Indonesia

Two Islamic parties have proposed legislation that would ban all consumption of alcoholic drinks and bring jail terms of up to two years for offenders in Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population. 

About 150 nationals of Russia and other countries including Bulgaria have left war-torn Yemen on board a second Russian plane on Sunday, TASS reported.

The Il-62 passenger aircraft landed at Chkalovskiy Airport near Moscow early on Sunday. This was after the second evacuation flight of a Russian plane from Yemen over the past 24 hours and the seventh one over the past two weeks.

Öztürk Y?lmaz, the former Turkish consul general to Mosul, who was taken hostage last year along with 48 others by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants for 101 days, has been appointed as an ambassador to Tajikistan's capital of Dushanbe.

The Islamic world faces the risk of disintegration amid sectarian tensions, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has said.

?The main thing for us is Islam, not Sunni nor Shiite,? Erdo?an told a group of journalists returning to Ankara following a one-day visit to Tehran on April 7. 

Greece, Mexico, Indonesia, Romania and Egypt have tabled a resolution, titled "Right to Work", that marks the start of a serises of initiatives in the employment sector.

A total of 94.5 per cent of people who turned out to cast ballots in the referendum on Sunday expressed disapproval about the building of the power Plomin C plant near the town of Labin.

But the turnout at 36 per cent was not high enough to make the vote binding because it did not pass the 50 per cent legal threshold.

Now that the lira and other emerging market (EM) currencies have somewhat stabilized, at least for the moment, it may be useful to try to understand why some underperformed, while others overperformed, peers.

Shinzo Abe is expected to become the first Japanese prime minister in history to address a joint session of the US Congress, crowning an April visit focused on deepening trade and military ties.
      
Abe hopes to make the speech during a trip to the United States at the end of next month, around Japan's "Golden Week" holiday, diplomatic and legislative sources told AFP.

Sixteen Indonesians, mostly women and children, have been arrested in Turkey attempting to cross into Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
      
The 11 children, four women and one man from the world's most populous Muslim-majority country were detained in the Turkish border town of Gaziantep. Officials did not say when they were arrested.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on March 10 urged Japan to resolve issues surrounding Tokyo's system of wartime sex slavery, her second foray into the delicate issue of East Asia's history.