Jorge Lorenzo concedes he could have "thrown in the towel" after a frustrating two-year spell at Ducati, but the three-time MotoGP champion feels rejuvenated and once again ready to challenge the supremacy of title-holder Marc Marquez - his new Honda stablemate.
Marquez has taken the sport by storm since his 2013 debut in the top category, winning the championship in five of the past six seasons, with fellow Spaniard Lorenzo standing between him and perfection having captured the 2015 title.
Yet injury clouds hover over both ahead of this weekend's season-opener in Qatar. Marquez has rated his fitness at "almost 100 percent" following a gruelling rehabilitation from December shoulder surgery, while Lorenzo missed the first pre-season test at Sepang after fracturing his wrist in a dirt bike crash.
Marquez has won just once among the elite at the Losail circuit in Doha, a venue where Lorenzo has triumphed on six occasions across three categories -- including a hat-trick of MotoGP ...

'Nothing is impossible' as reorated Lorenzo eyes Marquez crown

PTI Automatic

The death toll from last week's collapsed gold mine in northern Indonesia has risen to 16, as hopes to find survivors fade, an official said Wednesday.
Eighteen people have been pulled alive but injured from the illegal mine on Sulawesi island, but it is unclear how many were inside when the accident happened last Tuesday.
Painstaking rescue efforts have been hampered by steep terrain, unstable soil and dangerously narrow mining shafts.
National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said "the evacuation team has been working 24 hours nonstop since Monday", when the site was deemed safe for search teams.
Two excavators have been clearing debris to find more bodies that could still be trapped inside the mine, he added.
For the first few days the team had to dig by hand to reach survivors because of the precarious conditions.
Rescuers also had to temporarily halt the search on Tuesday after rocks started to fall on them.
"At this point, the chances of finding any survivors are ..

Death toll from Indonesia mine collapse rises to 16

Jailed former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak was granted bail on Wednesday, nearly a year after he was arrested over corruption charges.
The CEO-turned president, who served from 2008 to 2013, was found guilty on charges including bribery and embezzlement and sentenced to 15 years in prison last October.
But the Seoul High Court approved the request for bail that the 77-year-old Lee made on the grounds of ill health, the South's Yonhap news agency reported.
Lee made the request in January citing old age and potential health complications from diabetes and sleep apnea.
Lee was found guilty of creating slush funds of tens of millions of dollars and accepting bribes from Samsung Electronics in return for a presidential pardon for its chairman Lee Kun-hee, who was jailed for tax evasion.
The conservative politician has denied wrongdoing and labelled the allegations as "political revenge".
South Korean presidents have a tendency to end up in prison after their time in power, usually .

S Korea court grants bail for ex-president Lee

Hello Kitty, Japan's moon-faced global icon of cute, will soon appear in a Hollywood film for the first time in her 45-year-old history, her creator said on Wednesday.
Sanrio, the feline character's operator, announced it was teaming up with New Line Cinema and FlynnPictureCo for the film after a near five-year discussion about rights for the big screen.
"A search for writers and creative talent will commence immediately," Sanrio said in a statement.
The mouthless character, with her child-like hair bow and a registered height of five apples, has spawned a multi-billion-dollar industry since Sanrio introduced her in 1974.
Immediately recognising Hello Kitty's cash cow potential, the company branched out into merchandising the year after and she now adorns everything from pencil cases and pyjamas to double-decker buses and airliners.
Last year, a Japanese railway firm even splashed images of Hello Kitty over a special shinkansen, or bullet train, painted in shocking pink and white.
To .

Hello Kitty hits Hollywood with planned film debut

Steve Smith and David Warner's year-long exile has likely left them hungrier than ever and their return can spark Australia to World Cup glory, Test great Shane Warne said Wednesday.
The star pair's ban from state and international cricket for ball-tampering expires later this month and they are expected to be rushed back into the Australian side for the defence of their title at the showpiece tournament in England this year.
Both players have recently undergone elbow surgery and the great unknown is how they will perform back on the world stage, particularly in what is sure to be a hostile atmosphere in England.
But Warne has no doubt they will be as good as ever, benefiting from the break rather than their skills being blunted.
He is talking from experience.
Warne was suspended in 2003 for a year after testing positive to banned diuretic drugs.
Many wrote him off, but the leg-spinning legend quickly bounced back and enjoyed several more years playing at the highest level with the ...

