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A former Muslim Brotherhood leader has warned that government oppression in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Egypt is fanning militancy that will pose a threat abroad unless the army-backed authorities start respecting freedom and human rights. Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, who left the Brotherhood in 2011, said that once former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi wins a presidential election this week - as is widely expected - he had two choices: restore Egypt's path to democracy, or risk more instability that will dash hopes for economic development. In an interview with Reuters, Abol Fotouh predicted wider consequences flowing from the crackdown launched last year after the military overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi, Egypt's first democratically-elected president. He noted, for example, how past oppression in the Middle East had bred radicalism of the type that led to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. "The world around us m

Italian businessman Manlio Cerroni thinks a monument would be a fitting recognition of his services to Rome. Instead, the 86-year-old, who spent 60 years building a global empire and a personal fortune on trash, is facing trial on a string of charges. Italian prosecutors say Cerroni - "Il Supremo" to his aides - oversaw a web of companies and individuals colluding to defend his monopoly over trash disposal in and around the Italian capital, including his Malagrotta landfill, Europe's largest, which closed last year after European Union authorities ruled it unfit to treat waste. Cerroni's lawyer, Giorgio Martellino, says his client denies all charges, which also include fraud and improper waste treatment, but declined to be interviewed. Several local politicians from the Lazio region, of which Rome is the capital, are also due to stand trial for collusion. Cerroni was earlier this year put under preventive detention at home, but has since been released on bail, o

Thailand's top generals lured the former government and its supporters into a trap by arranging peace talks between political heavyweights then seizing power in a coup moments later, a deposed minister said on Sunday. Speaking to Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location, ousted Education Minister Chaturon Chaisang said he was suspicious of army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha's motives for declaring martial law on Tuesday, then calling all key players in the crisis to the negotiating table two days later. "I felt something wasn't right. I tried to warn cabinet members, but I couldn't get the message across in time," Chaturon said. "It was a trap. They'd planned it earlier, then they staged the coup and ordered the other Puea Thai Party members to report to them. I knew something was wrong," he said, referring to the ruling party of ousted Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Chaturon was describing Thursday's meeting at the Army

The Islamist Taliban have freed most of the 27 prisoners captured last week in Afghanistan's northern Badakhanshan province, a local official said on Sunday, but three remained captive because of their senior rank. _0"> The prisoners, most of them police officers, were taken in a battle for Yamgan district, after several days of fighting. "They still hold the prison chief, police chief and a NDS (intelligence agency) agent," district governor Nawroz Mohammad Haidari said by telephone. Yamgan initially appeared to have fallen to the Taliban, but local officials say it has since been recaptured by Afghan security forces.   true       Violence has intensified since the Taliban launched the start of the summer fighting season on May 12 in advance of the planned withdrawal of most foreign troops by the end of the year. The country's presidential election to replace Hamid Karzai, who cannot run for a third term, is underway, with a run-off round between the t

Thailand's military tightened its grip on power on Sunday as it moved to quell growing protests, saying anyone violating its orders would be tried in military court. It also took its first steps to revitalize a battered class="mandelbrot_refrag"> economy , saying nearly a million farmers owned money under the previous government's failed rice-subsidy scheme would be paid within a month. The military overthrew the government on Thursday after months of debilitating and at times violent confrontation between the populist government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and the royalist establishment. Critics say the coup will not end the conflict between the rival power networks: the Bangkok-based elite dominated by the military and the bureaucracy, and an upstart clique led by Yingluck's brother and former telecommunication mogul Thaksin Shinawatra. The Shinawatras draw much of their influence from the provinces. The military detained numerous people incl

class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Iran has hanged the first of four men sentenced to death for a massive financial scam that tainted the government of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, local media reported on Sunday. _0"> Mehafarid Amir-Khosravi, described as a self-made tycoon, was hanged in Tehran's Evin Prison on Saturday after the supreme court upheld the four death sentences, the reports said. There was no word on the fate of the other three. Exposed in 2011, the 30 trillion-rial ($2.7 billion) scandal involved embezzlement, bribery, forgery and money-laundering in 14 state-owned and private class="mandelbrot_refrag"> banks between 2007 and 2010 by people close to the political elite. Coming to light as normal Iranian were being hit by the impact of Western economic sanctions, the affair severely damaged the reputation of Ahmadinejad and his entourage towards the end of his eight-year presidency. Ahmadinejad's supporters said he had

At least 13 people were killed when a car bomb exploded on a busy roundabout in the central Syrian city of Homs on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said. _0"> Another 40 people were wounded in the explosion in the mainly Alawite Zahraa neighborhood, it said. Some of the dead were security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite, who is fighting a three-year revolt against his rule. Car bombs have become frequent in Homs in the past weeks, in particular since Assad's forces moved into previously rebel-held areas of the city this month. The uprising against Assad began as peaceful protests but became militarized after heavy crackdown by his forces, taking on an increasingly sectarian nature, pitting majority Sunni Muslims against Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Syria became a magnet for foreign al Qaeda-linked fighters who now control some rebel-held areas of