Calais migrants: Five shot in mass brawl
At least five migrants have been shot in the French port city of Calais, after a mass brawl between Afghans and Eritreans.
Four Eritrean youths aged 16-18 are in a critical condition and have been rushed to a local hospital for surgery, AFP news agency reports.
A fifth man was taken to nearby Lille due to the severity of his injuries.
At least 13 more people were wounded due to "blows from iron bars", the local prosecutor's office said.
French Interior Minister Gérard Collomb visited Calais overnight and said the clashes had been exceptionally serious. One of the most seriously wounded was said to have been hit by a bullet in the back of the neck.
"There's been an escalation of violence that has become unbearable for both the people of Calais and the migrants," the minister said.
In pursuit of the tortoise smugglers
Stuffed in suitcases or strapped to passengers’ bodies, more and more rare species are finding their way on to the black market. But a radical new wave of wildlife detectives is on the case. By Rowan Moore GeretyFri 2 Feb 2018 06.00 GMT
In February 2016, Richard Lewis, a wildlife conservationist working in Madagascar, was contacted by a veterinary clinic with an unusual request. “Someone went to a vet and said: ‘Can you take a microchip out of a ploughshare?’” Lewis recalled. “So they called us.”
The ploughshare tortoise is one of the rarest tortoises on the planet: with fewer than 50 adults thought to be left in the wild, each one is worth as much as $50,000 on the global exotic pet market. Like gold or ivory, their very rarity is part of what drives smugglers’ interest. Lewis runs the Madagascar programme of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, which operates a captive breeding site where ploughshares are reared for more than a decade before being released into the wild. Both buying and selling ploughshares, or keeping them as pets, is illegal, and the breeding site is heavily defended, with barbed wire and round-the-clock armed security. As a further measure against smuggling, the organisation implants every ploughshare it encounters with a microchip. Anyone hoping to remove the microchip is likely to be involved with tortoise trafficking.
North Korean delegation flying to Russia for talks on 'mutual cooperation'
Move comes amid rising tensions between Pyongyang and the US
A North Korean delegation is heading to Moscow for talks on mutual cooperation, the Russian Embassy in North Korea has said.
"The delegation flew to Moscow for consultations in the Russian Foreign Ministry on the vital issues of bilateral cooperation," the embassy wrote on its Facebook page.
The sides plan to discuss joint events to be held dedicated to the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries, according to Russian news agency Tass.
Grandfather recovers baby born to German nationals arrested in Iraq IS-held territory
A baby born to German nationals in IS-held territory in Iraq has been taken back to Germany. His parents are under investigation for alleged links to the 'Islamic State' terror group in Erbil.
German NDR and WDR public broadcaster and the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper reported on Thursday that the 14-month-old boy's parents, originally from Germany's central Hesse state, were being held in Erbil in northern Iraq.
Investigations against both parents were proceeding in Germany and Iraq on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.
Germany's foreign office and Iraqi judicial authorities had acted as intermediaries to help the grandfather collect the boy after family links were validated via DNA testing.
Iran arrests 29 women as headscarf protests intensify
TEHRAN (AFP) -
Tehran police have arrested 29 women for appearing in public without a headscarf as protests against the dress code in force since the Islamic revolution of 1979 intensify, Iranian media reported Friday.
Those arrested were accused of public order offences and referred to the state prosecutor's office, the Fars, ILNA and Tasnim news agencies reported without elaborating.
Chief prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri had played down the escalating protests on Wednesday, saying they were "trivial" and "childish" moves possibly incited by foreigners.
He had been asked about a woman detained earlier this week for standing on a pillar box in a busy street without the mandatory headscarf.
Hundreds of workers rescued from South African gold mine
Updated 0754 GMT (1554 HKT) February 2, 2018
More than 900 miners have been rescued after being trapped in a South African mine for at least 24 hours following a loss of power.
South Africa's Department of Mineral Resources announced Friday morning that all remaining miners had been freed from the shaft at the Beatrix gold mine, which is located in the city of Theunissen in the Free State.
A violent storm had knocked out the electricity supply on Wednesday, trapping the miners.
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