“The government has received official notification that King Salman will not travel to the G20 summit,” a spokesman told AFP.

The 81-year-old monarch will send Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan in his place, the German news agency DPA said separately.

The monarch was to have joined the meeting of major industrialised and emerging economies on Friday and Saturday.

Recent German media reports have said that the Saudi delegation had rented out Hamburg’s luxury Vier Jahreszeiten (Four Seasons) hotel in its entirety for the king and his delegation.

Saudi Arabia and its allies the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt have engaged in a bitter row with Qatar, severing air, sea and ground links and cutting off vital routes for imports including food.

They accuse Doha of supporting Islamic extremism and of being too close to their regional rival Iran, which Qatar has strongly denied.

They are demanding that Doha end support for the Muslim Brotherhood, close broadcaster Al-Jazeera, downgrade diplomatic ties with Iran and shut down a Turkish military base in the emirate.

Qatar Monday handed its official response to the demands to the emir of Kuwait, which is acting as a mediator, a Gulf official told AFP.

It was delivered hours after the four nations had accepted a call by Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah to extend the 10-day deadline for another 48 hours.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Monday travelled to the region, where he was to meet his Saudi counterpart Adel al-Jubeir and visit the UAE before heading to Qatar and Kuwait on Tuesday.

Another reported no-show at the Group of 20 meeting will be Brazilian President Michel Temer, who is under pressure at home in a bribery case.

Masao Gunji, who spent his working life on the trail of hardened criminals, now spends his retirement tracking down pink and white soft toys to keep in a Hello Kitty-themed house, which he built specially and has become a magnet for tourists.

“Kitty has been like the love of my life,” he said at his one-storey property, which is surrounded by regular houses.

“I love Kitty,” he added, calling her “adorable, especially her facial expressions”.

Hello Kitty, Japan’s global icon of cute, was introduced in 1974 and is now one of the country’s most famous exports — adorning everything from pencil cases to pyjamas.

To the surprise of fans, brand owner Sanrio said in 2014 the feline-inspired character was not actually a cat but a “happy little girl”, sparking uproar from Internet users who spluttered: “But she’s got whiskers!”

Though he doesn’t live in the property, Gunji was recognised last November by Guinness World Records for his collection, having spent around 30 million yen ($267,000) on thousands of items, including the house.

More than 5,000 items he owns bear Kitty’s iconic red bow, propelling Gunji past the previous record holder, also Japanese.

Gunji’s wife Yoshiko says she fully supports her husband’s passion.

“I don’t care how much he spends on Hello Kitty,” she said.

“People need to make a mark on the world, and Hello Kitty is the one he lives for,” she added.

“This is his dream.”//AFP

The unemployed man said in a chatroom linked to a video game that he wanted to buy a machine gun to kill Macron, the RMC radio station reported, adding that he had previously been convicted for condoning terrorism and was thought to be a far-right nationalist.

“We are realistic and will have several dead to report at the end of the day,” police spokesman Juergen Stadter told rolling news channel NTV.

There was “only a glimmer of hope” that 17 people missing after the collision would be found alive outside the coach, which was completely gutted, he added.

“Maybe someone ran away in shock,” Stadter said.

Another police spokeswoman, Anne Hoefer, also told AFP that “it is completely possible that some people did not make it out of the bus, it’s unclear where 17 of them are”.

The bus carrying 46 passengers and two drivers rammed into the trailer in a traffic jam on the motorway A9 close to the Bavarian town of Stammbach.

The crash shortly after 7 am (0500 GMT) sent the bus up in flames.

Some 31 injured people were pulled out of the bus, said Hoefer.

Images on television showed only a charred skeleton of the bus remaining.

It was unclear what kind of tour group the bus was carrying.

According to the Bild newspaper, the coach was travelling from the eastern region of Lausitz and heading for Nuremberg.

The accident struck near the town Bayreuth, which draws thousands of classical music lovers every summer to its opera festival.

The region close to the Czech border is also dotted with spas and castles, and the A9 is a trunk motorway leading to many popular summer holiday spots.

An emergency team, including firefighters and rescue workers, were at the scene, while traffic on the motorway was halted in both directions.

Those hurt were being flown by rescue helicopters to hospitals, many with life-threatening injuries.

