Kuwait has been cleared to compete in the 2020 Olympics after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Friday it was lifting the suspension it imposed on the Kuwait Olympic Committee (KOC) four years ago.
In a statement, the IOC said the KOC had successfully implemented "a roadmap agreed between all parties".
The announcement comes less than a week after Sheikh Fahad Nasser Sabah Ahmad Al Sabah was elected President of the KOC.
This was the third and final step in the roadmap which also required revision and adoption of new statutes for sports clubs and federations, followed by elections.
Kuwait was suspended in October 2015 following "undue government interference after a sports law that was not compatible with the basic principles that govern the Olympic Movement was passed in the country".
The new law had threatened the autonomy of the KOC and all other national federations while also meaning the country would no longer comply with the Court of Arbitration for Sport ..

IOC lifts Kuwait suspension, clearing nation to compete in 2020 Olympics

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South Africa's ethics watchdog said Friday that a respected minister had lied to lawmakers when saying he had never met the controversial Gupta business family at the heart of corruption allegations.
In a report set against a backdrop of infighting within the ruling ANC party, Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane said Pravin Gordhan intentionally misled the national assembly in 2018.
"The allegation that Mr Gordhan violated the Executive Ethics Code by deliberately misleading the National Assembly... is substantiated," she said in a report.
Gordhan is the newly-appointed minister of public enterprises and a close ally of President Cyril Ramaphosa, who last year forced out former head of state Jacob Zuma.
The public protector in South Africa is an ombudsman who should be politically independent, although critics accuse Mkhwebane of being a Zuma loyalist.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) is bitterly split between Zuma supporters and those backing Ramaphosa, who took the helm ...

Senior S.African minister lied to parliament: watchdog

Tunisia's premier on Friday banned the niqab Muslim face covering for women in government offices, citing security concerns after attacks in the North African country.
Prime Minister Youssef Chahed signed a government circular "banning access to public administrations and institutions to anyone with their face covered... for security reasons," his office said.
The ban on the niqab, which covers the entire face apart from the eyes, comes at a time of heightened security following a June 27 double suicide bombing in Tunis that left two dead and seven wounded.
The interior minister instructed police in February 2014 to step up supervision of the wearing of the niqab as part of anti-terrorism measures, to prevent its use as a disguise or to escape justice.
The Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights urged that the measure be only temporary.
"We are for the freedom to dress (as one pleases), but today with the current situation and the terrorist threats in Tunisia and across the ...

Niqab banned in Tunisian government offices

Some 1,000 people have been killed since Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar launched a push three months ago to capture Tripoli, the UN said Friday, including 53 detained migrants who died in a devastating air strike.
Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army, which holds eastern Libya and much of the country's south, launched an offensive in early April to wrestle the capital from forces loyal to the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).
Air strikes and ground fighting have since left nearly 1,000 people dead and some 5,000 wounded, the UN's World Health Organization said, without specifying the breakdown between civilians and fighters.
The fighting has forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes in a country mired by a bloody power struggle between militias since a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.
Among the dead are 53 migrants killed Tuesday night in an air raid on a detention centre in the Tripoli suburb of Tajoura, ...

1,000 dead in three-month fight for Libya's Tripoli

UNESCO on Friday added Iceland's Vatnajokull National Park, Europe's largest with a landscape of "fire and ice," to its World Heritage List.
Shaped by volcanoes and surrounded by lava fields, the park is also home to the largest glacier in Europe, after which it is named.
The protected area of some 14,500 square kilometres -- or 14 percent of the whole country -- is "an exceptional example of both the interplay of ice and fire and of the separation of earth's tectonic plates on land," according to UNESCO.
"This recognition of the outstanding universal value of the Vatnajokull National Park will benefit the area and further ensure its integrity," Education Minister Lilja Alfredsdottir told AFP.
"We are all responsible for its magnificent nature and history." The glacier, which covers more than half of the park and eight percent of Iceland's surface, reaches over several volcanic systems, including two of the most active volcanoes on the island, Grimsvotn and Bardabunga.
Iceland's ...

