local authorities in 2009.

He has said the charges are politically motivated.

An opinion poll said before Navalny's sentencing that incumbent pro-Kremlin mayor Sergei Sobyanin is set to retain the post with 78 percent of the vote, with Navalny expected to come a distant second on eight percent.

But observers say the campaign will provide him with valuable exposure in a country in which the Kremlin keeps tight control over most media.

"Participation in the race for the Moscow mayor, the most prominent elected office in Russia after the presidency, will dramatically elevate Navalny's public profile, irrespective of the outcome," said the Eurasia Group consultancy.

Some experts say his popularity will only grow with his release as he will be seen as a hero standing up to the country's elites, widely considered corrupt.

"Navalny has carte blanche," wrote former lawmaker and liberal commentator Irina Khakamada. "Whatever Navalny does now, he will be in a 'win-win' situation."

Navalny's sentencing prompted concern in the West, with a White House spokesman saying it showed a "disturbing trend of government actions aimed at suppressing dissent in civil society in Russia".

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Pope sets up body to overhaul Vatican

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis set up a special commission of lay experts on Friday tasked with overhauling the economic and administrative structure of the Vatican in a radical bid to streamline and clean up the scandal-hit institution.

The commission will delve into the workings of the Vatican's bloated departments and draft reforms to tackle instances of favouritism or corruption, simplify procedures, improve transparency and put economic resources to better use.

The commission is tasked with the "simplification and rationalization of the existing bodies and more careful planning of the economic activities of all the Vatican Administrations," the Vatican said in a statement.

It will offer specialist advice on how to "avoid the misuse of economic resources, to improve transparency ... to work with ever greater prudence in the financial sphere; to ensure correct application of accounting principles," it said.

The Argentine pope has worked fast since his election in March to establish a series of specialist bodies to tackle corruption and poor management in the Vatican.

This commission, which will report directly to him, comes on the heels of the establishment of a separate body looking at how to reform the Vatican bank and the appointment of eight cardinal advisors.

The specialists come from Malta, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Singapore.

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South Africa admits 'challenges' in Zimbabwe vote

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa's chief envoy on Zimbabwe's political crisis conceded on Friday there were challenges in the run-up to key polls, a day before regional mediators meet to discuss the vote.

Thousands of Zimbabwean security forces couldn't draw their mark in chaotic early voting three weeks before the July 31 elections to end a four-year unity government.

"The process has got challenges, we can't deny that because we've seen what info has been coming out during the special vote," said Lindiwe Zulu, who heads the mediation process after deadly polls in 2008.

During early voting last Sunday and Monday polling stations opened late and many lacked indelible ink, stamps, voter rolls and ballot papers and boxes.

"If things didn't go right in the special vote, those things need to be looked into by the time of elections on July 31," Zulu told AFP.

President Robert Mugabe called early polls, hoping to prolong his 33 years in power, despite demands for reform by his archrival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

However, Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said this week's "disorganised" early vote showed the country's election commission wasn't up to the task.

Leaders of regional mediator the Southern African Development Community (SADC) will meet in South Africa on Saturday to discuss the upcoming elections, said Zulu.

Presidents of South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Namibia would hold talks after the SADC observer mission deployed in Zimbabwe this week.

"They'll just be talking about Zimbabwe, really," said Zulu.

The 15-member block brokered the power-sharing deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai in 2009, a year after around 200 opposition members were killed in election-related violence.

But there is no love lost between Mugabe and the SADC at the moment.

He threatened to leave the bloc if it meddled in Zimbabwean affairs and scolded South Africa's top diplomat "stupid and idiotic" in an election rally earlier July.

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Merkel urges patience on NSA answers

BERLIN: Two months before national elections, German Chancellor Angela Merkel found herself besieged by questions about US spying, insisting Friday that she has not been remiss in confronting the Americans about their surveillance activities.

The chancellor's traditional 1-hour summer news conference was dominated by questions about National Security Agency snooping, including allegations by NSA leaker Edward Snowden that the US has been spying on its European allies.