Warne says Australia can win World Cup with Smith and Warner

Australia's economic growth ground to a near halt in the second-half of 2018, official data showed Wednesday, thrusting the issue to the front and centre of an already contentious general election campaign.
The figures released by Australia's statistics agency showed growth for October to December at 0.2 per cent, after a 0.3 per cent reading in the previous three months.
"Growth in the economy was subdued, reflecting soft household spending and a decline in dwelling investment," the Bureau of Statistics' chief economist Bruce Hockman said in a statement.
"The approvals for dwelling construction indicate that the decline in dwelling investment will continue." Conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison has based his re-election campaign on stewardship of the economy and allegations that a centre-left Labor party government would spell an end to 28 years of continuous growth.
Annual growth came in at 2.3 percent but the pace of expansion in the second-half of 2018 -- the weakest since ..

Australia's economy slows ahead of election

A prison inmate in northwestern France seriously wounded two guards on Tuesday in a knife attack that officials said was being treated as a terror incident.
"There is no doubt as to the terrorist nature of this attack," Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet told reporters.
The inmate "is still holed up" in the prison facility where his partner was visiting him at the time, she added early Tuesday afternoon.
Regional and elite police units have been dispatched to the high-security prison in Conde-sur-Sarthe in Normandy, officials said.
The 27-year-old inmate, Michael Chiolo, is thought to have become a "radicalised" Islamist while in prison and shouted "Allahu Akhbar" (God is Greatest) during his rampage in the family-visiting area of the facility, prison staff representative Alassanne Sall told AFP.
France has suffered a series of attacks from Islamist extremists since 2015 and is on high alert amid concerns about the return of Islamic State group jihadists from Syria.
The latest violence 

'Radicalised' inmate slashes guards in French prison attack

California's top prosecutor confirmed Tuesday that no charges would be filed in a high-profile case in which police shot dead an unarmed black man who had been holding a cell phone.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the two officers involved in the March 2018 incident that made national headlines acted lawfully when they each fired 10 shots at Stephon Clark after he was chased into his grandmother's backyard.
Becerra's independent report into the killing is in line with Sacramento District Attorney Marie Schubert's findings that no charges were warranted in the case.
Schubert's decision at the weekend prompted protests in Sacramento -- where the killing took place -- with 84 people arrested late Monday, including college students, several reporters and a pastor who has played a prominent role in demanding accountability in the case.
"This loss of life is a tragedy, and it is the kind of tragedy we have endured far too many times across our state and nation," Becerra told reporters .

California confirms no charges for police who killed unarmed man

- Worldwide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee said Tuesday he is on a mission to fix the problems of online abuse, misinformation and data protection that were not envisioned when the system was created decades earlier.
Berners-Lee, credited with creating the web in 1989, told a Washington Post event he is committed to working on solutions to rampant problems plaguing the online world.
The British computer scientist said his efforts focus on two areas -- the so-called "Contract for the Web" to ensure integrity of online information, and his platform in development called "Solid" to give users control of their data.
His comments come amid events marking the 30th anniversary of the web and growing fears that it has been hijacked for nefarious purposes.
Berners-Lee stepped up his call to join the "contract," a project unveiled last November, that would bring together governments, tech firms and others to establish principles for online governance.
"You can't just outlaw fake news, it's much ..

30 years later, Berners-Lee sees mission to fix internet's ills

Activity has been detected at a North Korean long-range rocket site suggesting Pyongyang may be pursuing the "rapid rebuilding" of a test facility after the collapse of the Hanoi summit, according to analysis of satellite imagery from a US think tank.
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) says activity is "evident" at the vertical engine test stand and the launch pad's rail-mounted rocket transfer structure at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station -- the facility from which Pyongyang launched satellites in 2012 and 2016.
Sohae is also the site Pyongyang used as a test stand to fire some of its rocket engines on the ground.
The satellite launches were condemned by the international community and widely viewed as disguised ballistic missile tests.
The renewed activity was recorded two days after the Hanoi Summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un -- which ended early without an agreement -- and may "demonstrate resolve in 

Pyongyang 'rebuilding' main satellite launch site, photos show

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, the centrist billionaire Democrat who positioned himself as a potential challenger to Donald Trump, said Tuesday he would not run for president in 2020.
"I believe I would defeat Donald Trump in a general election. But I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field," the businessman said in an opinion column on the Bloomberg media platform that he owns.
"Many people have urged me to run. Some have told me that to win the Democratic nomination, I would need to change my views to match the polls," he said, acknowledging the leftward tilt among many of the dozen major Democrats already in the race.
"I've run for office three times and won each time, in no small part because I've never stuck my finger in the wind to decide what I should believe. It's not who I am, nor do I think it's what voters want in a leader," he added.
Bloomberg said he would instead devote his considerable financial muscle ...

