Month: October 2016

Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova, who pulled off a stunning upset over world number one Angelique Kerber to scoop the WTA finals Sunday, credited her mental strength for her winning performance.
Runner-up at the 2014 Australian Open, the former seventh seed denied Kerber a chance to end a remarkable year on a high, defeating her in a nail-biting 6-3, 6-4 final in Singapore that lasted 76 minutes.
“It’s a big thing now in my tennis that I work with a mental coach. I’ve worked with him for one and a half years.
“This is something very important for me, because as you can see, on the court I put a lot of emotions, and emotions just affect me,” she told reporters after her win.
Cibulkova turned the tables on Germany’s Kerber a week after losing to her in the first of three round-robin stage matches.
“This is a big moment for me. It’s the biggest moment in my career,” Cibulkova said at the presentation.
“It’s hard to describe in words (how I feel). I have to congratulate Angelique Kerber, you are an inspiration for me to play hard this year. With hard work, everything is possible.”
Kerber went into the final as the overwhelming favourite to win after taking this year’s Australian Open and US Open titles but the 28-year-old was powerless to stop her diminutive opponent, whose shock win capped an inspired return to the game’s elite that saw her named as this season’s WTA Comeback Player of the Year.
Cibulkova only just snuck into the WTA Finals, restricted to the world’s top eight players, when she won this month?s Linz Open in Austria but was facing an early exit from Singapore after losing her first two matches.
-Bouncing back-
She only qualified for the semi-finals on a countback when Kerber did her a huge favour by beating American Madison Keys in straight sets, and Cibulkova herself and fought back from a set down to win against Svetlana Kuznetsova.
For her win over Kerber, Cibulkova was presented with the Billie Jean King trophy by tennis legend Monica Seles and a cheque for $2.05 million.
Kerber on the other hand was left wondering what went wrong at the end of a stellar year.
Oozing with self-belief after making the quantum leap from another promising player to the woman who dislodged Serena Williams at the top of the world rankings, Kerber had done everything right this week, giving up just set one in the four matches she played en route to the final.
The left-hander had won each of her last five matches with Cibulkova, but did not bank on her playing the match of her life, hitting winners from every part of the court, eliciting huge roars and gasps from the crowd.
“It was a tough year with a lot of matches, so I give everything on court today, the rest (of the) energy I had left,” Kerber told reporters.
“Of course when I’m looking back it’s one of my best years… I will just think about the best moments and the positive emotions.”
There were some anxious moments too for Cibulkova at the end.
She squandered three golden opportunities as her nerves started to fray, but regained her composure and was rewarded for her aggressive approach with a slice of luck, hitting a ferocious forehand that clipped the tape and landed on the other side of the net just as she fell to the court in disbelief at her achievement.
Russia’s Olympic gold medallists Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina won the doubles final, beating US Open winners Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Lucie Safarova 7-5 (7-5) 6-3.

The formal end to the French mission comes as a fresh wave of bloodshed shook the troubled nation, spearheaded by rival Muslim and Christian militia groups.
“France is not giving up on Central Africa,” Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on Thursday, highlighting the presence of more than 10,000 UN peacekeepers from the MINUSCA mission.
But many Central Africans are worried about the departure of the French troops, who were urgently deployed following a wave of bloodshed in December 2013.
“Armed groups are getting ready. And I’m afraid they will start an all-out offensive when the French have left,” a senior political figure told AFP, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.
“The militias fear the French troops but not the UN force.”
In recent weeks, people have been living in fear as armed groups have resumed their acts of violence in the interior of the country, leaving dozens dead.
On Thursday and Friday alone, at least 25 people were killed, among them six members of the security forces following clashes in the central town of Bambari and the surrounding area, MINUSCA said.
Armed groups have flourished over the years given the weakness of the state.
Among the main culprits are factions from the mostly-Muslim former Seleka rebel force, and the Christian anti-Balaka militias.
But there are also vigilante groups made up of nomadic Fulani herders, who are predominantly Muslim as well as others which specialise in highway robbery.
One of the world’s poorest countries, the Central African Republic has scarcely emerged from the chaos of civil war which erupted in 2013 following the overthrow of then president Francoise Bozize, a Christian, by Muslim rebels from the Seleka coalition who installed their own leader.
Christians who comprise about 80 percent of the population then organised vigilante units — dubbed “anti-Balaka” in reference to the machetes used by the rebels — which then began to target Muslims, plunging the country into a crisis.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Seleka and anti-Balaka groups committed widespread abuses against civilians, including killings, sexual violence, and destruction of private, public and religious properties, causing mass displacement.
French troops backed by a UN mandate arrived in December 2013. A month later, the Seleka president was forced to step down following massive international pressure over his failure to end the violence.
Despite this explosive cocktail, France, the former colonial power, decided earlier this year to end its mission in the country with Le Drian telling parliament earlier this month that the operation had been “a success”.
“We stopped the mass killings… allowed a process of intercommunal reconciliation, the reconstitution of the state, a presidential election, and legislative elections,” he said during a debate.
“Even if stability has not been entirely restored, it is important now… that this role be handed over to the Central African forces and the UN mission.”
Around 350 French troops, equipped with observation drones, will remain present, around 100 of whom will be deployed with the UN, the French government says.
The French operation has not been entirely smooth, with its troops coming under intense pressure since July 2014 over allegations of child rape.
Despite the troubling claims, fears of a return to violence have triggered concern among Central African civilians over the imminent pullout.
“I think there is a sense of unfinished business which risks plunging the country back into a much worse situation,” said a teacher called Edgar Ngbaba.
“I don’t believe in this withdrawal at all,” said Marie Ndoinam, a trader.
And the worry of Bangui residents is only fuelled by news filtering through from the interior of the country.
According to several Central African sources contacted by AFP, several hundreds of heavily-armed Seleka gunmen from rival factions have begun gathering in Batangafo, some 350 kilometres (220 miles) north of Bangui.

An evangelical mega-church bishop who once branded Catholics demons was elected mayor of Rio de Janeiro, in nationwide municipal elections confirming Brazil’s shift to the right.
This was the second round of balloting for city halls in Latin America’s biggest country and confirmed the trend seen in October 2 polls which ended in humiliation for the former governing Workers’ Party.
In the first round, the Workers’ Party lost about two thirds of the mayor’s posts it had won in 2012 elections, including Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo.
The drubbing underlined the decline of a party founded by ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and comes after the removal from office of his handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff in an impeachment trial in August.
The biggest winner emerging from the elections has been the center-right PMDB of new President Michel Temer and allied parties, especially the PSDB.
“The Temer government’s base came out with a big win,” said political scientist Fernando Schuler in Sao Paulo.
Schuler said losses by the Workers’ Party in heartland municipalities, including San Bernardo do Campo in Sao Paulo, “reinforced the tendency seen in the first round — a defeat for the former government’s political bloc.”
The highlight of Sunday’s runoff elections was a battle for Rio’s post-Olympics future between socialist Marcelo Freixo and evangelical Marcelo Crivella, from the Brazilian Republican Party (PRB).
Crivella — a bishop in the giant Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, founded by his billionaire uncle — won with an easy 59.4 to 40.6 percent, final results showed.
He has promised to bring law and order to Rio, a city beset by high crime. Despite billions of dollars in investments for the Olympic Games this year the city also suffers from ramshackle infrastructure, including a lack of basic sanitation for many in the impoverished favela neighborhoods.
Casting his vote in Copacabana, Crivella said he would dedicate himself “above all to health, education, transport and public safety.”
Evangelical politicians are advancing steadily nationwide, helped by disgust over revelations of systemic corruption among leading politicians and executives during the Workers’ Party era.
The evangelical message has also taken root among the poor, who earlier would have been expected to vote more along leftist lines. Several high profile cases of evangelical leaders also caught up in corruption allegations have yet to damage the movement.
Crivella himself faces controversy.
He has had to work hard to distance himself from statements he made in a book he wrote in 1999 in which he described Roman Catholics as “demonic” and claimed that Hindus drank their children’s blood. The 59-year-old has also described homosexuality as evil and African religions as worshipping “evil spirits.”
Freixo, 49, of the Socialism and Freedom Party, was a dramatically different candidate, advocating socially liberal policies. He won strong support among the city’s cultural elite and pro-gay activists.
Mauricio Santoro, a political analyst at Rio de Janeiro State University, said Brazilians are rejecting mainstream politicians and that Crivella and Freixo are signs of the polarized times.
“How is it possible that in Rio de Janeiro, a city of joy and openness about sexuality, there will be a mayor who is very conservative, discriminates and opposes Afro-Brazilian religions? The (centrist) alliance that governed the city has broken,” he said.
Schuler said center-right forces had made impressive gains and will look to the presidential elections in 2018.
However, those parties face a conundrum: Now they will have to govern just when Brazil is embarking on painful and potentially unpopular economic reforms to escape recession.
“Voters could easily become frustrated,” he warned.

Ivorians voted Sunday to determine the fate of constitutional changes the president says will help end years of unrest but which have alarmed the opposition, with scuffles erupting at dozens of polling stations.
The package put to the country’s 6.3 million voters is being boycotted by the opposition and has left much of the electorate confused, analysts say.
Commentators say turnout is the main question, as there seems to be little doubt the changes will be approved given the boycott.
Two opposition coalitions claimed turnout was very low, estimating only between three and seven percent of eligible voters had cast a ballot. Official figures have yet to be released.
“The results… show that the project and President Alassane Ouattara (have) been rejected by the people,” Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) head Pascal Affi Nguessan told AFP, claiming a “resounding success” for the boycott call.
“It is up to President Ouattara to draw conclusions (…) Either he withdraws the text, or he resigns,” he said.
An electoral commission source has said the counting should be finished “by the end of Monday, Tuesday at the latest”.
President Ouattara’s revised constitution would create the post of a vice president, and set up a senate, a third of which would be nominated by the head of state.
It would also suppress a contested clause on national identity — the so-called “Ivorian-ness” clause — which took effect in 2000 and stipulates that both parents of a presidential candidate must be born on Ivorian soil and not have sought nationality in another country.
The issue of identity has contributed to years of unrest in the West African country, which suffered a coup in 1999, a civil war in 2002 that split the country between its north and south, and a bloody post-election crisis in 2010.
The electoral crisis led to months of post-poll bloodshed with then-president Laurent Gbagbo refusing to step down.
Some 3,000 people died and Gbagbo is now on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity.
Shortly after the polls opened, trouble broke out in the economic capital Abidjan and elsewhere, with groups of youths storming several voting stations and damaging equipment, Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko said.
Bakayoko described incidents at “around 100” of the country’s 20,000 polling stations.
“They started by throwing stones… then they came in and broke everything…. They told us to stop working ‘because the constitution doesn’t meet the people’s expectations’,” an official, Nandy Bamba, told AFP.
“It’s a way of intimidating (us) but we are not afraid,” said trader Bahdjata Cisse who voted in favour of the changes.
With the outcome in little doubt, the participation rate will be the main issue.
After the 1999 coup, the current second constitution was approved in August 2000 by 87 percent of votes cast, with a participation rate of 56 percent.
The opposition and some observers believe Sunday’s vote will need at least a similar turnout to be legitimate.
AFP journalists noted no large crowds voting, with a survey by AFP showing turnout of between 20 percent and 46 percent at a selection of polling stations around the country.
Casting his ballot at an Abidjan school, Ouattara appeared confident.
“It is essential for our nation’s future to turn the page on the crisis created by the constitution of the year 2000,” he said.
Ouattara is from Ivory Coast but his father was born in neighbouring Burkina Faso and the issue of “Ivorian-ness” raised a hurdle in his bid for the presidency.
The proposed new constitution, which parliament has overwhelmingly approved, would see the creation of the post of vice president, who would appear on the ballot with presidential candidates.
The government claims the idea is to ensure continuity if the head of state dies or is incapacitated.
Critics have speculated that Ouattara is trying to line up a successor for when his term ends in 2020.
Ouattara “is treating Ivory Coast as if it were his personal property,” Nguessan has said previously. His FPI party was founded by Gbagbo.
“What he is offering is less than a constitution. It is a will and testament designed to distribute his country to his successors so it stays in the family.”
Some voters welcomed the chance to have their voices heard.
“I am voting for the sake of my children,” 61-year-old TV engineer Soro Seydou told AFP in the nation’s second city Bouake.
Others, however, had vowed to stay away.
“There is little engagement,” said researcher Meite Mamoudou who, like many observers, expected that many people simply will not have bothered to vote.

Gareth Bale tied his long term future to Real Madrid on Sunday by extending his contract with the Spanish giants to 2022, the club confirmed.
“Real Madrid C. F. and Gareth Bale have agreed an extension to the player’s contract, keeping him at the club until the 30th of June 2022,” Madrid said in a statement.
Bale, 27, joined Real for a then world record fee in 2013 on a six-year deal and has won the Champions League twice in his three full seasons in the Spanish capital.