If those missing are confirmed killed, the accident at the start of the summer holiday season would be one of the worst to hit Germany.

Among the deadliest in recent years was a collision in June 2007, when 13 people were killed as their tour bus drove off the road and plunged several metres down a slope in eastern Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt state.

In September 1992, 21 people died when a bus swerved out of its lane and struck a truck before ramming into the road divider in the southern Black Forest region, a key tourist destination.

Across Europe, the last such fatal accident struck on January 21 in Italy, when an accident involving a Hungarian bus carrying teenagers left 16 dead.

In France, a head-on crash in October 2015 between a truck and a bus carrying pensioners claimed 43 lives as both vehicles burst into flames.

Lee and the two younger children of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding leader, have since last month been waging a bitter war of words on social media over their revered father’s legacy, an unprecedented spectacle in a nation long used to censorship and libel suits against critics of the family.

“Their allegations are entirely baseless,” Lee told a regularly scheduled session of parliament.

His sister Wei Ling and brother Hsien Yang accuse the premier of exploiting their father’s legacy for his own political agenda, and seeking to groom his son to one day become leader of the city-state.

It is an escalation of a feud over what to do with a family bungalow that has simmered since the death in March 2015 of the elder Lee, who ruled Singapore with an iron hand but transformed the city-state into one of the world’s wealthiest societies.

The prime minister called for an open debate in parliament after the attacks on Facebook against him and his wife Ho Ching, who heads state investment fund Temasek Holdings.

Lee, who had earlier apologised to the nation for the open squabbling and admitted it had damaged Singapore’s reputation, Monday firmly rejected the claims in a statement to the legislature.

He said the allegations “have already damaged Singapore’s reputation”.

“Unrebutted, they can affect Singaporeans’ confidence in the government.”

He added that Singaporeans were “tired of the subject, and wish it would end. I too am upset that things have reached this state”.

At the centre of the dispute is the bungalow which the patriarch wanted destroyed after he passed away to prevent the creation of a personality cult.

The siblings said the prime minister is attempting to block the house’s demolition to exploit their father’s legacy, including grooming his own son to be a third-generation leader — a charge Lee and his wife denied.

The Lees are the closest thing Singapore has to royalty, dominating the now wealthy island’s politics for nearly six decades.

The patriarch served as prime minister from 1959 to 1990, and the current leader has been in power since 2004. The city-state has had only one other prime minister, Goh Chok Tong.

During a phone call, President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe “reaffirmed that the United States-Japan Alliance stands ready to defend (against) and respond to any threat or action taken by North Korea”, the White House said in a statement.

It added that the pair expressed “unity with respect to increasing pressure on the regime to change its dangerous path.”

During a separate phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the White House said it was Trump who “raised the growing threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”

“Both leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.”

But the White House made no mention of possible discussions between Trump and Xi over disputed islands in the South China Sea, even though the call took place just hours after a US warship sailed near an island in the waterway.

Beijing termed the incident a “serious political and military provocation.”

The destroyer, the USS Stethem, sailed less than 12 nautical miles from tiny Triton Island in the Paracel Islands archipelago, which is claimed by China as well as Taiwan and Vietnam, a US official told AFP.

On the call, Trump also “reiterated his determination to seek more balanced trade relations with America’s trading partners,” the White House said, a reference to the US administration’s aggressive stance on trade matters, especially as concerns China.

Pinning hopes on China

The Trump administration has been growing increasingly exasperated with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s regime, which has staged a barrage of missile tests in recent months.

Trump had been pinning his hopes on China — North Korea’s main diplomatic ally — to bring pressure to bear on Pyongyang, but declared last week that their efforts had failed.

He has presented sanctions as the best way to proceed with the hermit state, opting for that approach over dialogue with the regime.

During talks with South Korean leader Moon Jae-In — who has pushed for a policy of engagement with Pyongyang — on Friday, Trump called for a “determined response” to the North. But the pair failed to map out a joint strategy on how to handle North Korean threats.

“The era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed, many years it has failed. Frankly, that patience is over,” Trump said.

There was also deep anger in the United States after Otto Warmbier, an American student who was detained in North Korea on a tourist trip around 18 months ago, was returned home in a coma earlier this month. He died several days later.