Ex-NY mayor Bloomberg rules out run for US president in 2020

An Israeli spacecraft on its maiden mission to the moon has sent its first selfie back to Earth, mission chiefs said on Tuesday.
The image showing part of the Beresheet spacecraft with Earth in the background was beamed to mission control in Yehud, Israel -- 37,600 kilometres (23,360 miles) away, the project's lead partners said in a statement.
The partners, NGO SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, launched the unmanned Beresheet -- Hebrew for Genesis -- from Cape Canaveral in Florida on February 22.
The 585-kilogram (1,290-pound) craft took off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the private US-based SpaceX company of entrepreneur Elon Musk.  The trip is scheduled to last seven weeks, with the Beresheet due to touch down on April 11.
So far, only Russia, the United States and China have made the 384,000-kilometre (239,000-mile) journey and landed on the moon.
The Israeli mission comes amid renewed global interest in the moon, 50 years after American astronauts first walked on 

Israel's first spacecraft to moon sends selfie

A US judge on Tuesday rejected a bid by WikiLeaks leaker Chelsea Manning to fight a subpoena to testify in a closed-door probe believed to target the anti-secrecy group.
Manning told journalists outside the Alexandria, Virginia federal courthouse that her push to defeat a grand jury subpoena was rejected, but that she will continue to fight it over the coming days.
"The motion to quash was denied. We still have grounds to litigate so we're going to be here tomorrow," Manning said.
Manning was subpoenaed last week and not told what the case was about.
But she said she opposed grand juries, which she said are abused by prosecutors to unfairly compel testimony with little transparency.
"It's a secret proceeding in which evidence that would not normally be used or allowed can be reviewed," she told reporters outside the Alexandria courthouse.
"There's no adversarial process. You're not allowed to have your attorney in there. It's just a really bad process to have altogether." In 2010 the .

Court tells WikiLeaks leaker Chelsea Manning to testify to grand jury

North Korea recorded its worst harvest for more than a decade last year, the United Nations said Wednesday, as natural disasters combined with its lack of arable land and inefficient agriculture to hit production.
Last year's harvest was just 4.95 million tonnes, the United Nations said in its Needs and Priorities assessment for 2019, down by 500,000 tonnes.
It was "the lowest production in more than a decade", the UN's Resident Coordinator in the North Tapan Mishra said in a statement. "This has resulted in a significant food gap.

North Korea food production lowest in over a decade: UN

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro kept his silence Tuesday more than 24 hours after opposition leader Juan Guaido, defying a threat of arrest, returned to a hero's welcome in Caracas.
"They're drowning in contradictions, they don't know how to respond to Venezuela's people," Guaido told reporters, referring to the Maduro regime.  Guaido, recognized by more than 50 countries as Venezuela's acting president, flouted a government travel ban to embark on a 10-day tour of South American allies seeking support for Maduro's ouster.
When Guaido returned to Caracas on Monday, tens of thousands of supporters turned out around the country to welcome him home.
Maduro's government had threatened to arrest him when he returned. Not only had it fail to do so by midday Tuesday but authorities also have made no comment on Guaido.
On Tuesday, a national holiday for carnival, Guaido met with public sector union leaders.
His return marks the latest challenge to Maduro's authority since the 35-year-old 

Guaido says Venezuela government silence due to 'contradictions'

Britain's Brexit negotiators returned to Brussels on Tuesday vowing to "get a deal over the line" as they seek European Union support to break the deadlock in London as this month's divorce deadline looms.
UK attorney general Geoffrey Cox and Brexit minister Stephen Barclay began talks with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier, an EU official told AFP amid conciliatory signals from both sides.
Barnier said Saturday the European Union was ready to give further guarantees to help the Brexit deal it struck with Prime Minister Theresa May in November get through the British parliament.
Barnier also suggested European leaders would be amenable to a short "technical" delay in Britain's departure from the bloc scheduled for March 29, to give parliament time to formally ratify a final accord.
"We are determined to get a deal over the line and deliver on Brexit," Barclay tweeted as he and Cox, the government's top lawyer, departed for Brussels.
Barnier's small overture to Britain has raised some 

UK says Brexit talks at 'critical point'