Merkel's opponents in the September 22 parliamentary elections have seized on the issue, asserting that she has not done enough to protect Germans' privacy. Although polls show Merkel with a comfortable lead, the issue has created turbulence in what had looked like a smooth glide to a third term as chancellor.

Protecting personal data is an especially sensitive topic in Germany because of abuses by communist East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, and the Nazis' Gestapo.

Merkel insisted her government is awaiting answers from the US to detailed questions about the NSA's activities and hopes to receive them "as soon as possible" — but with no specific deadline.

"I have to take note that our American partners need time for the examination ... It wouldn't help to have an answer that would later turn out not to be truthful," she said. "So I prefer to wait."

Still, she insisted that her government was not trying to stall until Germany's elections are over, insisting that "Sept. 22 is not a date that I am trying to get past."

Last week, Merkel sent her interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, to Washington to confer with top US officials. Friedrich came away pointing to the importance of intelligence in preventing attacks — prompting Merkel's center-left opponents to intensify criticism over what they portrayed as an insufficient effort to protect Germans' personal data.

Her opponents also are questioning assertions by Merkel and other officials that they knew nothing before Snowden's disclosures. The government has been peppered this week with questions over details of those programs, with Snowden's allegations overshadowing such issues as Europe's laggard economy.

"My job is to ensure people in Germany know that German law applies on German soil, and that applies to everyone here," Merkel said. Still, she added, "it is not my job to familiarize myself with the details of PRISM," referring to one of the NSA programs.

Merkel has also sought to keep the issue from damaging relations with the US

"With every day it becomes clear to the United States that this is important for us," she said. "Germany is not a nation of surveillance. Germany is a nation of freedom."

Following the press conference, Merkel's center-left challenger, Peer Steinbrueck, termed her comments a sign of "alarming cluelessness and helplessness."

"I get the impression that she is simply sitting waiting in the chancellery for our American partners to inform her," he told broadcaster RBB Inforadio.

Also Thursday, justice ministers from Germany and France signed a joint declaration pushing for new rules to protect EU citizens' privacy rights and punish violators. At a meeting in Lithuania, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said the European push for tougher data protection rules is "an anti-PRISM action".

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Insurgents kill 8 laborers, Afghan officials say

KABUL: Insurgents pulled over a minivan with eight young laborers on their way to work at a US base in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, forced them out and then shot them dead, officials said.

The killings near Forward Operating Base Shank, a US base in Logar province, were the latest in a militant campaign of intimidation against Afghans working for the government or the international coalition.

The attack took place just after dawn near Puli Alam, the provincial capital.

"They were eight ordinary laborers going to work at that base. They were day laborers," said Logar deputy police chief Raeis Khan Abdul Rahimzai. "This is very hard to believe. It is an inhuman and un-Muslim act against innocent people."

He said the eight were heading for temporary day jobs at the base and were not part of the facility's local staff. The gunmen let the driver of the minivan go and did not harm him, Rahimzai said.

Provincial spokesman Din Mohammad Darwesh said there were four gunmen on motorcycles who pulled over the minivan.

"They just took them out of the car and shot them. They are all in their late teens and early 20's," Darwish said.

Both officials said it was unclear if the incident could have been in reprisal for a coalition airstrike that killed 18 Taliban fighters in another part of the province on Wednesday.

Logar, located just south of Kabul, has seen a sharp increase in insurgent activity this year, The Afghan army last week carried out a large operation against insurgents operating in the province.

The Taliban have said they will not stop fighting during the holy month of Ramzan, which began last week, and will instead step up their attacks.

About 1,000 Afghan civilians have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded in the first half of the year, according to the United Nations. That marked a 24 per cent increase in casualties compared to the same period last year.

As the Nato-led coalition last year started a withdrawal that will see most foreign troops gone by the end of 2014, the Taliban and other groups have unleashed a wave of bombings and assassinations around the country, testing the ability of Afghan security forces to respond with reduced help from Nato troops.

The Taliban have said they would go after government workers and anyone working for the US-led coalition as part of their campaign against President Hamid Karzai's administration.

The Taliban have in the past killed people working at the Logar base. Last November, militants shot and killed two translators as they were heading to work on the base.

