Blog with slideshow

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Swiss Belinda Bencic advanced to the last 16 of the Australian Open after two-time champion Naomi Osaka retired during Friday’s third-round match with an injury. Bencic took the first set in a tiebreak 7-6(3) before Japan’s Osaka, who had also pulled out of the Auckland final earlier this month due to an abdominal injury, withdrew from the contest. Osaka led 5-2 in the opening set but showed […]

BEIJING (Reuters) – The Chinese government “has never and will never” require companies or individuals to collect data for or provide data to it in a way that violates the law, China’s foreign ministry said on Friday. The ministry spoksperson was responding to a question about six Chinese companies including TikTok, Shein, Xiaomi, which have been named in a privacy complaint filed by Austrian advocacy group Noyb claiming the firms […]

LONDON (Reuters) -Three lawyers for the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were found guilty on Friday of belonging to an extremist group by a Russian court and sentenced to between 3 1/2 and 5 1/2 years, the Mediazona news outlet reported. Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October 2023 and added the following month to an official list of “terrorists and extremists”. Navalny, who died […]

HAMBURG (Reuters) – Germany has no new cases of the livestock illness foot-and-mouth disease with a suspect case on Thursday not confirmed, German agriculture minister Cem Oezdemir said on German radio on Friday. Germany has only one case of the disease, Oezdemir said on German radio Deutschlandfunk. Germany announced the country’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in nearly 40 years on Jan. 10 in a herd of water buffalo on […]

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand is stepping up security for tourists to restore the confidence of Chinese visitors, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said on Friday after an alleged kidnapping of a Chinese actor sparked concerns about the safety of travellers. Tourism is a key driver of Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, and China is the biggest single market for Thailand. “Tourism is the country’s main source of income. I don’t want it […]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A mysterious airstrip being built on a remote island in Yemen is nearing completion, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show, one of several built in a nation mired in a stalemated war threatening to reignite. The airstrip on Abd al-Kuri Island, which rises out of the Indian Ocean near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, could provide a key landing zone […]

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Law enforcement authorities on Friday were seeking to formally arrest impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was spending his third day at a detention center after his lawyers failed in a last-minute attempt to secure his release. Yoon, who was apprehended on Wednesday in a massive law enforcement operation at his residence, faces potential rebellion charges linked to his declaration of martial law […]

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A Pakistani court sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan to 14 years imprisonment on Friday in a land corruption case, local broadcaster ARY News reported. The verdict in the case, the largest in terms of financial wrongdoing faced by Khan, was delivered by an anti-graft court in a prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Khan has been jailed since August 2023. (Reporting by Islamabad newsroom; […]

The war of words between Greg Norman and Rory McIlroy is as good as done. Although the ongoing negotiations between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf on their “framework agreement” have made little apparent progress, there is less animosity between the sides in 2025 than there was when LIV first entered the golf scene. Now LIV is moving forward with sports executive Scott O’Neil as its CEO, replacing Norman, who […]

TAIPEI (Reuters) – The United States will not abandon its allies in the Pacific and the incoming Trump administration should renew its commitment to providing Taiwan with the means to defend itself, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said in Taipei on Friday. Trump’s first administration, in which Pence served, offered strong support for Chinese-claimed Taiwan, including the regularisation of arms sales. But Trump, who takes office on Monday for […]