ABU DHABI: World number one Roger Federer has been forced to pull out of the $2 million ATP Dubai Open due to a lung infection.According to the ATP’s website Federer picked up the infection last week and is expected to be out of action for a further two weeks.
The 28-year-old Swiss won the title in [...]

VANCOUVER: Mark Tuitert edged American hot favourite Shani Davis in the men’s 1,500m speed skating here on Saturday, claiming the Netherlands’ second gold at the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games.
Dutch’s first gold also came from speed skating as Sven Kramer triumphed in the men’s 5,000m last Saturday.
“Unbelievable. I can’t believe it,” said the 29-year-old Tuitert, who [...]

VANCOUVER: Zhou Yang of China won the women’s 1500 meters short track speed skating gold medal at the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games here on Saturday.
Zhou clocked in a winning time of two minutes 16.993 seconds for the top honor, the Olympic record, while Lee Eun-byul of South Korea took the silver in 2:17.849  and Lee’s [...]

WASHINGTON：The United States is developing a “significant regime of sanctions” after Iran apparently spurned an offer to negotiate over its suspect nuclear program, President Barack Obama said Tuesday.
In his most extensive remarks on Iran in some time, Obama said Iran appears to have spurned his offer of engagement. He says Iran is still pursuing a [...]

Stricter regulations will be applied to stem rising credit risks
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) said on Monday it would apply stricter approval rules to property lending this year as part of an effort to balance its loan structure and stem rising credit risks.The world’s largest bank by market capitalization will not issue new loans [...]

SHANGHAI/BEIJING: China has begun moving at the margins to withdraw excess cash from the financial system, as a spike in lending in the first few weeks of the year prompted concerns that credit growth was getting out of hand.
The moves, which have included increasing banks’ required reserves as well as additional punitive reserve requirements [...]

PORT-AU-PRINCE: The US government said on Sunday it would resume military evacuation flights to the United States for badly injured Haitian earthquake victims after a four-day suspension over cost and treatment questions.
The White House said the flights were expected to begin again within 12 hours. Medical workers in Haiti had said the suspension put seriously [...]

SANAA: Yemen rejected a ceasefire offer from Shi’ite rebels on Sunday and said fighting was continuing, as neighbouring Saudi Arabia accused the insurgents of mounting sniper attacks inside its territory.
The conflict with the northern rebels, who complain of social, religious and economic discrimination in the southern Arabian state, has rumbled on since 2004, but intensified [...]

Confident scalpers laugh off predictions that the new train ticketing system will wipe out ‘yellow bulls.’ Huang Zhiling in Chengdu, Qiu Quanlin in Guangzhou, Peng Yining and Wang Shanshan in Beijing report
As the man strolled beside the long lines outside Beijing Railway Station, occasionally stopping to chat with random strangers, the casual observer would be [...]