Sepp Blatter: Europe's 'hate' campaign against Fifa
- 30 May 2015
- Europe
Fifa president Sepp Blatter has condemned what he described as a "hate" campaign against football's world governing body by European officials.
And he said he was "shocked" by the comments of US prosecutors following the arrests of Fifa officials under an American anti-corruption warrant.
The 79-year-old Swiss was re-elected on Friday at a Fifa congress in Zurich.
European football governing body Uefa's president Michel Platini had urged Mr Blatter to step down ahead of the vote.
Mr Blatter's rival, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan, forced a second round of voting on Friday but then withdrew. Mr Blatter won 133 to Prince Ali's 73 in the first round, just short of the 140 votes needed for an outright win.
US wants China to halt South China Sea land reclamation
US ‘deeply concerned’ about scale of reclamation and prospect of further militarisation
US defense secretary Ash Carter said on Saturday that Beijing’s island-building in the South China Sea was undermining security in the Asia-Pacific but, despite his blunt remarks, the response from Chinese officials was measured.
Mr Carter, speaking to top defense officials from the Asia-Pacific at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, acknowledged that several countries had created outposts in the region’s disputed islands, but he said the scope of China’s activity created uncertainty about its future plans.
“China has reclaimed over 2,000 acres, more than all other claimants combined ... and China did so in only the last 18 months,” Mr Carter told the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum.
Russia releases travel ban blacklist
Russia has published a blacklist of 89 European Union politicians and military leaders banned from the country. The move is said to be in response to EU sanctions placed on Moscow over Crimea and Ukraine.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte used a weekly press conference on Friday to announce that two Dutch parliamentarians and a Dutch member of the European Parliament were on Russia's blacklist.
“Russia yesterday [Thursday] handed over a list of people to diverse EU embassies who may not enter Russia any longer,” Rutte said.
According to a letter from Belgium's Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, the list contains 89 names, Belgium MEP Mark Demesmaeker tweeted.
The Dutch foreign ministry confirmed the letter was genuine adding that Russia had requested the letter not be made public.
Moscow created the list in response to EU imposed sanctions and travel bans over Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its supposed involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Dutch Prime Minister Rutte said.
Renowned Angolan journalist sentenced on libel charge
Angolan court finds Angolan investigative journalist guilty of criminal libel.
The internationally renowned Angolan investigative journalist Rafael Marques de Morais has been given a six-month suspended sentence after the Luanda provincial court found him guilty of criminal libel against generals of the Angolan military.
The generals had agreed to drop charges against the 43-year-old journalist last week. These involved allegations in his 2011 book, Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola, that they were involved in 100 killings and 500 incidents of torture linked to mining operations in the country’s diamond-rich Lunda Norte province.
The generals were claiming $1.2-million in damages and a nine-year prison term.
In court documents, lawyers for the generals and two mining companies that had filed similar charges declared they had no further interest in pursuing the prosecution.
FIFA arrests resonate in Brazil, still smarting from World Cup waste
Brazilians reacted with a sense of vindication to the racketeering, money laundering, and other corruption charges brought against FIFA officials and corporate executives.
RIO DE JANEIRO; AND MEXICO CITY — The US criminal probe into alleged corruption in international soccer has hit hard this week in Latin America and the Caribbean, where 13 out of the 14 indicted figures reside.
But perhaps nowhere in the region do the charges resonate as much as in Brazil, where Wednesday’s news of the racketeering, money laundering, and other corruption charges against past and present FIFA officials and corporate sports executives was greeted with a sense of vindication.
Starting in 2013, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets to protest the billions of dollars of public money spent on preparing for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
India heat wave tests water supply as deaths near 2,000
Hospitals urged to give emergency treatment to people suffering from heatstroke as hundreds more die over past day.
30 May 2015 06:09 GMT
Dizzying temperatures have caused water shortages in thousands of Indian villages and killed hundreds more people over the past day, driving the death toll from a weeks-long heat wave to at least 1,826, officials have said.
Hospitals were urged to give emergency treatment to people suffering from heatstroke as authorities on Friday cancelled doctors' leave, set up water distribution points and warned people not to venture out.
"The main thing is prevention in this situation to ensure that preventive measures are being taken," said Charan Singh, additional director of public health in Delhi, where top temperatures have hit 45 degrees Celsius.
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