Iceland glacier national park named World Heritage site

Airports? In the 1700s?
A historical flub landed in President Donald Trump's "Salute to America" speech on Thursday marking the US Independence Day holiday.
While praising the victories of the Continental Army over the British during the 1775-1783 Revolutionary War, Trump mentioned how it "took over the airports." There were, of course, no airports in the 1770s, not to mention airplanes, which were not invented until the 1900s.
Trump read his prepared speech from a teleprompter behind a bulletproof lectern streaked with rain and that may explain the clumsy reference.
Trump also appeared to mix up the Revolutionary War with the War of 1812.
While talking about the Revolutionary War, Trump mentioned the "rocket's red glare" which inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem which became The Star-Spangled Banner. He wrote it after watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British in 1814.
Trump mostly stuck to his prepared text during a nearly hour-long "Fourth of July" speech that 

Historical flub lands in Trump speech

Thousands of people protested for a twentieth consecutive week in Algeria's capital on Friday, defying a major police presence and after the interim president renewed a plea for dialogue.
"Go, liberate Algeria!", protesters chanted, waving the national flag, as they kept up pressure for regime insiders to step aside, more than three months after forcing longtime ruler Abdelaziz Bouteflika into resigning.
Amid shouts of "Long live Algeria! Our claims are legitimate!", hundreds of the protesters successfully forced their way through a police cordon and headed for the esplanade of the main post office, a symbol of the protest movement.
Other chants glorified the martyrs of Algeria's war of independence, on what is the country's 57th anniversary of liberation from French rule.
Around a dozen protesters were arrested, witnesses said.
Ranks of police officers wearing helmets and equipped with shields had tried to block the protesters and confine them to a pavement around 10 metres (yards) ..

Thousands protest in Algeria capital, break police cordon

Deaths from an 11-month-old epidemic of Ebola in eastern DR Congo have crossed the 1,600 mark and a new fatality has been reported near the border with Uganda, the health ministry said on Friday.
As of Thursday, the health authorities had recorded 2,382 cases of Ebola, of which 1,606 had been fatal, it said.
A ministry spokesman told AFP that a patient whose infection had been reported on Monday in Ariwara, in Ituri province bordering Uganda, had died.
The fatality is a mother from neighbouring North Kivu province whose five children had become infected with Ebola, two of whom had died.
She had gone to Ituri in order to evade Ebola response teams,  the ministry said.
Ariwari lies in northern Ituri, about 10 kilometres (six miles) from Uganda and some 60 kms from South Sudan.
"So far, 177 people who have been in contact with the family have been identified in Ariwara and 40 have already been vaccinated," the ministry said.contacts The disease broke out in North Kivu before spreading to 

DR Congo Ebola death toll exceeds 1,600 mark

UNESCO's World Heritage Committee voted in Baku on Friday to list the sprawling Mesopotamian metropolis of Babylon as a World Heritage Site after three decades of lobbying efforts by Iraq.
Straddling Iraq's Euphrates River about 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad, the city was the centre of the ancient Babylonian empire more than 4,000 years ago.

UNESCO lists Iraq's Babylon as World Heritage Site

New Zealand will tour Sri Lanka after the ongoing World Cup and play two Tests and three Twenty20 matches starting early next month, the island nation's cricket board said Friday.
The visitors will also be the first foreign sporting team to tour Sri Lanka after the Easter Sunday suicide attacks that killed 258 people, including 45 foreign nationals.
Local Islamic radicals hit three churches and three hotels on April 21. Since then, Sri Lanka has been under a state of emergency which gives sweeping powers to police and troops to arrest and detain suspects.
The first Test between New Zealand and their hosts will begin on August 14 in Galle while the final Test match will be played in Colombo's P. Sara stadium from August 22, Sri Lanka Cricket said in a statement.
The first two T20 games will be in Colombo on August 31 and September 2 at the Premadasa Stadium while the final match will be on September 6 in Kandy.