World number three Rory McIlroy has made a late decision to skip this week’s Turkish Airlines Open over security fears.
The four-time major winner confirmed his pullout on Sunday from the first of the tour’s “Final Three” series of big money playoff events after finishing fourth in the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai on Sunday behind winner Hideki Matsuyama.
Asked by AFP if a rocket attack two weeks ago in the region which hosts the event had been behind his withdrawal, McIlroy said: “I think it’s obvious. I gave it a lot of thought, basically all week.
“It was sort of a weight on my mind and I felt like I slept a lot better last night knowing that I’d made a decision.”
The player’s management had informed the European Tour on Saturday night that McIlroy would not travel to the Regnum Carya Golf and Spa Resort, Antalya, for the $7 million tournament which starts Thursday.
It is the second blow to the tournament. Tiger Woods was originally on the entry list but withdrew earlier this month after electing to delay his comeback from injury until December.
Up to three rockets fired by unknown assailants on October 15 in the Antalya region hit a roadside fishmonger, causing no casualties, reports said.
Although the attacks took place some 90 kilometres (56 miles) from the tournament venue, they prompted officials to seek security reassurances.
McIlroy’s withdrawal leaves Masters champion Danny Willett, who slumped to 75th place in Shanghai, as the top-ranked player on the Turkey entry list.
Willett will be looking to regain ground after his poor showing in the WGC event dropped him out of the top spot in the “Race to Dubai” European order of merit standings for the first time since winning the US Masters in April.
British Open champion and Olympic silver medallist Henrik Stenson now leads the Race to Dubai after finishing tied second in Shanghai.
McIlroy remains third but now has only one event remaining, the season-ending Dubai World Tour Championship in three weeks time.
Willett will play all three Final Series events in Turkey, South Africa and Dubai. Stenson will play the two after Turkey.
That means even a win for McIlroy in Dubai may not be enough to retain his European Tour crown for the third consecutive year and fourth time in five years.
“I guess it’s out of my hands. That’s the thing,” said McIlroy Sunday. “If I have somewhat of a chance going into Dubai, that’s great. Those boys can battle it out.
“I think over the course of the season, they have had big wins and played well. They are two major champions, so I’m OK with that.”
Top five in the European Tour’s Race to Dubai standings after the WGC-HSBC Champions on Sunday:
1 Henrik Stenson (SWE) 3,843,283.58 points
2. Danny Willett (ENG) 3,581,896.64
3. Rory McIlroy (NIR) 2,824,148.55
4. Alex Noren (SWE) 2,318,603.58
5. Tyrrell Hatton (ENG) 2,242,985.02

Iran’s vice president and environment chief, Massoumeh Ebtekar, has told AFP that the West’s failure to fully implement the nuclear deal and lift sanctions are endangering her country’s efforts to meet climate targets.
In an exclusive interview, Ebtekar said Iran had already seen temperatures rise by 1.5 degrees over the past 20 years, and urgently needed to work with international partners.
“We’re facing the consequences of climate change already in Iran. It’s not a matter of the future, it’s a matter of today,” said Ebtekar, who heads the department of environment and has won multiple global awards for her work.
“We have a severe shortage in underground water reservoirs as well as drying up of our rivers and wetlands. In part this is due to unsustainable practices we had in Iran, but it’s also due to the aftermath of climate change.”
With Iran still largely frozen out of the global banking system because of continuing US sanctions, she said commitments for a 12 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 were at risk.
Two-thirds of the planned cuts were “conditional on a full lifting of sanctions because… it requires international collaboration — the exchange not only of experiences but also new technologies is very, very important,” she said.
Although most international sanctions were lifted under last year’s nuclear deal, the United States maintained sanctions linked to human rights and Iran’s ballistic missile programme — making global banks fear they could be fined by Washington for doing business with the Islamic republic.
The continued blockages have made renewing trade with the outside world much tougher than anticipated, and conservatives in Iran have leapt on the issue to make life difficult for moderate President Hassan Rouhani, saying his team was duped by Western negotiators.
“They have reasons to be sceptical,” said Ebtekar, who is one of several Iranian vice presidents. “There are many instances where (the Americans) have not been fulfilling their commitments.”
Ebtekar, 55, gained international fame as spokesperson for the student hostage-takers during the 1979-80 siege of the American embassy in Tehran, but has since become a key figure in the reformist movement, pushing for more open and democratic politics and closer ties with the West.
She insisted the overall outlook was positive — exports are up and the nuclear accord has shown Iran is “ready for investment, for trade, for working with the global community”.
She pointed to the wealth of opportunities in her own field, saying international firms were lining up to invest in solar energy, water conservation and waste management, if only full banking relations could be restored.
But the government faces problems at home, too.
Key institutions such as the judiciary and intelligence services are still controlled by hardliners who oppose closer ties with the West.
By imprisoning several dual nationals — Iranians with Western passports — on espionage charges in recent months, they have hurt the government’s attempts to extend its hand to the world.
“The judiciary have their own priorities. We hope (the cases of dual nationals) will be resolved,” said Ebtekar.
She also acknowledged that the slow recovery of the economy was deeply frustrating, particularly for the country’s young people.
“There are areas where he has faced difficulties and hurdles and pressures, but in most areas, I think people understand that President Rouhani has achieved well, has taken very important steps,” she said.
“He’s been able to bring about an atmosphere of peace… a sense of hope.”
Ebtekar is confident that Rouhani will be re-elected when Iran holds a presidential vote next May, despite fierce opposition from the conservative camp.
The alliance between moderates and reformists that propelled him to power in 2013 “is still very much in place,” she said, and losses by conservatives in recent elections meant parliament was more oriented towards the president than before.
“They have a more pragmatic, a more expert-oriented approach on many issues,” she said.
On whether she might one day consider the top job herself, Ebtekar stuck to the familiar line.
“I never even had a plan to be vice president. My plans were to continue my academic career,” she said of her other job as a doctor of immunology.
“But sometimes destiny has its own play.”

Wayward Australian tennis star Nick Kyrgios is seeking psychological help and his eight-week playing ban is set to be reduced, the ATP said Sunday.
The ATP earlier this month handed out a $25,000 (22,700 euros) fine and imposed a conditional suspension if the 21-year-old did not seek help following a tantrum at the Shanghai Masters.
The ATP said it would reduce the ban to three weeks if the volatile star engaged an approved sports psychologist.
The sport’s governing body confirmed Kyrgios was receiving treatment as part of his rehabilitation.
“Nick has taken up the care plan on offer to him from the ATP. The details and contents of the plan are strictly confidential,” the ATP said.
It now appears that Australia’s world number 13 will be allowed to compete again from November 7.
But Kyrgios’s season is over with no more tournaments scheduled for this year other than next month’s World Tour Finals in London for which he did not qualify.
Should his ban be reduced by the ATP, Kyrgios is expected to begin the new season at the mixed teams Hopman Cup in Perth on January 1 ahead of the Australian Open in Melbourne.
The Shanghai outburst was the latest incident involving the Australian.
Last year he was given a suspended one-month ban for making comments to Stan Wawrinka about his girlfriend.

A rebel assault to break the siege of Syria’s Aleppo slowed Monday amid fierce resistance from regime forces, as the UN said it was “appalled” by opposition fire on civilians.
Rebels launched a major assault on Friday, backed by car bombs and salvos of rockets, to break through government lines and reach the 250,000 people besieged in the city’s east.
Aleppo has been hit by some of the worst violence in Syria’s five-year conflict, turning the once-bustling economic hub into a divided and bombed-out symbol of the brutal war.
Since Friday, opposition factions allied with jihadists have amassed on Aleppo’s western outskirts in a bid to end the regime’s three-month encirclement of the city’s eastern districts.
While they scored an initial advance, the offensive has since slowed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor.
“Since Sunday, the regime has been taking the initiative and the clashes are less intense,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said on Monday.
“The only thing that has been accomplished is partial control over Dahiyet al-Assad,” a neighbourhood on Aleppo’s western outskirts that rebels entered on Friday, he said.
Regime and Russian air strikes were hitting the battlefronts on the city’s edges, but with less intensity than in previous days.
“The momentum of the rebel offensive slowed after failing to take control of the ‘3000’ apartment block and the military complex,” a pro-regime military source said, referring to two built-up areas southwest of Aleppo.
In a new toll on Monday, the Observatory said a total of 61 regime fighters and allied militiamen were killed in the assault, as well as 72 Syrian rebels.
Heavy rebel rocket fire since Friday has killed 48 civilians, including 17 children, the monitor said.
Syria’s state news agency SANA said three civilians were killed in rebel fire on Monday.
In a statement, the army gave a toll of 84 people killed in three days, “mostly women and children,” repeating allegations that rebels had fired shells containing chlorine gas on western Aleppo.
Rights groups Amnesty International said rebels had “displayed a shocking disregard for civilian lives”.
“The goal of breaking the siege on eastern Aleppo does not give armed opposition groups a license to flout the rules of international humanitarian law,” said Amnesty’s Samah Hadid.
UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Sunday he was “appalled and shocked by the high number of rockets” fired by rebels.
“Those who argue that this is meant to relieve the siege of eastern Aleppo should be reminded that nothing justifies the use of disproportionate and indiscriminate weapons, including heavy ones, on civilian areas and it could amount to war crimes,” he said.
“Civilians of both sides of Aleppo have suffered enough due to futile but lethal attempts of subduing the city,” he added.
Aleppo’s front line runs through the heart of the city, dividing rebels in the east from government forces in the west.
Rebel groups have pledged to push east from Dahiyet al-Assad to Hamdaniyeh, a regime-controlled neighbourhood directly adjacent to the besieged eastern districts.
Sarab Abu Abdo, a rebel commander in the Army of Conquest alliance, said fighting was “ongoing with light weapons” on Monday.
“We seized three blocks of the 3000 apartment complex, but the regime still controls most of it,” Abu Abdo told AFP.
He said regime forces had tried twice to overrun Minyan, a village west of Aleppo captured by rebels on Saturday, but failed.
An AFP correspondent saw about a dozen civilians, including women and children, fleeing Dahiyet al-Assad on Sunday.
They carried belongings stuffed into plastic bags over their heads or dragged them along the dusty road.
Syria’s conflict broke out in March 2011 with widespread protests calling for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.
But it has since evolved into a complex, multi-front war pitting regime forces, rebels, Kurds and jihadists against each other.
In Daraa, the southern province where demonstrations against Assad first erupted, a massive regime ambush left at least 35 rebels and allied jihadists dead.
The Observatory said the attack took place late Sunday as opposition fighters were preparing for an attack on nearby government positions.

Air space around the airport was closed from 7:25 pm to 8:49 pm (1525-1649 GMT) “due to unauthorised drone activity resulting in flight diversions”, said operator Dubai Airports.
The General Civil Aviation Authority said the airport at Sharjah, about 15 kilometres (nine miles) away, was closed for a similar period of time as a precaution because of the same drone.
Dubai Airports stressed in a tweet that safety was its top priority and reminded drone operators that it is forbidden to fly them within five kilometres (three miles) of any airport.
On September 28 the airport was shut for about half an hour because of an unauthorised drone while on June 12 it was forced to close for more than an hour for the same reason.
UAE authorities have announced their intention to tighten the rules on the purchase and use of drones and the penalties for violating them.
Around 100 airlines fly to more than 260 destinations from Dubai, which is also home to major carrier Emirates.
More than 78 million passengers travelled through the airport last year.

Chinese coastguard ships are still patrolling the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea but are not stopping Filipinos from fishing there, a Philippine defence spokesman said Sunday.
The information — from fishermen who have just returned from the shoal — came despite earlier Philippine government statements that the Chinese had left the outcrop they seized in 2012.
A spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte had said Saturday there were no longer signs of Chinese ships at the shoal, after Duterte visited China to repair frayed ties.
However Defence Department spokesman Arsenio Andolong said the fishermen who visited the shoal on Saturday still saw Chinese coastguard ships there.
“Filipino fishermen, who have been to Bajo de Masinloc, (the local name for Scarborough Shoal) say that they have observed an undetermined number of Chinese white ships in the area but (the Filipinos) were not subjected to any harassment by these vessels and they were able to fish in peace,” he said in a statement on Sunday.
China took control of Scarborough Shoal, 230 kilometres (140 miles) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon, in 2012. It drove Filipino fishermen away from the rich fishing ground, sometimes using water cannons.
In a case brought by then-president Benigno Aquino, the Philippines won a resounding victory over China at an international tribunal earlier this year.
In a judgement that infuriated Beijing, the tribunal ruled in July there was no basis for China’s claims to most of the South China Sea — where several nations have competing partial claims.
However Aquino’s successor Duterte played down this victory in a visit to China earlier this month, putting territorial disputes on the back-burner and focusing instead on Chinese aid.
Chinese President Xi Jinping told Duterte there was no reason for hostility and difficult topics “could be shelved temporarily”.
The Chinese occupation of the shoal has been a sore point in relations, with Filipino fishermen frequently complaining that Chinese ships drive them away from their fishing grounds.
Duterte had hinted at the possibility of a Chinese withdrawal upon his return from Beijing, saying: “We’ll just wait for a few more days. We might be able to return to Scarborough Shoal.”
Newspaper reports on Sunday also said fishermen from the northern province of Pangasinan were able to fish at Scarborough Shoal, with the Chinese watching but not interfering.
“Happy days are here again,” the Philippine Star quoted one fisherman as saying.

Turkish authorities have fired over 10,000 more civil servants, as the government presses a crackdown over the failed July coup, the official gazette said.
A total of 10,131 government employees have been removed, mainly from the education, justice and health ministries, according to announcements published late Saturday.
The sackings came as the Council of Europe warned Turkey against re-establishing the death penalty.
“Executing the death penalty is incompatible with membership of the Council of Europe,” the 47-member organisation, which includes Turkey, tweeted a day after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government would ask parliament to consider its reintroduction following the coup attempt.
Capital punishment was abolished in Turkey in 2004 as the nation sought accession to the European Union.
“Soon, soon, don’t worry. It’s happening soon, God willing,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told supporters in Ankara on Saturday as crowds chanted: “We want the death penalty!”
The government on Sunday also announced the closure of 15 pro-Kurdish and other media outlets.
University rector elections have also been suspended, with Erdogan set to pick the winners from a pool of candidates selected by the nation’s education authority.
The moves come three months after the government declared a state of emergency following the failed bid by a rogue faction of the army to oust Erdogan.
More than 35,000 people have been arrested since then, and many dozens of teachers, police officers and judges have either been suspended or fired.
Ankara accuses Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in the US, of masterminding the attempt to oust Erdogan — a claim he denies.
Erdogan, who has not specified a timetable for the reintroduction of the death penalty, said his government would take the proposal to parliament, which he said he was sure would approve it, allowing him to ratify the proposal.
Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz added to the Council of Europe’s warning, denouncing Turkey for considering a move that would “slam the door shut to the European Union”.
“The death penalty is a cruel and inhumane form of punishment, which has to be abolished worldwide and stands in clear contradiction to the European values,” Kurz told the Austrian Press Agency.
Ankara formally launched its EU membership bid in 2005. Since then, the bloc has opened 15 negotiating chapters out of the 35 required to join, but to date only one chapter has successfully been completed.
Council of Europe secretary general Thorbjorn Jagland had already warned Ankara against reintroducing capital punishment in August, noting the European Convention on Human Rights, which Turkey has ratified, clearly excludes it.
The Convention, signed in 1983, excludes capital punishment except in time of war or imminent threat of war and a 2002 protocol ended the time-of-war proviso.

Venezuela’s government and opposition leaders were set to meet Sunday for Vatican-backed talks in a bid to settle the country’s deepening political crisis.
It will be the first open dialogue between the sides in nearly a year of opposition efforts to drive President Nicolas Maduro from power.
His opponents blame him for an economic crisis that has caused food shortages and riots in the oil-rich country.
The start of the talks has been fraught with disagreement among the opposition coalition, which voiced suspicion of Maduro even as it confirmed it would attend.
The Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) agreed to join in talks with feelings of “skepticism and distrust,” its leader Jesus Torrealba said in a statement late Saturday.
His side blames Maduro for the country’s economic crisis and wants a referendum on removing him from office.
Maduro’s Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said the talks would go ahead Sunday “to contain actions that aim to overthrow the Venezuelan government by unconstitutional and undemocratic means.”
It was not immediately clear where or exactly when the meeting would take place. Sources told AFP on Sunday it would be in a Caracas hotel.
It would be the first official dialogue between the sides since the opposition took control of the legislature in January.
Since then, Maduro has persistently vowed to resist its efforts to unseat him.
He announced the plan for a “national dialogue” on Monday after an audience with Pope Francis.
The proposal appeared to sow divisions among the opposition. Some senior MUD leaders rejected the move as a ploy.
When the authorities blocked the MUD’s drive for a recall referendum against Maduro, it vowed to hold a political trial against him.
Maduro responded by threatening to jail his political enemies.
Agreeing to join the talks, Torrealba reiterated the MUD’s demands that the government respect the constitutional right to a referendum, and that it free imprisoned MUD activists.
“This meeting could yield important agreements that could de-escalate the conflict,” he said.
But leaders of some of the parties in the MUD warned that the “conditions are not in place for dialogue.”
“The government insists on blocking all the peaceful, constitutional and democratic means” for settling the crisis, they said in an open letter to Torrealba.
The two sides in the dispute said Vatican envoy Emil Paul Tscherrig would attend the talks, along with other international mediators led by Spain’s former prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
The Catholic Church in Venezuela called in a statement for the sides to go ahead with Sunday’s meeting “to avoid a spiral of violence that would increase the suffering of our beloved people.”
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, but is suffering a deep economic crisis sparked by falling crude prices.
The International Monetary Fund estimates inflation in Venezuela will hit 475 percent this year.
Analysts have warned of a risk of unrest in this South American country of 30 million people.
Clashes at anti-government rallies in 2014 left 43 people dead.
Opposition protests on Wednesday drew hundreds of thousands of people. The MUD vowed another demonstration next Thursday at the presidential palace.
Vice President Aristobulo Isturiz warned that government supporters would “be there waiting.”
The palace was the scene of a short-lived coup attempt in 2002 against Maduro’s late predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez.
Maduro’s lead delegate to the talks, Jorge Rodriguez, denounced the opposition’s plan to march there as “craziness.” He accused the opposition of plotting violence.
Senior opposition leader Henrique Capriles responded: “We have a legitimate right to demonstrate at any public building to demand that the constitution be respected.”