The 10-year-old video, hailing back to Trump’s days as a guest celebrity at pro-wrestling events, came after a week in which his unrestrained Twitter attacks on two MSNBC talk show hosts drew widespread condemnation from members of both political parties.

The latest tweet was immediately condemned by journalists, who said Trump seemed to be promoting physical violence against the media, while a Republican lawmaker said the president was trying to “weaponize distrust” through his postings.

But administration officials insisted Trump has a right to respond to critical coverage.

In the 28-second video, Trump, in a suit and tie, is seen knocking down another man in a suit who is standing next to a wrestling ring. Trump repeatedly pummels the fallen man, whose face is covered by a superimposed CNN logo. A fake CNN logo then appears on the screen reading “FNN: Fraud News Network.”

A longer version of the video online shows that the man being beaten was World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) owner-promoter Vince McMahon, a friend of Trump’s. In that version, Trump also gets in the ring to shave McMahon’s head as part of the “The Battle of the Billionaires” at the WrestleMania 23 event.

McMahon was present at the White House in February to pose smilingly with the president when his wife Linda McMahon — a former WWE executive — was sworn in as Trump’s Small Business Administration chief.

Encouraging violence?

Trump has recently stepped up his attacks on the news media. Besides the crude attack on MSNBC co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski — he called her “low I.Q.” and said he had seen her bleeding after a facelift — he has specifically bashed outlets including CNN, NBC, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Amid a torrent of criticism over his attack on Brzezinski, Trump doubled down Saturday, tweeting: “My use of social media is not Presidential – it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!”

With Trump’s tweets coming just weeks after a mass shooting at a congressional baseball practice, reporters on Thursday asked White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether his rhetoric might be promoting violence.

She replied: “The president in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. If anything, quite the contrary.”

But the wrestling video prompted a wave of recriminations.

“It is a sad day when the president of the United States encourages violence against reporters,” CNN said in a statement. “Clearly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied when she said the president had never done so.”

CNN suggested that Trump should instead be focusing on issues like health care, tensions with North Korea and his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hamburg, Germany.

A journalists’ group, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, roundly denounced the video. “We condemn the president’s threat of physical violence against journalists,” said a statement from the group’s executive director, Bruce Brown. “This tweet is beneath the office of the presidency. Sadly, it is not beneath this president.”

-‘A right to respond’ –

=======================

A White House official, Homeland Security adviser Thomas Bossert, defended Trump’s video and said it demonstrated the president’s “genuine ability to communicate to the people.”

“I think that no one would perceive that as a threat,” he said on ABC. “I hope they don’t. I do think that he’s beaten up in a way on cable platforms that he has a right to respond.”

But Republican Senator Ben Sasse rejected that argument, saying on CNN that there is a difference between complaining about bad coverage and “trying to weaponize distrust.”

Meanwhile, several journalists said they feared Trump was stirring up anti-media violence.

Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, said it was “unseemly” that Trump would “encourage such anger at the media.”

And Annie Lowrey, a journalist with The Atlantic magazine, tweeted: “In seriousness, I am terrified that a journalist — perhaps one of the many political reporters I know and love — is going to end up dead.”

Trump may see the news media as an easy target, one deeply disliked by his political base. But public approval of newspapers, at least, has significantly risen in the past year, a period marked by intensive and often critical reporting on the unorthodox Trump presidency.

Only 20 percent of Americans expressed confidence in newspapers in June 2016. But by last month the figure had risen to 27 percent, the Gallup polling firm reported.

Pacquiao, 38, is an elected senator and a unifying figure in the Southeast Asian nation beset by conflict, grinding poverty, and frequent natural calamities.

Residents of a war-torn southern city had hoped for a respite by watching the 12-round fight in displacement camps but their idol’s defeat silenced cheers and prompted many to stand up even before the announcement was over.

“We were expecting his hand to be raised as a winner but you cannot always win,” provincial government spokesman Zia Alonto Adiong told AFP after helping organise a public viewing in war-ravaged Marawi city.

“Our morale is at its lowest but Pacquiao remains a symbol of resilience. In the same way that he is already a boxing icon, this crisis does not define who we are.”

Islamist militants who went on a rampage in Marawi on May 23 have triggered intense fighting that has killed more than 400 people and forced nearly 400,000 people to flee their homes.