Last month, a Taliban suicide bomber struck outside of Afghanistan's supreme court, killing 17 people in the deadliest attack in Kabul in over a year and a half. In April, insurgents assaulted a courthouse and government offices in western Farah province, killing 46 people, including two judges, six prosecutors, administration officers and cleaners working at the site.

Also in June, the UN special representative to Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, said insurgents were behind 74 per cent of all civilians casualties in the first six months of 2013, and attributed the rise on the militants' "continuing disregard" for international laws on civilians in conflict.

Kubis also said that targeting government officials and civilians was a crime under international law. The Taliban have argued that government officials and workers are legitimate targets.

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Syria's war children will grow up illiterate: UN

BEIRUT: Syria's devastating civil war will force a generation of children to grow up illiterate and filled with hate, a UN envoy warned on Thursday as fighting raged on around the country.

Leila Zerrougui, the special representative for children and armed conflict, said both sides in the Syrian conflict, now in its third year, continue to commit grave violations against children.

Scores of children have been killed, injured, detained, and forced to witness or to commit atrocities as President Bashar Assad's troops battle opposition fighters trying to oust his regime, she said.

Zerrougui spoke following a three-day visit to Syria, where she met with government officials and rebel commanders. She said she urged both sides to spare the children.

Once the war is over, Zerrougui said she told her counterparts, they "will have to face a generation of children who lost their childhood, have a lot of hate and are illiterate."

The fighting has destroyed thousands of schools across Syria while many of those still standing have been turned into shelters for displaced people, Zerrougui also said, speaking to reporters in Beirut.

Before Syria, the UN envoy also visited Syrian refugees in neighboring countries, including Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq.

She said children account for nearly half of the five million Syrians who fled their homes because of the fighting. Of those, half have not gone to school. And nearly 70 percent of those who do go to school drop out because they need to help support their families or for other reasons, Zerrougui added.

During her visit to Syria, Zerrougui also urged opposition forces to stop recruiting children into combat and asked the government to consider children, who were forced to taking up arms, as victims, not as combatants.

Aid groups have warned that some 2 million children in Syria are facing malnutrition, disease, early marriage and severe trauma as a result of the civil war.

The Violations Documentation Center in Syria, a key activist group that keeps track of the war's dead, wounded and missing persons, says 7,132 children under the age of 15 have been killed in the past two and half years, including 4,939 boys and 2,193 girls.

More than 93,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict started in March 2011 as largely peaceful protests against Assad's rule. The crisis escalated into civil war after some opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown on dissent.

Fighting continued unabated in Syria on Thursday, particularly in the north, where activists said Kurdish fighters took control of a major town near the border with Turkey.

The Kurdish forces have battled rebels from radical Islamic groups for control of the town of Ras al-Ain for days, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group with a network of activists on the ground.

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Palestinians demand Kerry plan changes

RAMALLAH (Palestinian Territories): The Palestinians demanded on Thursday that changes be made to US secretary of state John Kerry's Middle East peace plan, following a meeting in Ramallah, an official said.

"Fatah wants to make some alterations to Kerry's plan ... because the proposed ideas are not encouraging for a return to negotiations," a top official of the party of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said.

"The central committee is demanding, for a return to talks ... that Kerry announce they should be based on the 1967 lines," said Amin Maqbul, secretary general of the ruling Fatah movement's Revolutionary Council.

The vote came after two rounds of intensive talks between Kerry and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas on Tuesday and Wednesday, who is also Fatah leader, in which they thrashed out the plan.

It was the top US diplomat's sixth visit to the region in as many months to try to broker a compromise formula to allow a resumption of direct peace talks after a three-year hiatus.

Israel had rejected Palestinian demands for a publicly declared freeze to all settlement construction in the occupied territories as a condition to resume talks, and Abbas and his negotiating team had referred those terms to the Palestinian political leadership.

The rejection by the leadership of Abbas's own Fatah movement of the blueprint meant that its planned referral to the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which also includes dissident factions, was unlikely to go ahead.

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Syrian university strips Turkish PM of PhD

DAMASCUS: Syria's Aleppo University has stripped Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of an honorary doctorate citing his support for Syrian rebels and crackdown on Turkish protesters, state media reported on Tuesday.