Dominant Hideki Matsuyama made history Sunday when he became the first player from Asia to win a World Golf Championships.
The 24-year-old from Japan left a world-class field, including Rory McIlroy and all four 2016 major winners, trailing in his wake as he finished seven strokes clear at the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai.
The 24-year-old Japanese player also became the first from the continent to win “Asia’s Major” and he did it in style with a flawless final round of six-under par 66.
Matsuyama was just one shot shy of the record 72-hole score at Sheshan International Golf Club of 24-under par set by current US Open champion Dustin Johnson three years ago.
Matsuyama finished at 23-under par after four stunning rounds of 66, 65, 68 and 66 at the par-72 layout. British Open champions Henrik Stenson and Daniel Berger of the US were tied for second way back at 16-under par.
World number three Rory McIlroy on Sunday carded his second 66 of the week for yet another top-five finish as he shared fourth place on 15-under par with Bill Haas.
Matsuyama, whose total of 29 birdies for the week was just three short of the all-time US PGA Tour record of 32, remarkably did not card a bogey after the ninth hole of his second round on Friday.
The in-form player is set to rise to as high as number six in the world following his victory for which he wins $1.62 million.
It caps a remarkable run in which Matsuyama has won the Japan Open, finished runner-up in the PGA Tour’s CIMB Classic in Malaysia and won the WGC-HSBC Champions in consecutive weeks.
Matsuyama settled any nerves straight away with a birdie at the first to open a four-shot cushion over defending champion Russell Knox, who eventually fell away with a two-over 74.
“I was really nervous at the start of the day, but I was able to birdie hole number one,” said Matsuyama.
“That kind of got myself into the rhythm of the day, and after that, it was smooth sailing.”
The relentless Matsuyama holed a crucial par putt at the fourth and stood on the eighth tee four shots clear of his two playing partners Knox and Daniel Berger of the US.
The young Japanese found thick rough off the tee and then carved a terrible second into more trouble.
With Berger on the green in three it looked as if his lead would be cut to two shots.
But Matsuyama controlled his fourth shot pitch from more rough to 10 feet and then calmly rolled in to save par and stay four strokes up after Berger missed his 25-foot birdie attempt.
“Number eight was a very important hole for me,” Matsuyama said. “I didn’t hit a very good second shot. But I was able to knock it on and make my par putt. From then on, the round became a lot easier.”
Knox had a bogey on eight for the first time in 23 holes and followed with two more dropped shots around the turn as his round began to unravel.
Berger bogeyed 11 and Matsuyama, who had not had a bogey since the ninth on Friday, rattled home a 30-foot putt for his 27th birdie of the week on the 13th to stand six clear on 21-under.
Seven clear going up the last, Matsuyama had one final wobble.
Going for the green in two because, he said, “I wanted to make 30 birdies in the week” he carved his second into water.
But he dropped and calmly got up and down to record a par five and his 45th hole in a row without a bogey.

Andrea Dovizioso won his first MotoGP race in seven years Sunday, pulling away from legend Valentino Rossi late in the Malaysia Grand Prix to take the checkered flag for Ducati.
Starting from pole position, the Italian fell back early as he and a number of riders struggled on the rain-soaked Sepang International Circuit.
But Dovizioso steadily reeled in his compatriot Rossi, taking the lead back with six laps to go and quickly opening up a gap as Rossi was slowed by tyre issues.
Dovizioso, 30, finished 3.115secs ahead of Rossi for his maiden win of the season and first since 2009.
Rossi, however, clinched second place in the 2016 world championship over his Yamaha teammate and rival Jorge Lorenzo of Spain.
Lorenzo, who will switch to Ducati next year, finished third on Sunday.
Honda’s Marc Marquez had already wrapped up the world championship two weeks earlier in Japan.
Dovizioso called Sunday’s win the biggest of his career.
“It’s really nice to come to this moment. In these conditions I struggled a lot in the race and had some problems, but I really wanted it,” he said.
The race began after a short delay because of a tropical downpour dousing the track.
Riders this week complained that the track, newly re-paved this year, was draining unevenly after rain, creating alternating wet and dry patches.
Much of the race was a gripping duel between Rossi and Dovizioso’s Ducati teammate Andrea Iannone, who was returning to the track for the first time since suffering a vertebrae fracture in a crash in early September.
The lead repeatedly changed hands between Rossi and Iannone over the first 10 laps as they aggressively dived under each other with inches to spare on Sepang’s tight curves.
But Iannone cracked, crashing out with seven laps left. One of three riders to crash, Iannone was uninjured but did not return.
Dovizioso pounced, overtaking Rossi and quickly stretching a sizable lead as Rossi slowed when the tyres his team chose began to prove unsuitable on the increasingly dry track.
“I was optimistic for the victory,” said Rossi, 37, nine-time world champion.
“But with less water I started to suffer very much with the tyres, especially the front.”
With one eye on second place in the world championship, Rossi said he didn’t want to crash out and “throw away 20 points.”
“It’s a shame because we would have liked to win but its good to get second place in the championship.”
“When you have a chance to close these things, you have to try.”
Rossi has had great success at Sepang in the past but has not won on the track since 2010, which also was the last year he won the world title.
Besides Iannone, British rider Cal Crutchlow crashed, as did Marquez. Marquez got back on the track and finished 11th.
Marquez slid off the track the previous weekend in Australia when he was in control of the race, which Crutchlow eventually won.
The crash-happy tone on the slick track was set earlier in the day during the Moto3 category, a veritable demolition derby marked a series of collisions and wipe-outs.
France’s Johann Zarco won in Moto2 to become the first man to repeat since the championship was introduced in 2010.
He became the first French rider to win more than one championship in Grand Prix Racing, according to MotoGP.

“I want to go back to Syria. There is war in my country, but we’ve been living for seven months in Greece like prisoners.”
Adan, from Aleppo, has abandoned his dream of building a new life in Europe, like thousands of other Syrians trapped in Greece.
He’s just arrived at the station in Didymoteicho, a village near the Greece-Turkey border, with his wife, three children and five other relatives, and is preparing to go through a police checkpoint before trying to get into Turkey, the start of a long journey home.
“We’ve been on the streets for months, with nowhere to live. When we arrived in Greece we went to the Idomeni camp where we stayed for three months,” hoping to cross the Greece-Macedonia border to head for Germany, says Adan.
He describes their miserable time in the makeshift camp where over 10,000 migrants were thrown together in wretched conditions, before the Greek government eventually decided to dismantle it in May and transfer them to nearby reception centres.
Adan and his family then tried their luck in Thessaloniki, the nearest major Greece city to Idomeni, before returning to Athens.
“We realised that we are trapped by the closure of the borders and finally we’ve decided to go home, he says.
More than 60,000 refugees are currently trapped in Greece, in particular after the March 18 EU-Turkey accord aimed at sending migrants arriving from Turkey systematically back there.
Refugees and migrants find themselves with no way ahead, their hopes to travel onward to a European country proving to be virtually impossible.
Programmes for relocating or reuniting families, the only legal way of moving to live and work in Europe, have proved slow and complicated due to the reluctance of many countries who don’t want to take in any more refugees.
The EU committed itself in September 2015 to relocate 66.400 refugees from Greece over two years. So far only 4,926 have left in 13 months.
A last hope for migrants is to apply for asylum in Greece — but that is also a lengthy procedure, and daunting in a country still mired in crisis, with the highest unemployment rate in the eurozone.
Adan shows the Didymoteicho police his identity papers handed out by authorities when they first registered on the Aegean island of Lesbos, the main entry point to Greece for migrants from the Turkish coast.
“With their documents they can travel freely within the country. But we know they came here to find people smugglers who will help them cross the Evros river on the border at night, to get into Turkey,” one border guard told AFP, requesting anonymity.
“This kind of case happens every day .. it’s crazy: these are miserable people, they’ve already paid to come illegally to Greece, and here they have to pay again to return home,” he said.
“The people smugglers are the only ones who profit.”
The river level on the Greece-Turkey border is currently quite low.
“Some people use boats but at some points you can cross by foot,” says Chrysovalantis Gialamas, border guard chief for the Evros region.
Dozens of refugees arrive every day at the Didymoteicho station in recent weeks. Some even have German refugee papers, and so appear to be returning from Germany, disappointed that they have not integrated there.
“We can’t really verify if they are genuine or fake,” said one officer, cautiously.
But apart from those who want to leave Greece, the flow of migrants in the opposite direction — from Turkey into Greece — has also increased in recent months, and police have been forced to bolster the land border between the two countries.
Since July, 70 people smugglers and over 1,000 migrants have been arrested, police say.
On Thursday an alleged Greek people smuggler was arrested near Thessaloniki transporting 40 Syrians including 15 children in a truck. They had paid 1,500 euros each to get to the Greek city, where they hoped to find a way to travel onward to northern Europe, according to police.

Bangladesh Sunday recorded their first Test victory over England, taking all ten wickets in a single session thanks to teen off-spin sensation Mehedi Hasan to win the second Test by 108 runs and square the series.
Celebrations erupted at Dhaka’s Sher-e-Bangla Stadium and across the country as Bangladeshis revelled in one of the proudest moments in their sporting history.
Chasing a target of 273, England seemed to be cruising when Alastair Cook and Ben Duckett guided them to 100 without loss at tea.
But 19-year-old Mehedi, playing in only his second Test, triggered a dramatic collapse in the final session of the third day.
England crumbled to 164 all out to suffer their first-ever defeat by Bangladesh in 10 Tests and share the two-Test series 1-1.
Bangladesh secured Test status in 2000 and the win was only their eighth in 95 Tests — and the first against a full-strength side from a major country.
“It’s a great moment for Bangladesh cricket. It was up and down and you never knew which team would win,” said jubilant captain Mushfiqur Rahim.
“The coach was a bit fired up at tea. We didn’t bowl too well. Then they tried to bowl in good areas and did really well. The bowlers did a great job.
“We didn’t think Mehedi will shine like this. He’s a good batsman as well and hopefully will be a great all-rounder for Bangladesh.”
Mehedi, who celebrated his 19th birthday this week, took the final wicket of Steven Finn to finish with 6-77 in the innings and 12 for 159 in the match.
It was his country’s best-ever bowling figure in Tests, overtaking Enamul Haque Jr?s 12-200 against Zimbabwe in 2005.
He finished the series with 19 scalps.
Shakib Al Hasan, the only other Bangladeshi apart from Mehedi and Enamul to take 10 or more wickets in Tests, joined the party with 4-49, including three wickets in an over.
Yet England had reason to feel confident after Duckett and Cook gave them a confident start in pursuit of an achievable target, before Mehedi struck with the first ball of the final session.
He bowled Duckett for 56 and then quickly removed Garry Ballance (five) and Moeen Ali (zero). Then came the coup de grace, the wicket of Cook, the only other half-century maker with 59.
With Shakib having already removed Joe Root for one in the meantime, England were desperate for Jonny Bairstow to replicate his recent fine form.
But Mehedi dismissed Bairstow to complete his second five-wicket haul in the match. The England wicketkeeper-batsman departed for three to leave his side precariously poised on 6-139.
Shakib then took Bangladesh to the brink of victory before Mehedi — the man of the match and of the series — trapped Steven Finn leg before.
“270 would have been a helluva chase… probably,” Cook said after the match.
“Today we showed our inexperience in these conditions. When the ball got rolling we couldn’t stop it.”
Earlier in the day Adil Rashid claimed 4-52 and Ben Stokes 3-52 as England dismissed Bangladesh for 296 to keep their victory target below the 300-run mark.
But the visitors squandered the chance to dismiss Bangladesh more cheaply, dropping a series of catches and allowing the hosts to build on their overnight 152-3.
Stokes was fined 15 percent of his match fee for breaching the ICC code of conduct, ignoring requests from the on-field umpires to stop “verbally engaging” with Bangladeshi batsman Sabbir Rahman.
The English player admitted his offence and no formal hearing was need, the ICC, cricket’s global governing body, said in a statement.

Italy’s most powerful earthquake in 36 years struck the country’s mountainous centre Sunday, panicking shell-shocked residents for the third time in two months and flattening a world famous 600-year-old basilica.
Remarkably, there were no reports of anyone dying as a result of the 6.6-magnitude quake but more than 3,000 people were left temporarily homeless, the national civil protection agency said.
“We can confirm that we have no information on victims,” said agency head Fabrizio Curcio, adding that 20 people had been injured, relatively lightly.
However “many buildings are in a critical state in historic centres and there are problems with electricity and water supplies,” Curcio told reporters.
The quake struck at 7:40 am (0640 GMT) near Norcia in the region of Umbria, unleashing a shock felt in the capital Rome and even in Venice, 300 kilometres (200 miles) away.
Norcia residents were barred from returning to their homes on safety grounds and, as night fell, hundreds were being transported by bus to nearby Lake Trasimeno, where temporary accommodation in hotels and gymnasiums had been arranged.
It was Italy’s biggest quake since a 6.9-magnitude one struck the south of the country in 1980, leaving 3,000 people dead.
More than 50 powerful aftershocks rumbled throughout the day, some 15 of them between magnitude 4 and 5.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi reiterated a government pledge to rebuild every damaged house and ensure that dozens of remote communities do not become ghost towns.
“Fatigue must not turn into resignation” he urged, during a short press conference in Rome, adding that an extraordinary cabinet meeting on Monday would discuss the quake situation.
The most important architectural casualty was Norcia’s 14th-century Basilica of Saint Benedict.
Built on the reputed birthplace of the Catholic saint, it had survived dozens of quakes over the centuries. But it had been compromised by other recent tremors and Sunday’s saw it collapse in on itself with only the facade left standing.
The church is looked after by an international community of Benedictine monks based in two local monasteries which attract some 50,000 pilgrims every year.
“It was like a bomb went off,” said the town’s deputy mayor, Pierluigi Altavilla.
“We are starting to despair. There are too many quakes now, we can’t bear it anymore.”
Lucia Rafael, one of several nuns forced to flee their convent in the town, told AFP the prolonged shaking had “felt like the apocalypse”.
Giuseppe Pezzanesi, mayor of Tolentino in the neighbouring Marche region, said “the people are on their knees psychologically.”
The quake’s epicentre was located at a very shallow depth of one kilometre, six kilometres north of Norcia, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), which measured the magnitude at 6.6.
Italy’s institute of geology and volcanology (IGNV) measured the quake at 6.5 and said it had been preceded by a 6.1-magnitude shock an hour earlier.
It came four days after quakes of 5.5 and 6.1 magnitude hit the same area and nine weeks after nearly 300 people died in an August 24 disaster in the tourist town of Amatrice at the peak of the holiday season.
French seismologist Pascal Bernard warned that the quakes were likely to continue in the weeks or even months to come.
“We aren’t talking about replicas of this magnitude, they are normally smaller,” the researcher told AFP.
The 13th-century civic tower in Amatrice, which was damaged but left standing by the August quake, also collapsed on Sunday.
As with Wednesday’s tremors, the impact was mitigated by the fact that any buildings deemed vulnerable to seismic activity had been evacuated.
The quake was powerful enough to set off car alarms in Rome, 120 kilometres from the epicentre.
Part of the capital’s underground rail network and a road flyover were temporarily closed to allow structural checks to be carried out and schools will not open Monday for the same reason.
Tests were also carried out on Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, which remained open to the faithful on Sunday for the Angelus prayer at which the Pope spoke of his “closeness” to the people affected.
Much of Italy’s land mass and some of its surrounding waters are prone to seismic activity with the highest risk concentrated along its mountainous central spine.
Italy straddles the Eurasian and African tectonic plates, making it vulnerable to seismic activity when they move.
In addition to the Amatrice disaster in August, just over 300 people perished when a quake struck near the city of L’Aquila in 2009.
In 1980, tremors near Naples left 3,000 dead and an estimated 95,000 died in the 1908 Messina disaster, when a quake in the waters between mainland Italy and Sicily sent massive waves crashing into both coasts.