New Zealand to tour Sri Lanka after World Cup

Gibraltar, which has detained an Iranian tanker suspected of carrying oil to Syria in violation of sanctions, said Friday it acted of its own accord and not on any other government order.
Spain's Foreign Minister Josep Borrell had said the ship was detained in waters off the overseas British territory on Spain's southern tip at the request of the United States.
"There has been no political request at any time from any government," Gibraltar's government said in a statement.
"The decisions of Her Majesty's Government of Gibraltar were taken totally independently, based on breaches of existing law and not at all based on extraneous political considerations."
Tehran, which on Thursday summoned the British ambassador in Iran in protest, on Friday called for "the immediate release of the oil tanker".

Gibraltar says it detained Iran tanker of own accord

Bangladeshi police have arrested a religious school's principal for allegedly raping at least a dozen children under his care, an official said Friday, sparking demonstrations by hundreds of people.
Al Amin, the head teacher and founder of the Baitul Huda Cadet Madrassa at Fatulla outside Dhaka, claimed innocence, saying he was "possessed by Satan".
Madrassas are religious institutions that provide everything from basic Koran-based education to graduate-level religious studies.
Elite police from the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested the teacher on Thursday after the mother of a 10-year-old student filed a rape complaint against him.
Local RAB chief Lieutenant Colonel Kazi Samser Uddin said the young girl watched a TV news report on serious sexual assault and told her mother that the seminary founder "did the same to her".
"The mother immediately rushed to us with the complaint. Then we arrested the principal," Uddin told AFP.
The teacher later admitted he forcibly had sexual ...

'Possessed' Bangladeshi headteacher arrested over child rapes

France 2019 has been "the best women's World Cup ever", FIFA President Gianni Infantino insisted on Friday.
Infantino said the tournament had been "phenomenal" and "incredible" as he promised to increase investment in the women's game and to propose further expanding the tournament for the next tournament in 2023.
"There was a before and there will be an after", he added ahead of Sunday's final between holders the United States and the Netherlands in Lyon.

France 2019 has been 'best women's World Cup ever' - FIFA chief

The finalists in the race to succeed Theresa May as Britain's prime minister wooed voters Friday in Scotland, where frontrunner Boris Johnson's "no-deal Brexit" threats are fanning the flames of independence.
Built on fishing and oil, Scotland has been traditional tricky terrain for Britain's ruling Conservative Party, which has not won a general election there since the 1950s.
But Johnson ventured up north for the first time Friday in the latest leg of a month-long campaign that will conclude with the July 24 confirmation of Britain's next premier.
UK media reports paint a portrait of a confident Johnson already drafting the makeup of his future government.
But it is his rival, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has won the coveted endorsement of the Scottish Conservatives' leader Ruth Davidson, who is weary of the prospects of Britain splitting away from the EU without any plans for what happens next.
Hunt, widely viewed as less charismatic but more pragmatic than Johnson, already ..

British PM rivals woo Scotland with union at stake

Russian swimming great Alexander Popov and Ukrainian pole vault legend Sergey Bubka, both IOC members, reacted furiously Friday to claims they took bribes in exchange for supporting Rio de Janeiro as hosts for the 2016 Olympic Games.
"I didn't even vote for Rio de Janeiro," said Popov, one of three Russian members of the International Olympic Committee, in a statement released by RIA Novosti.
Bubka, who is also head of Ukraine's national Olympic committee, was also quick to deny the allegations, saying: "I completely reject all the false claims." Brazilian media cited a former governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Cabral, who is in prison on corruption charges, as saying at a court hearing that he helped to orchestrate a bribe to secure the city as host of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
He said the bribe, worth a combined $2 million, was organised with the help of Lamine Diack, the disgraced former head of athletics' world governing body the IAAF.  Diack resigned as an honorary IOC ...

Popov, Bubka deny taking bribes for backing Rio's Olympic bid

Britain's competition authority said Friday it was looking into the acquisition by US online giant Amazon of a stake in Deliveroo, an app-based service firm that delivers restaurant meals to clients using bicycle or moped riders.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it had last month served the firms with an initial enforcement order, a preliminary step that could lead to the launch of a formal merger probe.
In mid-May, UK-based Deliveroo announced that Amazon was the largest investor in its latest $575 million funding round, which would go to boosting its tech team and developing new products.
The investment would mean Amazon finally gets a foothold in Britain's fast growing food delivery business in which Deliveroo is a major player, after its own attempt to enter the market was shuttered in 2018.
The initial enforcement order sought to block the firms from carrying out steps that would lead to a de facto merger or control of Deliveroo by Amazon pending review by the ...