State news agency SANA said Erdogan was being stripped of the PhD because of "his plots against the Syrian people" and his use of "arbitrary" violence against protesters in Turkey.

SANA quoted Khudur Orfaly, dean of Aleppo University, describing the decision as "a message of solidarity to the friendly Turkish people, who reject Erdogan's hostile policies".

Relations between Syria and Turkey have deteriorated sharply since the uprising broke out against President Bashar al-Assad's rule in March 2011 and Erdogan became one of Assad's most outspoken critics.

Turkey is now home to more than 400,000 Syria, refugees and harbours many of the opposition's top civilian and military leaders.

At home, Erdogan has faced a wave of protests since June, demanding his resignation.

Human rights groups have accused Turkish police of using excessive force against the demonstrators, and Syrian state television has frequently aired footage of Turkish security forces putting down the protests.

Syria's state media does not acknowledge the existence of any popular anti-Assad movement, instead blaming the violence on foreign-backed "terrorists".

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Pakistan presidential election on Aug 6

ISLAMABAD: The election to choose the next Pakistan President will be held on August 6, over a month earlier than expected, in a move seen as an attempt to hasten the exit of incumbent Asif Ali Zardari.

The schedule for the presidential election was announced on Tuesday by the Election Commission.

"The schedule has been approved by chief election commissioner Fakhrudin G Ibrahim in a special meeting," an election commission official, who did not want to be named, told PTI.

Zardari, currently on a private visit to Dubai and London, is set to complete his five-year term on September 8. He has announced that he will not run for a second term.

The announcement of the date for the presidential poll came as a surprise to observers as the electoral college is currently incomplete. Bye-elections for 42 vacant seats in the national and provincial assemblies will be held on August 22.

The four provincial assemblies and the two houses of parliament form the electoral college for the presidential poll and voting is held in the assemblies.

According to the current strength of political parties in the national and provincial assemblies, the nominee of the ruling PML-N of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will easily win the election.

Khurshid Shah, a senior leader of Zardari's Pakistan People's Party, criticised the decision to hold the election before the President completes his term.

"I don't know why they are doing it before the completion of the electoral college. The presidential election can be legally held only after August 22," Shah told reporters.

Former election commission secretary Kanwar Dilshad too criticised the decision.

According to the official schedule, the last day for submitting nomination papers is July 24. The nominations will be scrutinised on July 26 and the official nominees will be announced on July 29.

Zardari, 57, replaced former military ruler Pervez Musharraf and managed to survive despite strong criticism from the media and opposition.

It is believed that the move to hold the poll on August 6 is part of efforts by Zardari's opponents to force him to resign as he will be a "lame duck" President after his successor is elected.

So far, political parties have not revealed the names of their candidates though the PML-N held a meeting in the Prime Minister's House to discuss various names for the top post.

Sources said Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, Sartaj Aziz, Mumtaz Bhutto and Ghaus Ali Shah were among those considered by the PML-N leadership but no decision was made about the final nominee.

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Sudan's President leaves Nigeria, ICC calls for arrest

ABUJA: Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has left Nigeria, where his presence at a one-day African Union HIV/AIDS summit defied International Criminal Court (ICC) calls for his arrest on charges of genocide and war crimes, officials said on Tuesday.

His press secretary and Nigerian hosts both denied reports in the local media that he had left early fearing arrest.

Monday's summit lasted one day and Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn was the only African leader who stayed on until Tuesday, an official at a breakfast for them at the presidency that morning said.

"President Bashir returned normally to Khartoum after participating in the summit in Abuja to resume his work in Khartoum," his press secretary Emad Said told Reuters.

Bashir, who is accused of masterminding genocide and other crimes during the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region in which some 200,000 people were killed, arrived in Nigeria on Sunday, much to the chagrin of human rights campaigners.

New York-based Human Rights Watch and the British government both expressed dismay at the decision to let him in, and a local activist group filed a court petition demanding his arrest, in line with Nigeria's obligations under the ICC treaty.

Sudan's foreign ministry reacted angrily to negative comments from Britain's Africa minister Mark Simmonds.

