DOHA – The 2022 World Cup in Qatar should take place in November and December, a Fifa taskforce has recommended. Key football officials met in Doha to discuss a number of options following fears a summer event would endanger the health of players and fans. Qatari temperatures in June and July can exceed 40 degrees…
LOS ANGELES – “Birdman,” the 21st Century Fox Inc. feature about a washed-up film superhero trying to stage a comeback, won the Oscar for best picture, Hollywood’s highest honor. Its director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, also won. “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” collected four awards in all, including best original screenplay. The film stars…
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama defended his decision not to call war against ISIS as a religious one during remarks at an anti-extremism summit on Wednesday. “We are not at war with Islam, we are at war with those who have perverted Islam,” he said. Original Post: At this week’s summit on combating violent extremists,…
BEIJING – Former senior official Su Rong has been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party for corruption and faces prosecution, said the country’s top anti-corruption body. Mr Su was a vice-chairman of China’s parliamentary advisory body. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said he had used his position to obtain “large bribes”. State media…
MOSCOW – A ceasefire will begin in eastern Ukraine on 15 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced. “We have managed to agree on the main issues,” he said following marathon talks involving Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, as well the leaders of France and Germany. French President Francois Hollande said it was a “serious deal”…
SEOUL – South Korea’s former spy chief has been sentenced to three years in jail for trying to influence the results of the 2012 presidential election. Won Sei-hoon, who headed the National Intelligence Service (NIS) until 2013, was found guilty of violating election laws. He was convicted of directing NIS agents to conduct an online…
AMSTERDAM – Amsterdam is looking for an investor to buy five buildings where sex workers can work collectively in their own prostitution business, a spokesman for the city’s mayor says. Currently, prostitutes in the city work individually, renting the windows where they stand on view for prospective customers from the brothel owners. But this system…
TAIPEI – Rescue teams in Taiwan are continuing to search for the 12 people who remain unaccounted for after a plane crashed in a river. Thirty-one people are now known to have died when the TransAsia ATR-72 plane came down in Taipei’s Keelung River on Wednesday morning. Fifteen survivors were pulled from the wreckage, including…
ATLANTA – Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter of late singer Whitney Houston, is “fighting for her life” after being found unconscious, her family says. Ms Brown, 21, was rushed to hospital on Saturday after being found unconscious in the bath at her home in Atlanta. Her mother, a global star, was found dead in February 2012,…
TOKYO – Japan has reacted with anger and defiance to a video appearing to show the beheading of Japanese hostage Kenji Goto by an Islamic State militant. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan “would not give in to terrorism” and that he would expand his support to countries fighting IS. IS has cited Japanese aid…