When a leading French politician said Switzerland’s free ports were helping terrorists hide stolen assets, Swiss officials offered a blunt rebuke.
In response to French finance minister Michel Sapin’s charge, authorities in Geneva insisted they had cleaned up their act and suggested he come and check things out for himself.
“Had (the comments) been made several years ago, we could have taken them seriously. Today, they are simply unacceptable,” Pierre Maudet, economics chief in Geneva’s cantonal government, told Switzerland’s One FM.
Maudet’s chief of staff, Patrick Baud-Lavigne, added that “a letter has been sent to Mr. Sapin inviting him to come make an on-site inspection.”
Sapin’s supposed insult was made at a G20 meeting earlier this month.
He called free ports a “weak link” in countering terrorist financing as they helped Islamic State group (IS) sympathisers traffic artistic and archaeological treasures stolen from Iraq and Syria.
“These free ports exist in certain countries. I am referring in particular to Switzerland,” he said.
The original concept behind free ports was to provide places to store goods in transit, protecting them from excessive tariffs and bureaucracy.
Perhaps not surprisingly, highly secured warehouses where basically anything could be stashed tax free with few questions asked became increasingly attractive to nefarious operators.
Switzerland became a free port hub, mirroring the country’s banking system which has long been known as a place to store enormous wealth with little scrutiny on the origins of funds.
The Geneva free ports, established in 1854, now include two separate heavily guarded facilities where endless rows of valuable wine are kept alongside thousands of works of art including Picassos, Van Goghs and Monets — assets likely worth billions of dollars.
In recent years, questions have been raised about some of the goods held at Geneva’s secretive warehouses.
In April, port authorities sequestered Amadeo Modigliani’s painting “Seated Man With a Cane”, which had allegedly been looted from a Jewish art dealer by the Nazis and has been valued at $25 million (23 million euros).
Questions about the piece emerged after the Panama Papers leaks uncovered the identity of its owner.
There has, however, been no public confirmation of Sapin’s suggestion that treasures looted by jihadists had been kept in Geneva.
Baud-Lavigne said “there is a little bit of fantasy and misunderstanding around the free ports.”
But officials have conceded the Geneva facilities had previously been used to traffic archaeological goods and have implemented a series of transparency measures.
Geneva free ports chief Alain Decrausaz told AFP these new rules should ease concerns about the facility being exploited for terrorist funding.
Federal government guidelines approved earlier this year require the name and address of merchandise owners be mentioned on inventory lists, he said.
And last month, new systems for the “control of archaeological antiquities” were adopted, requiring anyone transporting such goods be approved before arriving at the port.
If there any doubts as to the provenance of any item, international auditing giant KPMG can ask for more information or conduct a “complete inspection” of the cargo, Decrausaz explained.
One unresolved issue is customs agents.
Decrausaz said he has repeatedly asked for more, but the federal government claims that with 1.3 million migrants and refugees pouring into Europe over the last two years, Switzerland can’t afford to take staff away from border controls to beef up customs at the port.

A year after jihadists bombed a Russian plane carrying holidaymakers in Egypt, tourism shows little sign of recovery in the Arab country grappling with an economic crisis.
In Khan el-Khalil, a historic bazaar in Cairo once full of tourists, a clothing store owner says he now spends his days surfing Facebook.
“I don’t have anything else to do,” said Amgad Qasabgi, 45, in front of his shop, a sequined two-piece belly dancing outfit dangling over his head.
The October 31, 2015 bombing of the plane claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group killed all 224 people on board after takeoff from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Russia reacted by cancelling all flights to Egypt, with Britain cancelling flights to the resort town itself, decimating a tourism sector already battered by unrest following the country’s 2011 revolution.
Citizens of the two countries make up around 40 percent of foreign tourists to Egypt.
The drop in tourism revenues, a main source of foreign hard currency, has exacerbated a dollar shortage in Egypt that in turn has hit imports.
Government officials have blamed a foreign conspiracy targeting the Egyptian economy, while unveiling slick commercials to try to woo back the tourists.
“There are no foreign tourists,” said Qasabgi, a father of five. “Spending by Egyptian tourists does not cover our daily expenses.”
The bazaar’s cafeterias and restaurants are empty save for some Egyptian families and strolling students.
A few tourists hopped off two buses parked at a plaza in front of the nearby Hussein mosque, but most returned without buying any souvenirs.
“Tourism has totally died,” said Abdel Rahman, a salesman at a large store specialising in lanterns and inscribed silver chandeliers.
A family of European tourists enters the shop and haggles over a small lamp. They leave empty-handed.
“The few tourists who do come almost always don’t buy anything,” said Abdel-Rahman, turning off the light to save on his electricity bill.
Traditionally, tourism has provided about 20 percent of Egypt’s foreign currency needs.
In February, Prime Minister Ismail Sharif told state television the country had already lost up to $1.3 billion since the airliner disaster.
Even before the Russian plane disaster, the tourism industry had been badly hit.
-‘War on terrorism’-
In June 2015, police foiled an attempted suicide bombing near the famed Karnak temple in Luxor — one of Egypt’s most popular attractions — while 600 tourists were inside.
In September the same year, eight Mexicans were mistakenly killed by security forces in the vast Western Desert.
Last year, tourist numbers plunged by more than half, to 6.3 million, compared with 15 million in 2010. The number from Russia fell to 2.3 million, from 3.1 million in 2014.
At the same time, tourism revenues dropped by 15 percent to $6.2 billion in 2015, compared with the previous year, according to official figures.
The government aims to attract 20 million tourists, with revenues of $26 billion, by 2020, through an international campaign to promote Egypt and develop tourist sites.
Egyptian authorities say they are in a “war on terrorism” since the military overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 unleashed a jihadist insurgency.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief, has vowed to restore order, but attacks have persisted, especially in the Sinai Peninsula.
Jason Shi, a Chinese citizen in Egypt on a business trip, said he could not resist visiting the historic landmarks.
“We got a warning from our foreign ministry not to visit Sinai or to stay late in the streets or approach security premises,” he said outside Cairo Museum.
“But I cannot miss this opportunity to visit famous places like the pyramids and Old Cairo,” said Shi, who was accompanied by a Mandarin-speaking tourist guide.
Sherif Ibrahim, a 59-year-old waiter at a kebab restaurant in Khan el-Khalil, doubted the prospects of a recovery.
“No tourist in their right mind would come to Egypt,” he said. “I’m not optimistic with the new season when there is talk of terrorism and calls for (anti-government) protests.”

Woeful hitting has the Chicago Cubs on the brink of an eighth consecutive World Series defeat to extend America’s longest sports title drought since their last championship in 1908.
Cleveland’s 7-2 romp over the Cubs at iconic Wrigley Field gave the Indians a 3-1 lead in Major League Baseball’s best-of-seven final and a chance to snap their own futility streak by winning Sunday for their first crown since 1948.
But Cubs manager Joe Maddon says he likes Chicago’s chances to make a rare comeback for the trophy if they can fight their way into a sixth game Tuesday at Cleveland.
“We have to have a one-game winning streak tomorrow, and if we do that, I really would be feeling pretty good about going back to Cleveland,” Maddon said.
“We just need that offensive epiphany somehow to get us pushing in the right direction. And if we do that, I really think, based on what they have left pitching-wise and what we have, going back over there, I kind of like our chances.”
But the Cubs are only batting .204 (28-for-137) with 39 strikeouts in four games. They have managed only two runs in the past 22 innings and have only one hit in their past 27 times at bat with runners on base.
“We just have to do more offensively to give ourselves a chance,” Maddon said. “You have to be able to play through the tough moments by doing something offensively, and we haven’t been able to do that.”
Jon Lester, a 32-year-old right-hander who pitched on two World Series champions with the Boston Red Sox, will start for the Cubs against Trevor Bauer, the game two loser in Cleveland who takes the mound on short rest.
The Indians’ depth in relief pitchers has enabled them to dominate in this playoff run with a record five shutouts and 13 consecutive playoff games with eight or more strikeouts.
“They have been pitching great. They have been outstanding,” Maddon said. “And you can see it. We’re obviously having a tough time.
“It’s just a matter of us gaining offensive confidence. That’s what we need right now more than anything. When you’re not hitting like that, the whole vibe’s very difficult to push in that real positive direction.”
Cubs leadoff batter Dexter Fowler is 4-for-17 in the World Series with number two hitter Kris Bryant struggling at 1-for-14 and Anthony Rizzo next at 4-for-14.
Wilson Contreras is 1-for-13 at the plate with Addison Russell only 2-for-15 with the bat and Javier Baez just 2-for-17, and a miserable 1-for-13 with runners on base.
Lester won 19 games for the Cubs this season and Maddon hopes he has one more in him because he likes his chances against Cleveland game-three starter Josh Tomlin and Corey Kluber, the first World Series pitcher since 1990 to win games one and four with short rest. Kluber would pitch again on short rest if the Cubs force a seventh game.
But the Cubs have to win Sunday for any of that to happen, and they have only as many World Series wins at Wrigley Field in 102 years as the Indians have in two days.
“I don’t think you can really take it any different than any other start. You have to have the same mindset going into it,” Lester said of pitching the do-or-die matchup.
“If you’re down 3-1 and you’re going in there saying, ‘You have to do this, you have to do that,’ to try to stay alive, I think you’ve kind of already been beaten. You’re not worried about the right thing.”

Surrounded by the rubble of her former neighbours’ homes, Getnesh Amare hangs her laundry in the shadow of the high-rise offices and hotels taking over the once insalubrious centre of Ethiopia’s capital.
“They have come many times to force us to move quickly. I’m not happy, but it’s a must. I have to move,” the mother-of-four, a housekeeper, told AFP.
The neighbourhood of Kazanches, once a byword for dodgy bars and prostitution, has been singled out as the new business centre of Addis Ababa by authorities determined to rid the capital of slum-like residential areas.
On one side of the street, trendy cafes and bakeries have cropped up, while on the other, holdouts like Amare are clinging to their tin-roofed mud huts, known as “chika bet”, for which they pay a monthly rent of less than a dollar.
Authorities are trying to convince her to move into a three-bedroom “condominium”, the Ethiopian version of social housing. However, the thought of living in one of the large housing projects mushrooming on the outskirts of Addis Ababa does not impress her.
“It is not very comfortable. The water comes twice a week and it’s on the fourth floor,” Amare complained. And above all, the apartment is more than an hour’s commute from the centre of the city.
The condos have become a symbol of Ethiopia’s development, and a way for authorities to clean up downtown Addis, create jobs and house more than three million people still living in chika bets.
“I am not sure you can say this is a house,” Haregot Alemu, general manager of the Land Development and Urban Renewal Agency, said of the chika bet.
“There is no access to toilets. There is no access to clean water. There is no access to sewage. In the condos the life of people is completely changed,” he said.
The Ethiopian government wants the country to be ranked “middle-income” by 2025, meaning a gross national income of more than $1,000 per person. The condominiums are seen as a way to create a middle-class of property owners.
“The objective is also to encourage the savings habit of the citizens of Addis so they can afford to buy their house,” said Alemu.
In Jamo, one of these new suburban high-rise clusters, blocks of buildings have sprung up one after the other. Henok Kasahun, 27, moved here to a one-bedroom apartment, without regrets.
“The facilities are better. You have good toilets, a kitchen, and easy access to water and electricity. Before, in our previous house, we didn’t have such facilities,” he said.
The government?s goal is to build 700,000 apartments in the next five years. Demand is high and authorities have set up a lottery system for aspiring householders which 750,000 people have signed up to.
However, modernity has a price. To acquire a condo, future owners must pay at least 10 percent of the price — between $5,000 and $25,000 (4,500 and 22,900 euros) depending on the size and location.
In a country where the monthly salary is below $100, repayment can quickly become unaffordable.
Topiyo Eshetu, who is unemployed, was among the first to move into one of the apartments six years ago, and did so grudgingly.
The municipality gave the family one month to leave their home on Meskel Square in central Addis Ababa and pay the deposit of $800.
“I collected from relatives and friends. For the people who can afford it you can live a better life here … but for people with no income it’s difficult,” she said.
And now she adds the promise of greater comfort has not materialised. Water and electricity is haphazard and there is not enough space for her three children. And the family is struggling to pay the $35 a month mortgage repayment.
“We used to live in a small house within our income that we could afford, but here it’s not compatible with our income.”
Those who cannot afford the 10 percent down payment merely take the compensation money for the destruction of their chika bet and go elsewhere. Others who struggle to keep up with the repayments often end up selling the condo and moving out.
For Alemu, this forced march to development is necessary to change the image of Addis. “As the site of the African Union (headquarters), our vision is to create a modern city which leads in the continent.”

