SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- Arab and European leaders stressed on Sunday the need to beef up efforts to face common challenges.

This came during the first League of Arab States (LAS)-European Union (EU) Summit which kicked off Sunday in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh city and will end on Monday.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the two-day summit, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said that terrorism is spreading like a "plague," urging leaders to stand together against it.

Trabzon; 25 Feb 2019; AA: Turkey will reveal links between the U.S. and PKK/PYD terrorist group in the coming days, the country’s interior minister said on Sunday.

Suleyman Soylu said that he will announce to the public about what kind of relations the U.S. generals and the PKK/PYD had.

Soylu added that recently captured PKK members shared information about their links to the U.S. as well as some European countries.

Ranchi, Feb 24 (PTI) Three ultras of the banned Peoples Liberation Front of India (PLFI) were killed in an encounter with security forces in Gumla district on Sunday, a senior police officer said.

The incident happened at Amtoli forest under the jurisdiction of Kamdara police station.

Additional Director General of Police (Operation) M L Meena told PTI that the three were killed during the encounter with the personnel of CRPFs CoBRA unit and the Gumla district police, about 94 km from here.

BEIJING, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- Beijing Daxing International Airport completed flight checks when a plane landed safely at the airport at 10:20 a.m. Sunday.

The flight checks lasted 34 days and ended 19 days ahead of schedule.

Seven instrument landing systems and one navigation system, among others, went through thorough checks.

The completion of the tests means the airport is ready for operation, authorities said.

Set to open in late 2019, the new airport sits at the junction of Beijing's southern Daxing District and Langfang, a city in Hebei Province.

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Senior Taliban leaders, including one of the group’s founders, were to hold another round of talks Monday in Qatar with Washington’s special peace envoy as U.S. efforts intensify to find a negotiated solution to Afghanistan’s 17-year war, America’s longest.

The Taliban, some of whom arrived in Doha, Qatar’s capital, from Pakistan the previous night, raised expectations ahead of talks with U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad.

ANKARA, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- Turkish parliament on Sunday elected ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lawmaker Mustafa Sentop as its new speaker, replacing Binali Yildirim who is AKP's Istanbul mayor candidate for upcoming local elections.

According to official news from the parliament, Sentop, a lawmaker from northwestern Tekirdag province, received 336 votes in the third round of voting by the Turkish National Assembly of 600 seats.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Embattled Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax compared himself to Jim Crow-era lynching victims in a surprise speech Sunday, as he resists widespread calls to resign prompted by allegations of sexual assault.

Fairfax strongly defended himself and lashed out at his critics from his rostrum in the state Senate as the 2019 legislative session was coming to a close.

CANBERRA, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has downplayed the results of an opinion poll which showed that the governing Liberal-National party coalition (LNP) still trails the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in the run up to the general election in May.

The latest Newspoll, released on Sunday night, revealed that the LNP trails the ALP 47-53 on a two-party preferred basis.

The result comes despite Morrison leading an all-out assault on Labor over its border protection policies over the last two weeks.

25 Feb 2019; DW: Moldova's pro-Russian and pro-EU parties were neck and neck after polls closed in Sunday's parliamentary election, with more than 30 percent of the vote counted.

The broadly pro-Russia opposition Socialists, the party of President Igor Dodon, has won around 30 percent of the vote, while the ruling Democratic Party was slightly behind with about 29 percent, according to figues from the Electoral Commission.

DAKAR, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- Ballot-counting started immediately after the voting process of the Senegalese presidential election ended peacefully around 6:00 p.m. Sunday (1800 GMT).

In a polling center in the city of Dakar, an official of the Autonomous National Electoral Commission (ANEC) told Xinhua the center closed at 6:00 p.m. sharp as scheduled. All the eight polling stations in the center started the ballot-counting afterwards.

Mumbai, Feb 24; PTI/GANASHAKTI: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has deleted as many as 50 lakh names from the voters' list in Maharashtra after revision ahead of the polls, an official said on Sunday.

Some of these names were registered multiple times or the concerned voters had died, he said.

More names were likely to be deleted in the coming weeks as the process of authentication of voters was underway, the ECI official said.

Tirunelveli (TN), Feb 24 (PTI) Makkal Needhi Maiam chief Kamal Haasan Sunday denied that his outfit was the Bharatiya Janata Party's "B team" and asserted that the party was being targeted as they were growing in stature.

Addressing a party rally here late tonight, Haasan, without directly naming any outfit, said he was being targeted as his party was growing in stature.

One of the attacks was calling his party "the BJP's B team," he said.