MELBOURNE: Andy Murray is still hoping to make it to one more Wimbledon tournament before his problematic hip forces him into retirement. For now, he’s only committing to the Australian Open. In an emotional news conference on Friday, when a tearful Murray had to leave the room shortly after his first attempt to get it started, and needed to pause …

SYDNEY: Alex Carey will be given the opportunity to push for a top order spot at the World Cup when he opens the batting with Australia captain Aaron Finch against India in the first of three One-day Internationals in Sydney on Saturday. The 27-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman has played just six previous ODIs and typically batted in the middle order, where he …

IN any sport — be it cricket, hockey or football — success and failure depends on how a team or an individual plans for the contest. The team and the management do a lot of homework on how to tackle the situation and that includes the knowledge of the opposition, fitness of the team and tactics to be used for …

The US-led military coalition in Syria has begun pulling out troops, a spokesman said on Friday without elaborating on locations or timetables. “Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) has begun the process of our deliberate withdrawal from Syria,” spokesman Colonel Sean Ryan told AFP in a statement, referring to the US-led anti-militancy force. “Out of concern for operational security, we will …

NEW DELHI: Nepal on Friday strongly pitched for a South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit, saying that differences should be resolved through dialogue and the grouping should collectively deal with terrorism and other key challenges facing the region, the Press Trust of India said. According to the news agency, Nepalese Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali cited last year’s …

WASHINGTON: Thousands of requests by men originally from other countries, including Pakistan, to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved over the past decade, according to government data obtained by AP news agency. In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl. The approvals are legal: the Immigration and …

WASHINGTON: A move to oust a Republican Party leader in Texas because he is a Muslim has failed after it was put to a vote of the executive committee. Committee members voted 139-49 on Thursday night to retain Shahid Shafi, a trauma surgeon, as the vice chairman of the local branch of the Republican Party. “Religious liberty won tonight,” The …

GAZA: Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian woman during Gaza border protests on Friday, medics said, and the military said it opened fire in response to grenade and rock attacks and breaches of the frontier. Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza health ministry, said 25 other Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire during the mass demonstration, a weekly event along …

BANGKOK: An 18-year-old Saudi woman who fled her family seeking asylum in Australia left for South Korea on her way to Canada late on Friday, the head of Thai immigration police said, in a surprise twist to a saga partly played out over Twitter. Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun was granted refugee status by the UN two days ago after arriving in Bangkok …

WASHINGTON: The Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives voted on Friday to restore funding for federal agencies that have been shut down by a fight with President Donald Trump over border wall funding, as some 800,000 government workers, from tax collectors to FBI agents, missed their first paycheck. The House bill, which passed 240-179 with only a handful of Republicans supporting it, would …