It wasn’t always pretty, but the Cleveland Cavaliers held on for a 105-99 victory over the Orlando Magic to stay unbeaten in the fledgling NBA season.
Shooting guard J.R. Smith, whose contract dispute dragged on through training camp before the reigning NBA champs inked him to a four-year deal worth as much as $57 million, on Saturday gave good value with three three-pointers in the final three and a half minutes as Cleveland won after letting most of an 18-point lead get away.
“Not every game is going to be pretty for us,” Cavs guard Kyrie Irving said. “We understand that. (We) came off a kind of late win just like this against Toronto yesterday and now Swish (Smith) hit the big shot. For us it’s just about being ready no matter what the score is. We’ve just got to stay resilient.”
Superstar LeBron James had 23 points, nine assists and six rebounds, Irving added 20 and Smith shook off another slow start to score 16 points — 11 of them in the fourth quarter.
Kevin Love fouled out in the final minute with 19 points and five rebounds as the Cavaliers improved to 3-0 for the season less than a week after raising their 2015-16 championship banner.
After controlling most of the contest, Cleveland opened the fourth quarter shooting just 2 of 12. They went more than five minutes without a basket from the floor, and the Magic had trimmed the deficit to 88-85 with four minutes to play.
“I just thought there was a stretch in the game where we messed around, took some bad shots,” Cleveland coach Tyronn Lue said.
Lue said Smith is still finding his rhythm after missing all but one pre-season game.
But James found him in the corner for a big three-pointer after Orlando’s Elfrid Payton’s jump shot pulled the visitors within three.
Smith added another three-pointer on the Cavaliers’ next trip down and one more in the final minute.
“The guys just set the table for me,” Smith said. “It was just time for me to eat.”
In Denver, Damian Lillard made a floating seven-foot shot with three-tenths of a second remaining in overtime to lift the Portland Trail Blazers to a 115-113 triumph.
Portland erased a nine-point fourth-quarter deficit, handing the Nuggets a defeat in their home opener for the third straight year.
Lillard scored 37 points and C.J. McCollum added 23 with 10 rebounds for the Trail Blazers.
Nikola Jokic scored 23 points and pulled down a career-high 17 rebounds and Emmanuel Mudiay had 21 points for the Nuggets on what proved an eventful night at their Pepsi Center arena.
At halftime the Nuggets retired the number 55 of Dikembe Mutombo, the Congolese great whose Hall of Fame career spanned 18 seasons.
But the night on which he was honored didn’t go entirely smoothly. With 9:18 remaining in the fourth quarter half of the overhead lights in the arena went out, delaying the game for 28 minutes.
Portland put a further damper on the festivities with their huge rally, scoring the last six points of the game to win it.
Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker sat out San Antonio’s home opener, but the Spurs still had enough firepower to beat the New Orleans Pelicans 98-79.
San Antonio never trailed after the first quarter and used a 17-4 scoring run late in the third period to take a stranglehold on the contest.
Spurs forward Kawhi Leonard scored 16 of his team-high 20 points in the second half and San Antonio smothered Pelicans power forward Anthony Davis, who came into the contest averaging 47.5 points per game in the young season but was held to 18.
Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry was asked if games against Western Conference powers Golden State and San Antonio on consecutive days was the toughest back-to-back the NBA had to offer.
“We’re playing against a team that won 73 games and a team that won 67 games,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s ever been a back-to-back where you play against teams that won 200 games.”

A Turkish court has barred a leader of the main pro-Kurdish party from leaving the country, accusing her of “belonging to an armed terrorist organisation,” the state-run Anadolu news agency reported Saturday.
Figen Yuksekdag, co-chair of the leftist People’s Democratic Party (HDP), was also accused of “terrorist propaganda” and banned from leaving Turkey “because of activities that indicate she might flee” abroad, according to Anadolu.
The HDP denounced the decision as “totally arbitrary” and said it would appeal.
The move could aggravate tensions with several pro-Kurdish demonstrations planned Sunday across the country, including in Istanbul and Diyarbakir, the largest city in predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses the HDP of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — listed as a terror group by Ankara, the European Union and the United States — a claim the HDP denies.
The PKK, which has waged a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, has resumed attacks on security forces since the rupture of a fragile ceasefire last year.
Hours after the ban on Yuksekdag was announced, authorities ordered the closure of several pro-Kurdish media, including the Dicle Haber Ajansi news agency and the Ozgur Gundem newspaper, according to a decree published Saturday evening in the official journal.
The moves by Turkish authorities come with tensions already high after the two co-mayors of Diyarbakir were taken into custody on Tuesday as part of a “terrorism” probe.
On Wednesday police used tear gas and water cannon to prevent people protesting in the city against the mayors’ detention, which was also followed by several PKK attacks on military targets.
Three soldiers were also killed Saturday in a PKK attack in the southeastern province of Hakkari and two policemen were wounded by a rocket attack in Diyarbakir, according to Anadolu, citing officials from the security forces.
In response to the death of the soldiers, the Turkish military said in a statement it had conducted air strikes in northern Iraq, where there are PKK bases, killing 10 “terrorists”.

Although Tunisia’s tourism industry seems to be going through an unending chill, Mohamed Ben Sheikh is convinced there are good days ahead thanks to the nation’s vineyards.
Standing on a hillside on his land, he says, “Our country is rich in local produce.”
Among these assets, the ancient culture of winemaking is undergoing something of a revival in this overwhelmingly Muslim-majority country which has a reputation of being one of the most liberal in the Arab world.
For decades, Tunisia has relied heavily on tourism but almost exclusively targeting beachgoers and sun worshippers. But the instability that followed its 2011 Arab Spring uprising has sparked a major crisis, forcing the north African country to rethink its strategy.
And one of the possibilities is attracting wine enthusiasts.
“Wine is a premium product which relates to both land and history. It is a way of promoting Tunisia,” says Ben Sheikh, president of the chamber of alcoholic drinks producers.
At the Neferis vineyard in Grombalia, perched on hills overlooking the Mediterranean some 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of Tunis, Ben Sheikh is trying to develop a wine route as an “alternative” form of tourism which he is hoping to be able to offer tour operators next year.
Besides wine-making Tunisia is home to many archaeological sites, he adds. “We should create cultural tourism.”
Tunisia is no newcomer to vineyards. It has been producing wine for at least 2,800 years, Ben Sheikh says.
“Carthage was the granary of Rome but it was also its wine cellar. It had a great agronomist, Magon, who was the first to write treaties on winegrowing,” he explains.
The idea is to develop a tour stretching from the capital Tunis to the nearby Cap Bon peninsula, mixing archaeology with visits to local vineyards.
And it is the wine aspect which is most likely to surprise.
Following a post-independence decline partly due to Europeans buying their own produce, according to industry veteran Belgacem D’Khili, Tunisia’s winegrowing industry experienced something of a revival in the 1990s.
At the time, the government promised to reclaim public land and bring in foreign investment in a step which saw the emergence of seven companies for agricultural development.
Twenty years on and the bet seems to have paid off.
Tunisian wine, which relies on old grape varieties such as Carignan, is branching out into newer varieties such as Chardonnay, Viognier or Verdejo. To date, it counts seven AOCs.
For that, “we need investment in new technologies, and cooling the wine at controlled temperatures during fermentation,” says Rached Kobrosly, who is in charge of quality control at the Neferis winery.
Spread over 450 hectares (about 1,100 acres), Neferis produces 1.2 million bottles every year and Kobrosly says they compare among the world’s best. He cites as examples Italy’s typically rich red wine Amarone and classified French wines such as Saint-Emilion and Pomerol, both from the Bordeaux region.
Kobrosly says the 32 million bottles emerging from Tunisian wineries — and almost all of it consumed domestically — “has a very great chance of being exported” and sold in overseas markets.
But despite the optimism the figures remain modest.
Although the sector earns approximately 80 million euros ($87 million) annually and contributes 25 million euros to state coffers in taxes, revenues from wine exports do not exceed 10 million euros.
This is partly due to the limited scale of vineyards — only 15,000 hectares on a national level — and a near total absence of any marketing strategy.
“The problem with Tunisian wine is not one of a bad image but the fact there’s no image!” says Kobrosly.
“To reinforce its touristy appeal, events have to be launched around grape harvests and wine cellars,” says Tahar Ayachi, a journalist specialising in heritage and tourism.
“There was a time when one celebrated harvests and where one pressed grapes in village squares,” Ayachi adds.
D’Khili, who has for years headed the “Vignerons de Carthage” wine cooperative, says there is “long-term work” ahead.
But with “the revolution in quality in the last 20 years, we have the tools to succeed.”
D’Khili, who is trying to promote Shadrapa, a picturesque domaine nestled on the banks of the Medjerda river about 70 kilometres west of Tunis, says the site could become a huge tourist draw.
“We are close to Dougga, one of the most beautiful archaeological sites and we are working in tandem with some of the bed and breakfast places in the area,” he says.
“Viticulture is the sector of the future.”

Zimbabweans know the risks of worthless money all too well after hyperinflation between 2007 and 2009 gave them the 100-trillion-dollar banknote that barely bought a loaf of bread.
Now they fear that the government is about to create another devastating crisis by printing its own “bond notes” that will officially be worth the same as the US dollar.
Many Zimbabweans who lost all their savings in the hyperinflation years dread President Robert Mugabe’s government issuing so-called “surrogate money”, set for next month.
“My fear is that we will have a repeat of 2009,” Petros Chirenje, 43, an electrician based in the capital, Harare, told AFP.
“I had 17 trillion Zimbabwean dollars in my bank account and I lost everything when the government switched to foreign currency.
“I worry that the US dollars in my account will be converted to bond notes.”
The country has used the US dollar since 2009 after issuing so many Zimbabwe dollars that hyperinflation peaked at 500 billion percent and the national currency was abandoned.
But a shortage of US banknotes has added to Zimbabwe’s accumulating economic woes.
Banks are scarcely able to dispense cash, the few remaining businesses are grinding to a halt, and the government repeatedly fails to pay soldiers and civil servants on time.
Chirenje buys imported electrical supplies because few goods are made in Zimbabwe — but bond notes are unlikely to have much value to international producers.
“The government says the bond notes will be equivalent to the US dollar, but my question is ‘how?’,” he said.
The new notes, starting with small denominations of $2 and $5, were meant to be introduced this month, and are now due out in November but no confirmed date has yet been announced.
In response, Zimbabweans have been lining up outside banks to try to get hold of the few remaining US dollars. Withdrawals are sometimes limited to just $50 per person a day.
Mavis Chapo, a housewife, said she was withdrawing all her money “before it is eaten up.”
“I would rather take my money out and buy things I did not plan to buy,” 54-year-old Chapo said outside the Central African Building Society bank in the capital, adding she would not give up despite waiting for five hours in the hot summer sun.
“I cried when I lost all the money in my account in 2009 and was later told it was worth only US$5. I am wiser after that experience. I don’t want to cry again.”
The state-run Herald newspaper said last week that “the introduction of bond notes early next month is on course, with massive educational campaigns expected to start on October 31.”
Reserve Bank governor John Mangudya on Thursday sought to allay fears that authorities were using bond notes to covertly re-introduce the Zimbabwe dollar.
“These are just short-term measures,” he told a meeting of local business executives in Harare.
“The long-term measures are to ensure that the economy is investor-friendly.”
He said bond notes would be introduced gradually, and claimed they would help boost exports and production as well as the cash crunch.
Such reassurances are unlikely to persuade investors who have pulled out of Zimbabwe due to the authoritarian regime of 92-year-old Mugabe, laws forcing foreign-owned companies to sell majority stakes to locals, and endemic corruption.
At least 4,600 companies have closed down in the past three years, according to central bank data cited by Bloomberg News.
“The bond notes are not a solution to the liquidity crisis,” Obert Gutu, spokesman for the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, told AFP.
“This is a dead end and the talk of bond notes is causing anxiety and panic as shown by the numbers of people going to make withdrawals.”
The bond notes plan, which was announced in May, hit a further snag last week with reports that the German company that was to print the new currency had pulled out of the deal.
“No one can trust the government,” Tony Hawkins, professor at the University of Zimbabwe’s school of economics, said.
“It seems the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing and this is not good for the economy.”
A wave of protests this year has shaken Mugabe’s 36-year rule, with “No to bond notes” among the slogans at anti-government demonstrations that have been regularly crushed by police.
The government says the new notes will be backed by a $200-million support facility provided by the Cairo-based Afreximbank (Africa Export-Import Bank).

The race for the White House narrowed noticeably on Sunday as Hillary Clinton sought to shake off a renewed FBI probe of her emails and Donald Trump blitzed western states nine days ahead of the vote.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll put the Democratic presidential candidate just one point ahead of her Republican challenger Donald Trump at 46-45 percent in a four-way race.
In Florida, which is a must-win for the tycoon, Trump overcame a one-point deficit in September to enjoy a four-point lead, according to a New York Times Upshot/Siena College Research Institute poll.
The 69-year-old former secretary of state hit the ground hard Sunday, ticking off five campaign stops in Miami and Fort Lauderdale — an early vote brunch in an Irish pub, an African-American Baptist church, a soul food restaurant, an early voting site and a rally in a gay nightclub.
Much of her two-day visit to the sunshine state focused on encouraging early voting and she says a record 200 million Americans had registered to vote, 20 million of whom had already done so.
“We’ve got some big issues we’ve got to address, the last thing we need is somebody who is a loose cannon,” she told New Mount Olive Baptist Church, swiping her rival in Fort Lauderdale.
But her campaign was jolted when FBI boss James Comey wrote to lawmakers Friday announcing that his agents are reviewing a newly discovered trove of emails, resurrecting an issue Clinton had hoped was behind her.
“We cannot get distracted by all the noise in the political environment, we’ve got to stay focused,” she said. “The best way to repudiate a negative, hateful, bigoted vision is by voting.”
However, Trump jumped on the fresh controversy campaigning in Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico on Sunday, when he told a Las Vegas rally that “her criminal action was willful, deliberate, intentional and purposeful.”
The Clinton campaign went on the offensive against America’s top cop, with the nominee calling Comey’s move “deeply troubling” on Saturday and her aides stepping up the pressure on Sunday.
“It was long on innuendo, short on facts, so we’re calling on Mr Comey to come forward and explain what’s at issue here,” Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta told CNN.
Leading Democratic senators have also urged Comey and his boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, to make clear by Monday night whether the new emails are pertinent to the investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified material that the FBI closed in July.
Although the candidate looking to make history as America’s first female president remains the overwhelming favorite in the race, Trump has sought to exploit the FBI’s decision by deflecting attention from his own scandal over alleged sexual misconduct accusations.
“Hillary’s corruption shreds the principles on which our nation was found,” he told the Las Vegas rally on Sunday. “The only way to beat corruption is to show up and vote.”
“We are now leading in many polls, and many of these were taken before the criminal investigation announcement on Friday — great in states!” the 70-year-old real estate billionaire posted earlier on Twitter.
He also kicked off the penultimate Sunday before Election Day in church, attending a service in Las Vegas, but making no remarks. He has two further rallies scheduled Sunday in Colorado and New Mexico.
According to the New York Times, the FBI renewed its probe after agents seized a laptop used by Clinton’s close aide, Huma Abedin, and her now estranged husband, Anthony Weiner.
A disgraced former congressman who resigned in 2011 after sending explicit online messages, Weiner is under investigation over allegations he sent sexual overtures to a 15-year-old girl.
Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway lashed out at Clinton on Sunday for criticizing Comey’s handling of the email trove.
“She just has to call her friend and confidante Huma Abedin and say tell us what’s in the emails, tell us what’s on the devices that you shared with your pedophile husband,” Conway told Fox News.
“I think it’s a terrible strategy but it’s very much the strategy of Hillary Clinton throughout her career which is to shoot the messenger, attack the person who’s calling into question your fitness for office.”
Clinton’s campaign has been overshadowed from the start by allegations she put US secrets at risk by using a private server based in her home for all email correspondence as secretary of state.
Trump on Saturday called the latest development “the biggest political scandal since Watergate.”
However, experts say it is highly unlikely the FBI will make significant progress in the investigation before polling day and few observers expect Clinton will ultimately face criminal charges.

Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed’s global Godolphin empire will have five runners in Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup as it bids to end its near 20-year heartbreak in Australia’s greatest horse race.
The Godolphin stable has been coming to the Flemington racecourse since 1998 and the closest it has come to victory are three runner-up placings.
Central Park was second in 1999 followed by Give The Slip in 2001 and Crime Scene eight years later.
Godolphin is hoping its sheer weight of numbers will finally crack a win in the race that is said to “stop a nation”.
The 156th edition of the Melbourne Cup over 3,200 metres (two miles) has become a global event and its bumper Aus$6.2 million (US$4.7 million) prizemoney lures the big names of thoroughbred racing, from Japan to the Gulf and Britain.
British-based Oceanographer joined race favourite Hartnell, Qewy, Secret Number and Beautiful Romance as Godolphin’s runners in the Cup with a slashing last-to-first qualifying win in the Lexus Stakes at Flemington on Saturday.
“We don’t usually do this (backing-up in four days), but he is a fit and we think he will run the trip,” Oceanographer’s trainer Charlie Appleby said.
The Godolphin team is optimistic of its chances of finally breaking its duck in the handicap two-miler.
“It’s an extraordinary achievement and it’s superb from all three trainers to have horses qualify for the race,” said the head of the stable’s Australian operations Henry Plumptre.
“I’d say three or four of them are really serious chances.”
Newmarket trainer Michael Bell has returned with topweight Big Orange, who is out to improve on his fifth placing in last year’s race.
“He ran a great race last year and he was really only a boy and he’s developed into a man now, his form’s improved and he’s got a significantly better draw,” he said.
“The fact he has got topweight is not so relevant given his physique and we just pray for the track to run like it did on Saturday and he’ll run a big race.”
Irishman Aidan O’Brien is hoping to replicate the trailblazing successes of compatriot trainer Dermot Weld with Vintage Crop (1993) and Media Puzzle (2002) with his runner Bondi Beach.
Another Irish trainer Willie Mullins, whose galloper Max Dynamite was beaten by the Michelle Payne-ridden Prince of Penzance in last year’s Cup, is back with Wicklow Brave, to be ridden by Frankie Dettori.
Payne, the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup, does not have a ride in this year’s race.
Japan, which won with Delta Blues in 2006, will be represented by nine-year-old gelding Curren Mirotic, trained by Osamu Hirata.
The Melbourne Cup has been won six times by internationally trained horses: 2014 (Protectionist, Germany), 2011 (Dunaden, France), 2010 (Americain, France), 2006 (Delta Blues, Japan), 2002 (Media Puzzle, Ireland), and 1993 (Vintage Crop, Ireland).
Pre-post betting – 4/1 Hartnell, 5/1 Oceanographer, 7/1 Jameka, 8/1 Bondi Beach, 14/1 Heartbreak City, 15/1 Big Orange, 16/1 Almandin, 18/1 Exospheric, Wicklow Brave, 20/1 Qewy, 25/1 Almoonqith, Curren Mirotic, 30/1 Grand Marshal, Grey Lion, 34/1 Our Ivanhowe, Secret Number, Who Shot Thebarman, 50/1 Beautiful Romance, Gallante, 60/1 Excess Knowledge, 70/1 Assign, 80/1 Sir John Hawkwood, 125/1 Pentathlon, 200/1 Rose Of Virginia.

Thousands thronged downtown Mexico City on Saturday for a “traditional” indigenous procession held for the first time this year, inspired by a hit Hollywood movie.
The Paseo de Reforma, this capital city’s grand boulevard, was filled with revellers — some local, some tourists — taking part in the procession inspired by the opening scene of the 2015 James Bond movie “Spectre.”
In Spectre, the British agent played by Daniel Craig goes after a bad guy through a parade featuring giant skeletons floating among people dancing with their faces painted as skulls.
Saturday’s parade — staged by city elders inspired by the movie — started at the Angel of Independence monument and ended at the historic Zocalo square.
The procession tried to recreate the props and wardrobe from the movie, with thousands of volunteers dressed in skull and skeleton costumes, as well as traditional dress.
Musicians and dancers representing various regions across Mexico performed along the length of the procession.
The Day of the Dead takes place between November 1-2 every year, when Mexicans visit cemeteries to pay respects to their late relatives, bringing them food and drinks in a centuries-old tradition mixing pre-Hispanic and Catholic beliefs.
Those taking part in Saturday’s procession said they enjoyed the fete, even if it was imported from a make-believe world of celluloid.
“The truth is, it turned out to be quite nice,” said Alfredo Nunez, a retiree who attended the event with his wife, adult children and a granddaughter.
Beatriz Galeana, a Spaniard who now resides in Mexico, said she had been looking forward to seeing whether the procession captured the essence of the deeply spiritual Day of the Dead holiday.
“I wanted to see the artistic work relating to the Day of the Dead,” which was rendered quite differently to the traditional celebration, she said.
Day of the Dead observances, Galeana noted, “have more to do with spirituality,” while the “parade is mostly about capturing the aesthetic” of the celebration.
The procession is part of a series of events to run through November 2 in the capital.
Authorities were hoping the parade would give a boost to local tourism, which it appears to have done.
Officials said they expect to rake in $52.1 million from the event, and that hotel occupancy was at a brisk 80 percent.

China’s Feng Shanshan won her second Sime Darby LPGA Malaysia title in three years as a final-round charge from world number one Lydia Ko of New Zealand fizzled out on Sunday.
Feng, who won in 2014, had stormed into the lead with a seven-under par 64 in a rain-interrupted third round that forced her and several others to wait until early Sunday to finish up.
She then started the final round with a bogey on the first hole but regained her footing to finish at 17-under for a three-stroke win over Norway’s Suzann Pettersen at TPC Kuala Lumpur.
With the win, the ebullient Feng ended a two-year title drought.
“It’s really good, especially in the last four years where I finished second, first, second, first here,” she said.
“Even though I only improved one spot, I think I’ve had a fantastic week coming back here. Makes me feel like I’m at home.”
“I really love this golf course. And actually can we have like ten LPGA events here on this course?”
Feng had finished in the top five in her four previous tournaments leading up to the event.
Ko struggled early in the tournament but jumped into contention after shooting 65 on Saturday.
She made a run on Sunday with three birdies on the front nine but her hopes evaporated when she double-bogeyed 15, and later bogeyed the final hole to finish at eight-under with a closing even-par 71.
Ko, 19, hasn’t won since the Marathon Classic in July.
“I think there’s still a lot of positives out there,” said Ko, who used a Malaysian caddie for the tournament after parting ways with her Australian bagman Jason Hamilton earlier this month.
Feng pockets a $270,000 prize for the tournament.
Anna Nordqvist of Sweden and South Korea’s Amy Yang ended up tied for third at 12-under par.

Goa has long attracted Western holidaymakers for its relaxed vibe, but rapid construction, swelling crowds and fears over safety are threatening the Indian state’s global reputation as a tranquil haven.
The former Portuguese colony is transforming from a quiet paradise popular with international hippies to a heavily-developed entertainment destination for higher-income foreign and domestic visitors who want five-star luxury, tourism officials say.
“The laid back tourist might go to other destinations because Goa is changing but now there are lots of other segments coming such as MICE tourism (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions),” Savio Messias, president of the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa, told AFP.
“Goa is also getting to be a very big wedding destination and a lot people are now coming for entertainment,” he added.
Billboards advertising luxury developments dot Goa’s lush landscape, with Messias saying many new hotels, including big chains, are opening up every year.
Government statistics show Indian visitors soared by 34 percent to 4.7 million last year from 2014 while foreigners increased by just 5 percent as the number of charter flights plummeted.
The sluggish global economy and a slump in the value of the Russian ruble are regularly cited as factors but local businesses fear Westerners are being turned off by Goa’s rapidly altering landscape.
“Day by day the number of foreigners coming is getting less because they hear it is too crowded here now. They want peace and quiet.
“Over the past two to three years business has been very low,” Mohammed Sultan, a jewellery shop owner at Baga beach, told AFP.
An imminent ban on alcohol consumption in some public areas, plans to shift the popular Sunburn music festival out of peak season and ministers’ comments that beach parties are illegal and bikinis should be banned are also contributing to fears the Goan party could be over.
“I think it affects Westerners’ thinking. They want to be free to enjoy their holiday,” said Sultan.
At nearby Anjuna beach, where British schoolgirl Scarlett Keeling died in 2008, sari-clad women who ply its sands selling trinkets to visitors worry that India’s reputation as a destination that is dangerous for women is having an impact.
“I think the news stories about Scarlett have made people not come. Maybe they are worried,” 39-year-old Monica Tipi told AFP before eyeing a sale from an Indian couple.
The acquittal last month of two local men accused of drugging, sexually assaulting and then leaving 15-year-old Keeling to drown in shallow water was the culmination of a case that had highlighted Goa’s seedier side.
Several high-profile sexual assaults against women across India, including the fatal gang-rape of a student in Delhi in 2012, has shone a global spotlight on frightening levels of violence against women in the country.
“The news stories haven’t put us off. We feel safe but we wouldn’t travel on our own. We always stick together,” 26-year-old Australian Chloe Cato, who’s travelling round India with a friend, told AFP at Anjuna.
Britain’s government warns in its travel advice for India that British women have been sexually assaulted in Goa and says a number of its nationals die in the state every year due to drug or alcohol abuse.
Goa-based lawyer Vikram Varma, who acted for Keeling’s mother and who also represents the Russian consulate, says police have failed to investigate the deaths of several foreigners over the last decade or so.
“Crime does happen everywhere, but when the criminal justice system itself prefers to blame the victim and protect the criminals, a large number of family tourists prefer to holiday in safer environments,” he told AFP.
The number of Russian tourists visiting Goa plummeted from 120,000 in 2013 to just 40,000 in 2014 but is predicted to bounce back to around 100,000 this season due to Moscow declaring Egypt and Turkey unsafe for its citizens, according to Varma.
They may choose to visit the casinos that line the river running through the state capital Panaji or take a ride on a new amphibious tourist boat. Helicopter rides and trips on seaplanes are also being launched.
“The kind of tourists coming to Goa has been changing… We are targeting the more high-end tourist,” said Messias, adding that the state’s character will evolve as a result.
“Some sections of the industry are very happy about this change but some are not.”

France’s Operation Sangaris will formally end on Monday, almost three years after the military mission was launched in December 2013 to quell inter-ethnic unrest in Central African Republic (CAR).
The operation initially ran alongside an African Union peacekeeping mission called MISCA which later morphed into the UN’s MINUSCA force, helping to restore stability in the capital Bangui yet without managing to end violence elsewhere.
At its height, more than 2,500 troops from various French units took part.
In June, France said it had reduced its force in CAR to 350 soldiers, who would serve as a tactical reserve force for the UN peacekeepers, effectively announcing the end of its military mission there.
Here is an overview of why Operation Sangaris was launched and what it accomplished.
On December 5, 2013, widespread clashes erupted in Bangui which left hundreds of bodies lying in the streets.
Christian militia groups, known as anti-Balaka (anti-machete) attacked several areas, targeting Muslims and triggering revenge attacks by the mainly-Muslim Seleka rebel alliance.
Seleka fighters had already targeted the majority Christian population, a key reason why the anti-Balaka groups had emerged. Attacks by both sides, mostly against civilians, plunged CAR into a humanitarian, political, and security crisis.
A few hours after the violence broke out, aOperation French force began deploying across the country as part of a UN-mandated effort to quell the deadly wave of sectarian violence. The operation was named “Sangaris” after a small red butterfly common to the region.
France had already intervened militarily several times since CAR, a former French colony, won its independence in 1960.
At the time, French President Francois Hollande said the troops would stay in the country “as long as necessary” but said the operation was “not designed to last.”
Paris, which had already sent troops to Mali in January of that year to battle jihadist groups, watched the situation in CAR deteriorating following the overthrow in March of Francois Bozize by Seleka rebels led by Michel Djotodia.
An initial force of about 1,200 French marines, paratroopers and engineering units was officially sent to back up the AU’s MISCA force, but quickly found themselves on the front line.
Their mandate was to “disarm all militia and other armed groups that have terrorised the population” and the first objective was to secure Bangui and its 4.5 million inhabitants.
Between February to September 2014, combat troops also secured a road link from Bangui to neighbouring Cameroon. In September, UN soldiers from MINUSCA took over from the MISCA troops.
On February 14, 2016, Faustin-Archange Touadera was elected president, capping a chaotic political transition, and three months later, Hollande visited Bangui, declaring that stability “has been restored.”
Elsewhere in the country, however, armed groups continued to plague the population. Former Seleka units are still active and a total disarmament of militia groups appears unlikely.
However, since July 2014 the force has been under growing pressure following the emergence of allegations of child rape by French soldiers deployed in Central African Republic.
French prosecutors opened an investigation, but the allegations did not become public until April 2015. Since then, other reports have emerged about troops’ alleged involvement in sexual attacks and giving children food and sometimes small amounts of money for sexual services.
So far, the Sangaris force is already the subject of three investigations into separate allegations of sexual abuse of children in the central African country.
In June, Paris prosecutors also opened a preliminary investigation into allegations that French troops beat up, or stood by while others beat up two people in CAR.

