World News

KOCHI: "Why are you not scoring goals? Have you lost that magical touch in front of goal?" Questions were mostly along these lines when  Dimitar Berbatov  fronted up to Kerala Blasters fans in a live interaction through social media the day after he limped out of the pitch due to a muscle tear in the match against FC Goa, yet to find the back of the net after four starts. The fans, after all, expected a goal-fest from the Bulgarian who had scored 212 goals from 494 matches in his professional club career before his sojourn with the Blasters began. The memories of Berbatov's five goals in a match for Manchester United against Blackburn in 2010 still linger in the fans' minds. However, the 36-year-old, who has mostly played in a much more deeper role in midfield -- sometimes as a creative midfielder, sometimes as a defensive midfielder -- is much more pragmatic about his role and his influence on the Blasters. "When you start to get older, you see it from a diff...

ZURICH (Reuters) - Peru captain Paolo Guerrero will be able to play at the World Cup after FIFA’s appeal committee cut his ban for failing a doping test from one year to six months on Wednesday. The reprieve for Peru’s all-time leading scorer is a huge boost for the South Americans, who have qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 36 years but are short on big-name players. Guerrero, 33, who plays for Flamengo in Brazil, had been suspended by world governing body FIFA on Dec. 8 after testing positive for cocaine metabolite benzoylecgonine after Peru’s 0-0 draw away to Argentina in a World Cup qualifier in October. The ban, backdated to start on Nov. 3, will now finish in May, just over one month before the start of the tournament in Russia. “The FIFA Appeal Committee after taking into account all the circumstances of the case, in particular the degree of fault of the player, considered a six-month period of ineligibility to be a proportionate sanction,” said FIFA....

Visakhapatnam:  The FinTech Eco System in Visakhapatnam is vibrant and has a bright future, said academic team of Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore, at GITAM Institute of Management during the interaction with the media here on Wednesday. The academic team comprising Ngee Ann International Office assistant director Ray Ng Tze Thim, School of Business and Accounting senior faculty Linda Ng Lay Khim and School of Infocomm Technology Anand Ravi Deshpande visited Visakhapatnam FinTech Valley and GITAM FinTech Academy to understand the FinTech ecosystem in India. The team expressed that the young graduates, who established their Start-Ups in Visakhapatnam, have a lot of potential. They informed that the Singapore government is also showing equal interest to tie up with Andhra Pradesh state to enhance the human resource base in the field of FinTech particularly to encourage Start-Ups. The team has shown interest to send their students and young entrepreneurs to Visakhapatnam to u...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, won a decades-long battle on Wednesday to open part of an Arctic wildlife reserve in her state to oil and gas drilling, but Democratic senators and conservationists vow the war has only begun. The tax bill passed by Congress contains language pushed by Murkowski and supported by President Donald Trump to hold two lease sales in the 1.5 million-acre (600,000-hectare) 1002 area on the northern coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. Democrats and environmentalists deplore the prospect of development in ANWR, home to polar and grizzly bears, 200 species of birds, and where Gwich‘in natives depend on migrating herds of porcupine caribou. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, said the fight over the drilling was not over. “In fact I would say today is the beginning,” said Cantwell adding that Democrats would make sure the Trump administration follows all environmental laws before allowing drill...

                            Many more happy returns of the day to Govinda

A day after he won the hearts of the people of his adopted village in Osmanabad, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar said hee on Wednesday he “left a piece of my heart in Donja”. The Rajya Sabha MP’s heart-felt tweet came after his maiden trip to review the status of several project in the village which he has adopted under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) in November 2016. Donja is around 330 kms from Mumbai. “My visit to Donja has been a heart-warming one filled with promise and hope,” he said of the half-day spent there on Tuesday (Dec. 19),” Tendulkar said. “Many miles we’ve gone towards building a better life for the villagers and many more to goa But this is a great step in the right direction,” he added. The batting idol virtually floored the village of 2,800 on his short visit do Donja where he was accorded a hero’s welcome and showered with love and affection. With Osmanabad collector R. V. Game, Sachin reviewed the progress of the works to be carried out under t...