WorldNews

NAPIER, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand's Cricket World Cup match against Afghanistan on Sunday, which shaped as one of its least demanding in Pool A, might instead become one of its most compounding. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18468[/attach] Montreal (AFP) - Four Canadian government ministers were sent envelopes of a suspicious white powder on Thursday that was later believed to be harmless, police said. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18467[/attach] DORAL, Fla. (AP) — J.B. Holmes never liked the old Blue Monster at Doral because he thought it was too easy for a World Golf Championship. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18466[/attach] The foreign ministers of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia said early on Friday they had reached the basis of an agreement on the sharing of Nile waters and Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam. "A full agreement has been reached between our three countries on the principles of the use of the eastern Nile Basin and the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam," Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti told reporters early on Friday morning. Egypt fears Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam project would diminish its share of the river waters. Continue reading...

British lawmakers banned from entering Hong Kong last year said Chinese regulations were eroding freedoms in the former British colony, and urged their government to take a harder stance against Beijing. Pro-democracy protests shut down parts of Hong Kong for two and a half months last year in response to a decision by China to pre-screen candidates in a 2017 election which will choose the city's next chief executive. On Friday a report by British parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee said China's new nomination process was "unduly restrictive". The report highlighted what it called a "troubling pattern" of limitations being imposed on the autonomy and freedoms negotiated for Hong Kong 30 years ago when Britain and China agreed a deal to hand it back to Beijing. Continue reading...

SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) — The Baltimore Orioles have released right-hander Suk-min Yoon. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18460[/attach] PANAMA CITY (AP) — A three-member judicial panel sentenced a suspended Panamanian Supreme Court justice to five years in prison for unjustified enrichment in an unusual case of corruption that captured this Central American nation's attention. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18459[/attach] The share of women in the world's parliaments has almost doubled in the last two decades but progress seems to be stagnating, the International Parliamentary Union said Thursday. "There is no room for complacency," warned Martin Chungong, head of the Geneva-based IPU, which groups 166 national legislatures. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18458[/attach] Italy's coastguard rescued 127 people and recovered 10 bodies on Tuesday after a boat capsized off Sicily when the people on board rushed to one side of the vessel in a stampede to get onto the arriving coastguard boat. Di Giacomo said the latest deaths took the migrant death toll in the waters between north Africa and southern Italy to more than 400 since the start of the year. Italy's foreign ministry said Thursday that 8,918 migrants had been landed in Italy between January 1 and March 4, a near 60-percent increase from the total of 5,611 registered in the same period in 2014. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18457[/attach] PARIS (AP) — Kim Kardashian made a fashion statement of her own at Balmain's show Thursday, showing off newly platinum locks. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18456[/attach] The trial of two men accused of plotting to derail a Toronto-New York passenger train to protest the deployment of Western troops in Afghanistan wrapped up Thursday in Canada. The court heard closing arguments in which a lawyer for one of the accused said his client was not a terrorist, but rather a con man. Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser, both in their 30s, were arrested in 2013 in what police said was an Al-Qaeda-backed plan to sow fear across North America. According to public broadcaster CBC, John Norris, the lawyer for Jaser told the court his client was only ever interested in swindling Esseghaier and an undercover FBI agent whom they believed was a wealthy Arab businessman. Continue reading...

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AP) — Heavy wind has caused an eight-member crew attempting to row across the Atlantic Ocean in record time to fall just short of their goal of reaching Barbados. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18448[/attach] Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko agreed to drink chicken broth Thursday as concerns mount over her health on the 83rd day of a hunger strike in a Russian jail which has seen her lose over 20 kilos (44 pounds), her lawyer said. The European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned Wednesday that Savchenko "faces permanent damage to her health or death" and called on Moscow to urgently release her. Continue reading...

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) — An opposition politician in Macedonia who ran in the presidential election last year has filed a lawsuit against the government, claiming he was the victim of a major illegal wiretapping operation. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18447[/attach] Ukraine on Thursday observed a day of mourning after 32 miners died in a blast in a notoriously dangerous mine just a few kilometres from the frontline, where Kiev has reported an increase in attacks by pro-Russian separatists. The Zasyadko mine is located on the outskirts of rebel hub Donetsk not far from the frontline of the conflict between the pro-Russian separatists and Kiev's forces. International monitors have reported sporadic heavy fire in the area of the Donetsk airport nearby despite the EU-mediated ceasefire struck on February 12 aiming to end 11 months of violence that has killed over 6,000 people. Kiev's security spokesmen said that sporadic attacks on its positions killed one Ukrainian soldier since Wednesday, and a civilian working for the emergency services was killed by shelling in Avdiyivka, a village west of Donetsk. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18446[/attach] AbbVie will spend about $21 billion to buy fellow drugmaker Pharmacyclics and add another major revenue producer to a portfolio that already includes the world's top-selling drug. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18440[/attach] TOKYO (AP) — A former crewmember on a Japanese battleship that sank during World War II said Thursday he recognized photos of wreckage discovered this week off the Philippines by a team led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18439[/attach] At least 18 civilians were killed in a single regime barrel bomb attack in Syria's northern city of Aleppo on Thursday, a monitoring group said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bomb, dropped from a helicopter, struck an eastern sector of the divided city where people were gathering to buy and sell fuel. In the northern province of Idlib, seven civilians were killed in a regime air strike near a school, Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Observatory, told AFP. The deaths came after UN envoy Staffan de Mistura dispatched a delegation to Aleppo in efforts to freeze fighting there. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18438[/attach] CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Indonesian officials said Thursday they will reject an Australian offer to swap prisoners as part of a last-ditch attempt to save the lives of two Australian drug smugglers expected to face a firing squad within days. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18437[/attach] Peace talks aimed at ending 15 months of civil war in South Sudan appeared deadlocked on Thursday just hours before the expiry of a regionally-imposed deadline for a deal. Hopes of an agreement were dealt another blow as President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar pulled out of their discussions, promising to reconvene mid-afternoon. A deadline set by the east African regional bloc IGAD, which is mediating the talks and growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of results, expires at midnight (2100 GMT). "The two principles will meet again this afternoon after separate meetings with the mediators," said an IGAD spokesman. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18436[/attach] LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization will start large-scale testing of an experimental Ebola vaccine in Guinea on Saturday to see how effective it might be in preventing future outbreaks of the deadly virus. Continue reading...

Russia's Defence Ministry said on Thursday that large-scale military exercises had started in southern Russia and in disputed territories on Russia's borders. The Defence Ministry said the exercises were taking place in Russia's Southern and North Caucasus Federal Districts, as well as on Russian military bases in Armenia, the Georgian separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Ukraine's Crimea region, which Moscow annexed last year. Continue reading...

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian news agency Tass says that Russian media outlets are no longer granted access to official events in Ukraine. Continue reading...

[attach=full]18433[/attach] The US ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was recovering from surgery Thursday after having his face and arm slashed by a knife-wielding activist in an attack applauded by North Korean state media. Witnesses described how a man armed with a 25-centimetre (10-inch) paring knife had lunged across a table and attacked Lippert at a breakfast function in central Seoul. In a brief despatch, North Korea's official KCNA news agency called the attack "just punishment" and a valid "expression of resistance" that reflected South Korean public opposition to the joint drills which went ahead over Pyongyang's bitter protests. Kim was a known maverick activist who had been handed a two-year suspended sentence in 2010 for throwing a rock at the then Japanese ambassador to Seoul. Continue reading...

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — It looked like a steal: $72 for a round-trip business class ticket on South African Airways between Johannesburg and Abu Dhabi. Continue reading...