Moving within one victory of their first World Series title since 1948, the Cleveland Indians have long-suffering Chicago Cubs supporters on the verge of more misery and another heart-breaking failure.
Cleveland’s Corey Kluber pitched superbly over six innings on short rest while Jason Kipnis and Carlos Santana smashed home runs Saturday as the Indians routed the Cubs 7-2 to seize a 3-1 lead in Major League Baseball’s best-of-seven final.
The Indians can end their epic title drought and extend the Cubs’ epic 107-year futility streak by winning game five Sunday at Wrigley Field.
“We have to take tomorrow with the same approach we’ve taken every game to this point,” Kluber said. “If we relax or take our foot off the gas pedal, that’s just inviting them to get momentum and come back into the Series.”
The Cubs, in their first World Series since 1945, are trying to end the longest title drought in American sports history, and the only one in baseball longer than that of the Indians, by capturing their first World Series since 1908.
“We’re chasing it. We’re still in there,” Cubs outfielder Dexter Fowler said. “This team is keeping its head up.”
No Cleveland sports team had won a title in 52 years until the Cavaliers took the NBA crown in June. Now the city is on the brink of two championships in four months.
“We have a ways to go. We’re not done. We still have work to do,” Indians manager Terry Francona said. “Nothing needs to change. They don’t need a talking to. They’re doing just fine. If they don’t understand by now, they’re probably not going to.”
Teams with a 3-1 Series edge have won the crown 40 of 46 times, including 10 in a row, last failing in 1985 when Kansas City won the final three games to defeat St. Louis.
“It has been done before. It can happen. So there’s no reason to stop now the things that we’ve been doing,” Kipnis said. “The best thing to do is kind of put them away before they can (seize momentum).”
Kipnis, a Chicago native who grew up cheering on the Cubs, blasted a three-run homer in the seventh inning that quieted fans at 102-year-old Wrigley Field, where the Cubs are 2-12 in Series games and haven’t won a Fall Classic contest in 71 years.
“Probably can’t say the words that were going into my mind. Kids are watching this,” Kipnis said of his blast. “But it’s just excitement. To be put into a situation like this and actually have something happen like that is, for lack of a better term, a dream come true.”
Indians starting pitcher Kluber allowed only one run on five hits over six innings with six strikeouts. The 30-year-old right-hander became the first pitcher since Cincinnati’s Jose Rijo in 1990 to win games one and four of the World Series.
“Kluber was tremendous,” Francona said. “He had to work early. He didn’t have his best breaking ball. But I think he’s proving over and over just how good he is.”
Kluber struck out nine and scattered four hits over six scoreless innings in Tuesday’s opener as Cleveland blanked the Cubs 6-0. He’s now 5-1 in the playoffs with a 0.89 earned-run average.
“He works so hard to be good,” Francona said. “It’s nice to see him be rewarded for it.”
Chicago’s 38-year-old right-handed pitcher John Lackey, a two-time World Series champion, surrendered three runs on four hits over five innings in his 23rd career playoff start, the most of any active pitcher.
Kipnis doubled to the rightfield wall and Francisco Lindor singled to score him for a 3-1 Cleveland lead in the third inning. It was Lindor’s sixth hit of the Series, making him, at 22, the youngest player since 1997 with so many.
Lindor scored on a sixth-inning sacrifice fly by Lonnie Chisenhall and Kipnis smashed his homer in the seventh off Cubs reliever Travis Wood to all-but seal Chicago’s fate.

Hillary Clinton took to the stage with Jennifer Lopez in Miami late Saturday when the music superstar performed a free concert in the rain to encourage early voting in the battleground state of Florida.
The 47-year-old actress, singer and dancer whose toned physique appeared to defy gravity, powered through some of her greatest hits, including “Let’s Get Loud” and “On the Floor” before an exuberant crowd who cheered and danced as rain drenched the outdoor amphitheater.
Clinton arrived for the last segment of the gig, after Lopez’s ex-husband, Marc Anthony, had already performed. She enveloped Lopez in a bear hug, before thanking the former couple for their support.
The concert capped a day of campaigning in Florida for the Democrat nominee after America’s top cop, FBI Director James Comey renewed his probe of her emails and her lead over Donald Trump narrowed.
Clinton lashed out at her Republican rival, accusing him of stoking fear, disgracing American democracy and insulting “one group of Americans after another, 10 days before the November 8 ballot.
Trump fired up his raucous supporters on Saturday with a vow that “justice can at last be delivered” with regard to Clinton’s emails — despite the FBI not putting any timeline on the new inquiry.
“Are we going to let Donald Trump get away with that? You’re right. We’re not,” she said. “No matter what they throw at us, we don’t back down. Not now. Not ever,” the Democrat said.
“We just heard Jennifer perform Let’s Get Loud, well I say let’s get loud at the voting booth,” the former secretary of state said.
“Don’t wait another day to vote and lets get loud by knocking on doors, making calls, take out your phones,” she said.
“Because if we turn out, we win!” she said to more cheers.
Although the rain came down heavily, the crowd seemed pretty pumped up as Lopez closed out with “On the Floor” and ticker tape paper dropped from the sky at the Bayfront Park Amphitheater.
On Saturday, the latest poll of polls by tracker site RealClearPolitics put Clinton 3.9 percentage points ahead of Trump nationwide, down from a lead of 7.1 points just 10 days previously.

The EU and Canada finally signed a landmark free trade deal seven years in the making on Sunday, after overcoming last-minute resistance from a small Belgian region that nearly torpedoed the entire agreement.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Brussels for a ceremony that had been pushed back from Thursday after Wallonia with its population of 3.6 million initially vetoed a pact affecting more than 500 million people.
But in a sign of the fierce passions aroused by the giant Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), protesters burst through riot police lines and hurled red paint at the EU’s headquarters.
“That I be here today or three days ago is not going to make a huge difference in the grand scheme of the real impact it’s going to have for this good deal to move forward,” Trudeau said after signing the pact with leaders of the EU institutions.
Cheers and applause erupted as they inked a long-anticipated deal that will remove 99 percent of customs duties between the two sides, linking the single EU market of 28 nations with the world’s 10th largest economy.
The leaders hailed the pact as good news after the Belgian drama, which sparked dire warnings for the EU’s credibility as it wrestles with Britain’s shock vote to leave, a huge migration crisis and the threat of a resurgent Russia.
The signing was also further delayed when Trudeau’s plane from Canada suffered “mechanical issues” and had to turn back for repairs.
“Patience is a tree whose root is bitter, but its fruit is very sweet,” EU President Donald Tusk said. “Today’s decisions demonstrate that the disintegration of the Western community does not need to become a lasting trend.”
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker meanwhile said the deal was an “international standard that will have to be followed by others” — not least an even bigger agreement that the EU is negotiating with the United States.
But the fate of the Canada-EU deal — so close to the finish line after seven gruelling years of negotiations — had been hanging by a thread until just days ago because of Belgium.
French-speaking Wallonia had for two weeks resisted huge pressure to back the deal until it won concessions for regional farming interests and guarantees that international investors will not be able to force governments to change laws.
Following marathon talks led by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, the Walloons finally agreed on Thursday evening, and a day later, Trudeau agreed to fly in for the delayed signing.
The pact required all EU member states to endorse it and in some cases such as Belgium’s for regional governments to agree too, giving tiny Wallonia an effective veto.
Concerns in the declining industrialised region in Belgium’s south reflect wider worries in Europe about globalisation, as well as fears among activists that such deals erode consumer, social and environmental protections.
On Sunday, around 100 protesters banged drums and shouted slogans outside the European Council building while Belgian riot police backed by water cannon looked on, AFP reporters said.
The glass front doors of the building were also daubed with red paint after some protesters briefly managed to break through police lines, with a number of them arrested.
The activists also see CETA as a Trojan horse for the even larger — and more controversial — deal between the EU and the United States.
Negotiations for that deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), have however stalled in recent weeks, and the goal of approving it by the end of President Barack Obama’s term in office now having been abandoned.
The troubles with the Canadian deal have meanwhile been seen as a possible harbinger of things to come for Britain as it tries to negotiate a new trade pact with the EU after it leaves the bloc — most likely in 2019.

Australia moved Sunday to bar any refugee or asylum-seeker who arrives in the country illegally by boat from ever being able to apply for a visa, even as tourists or for business.
The lifetime ban will be put to parliament when it next sits, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull saying it was necessary to send an “absolutely, unflinching, unequivocal message” that boatpeople will never be allowed in Australia.
“This is a battle of will between the Australian people, represented by its government, and the criminal gangs of people-smugglers,” he said.
“You should not underestimate the scale of the threat. These people-smugglers are the worst criminals imaginable. They have a multibillion-dollar business.
“We have to be very determined to say no to their criminal plans.”
Amendments to the migration act would be backdated to mid-2013, when former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd declared: “As of today, asylum-seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia.”
Canberra currently sends all boatpeople to offshore processing camps on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus.
They are already blocked from being resettled in Australia even if found to be genuine refugees. They can either return home, make a life on Manus or Nauru, or go to a third country.
The new legislation would affect those sent to Nauru and Manus from July 19, 2013, including those who have returned home, and anyone who arrives in the future.
But children will be exempt and the immigration minister would have the power to make exceptions.
The Nauru facility holds just over 400 men, women and children.
Some 800 men are detained on Manus, which Australia in August agreed to close after a Papua New Guinea court ruling that holding people there was unconstitutional and illegal.
Rights group have alleged there is widespread abuse and self-harm in the camps.
Turnbull said the move would reinforce to refugee advocates still hoping Australia will accept some of those on Nauru or Manus that it will never happen.
“We have one of the most generous humanitarian programs in the world,” he said.
“But the only reason we can do it, the only reason it has the public acceptance that it does, is because we are in command of our borders.”
Australia has boosted its annual humanitarian refugee intake in recent years from 13,750 to 18,750, and has also agreed to take 12,000 displaced in Syria and Iraq.
Refugee advocates said the plan was unacceptable, with Save the Children fearing it will further exacerbate the mental anguish of those held in the Pacific camps.
“We have grave concerns that this kind of announcement will push people over the edge,” said the organisation’s director of policy and public advocacy in Australia Mat Tinkler.
“The government must act urgently to give hope to these people, not continue to take it away.”
Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre lawyer David Manne agreed that the proposal punished genuine refugees.
“This does nothing to address that fundamental question about where they are going to be taken so that they can rebuild their lives in safety and with dignity,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Since the start of “Operation Sovereign Borders” in September 2013, the conservative government has managed to halt the flood of boat arrivals, and drownings, that characterised previous Labor administrations.
Labor said Sunday it had yet to decide whether to back the visa ban.

Hysteria sweeping the United States after a series of “creepy clown” sightings in recent weeks has created an unwelcome scare this October 31 when Americans will celebrate all things ghoulish, sinister and fantastical.
The Halloween holiday sees millions of American children don costumes and go house-to-house trick-or-treating in neighborhoods across the country.
But cities and law enforcement are discouraging or even banning clown costumes this year after sightings of sinister clowns, some armed with knives.
Authorities fear the bizarre trend could provoke a nasty backlash when children turn out Monday night.
The unusual sightings began in August with reports of people in South Carolina dressed as clowns trying to lure children into the woods.
The appearances soon spread with more than 20 states now having reported clown incidents, and although most were pranks in bad taste or unverified threats, some arrests have been made, including for attacks.
The craze has even spread beyond the United States to Europe, South America and Australia.
The hysteria has had surprising repercussions for many, such as Armando Santana, a 22-year-old actor who performs as a scary clown in a popular Miami horror house.
He says he would no longer dream of leaving his job without ditching the costume.
“It means that by the end of the night I have to wash my face. I can’t drive my car with this on, just in case I get stopped,” he said, emitting a classic menacing chuckle.
Even a building in Miami Beach warned its residents ahead of the Halloween door-knocking: “You must be extra careful with anyone wearing clown masks.”
Burger chain McDonald’s meanwhile has scaled back public appearances of its famous smiley-faced clown mascot Ronald McDonald, citing “the current climate around clown sightings.”
And discount retail chain Target halted the sale of clown masks because of “the current environment,” said spokesman Joshua Thomas.
While some observers have made light of the sightings, police and other authorities are taking the craze seriously.
“Did you know that you could be arrested for wearing a clown mask with the intent to disturb the peace?” warned the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office on Twitter this month.
The Miami police released a video that shows a boy, fleeing a shadowy clown in the dark, being run over by a car. “These pranks can have serious or even tragic ends,” it concludes.
Miami police spokeswoman Yelitza Cedano Hernandez told AFP that, while it is not prohibited to dress like a clown, “if this prank leaves someone injured, the prankster is going to be arrested and the victim’s family can take the person to court.”
In Kemper County, Mississippi, clown gear has been expressly banned until after Halloween, and authorities will slap a $150 fine on any violators.
Meanwhile a number of US school districts — particularly in New Jersey, Connecticut and Colorado — have banned clown costumes in Halloween parades.
The same action was taken by the city of Belmont, North Carolina, for its Belmont Boo Festival last week: No adult clown costumes allowed.
“People dressed as horror clowns are not ‘real clowns,'” said Randy Christensen, president of the World Clown Association.
“They are taking something innocent and wholesome and perverting it to create fear in their audience,” he said in a statement.
But some benefit when there’s a buzz.
Staff at the Halloween Megastore in Miami said that clown masks, along with superheroes from the film “Suicide Squad” and the US presidential candidates, are hot sellers this season.
And Nelson Albareda, producer of the House of Horror Haunted Carnival in Miami, which has an entire section dedicated to sinister clowns, welcomes the phenomenon.
“I’ve been in the Halloween industry for 16 years and a lot of people have a phobia on clowns, so this is nothing new to us,” he told AFP, while walking the haunted house’s dusty passageways.
“Now there’s a lot of hoopla about clowns, even on social media. It’s actually better for us.”

Ivory Coast goes to the polls on Sunday to vote on constitutional changes that President Alassane Ouattara says will help to end years of instability and unrest linked to the vexed issue of “Ivorian-ness”.
The draft constitution put forward by Ouattara — which parliament overwhelmingly approved earlier this week — would also create a vice president picked by the president and a senate, a third of whom would be nominated by the head of state.
The controversial package of changes has succeeded in both alarming opposition leaders and leaving much of the electorate confused.
“All this, it’s madness! What concerns us is the cost of living and getting out of poverty. The rich get richer and the poor stay poor,” said Bamory Kone, a mechanic in Adjame, an area that mostly supported Ouattara’s run for the top job in 2015.
“The constitution won’t change anything. I won’t be going to vote,” he added.
The draft constitution notably suppresses a clause on national identity — the so-called “Ivorian-ness” clause which took effect in 2000, and also stipulates that both parents of a presidential candidate must be born on Ivorian soil and not have sought nationality in another country.
The issue has contributed to years of unrest, including a coup in 1999, a civil war in 2002 that split the country between its north and south and a violent post-election crisis in 2010.
The most recent crisis led to months of post-poll bloodshed with then-president Laurent Gbagbo refusing to step down. Some 3,000 people died and Gbagbo is now on trial in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Ouattara hails from central Ivory Coast but his father was born in neighbouring Burkina Faso and the issue of identity raised a hurdle in his bid for the presidency.
He eventually overcame this obstacle through a decree Gbagbo was pressured to sign by the international community.
The proposed new constitution also calls for the creation of the post of vice president, who would appear on the ballot with presidential candidates.
For the government, it would ensure continuity if the head of state died or was incapacitated. But critics have speculated that he is trying to line up a successor for when his term ends in 2020.
The opposition sees the change as a “monarchistic tactic”.
The draft also establishes a new legislative chamber in the form of a senate, two-thirds of whose members would be elected, with the remaining third appointed by the president.
Ouattara “is treating Ivory Coast as if it were his personal property. What he is offering is less than a constitution. It is a will and testament designed to distribute his country to his successors so it stays in the family,” said the head of the Ivorian Popular Front, the opposition party founded by Gbagbo.
US-based Human Rights Watch has warned that despite campaigning many Ivorians are still none the wiser about what they are voting for.
“There is little engagement,” said researcher Meite Mamoudou who, like many observers, expects that many people simply will not bother to vote.
Some 6.3 million people are eligible to vote.
The country’s 20,000 polling stations will open from 0800 GMT and close at 1800 GMT.
An electoral commission source said the counting should be finished “by the end of Monday, Tuesday at the latest”.