Austrian authorities on Tuesday arrested a cross-country skier already suspended over doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, according to media reports, in a widening scandal following several arrests last week.
Five other skiers and two cyclists are under investigation as part of a probe into an alleged doping ring based in Germany and led by a 40-year-old sports doctor named as "Mark S".
Prosecutors in the city of Innsbruck said they have arrested another Nordic skier. They did not name him or give details of why he was arrested.
But the Kronen newspaper named the man as Johannes Duerr, who was thrown out of the Sochi Olympics in 2014 after testing positive for blood booster EPO.
In a German TV programme broadcast in January, Duerr set out detailed claims of how he went about doping, as well alleging the complicity of some employees of the Austrian Ski Association (OSV).
Prosecutors say last week's police crackdown on the alleged doping ring based in Erfurt in Germany was sparked by ...

Another skier arrested in widening doping scandal

A Tokyo court on Tuesday unexpectedly granted bail to former auto industry titan Carlos Ghosn, who has spent more than three months in a detention cell.
It was the latest twist in a case that has gripped Japan and the business world since the tycoon's shock arrest on November 19 over suspicions of financial misconduct. An appeal by prosecutors against the decision to grant Ghosn bail was thrown out late Tuesday, according to the Jiji news agency.
The 64-year-old Ghosn's lead lawyer Junichiro Hironaka suggested to Japanese media he could be freed Wednesday, once his defence team has raised bail which was set at one billion yen (USD 9 million).
The former head of Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors and Renault faces three charges -- two involving alleged under-reporting of his salary and a third over a complex scheme in which Ghosn allegedly sought to transfer his losses to Nissan's books.
Further claims of financial misconduct have been levelled against him and prosecutors may yet slap him with .

Ex-Nissan chief Ghosn wins bail in Japan

Germany head coach Joachim Loew dropped a bombshell on Tuesday by announcing that 2014 World Cup winners Jerome Boateng, Mats Hummels and Thomas Mueller are no longer in his plans.
Loew told the Bayern Munich trio before he names the squad for the friendly against Serbia in Wolfsburg in two weeks and the Euro 2020 qualifier against the Netherlands in Amsterdam on March 24.
Between them, Hummels, Boateng, both 30, and Mueller, still only 29, boast 246 appearances for Germany and were at the heart of the team which won the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
However, last year's debacle at the World Cup finals in Russia saw Germany crash out after the group stages due to below-par performances from Loew's trusted stars, including the trio.
"2019 is the year of a new start for the German national football team," said Loew.
"It was important to me personally to explain my thoughts and plans to the players and managers of FC Bayern," added Loew, who flew to Munich to speak to the trio.  The ...

Bayern trio Hummels, Boateng and Mueller out of Germany picture

Austrian cyclists Georg Preidler and Stefan Denifl have been suspended by the International Cycling Union (UCI) after getting caught up in the doping ring that was broken in the recent Nordic Skiing world championships.
Preidler, a three-time Austrian national time-trial champion, went to the Austrian police Monday to confess his guilt and was subsequently fired by his French team Groupama-FDJ.
"The UCI has now received further information regarding the admissions made by Mr. Georg Preidler and Mr. Stefan Denifl.
"After review of all elements in its possession, the UCI has decided to provisionally suspend both riders with immediate effect," a UCI statement said on Tuesday.
Preidler was not among six athletes arrested last week in a probe into an international doping ring but handed himself in to police in Graz after struggling with his conscience.
The triple Austrian time-trial champion said that he had been sought out by the doping ring and had only started doping "recently", ...

Cyclists caught in doping ring suspended by UCI

A court in Sweden on Tuesday fined a 17-year-old for threatening Swedish footballer Jimmy Durmaz during the World Cup after he committed a foul that paved the way for a German victory.
Durmaz was subjected to thousands of abusive comments on his Instagram account after his foul led to a free kick that handed Germany a 2-1 victory in the 95th minute in the group stage.
Sweden nonetheless progressed to the quarter-finals of the tournament in Russia.  Durmaz, a Toulouse TC winger born in Sweden to Assyrian parents who emigrated from Turkey, said at the time his family and children had also been threatened.
The Swedish football federation reported the abusive comments, including many racist remarks, to police, and prosecutors singled out three posts in particular, all written by youths.
The first youth received a formal warning from the prosecutor while the second accepted a fine without a trial.
The third, the 17-year-old convicted Tuesday, went to trial because he rejected the charge of 

AFP

AFP

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