UK regulator looks into Amazon's Deliveroo investment

Job creation roared back to life in the US economy in June, wiping away fears of a slowdown as employers rushed to hire in transportation, construction and other areas, the government reported Friday.
The US jobs engine added 224,000 net new positions last month, smashing forecasts, the Labor Department said in the closely-watched report, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7 per cent as more workers stepped off the sidelines to enter the labor force.
After an unexpectedly weak May, the vigorous June rebound should quiet talk of a steep drop-off in economic activity and delight President Donald Trump as he prepares to seek reelection next year.
But it could disappoint stock markets, which had been banking on an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve following a batch of soft economic data. That rate cut, expected later this month, could now be in doubt.
Still, even with the latest numbers, job creation slowed to a monthly average of 172,000 in the first half of the year, ...

US job creation soars 224,000 in June; unemployment rises to 3.7%

A landmark African free trade zone due to be ceremonially launched at a summit in Niger this weekend is expected to take effect from July 2020, the African Union (AU) trade commissioner said Friday.
"We have recommended to the summit that the actual date of trading should be the 1st of July 2020," Albert Muchanga, in charge of trade and industry at the 55-nation bloc, told AFP.
"It is not yet definitive, the summit has to consider that recommendation," he said.
However, "the ministers of trade have accepted, so naturally you would expect that the head of states will." "I am very optimistic, the passion is spreading and everyone is ready to work hard for the better," he added.
The launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), 17 years in the making, will be the major focus at the AU summit.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and the most notable absentee to the deal alongside Benin and Eritrea, announced earlier this week that it would sign up to the AfCFTA in ...

African free trade zone expected to begin in 2020

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned Friday that the chances of saving a landmark Cold War arms treaty were decreasing day by day, after talks with Russian officials failed to yield any breakthrough.
Russia and the United States have both suspended their participation in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF), accusing each other of violating the accord, which banned a whole class of nuclear-capable missiles.
Washington will definitively quit the deal on August 2 unless Russia destroys a controversial new missile system the US and NATO say breaches the accord, signed in 1987 between US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
NATO held talks with senior Russian officials as part of efforts to save the deal, a week after alliance defence ministers agreed a package of counter-measures in case Moscow ignores the deadline.
"We didn't see any sign of Russia being willing to come back into compliance with the INF treaty," Stoltenberg told reporters after the meeting, .

NATO says no sign of Russia backing down in missile crisis

A group of tigers at a circus in southern Italy attacked and killed their veteran trainer during rehearsals, Italian media reported Friday.
One tiger attacked Ettore Weber, 61, on Thursday under the big top in Triggiano, in the popular southern tourist destination of Puglia, before three other tigers joined in.
The tigers toyed with the body for several minutes before emergency services and staff could intervene, Italian media said.
Around 40 countries, including 20 in Europe, have at least partially banned the use of wild animals in circus performances.
Britain plans to enact such a ban from next year.

Tigers kill circus trainer in Italy: report

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said three Syrians were killed in the Turkish town of Reyhanli close to the Syrian border in a car blast that may be terror-related.
"The initial findings suggest there may be more of a link with terror," Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul. "It is clear there was a bomb in the car," he said.
"Our colleagues are looking into who was behind this," he said in televised comments, adding the government would provide more information in a few hours.
The blast took place less than a kilometre from the Reyhanli district governor's office around 1000 GMT, state news agency Anadolu reported.
Images in Turkish media showed thick black smoke and flames from the car as firefighters fought the blaze.
A twin car bombing blamed on pro-Damascus groups in May 2013 in Reyhanli killed over 50 people in one of the deadliest attacks in Turkey's modern history.
Turkey was hit by a series of terror attacks in 2015 and 2016 blamed on the Islamic State extremist group ..

AFP

AFP

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