A pro-Russia candidate came out top in Moldova’s presidential election, according to incomplete results issued early Monday which left it unclear whether he could beat his pro-EU rival in the first round.
Ex-Soviet Moldova went to the polls Sunday in its first popular presidential election since the 1990s, seen as a tug-of-war between supporters of closer relations with Russia and those seeking EU integration.
With more than 95 percent of the ballots counted, pro-Moscow candidate Igor Dodon was well ahead, on 49.2 percent, teetering on the brink of an outright win which would avoid the need for a run-off second round vote.
His main rival, the pro-European Maya Sandu, was on 37.5 percent while none of the other seven candidates had crossed the five percent threshold, according to the incomplete results.
Less than half of registered voters — 48.97 percent — cast their ballot, the electoral commission said after polling booths closed at 9:00 pm (1900 GMT).
“I would like to thank the voters for their active participation in the election. The main conclusion is that voters no longer believe in this government (…) Our victory is inevitable,” Dodon, 41, said at a press conference.
The crisis-hit country of 3.5 million wedged between Ukraine and Romania is the poorest in Europe and has struggled with a string of high-profile corruption scandals which have overshadowed the vote.
The presidential candidates presented diametrically opposed visions for the country’s future: calling for deeper ties and boosting trade with Moscow, or committing to the path toward Europe.
Voters are leaning in opposite directions as well.
“We can’t be without Russia, that’s our export market” that could provide cheap gas, said Igor Lopukhov, 66, a Russian-speaking pensioner who voted for Socialist Party candidate Igor Dodon, a leader in opinion polls who has vowed to restore cooperation with Moscow.
Former education minister Sandu, a strong proponent of EU integration who is supported by younger Western-leaning Moldovans, thanked her supporters and predicted a second-round run off between her and Dodon.
“See you at the second round,” she said, after the polling stations closed but before any results were announced
The complete election results are not expected until later Monday. A second round vote, if required, will take place on November 13.
Forty-one percent of the population live on less than $5 (4.6 euros) a day while the monthly average salary is $240, according to World Bank figures.
Many Moldovans make ends meet only through remittances sent by relatives working abroad, which make up nearly a quarter of gross domestic product (GDP).
“My daughter sends me money (for food) from Italy,” said 70-year-old Zinovia Ilonel, who also voted for Dodon. “She’s never coming home.”
Moldova last elected a president by popular vote in 1996, after which members of parliament chose the head of state due to a constitutional amendment from 2000.
A constitutional court decision earlier this year re-established the popular vote.
The central election commission in Moldova said voting was monitored by over 3,200 Moldovan observers and 562 more from abroad.
Moldova has been rocked by protests and political turmoil since the mysterious disappearance of $1 billion from three banks last year, which undermined people’s support for the ruling pro-Western coalition.
A total of nine candidates took part in the ballot after ruling party candidate Marian Lupu withdrew from the race, endorsing Sandu on Wednesday.
Despite the geopolitical divisions, Sandu, who launched a new party this year called Action and Solidarity, tried to focus her campaign on fighting corruption.
“We should not be afraid, we must prove to the thieves and corrupt (officials) that there are more of us,” she said Sunday. “Together we must bring order to Moldova.”
EU officials have admitted that Europe has lost much of its appeal in the scandal-weary ex-Soviet republic as no successful reforms have been seen through, while east-west rhetoric is often used to gloss over deeper issues.
Some in Moldova have lost faith in their nation entirely.
“We have to admit that the project called Republic of Moldova is bankrupt,” said Vasile Prodan, an activist supporting candidate Mihai Ghimpu of the Liberal Party, who calls for joining neighbouring Romania.

Democrat Hillary Clinton has released a detailed policy platform, but a successful start for an eventual Clinton administration depends on a number of variables — notably who is in control of Congress.
“We’ll begin to get to work right away and reach out to everybody that we can possibly touch to start talking about what we can do together,” Clinton said on October 22, recalling her efforts to work with Republicans as a first lady and senator.
“And I think there’s a big agenda where we can find common ground.”
Clinton has pledged to put forth two bills in her first 100 days in office: one on immigration reform and the other a major infrastructure investment plan.
These two major legislative initiatives should dominate the start of the 69-year-old’s mandate. In the past, they have been issues that have earned bipartisan support.
“A potential Clinton administration will see immigration as a very, very high priority in 2017,” Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, told AFP.
To fulfill her campaign pledge to offer a pathway to “full and equal citizenship” to millions of immigrants without legal residency, Clinton will need to make compromises with Congress — and thus with Republicans.
Republicans are likely to maintain control of at least the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate as well.
The Senate adopted immigration reform legislation in 2013, but it died in the House, due to pressure from the Republican Party’s ultra-conservative wing.
Current House Speaker Paul Ryan is open to some kind of immigration reform, but one that unfolds in stages: first, a toughening of border controls, followed by an overhaul of the legal immigration system and, eventually, some form of a way forward for undocumented migrants.
“It’s going to be difficult for Republicans to do nothing and continue to be obstructionist,” said Carmel Martin, executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress, a think tank that is close to Clinton.
Martin says Democrats hope a Trump loss on November 8 could strengthen the Republican Party’s more moderate faction.
According to Doris Meissner, an expert at the Migration Policy Institute, “it does come down to what the struggle within the Republican Party will be, on how they interpret the election result if they in fact lose the presidency.”
Another major decision awaits the next president: the eventual nomination of a Supreme Court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia, a stalwart conservative.
Obama nominated Merrick Garland, but his candidacy has stalled in the Senate amid partisan stonewalling. If the Democrats win a majority in the chamber, that could change quickly.
Foreign policy headaches will pile up on the desk of Obama’s successor, but none are as big as the crisis in war-wracked Syria.
Clinton should quickly set up her national security team, and is likely to pull at least some of her picks from the ranks of Team Obama.
Some posts, like secretary of state and Pentagon chief, require Senate approval.
A review of American policy in Syria is “inevitable,” according to Jeffrey Rathke, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Rathke, an expert on Europe, also said it would be “necessary” to review US policy towards the Old Continent, and towards Russia, in order to reinforce US ties with both the European Union and NATO.
“It’s important for the new administration to take a leadership role in ensuring that not only do we support a country that’s under pressure from Russia, but to be sure that we are prepared to react if there are further attempts by Russia to intimidate or coerce European countries,” Rathke told AFP.
A European ambassador in Washington said it would be vital for the next president to organize a US-EU summit as quickly as possible.
A NATO summit is set to take place in Brussels next year, but a specific date is not set.
A Group of Seven summit is on the cards for May 2017 in Italy, as well as a G20 summit in July in Germany.
The next US leader also may want to consider attending the annual Munich Security Conference in February, less than a month after taking office.
As for a first presidential trip abroad, Clinton’s entourage declined comment to AFP as to whether she would respect the tradition followed by the last five presidents, who headed first to either Canada or Mexico, America’s neighbors.

Serbia’s pro-European Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic was moved to a safe location Saturday after an arsenal of weapons, including a rocket-launcher, was found close to his house near Belgrade, which a minister said was “preparation for assassination”.
Authorities were alerted by passers-by who found the cache in chests in a forest near Vucic’s family home in Jajinci, south of Belgrade, Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic told reporters.
“There is a rocket launcher, four hand grenades and a large quantity of ammunition for 7.62 mm automatic rifles and 7.9 mm sniper rifles,” said Stefanovic.
“What is worrying is that these weapons were discovered only a few dozen metres from a turn into the family home of Prime Minister Vucic,” he said, adding that his retinue would have represented “a very easy target”.
A former associate of late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and once a staunch ultranationalist, Vucic, 46, has since remodelled himself as a pro-EU reformer.
Serbia was rocked by the assassination of democratic pro-European prime minister Zoran Djindjic in 2003.
Labour and veterans minister Aleksandar Vulin demanded that the security and intelligence services “give answers (on) who prepared to assassinate the prime minister”.
Deputy prime minister and foreign minister Ivica Dacic called on the authorities to exercise “particular vigilance, keeping in mind the increase in pressure on our country,” without elaborating.
While taking care to keep on the right side of traditional partner Russia, Vucic has built a reputation in the West as a reliable partner, including by engaging in dialogue on the normalisation of relations with the former Serbian province of Kosovo, which proclaimed independence 2008 but was not recognized by Belgrade.

The woman at the heart of a lurid political scandal engulfing South Korean President Park Geun-Hye returned to the country Sunday to face accusations of influence-peddling and meddling in state affairs.
With just over a year left to run, Park’s presidency has unravelled over shocking revelations that she discussed and sought advice on government policy from Choi Soon-Sil, a close personal friend with no official position and no security clearance.
Choi, who has been holed up in Germany since early September flew into Seoul Sunday morning on a flight from London, her lawyer Lee Kyung-Jae told reporters.
“Choi told me she will cooperate with the investigation and expressed her deep apology to the people for letting them down and causing them frustration,” Lee said.
As well as a public uproar over her relationship with, and apparent control over Park, she faces charges of using her links with the president to strong-arm major companies like Samsung into donating large sums to two non-profit foundations she set up.
Choi has spoken with prosecutors to schedule her questioning, Lee said.
The past week has a seen a daily diet of increasingly sensational media reports regarding Choi, the 60-year-old daughter of a shadowy religious leader and one-time Park mentor.
Invoking a lurid back-story of religious cults, shamanist rituals and corruption, the reports have portrayed Choi as a Rasputin-like figure whose influence extended to vetting presidential speeches and advising on key appointments and policy issues.
“As her attorney, I think the case must be thoroughly investigated and the truth be told to prevent any further eruption of speculation that goes beyond fantasy,” Lee said.
The South Korean leader on Sunday carried out a partial reshuffle of her key aides after ordering her secretariat to hand in their resignations earlier this week.
Park accepted the resignations submitted by her Chief of Staff and four senior presidential secretaries, presidential spokesperson Jung Youn-Kuk said in a statement.
A public apology by Park, in which she acknowledged seeking limited advice from Choi, has done nothing to assuage public outrage over the president’s behaviour or halt a plunge in her approval ratings to record lows.
More than 10,000 people took to the streets of Seoul on Saturday evening, calling on Park to resign and for Choi to be prosecuted. There were similar protests elsewhere, including the country’s second largest city, Busan.
Analysts say the scandal could paralyse Park’s administration, underling her lame-duck status ahead of presidential elections in December next year.
Choi is the daughter of the late Choi Tae-Min, who married six times, had multiple pseudonyms and set up his own religious group known as the Church of Eternal Life.
Choi Tae-Min befriended a traumatised Park after the 1974 assassination of her mother, who he said had appeared to him in a dream, asking him to help her daughter.
He became a long-time mentor to Park, who subsequently formed a close bond with Choi Soon-Sil that endured after Choi Tae-Min’s death in 1994.
Choi Soon-Sil’s ex-husband served as a top aide to Park until her presidential election victory in 2012.

Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri believes his side have finally rediscovered the defensive resilience that helped them to their fairytale Premier League title triumph last season.
The defending champions collected their first point on their travels this season in Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Tottenham Hotspur after Ahmed Musa cancelled out Vincent Janssen’s penalty.
Following four successive — and heavy — away defeats it was a show of stubbornness that had been conspicuous by its absence on previous away trips.
“I’m pleased with the point, our performance and our spirit. We played together and we fought together,” said Ranieri, whose side remain in mid-table.
“We played well against a good team. We can take confidence from this. Our defending was excellent, just as we did last season. It’s important as we need to refind some confidence.
“Our spirit often this season has been singular, but here it was squad spirit.”
Leicester have one foot in the Champions League knockout stages ahead of Wednesday’s group game away to FC Copenhagen.
But Ranieri said: “The pressure on us is to be safe (in the league).
“The Champions League is for another day. We concentrate on each game that comes, but this was a step in the right direction in the league, especially away from home.”
Tottenham, who fell away to finish third behind Leicester and Arsenal last season, have now gone five games without winning in all competitions.
“It’s important to score more,” said manager Mauricio Pochettino. “We need to be more clinical and score more. This game and the last few games we have had a problem scoring.
“We need to be more aggressive in the final third. We need to be determined to score and that’s where we need to improve.
“After 10 games we have won five and drawn five. We are still strong and unbeaten in the league, that is very important. If want to fight for big things we need to improve.”
He added: “It’s true we are fighting and it’s difficult to win games recently, but the team showed it is strong enough.
“We need to stay positive. We are in a bad period, so together we need to be strong.”
Dutch striker Janssen, who has been deputising up front for the injured Harry Kane, scored his first league goal in a Spurs shirt after Robert Huth was adjudged to have fouled him.
It was his third goal since he arrived from AZ Alkmaar, all of which have been penalties, and Pochettino is hoping he can now go on a run in front of goal.
“Harry is our main striker,” said the Argentine. “We are very happy with Vincent, but we need to share the burden with Harry.
“A lot of strikers score from penalties and I think it’s important for Vincent to score. He took responsibility for the penalty with big pressure.
“If you score, whether it’s from open play or a penalty, it’s the same. His first goal in the Premier League is important.
“Since the day he arrived his behaviour and performance is always improving. It’s important to have confidence and trust in him.”
Janssen opened the scoring in the 44th minute, but Musa equalised three minutes into the second half, sliding in to convert Jamie Vardy’s cross for his second goal in two games.
“Musa is a good player and slowly starting to understand the Premier League,” Ranieri said of the Nigeria international.
“He saw the ball a lot and was very strong. He will only improve.”

Chris Kirk fired a seven-under 65 to take a share of the third-round lead at the Sanderson Farms Championship alongside fellow American Luke List.
The 31-year-old Kirk, who is seeking his fifth career PGA Tour title and second win in this event, had eight birdies and a bogey in his round on Saturday at the Country Club of Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi.
List had seven birdies in his bogey-free 65.
“The greens are tricky to read and they’re quick, but I feel like my speed has been pretty good so far this week,” said Kirk, who is the highest ranked player in the field at 76 in the world. “Once you get out there on Sunday it’s anybody’s game.
“Hopefully I’ll be a little bit more comfortable out there but I’ll be just as nervous as everybody I’m sure.”
Kirk won this event in 2011 when it was known as the Viking Classic.
List, also 31, equalled Kirk’s 54-hole score of 14-under 202 after draining five of his seven birdies in a span of eight holes.
List’s lone professional win came at the 2012 South Georgia Classic on what is now the Web.com Tour.
“I was fortunate today to avoid the rough for the most part,” List said. “Certain holes I could take advantage of my length and certain holes had to throttle back but swinging really nicely today.
“For me it’s just being really patient. The more chill I can be tomorrow the better off I’ll play. Of course I’ll be nervous.”
Former US Open champion Lucas Glover shot 68 and was one stroke back in a tie for third with Canada’s Graham DeLaet, who had four straight birdies on the back nine for a 68, and Cody Gribble, who shot 67.
Grayson Murray, who led at the halfway point, stumbled to a double-bogey six on the 15th hole en route to a 72.
He fell into a tie for sixth with Cameron Smith of Australia, who sank a seven-foot eagle putt on the 11th hole in a 67, and Seamus Power of Ireland and Greg Owen of England, who both posted 70s.