In Manila, soldiers wounded from the clashes in Marawi watched a bloodied Pacquiao from screens set up in a military hospital.

Pacquiao had bled profusely from cuts to the head high above both eyes, prompting boos from crowds gathered in gymnasiums in the capital.

“Pacquiao lost, but a battle is really like that. He is a true soldier because even if he is wounded he keeps attacking the opponent,” armed forces chief General Eduardo Ano told reporters.

Pacquiao, a staunch ally of President Rodrigo Duterte, received huge praise from the presidential palace.

“Nothing will change: Senator Manny Pacquiao will remain our people’s champ, national fist, and national treasure,” said Duterte’s spokesman Ernesto Abella.

Pacquiao’s rags-to-riches story, from high school dropout to millionaire world boxing champion in an unprecedented eight weight divisions, is a huge source of pride in the Philippines.

In keeping with tradition, many Filipinos watched Pacquiao’s fight, which took place around midday on Sunday in the Philippines time zone, in public places, including in restaurants and watering holes.

However crowds have gradually become thinner as Pacquiao hits the twilight of a glittering career.

“I don’t think he lost. He was cheated! He still came out a strong fighter,” construction worker Rudy Merano, 30, told AFP in a public square of Manila’s Marikina suburb.

“But I think Pacquiao should retire and just focus on being senator. He is clearly ageing.”//AFP

Bogor, Indonesia – Former US president Barack Obama arrived Friday in his former childhood home Jakarta, where he met Indonesia’s president at the end of a ten-day family holiday.

Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo met with Obama at the presidential palace on the outskirts of Jakarta, with Obama delighting local media by greeting Widodo with “apa kabar” — how are you in Indonesian.

The former first family arrived a week ago on the resort island of Bali and then visited the historic Yogyakarta city in central Java before coming to the capital.

President Widodo took Obama to a cafe in the botanical garden next to the palace, where he sampled traditional snacks and ate a bowl of meatball soup.

Obama spent four years in Indonesia in the late 1960s in the then-sleepy capital Jakarta after his mother married an Indonesian man, following the end of her marriage to his Kenyan father.

Many Indonesians feel a strong bond with Obama because of his early exposure to Indonesian culture, and a two-metre (six-foot) bronze statue has been placed in his former school.

The statue of “Little Barry” — as Obama was known to his Indonesian school friends — depicts a young Obama dressed in shorts and a T-shirt with a butterfly perched on his hand.

Obama is travelling with his wife and their two teenage daughters.

Prior to Jakarta, they toured a Hindu temple wearing traditional sarongs, walked through terraced rice paddy fields and white water rafted in Bali.

They also visited ancient Buddhist and Hindu temples on Yogyakarta.

Obama is expected to give a speech about pluralism and tolerance at an Indonesian diaspora convention on Saturday before wrapping up his tropical holiday in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.//AFP

At the end of a 10-day family holiday, Obama spoke to a packed crowd in the capital Jakarta, where he praised the spirit of tolerance in Indonesia, saying you could see mosques, temple and churches alongside each other.

“That spirit is one of the defining things about Indonesia, the most important characteristics to set as an example for other Muslim countries around the world,” Obama said.

The 44th president of the United State then said: “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika,” — Indonesia’s motto, which means unity in diversity, prompting huge cheers from the crowd of thousands of leaders, business people and students at the Fourth Congress of Indonesian Diaspora.

Obama lived in Indonesia when he was a six-year-old boy with his mother, an anthropologist, and his Indonesian stepfather and half-sister.

His mother later divorced and Obama moved back to Hawaii at the age of 10 to live with his grandparents.

The Muslim-majority country has recently seen a rise in Islamic radicalism.

Its track record as a tolerant nation is being tested after former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama — an ethnic Chinese Christian — lost Jakarta’s mayoral election in April against a prominent Muslim candidate.

Purnama was later sentenced to two years prison in May for blasphemy over comments he made about the Koran which divided the nation and stirred up issues of religion and ethnicity in the archipelago, which was long hailed by other countries for its ability to tolerate different religious.

Prior to Jakarta, Obama and his family visited the resort island of Bali and the ancient city of Yogyakarta which is known for its temples.

The Obamas will leave Indonesia for South Korea on Sunday.