Source : OnIslam & News Agencies / 19 June 2013

Reflecting a worrying curve in anti-Islam attacks in France, a pregnant Muslim woman has lost her baby after being attacked by two skinheads for donning Islamic face-veil.

“Her husband called me this afternoon. She lost the baby,”lawyer Hosni Maati told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday, June 18.

Source : Al Jazeera and agencies / 19 June 2013

Leaders of the world's most powerful nations have strongly endorsed calls for a peace conference on the Syria conflict "as soon as possible", but failed to mention the fate of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a final communique.

Source : Presstv / 19 June 2013

The British government has refused to issue an entry visa to two Palestinian writers who have been invited to speak at a festival of contemporary Arab art in London.

The Gaza-based husband and wife writers, Ali Abukhattab and Samah al-Sheikh were due to talk about their work at the Shubbak festival on June 28, but were denied visas to attend the event.

Source : Presstv / 19 June 2013

A United Nations agency says thousands of people remain displaced in Myanmar a year after extremist Buddhists launched deadly attacks against Rohingya Muslims in the country’s Rakhine State.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday that some over 140,000 people remain in camps with little hope of returning home.

The UN sources noted that the violence has claimed up to 167 lives and destroyed 10,000 buildings in the troubled region.

Source : Presstv / 19 June 2013

At least three Afghan civilians have been killed in a US-led airstrike in eastern Logar Province, Press TV reports.

Provincial officials said on Tuesday that all victims of the air raid were adolescent Afghans.

By Tom Miles / 19 June 2013

Syria's war has contributed to the biggest rise in global refugee numbers since 1994, the year of the Rwandan genocide and the height of conflict in the Balkans, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said in its annual report published on Wednesday.

By AFP / 19 June 2013

Pregnant women who were exposed to high levels of air pollution were twice as likely to have a child with autism as women who lived in low pollution areas, a US study said yesterday.

According to experts at Harvard University, the research is the first large national study to examine links between the prevalence of pollution and the development of the developmental disorder.

Source : Khalil Hanware / 19 June 2013

Saudi Arabia topped the list as foreign direct investment (FDI) into Arab states rose by 9.8 percent last year.

Despite unrest in some of them, FDI in Arab states exceeded $ 47 billion in 2012 compared with $ 42.9 billion the previous year, the Kuwait-based Arab Investment and Export Credit Guarantee Corp. (AIECGC) said in its annual report released yesterday.

Saudi Arabia topped the list of inflows with $ 12.2 billion, representing 25.8 percent of the total, the report said.

Source : Reuters / 19 June 2013

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have begun ethnically cleansing Sunni Muslims and deliberately pushing refugees across the border into Lebanon, the Lebanese caretaker minister for social affairs said on Tuesday.

Assad is battling a Sunni-led revolt in Syria, which he and his father before him have ruled for four decades. He belongs to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

By AFP / 19 June 2013

A man stood still in Istanbul's Taksim Square: silent, staring straight ahead, he had not moved for hours.

His peaceful action, on the square that police cleared of protesters on Saturday and where the Turkish authorities have banned gatherings, was a new form of protest.