In a statement, the ministry suggested Britain was being hypocritical because of its participation in the Iraq war.

"Britain participated in the Iraq invasion after it had manipulated the domestic and international opinion with reasons it knew were lies. Iraq, our friend, still suffers from the destruction," Ali Karti said.

The ICC's pre-trial chamber said on Tuesday that it had asked Nigeria to arrest Bashir and hand him to the ICC the day before.

The African Union voted in 2009 to not cooperate with the ICC indictments against Bashir. Nigeria's presidency says its decision to allow him in was in keeping with that decision.

African enthusiasm for the court has waned over the years, partly owing to a perception that prosecutors disproportionately target African leaders, a charge the ICC denies.

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Car bomb kills 13 in Syria

BEIRUT: A car bomb exploded outside the police headquarters in a town north of the Syrian capital, killing at least 13 people including 10 policemen, activists said on Monday.

The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said the blast took place overnight in the town of Deir Atiyeh, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Damascus. One child was among the dead, the Observatory said.

Syria's state news agency confirmed the attack, but said a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden car in a residential area of the town, causing an unknown number of casualties. It said "terrorists" were behind the blast — a government term for rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad's regime.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but radical Islamic groups, including those with links to al-Qaida, frequently target Syrian government institutions, security installations and troops with car bombs and suicide attacks.

Last month, a Syrian branch of al-Qaida known as Jabhat al-Nusra, claimed responsibility for multiple suicide attacks on security compounds in Damascus that killed at least five people.

The Nusra Front and other Islamic extremist groups have been the most effective fighting force on the opposition side in the past year, spearheading many of the rebel offensives that have captured military bases, towns and villages.

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Pressure on Spanish PM to step down

MADRID: Pressure mounted on Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Monday as a once-trusted aide gave more testimony before a judge looking into allegations of illegal financing in the ruling party.

Opposition leaders called on Rajoy to step down and a source within his own centre-right People's Party told Reuters that discontent was growing with his leadership.

Rajoy, who is fighting economic recession and trying to plug a hole in the budget, has so far limited the impact of the scandal over allegedly illegal donations by construction magnates that were supposedly distributed as cash payments to party leaders in return for juicy contracts.

At the heart of the scandal is former party treasurer Luis Barcenas, 55, who was jailed in June and charged with bribery, money laundering, tax fraud and other crimes.

A high court judge questioned Barcenas behind closed doors for more than three hours on Monday, after he was transported from jail in a white van.

A lawyer involved with the case told Reuters that the former PP treasurer was expected to turn over documents showing how he ran a secret slush fund at the party for many years.

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British woman dies trying to swim the Channel

LONDON: A British woman died trying to swim across the Channel between Britain and France over the weekend, police and the UK foreign office said on Monday.

Susan Taylor, who was reportedly in her 30s, died in hospital in Boulogne-sur-Mer on the northern French coast on Sunday night after trying to complete a charity challenge.

"We are aware of the death of a British national in Boulogne on July 14, 2013. We are providing consular assistance to the family at this difficult time," the Foreign Office said.

French authorities said the boat accompanying Taylor, the "Pathfinder", called coastguards at about 5.30pm (1530 GMT) on Sunday and asked for a defibrillator.

A helicopter was dispatched to collect the swimmer and take her to hospital, where she died at about 7.15pm (1715 GMT), the local maritime prefect's office said.

According to her online charity fundraising page, Taylor had raised almost £3,000 ($4,500, 3,500 euros) for the Rainbows children's hospice, and a further £2,200 for Diabetes UK.

Donations continued to pour in after her death.

On the website, Taylor described swimming the Channel, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, as akin to scaling Everest.

"Less than 1,000 people have completed the 21-mile (34km) cross-Channel swim, whereas over 3,000 have conquered the world's tallest mountain," she wrote.

"Only one in ten people who train for the Channel actually complete it."

Kevin Murphy, secretary of the Channel Swimming and Piloting Federation, trained with Taylor earlier this year in Majorca, where she completed a six-hour swim in cold water.

"It is incredibly sad," he said, adding: "She had been our friend on the beach training in Dover and everyone's cut up about it because she was such a lovely, nice lady."

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