BEIJING, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday congratulated via a video on the opening of a forum in Kazakhstan to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative.

In the video, Xi also extended sincere gratitude to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and sincere regards to all the guests at the forum.

After the initiative was put forward, it has gained extensive attention from the international community and active response from related countries, Xi said.

MOSCOW, September 7. /TASS/. The United States can forward information concerning preparations for an alleged attack involving the use of chemical weapons in Syria’s Idlib to Russia though bilateral conduits, if Washington has such information, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday. The spokeswoman responded to the remarks by US Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey who said that there was plenty of evidence proving that Damascus was getting ready to conduct a chemical weapons attack in Idlib.

UN, September 6. /TASS/. The United States should disclose the list of its possible targets in Syria if they believe that chemical weapons are being stored there, Russia’s UN envoy, Vasily Nebenzya, told the UN Security Council session on Syria on Thursday.

Srinagar, Sep 6; PTI: National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval's assertion that a separate constitution for Jammu and Kashmir was probably an "aberration" was an attempt to "distort" facts and history, CPI(M) MLA Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami claimed Thursday.

"J&K acceded to India under the guarantees provided by the Constitution of India. It is the constituent assembly which incorporated Article 370 in the Constitution providing a constitutional basis for the relationship of J&K with the Union," Tarigami sain in a statement here.

New York, Sep 7; PTI:  A 25-year-old Indian man was among three people killed when a gunman opened fire in a bank building in the US city of Cincinnati before police shot him dead on Thursday.

Pruthviraj Kandepi, who hailed from Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, was killed when 29-year-old Omar Enrique Santa Perez from the town of North Bend, Ohio, opened fire at the headquarters for the Fifth Third Bank near Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati, police said.

By Hajer M'tiri

PARIS; 7 Sep 2018; AA: A wanted former militant of Liberia's brutal civil war was arrested, being charged over crimes against humanity in France, local media reported Friday.

The man, identified as Kunti K., a naturalized Dutch citizen of Liberian origin, was arrested in Paris on Tuesday, French daily Le Figaro reported citing police sources.

The 44-year-old man arrived in France in 2016, after leaving the Netherlands and passing through Belgium, according to police.

PRESEVO, Serbia; 7 Sep 2018; AP: The European Union’s top diplomat says she’s concluded separate talks with the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo but that there has been no breakthrough in normalizing their strained relations.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Friday after meetings with Serbian President Aleksander Vucic and Kosovo President Hashim Thaci that she held several rounds of talks but that “difficulties remain.”

Shahjahanpur (UP), Sep 7; PTI: A 26-year-old woman was raped by three persons in a car in the district here, police said Friday.

The woman, hailing from Lucknow, had taken a lift in the car on August 27 when she did not get a bus for reaching Sitapur, following which she was taken to a place near a cold storage and allegedly raped, Superintendent of Police City Dinesh Tripathi said.

The woman, in an FIR lodged with the police yesterday, said that she was dropped in Sitapur late at night by three persons who fled from the spot, the SP said.

Mumbai, Sep 6 (PTI) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has taken Amol Kale, the prime accused in journalist Gauri Lankesh murder case, in its custody in connection with its probe in rationalist Narendra Dabholkar's murder case, an official said Thursday.

The CBI suspects that Kale is also the mastermind of Dabholkar's killing, he said.

Kale, who was arrested in May this year by the Karnataka Police's Special Investigation Team (SIT) in connection with Lankesh's killing.

TEHRAN, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Minister said on Wednesday that the United States seeks to "abuse" the upcoming meeting of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to blame Iran for the violation of international law.

It is the U.S. President Donald Trump who is violating the international law and is bullying others to do the same, Mohammad Javad Zarif said with reference to the UNSC resolution 2231 on Iran's nuclear program.

On Tuesday, it was announced in Washington that Trump was going to chair a meeting of the UNSC on Iran on Sept. 26.

5 Sep 2018; DW: A senior official has claimed in an op-ed to be part of "the resistance inside the Trump administration." The op-ed, published anonymously by The New York Times, has fueled the flames in a tumultuous White House.

Senior officials in US President Donald Trump's administration are actively undermining parts of his presidency, according to a senior White House official who wrote an op-ed for The New York Times.

ISLAMABAD, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Wednesday called for the political solution to the Afghan issue and the two sides agreed that "present conditions in Afghanistan were conducive to intensifying efforts for a political settlement," according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry here.