The Fiji Times

Italian Molinari named Europe’s player of the year

(Reuters) – Francesco Molinari was named the European Tour’s Golfer of the Year for the first time on Monday, capping a stellar season in which he won the British Open to become the first Italian major champion. The 36-year-old also won the PGA Championship at Wentworth, the Tour’s flagship event, and claimed a maximum five...

Many diabetics needlessly test blood sugar at home

(Reuters Health) – – One in seven people with type 2 diabetes may be needlessly testing their blood sugar at home several times a day, a U.S. study suggests. People with type 2 diabetes don’t need to test their blood at home if they have well controlled symptoms and don’t take medications that can cause...

Google+ shutdown speeds up, new privacy bug affected 52.5 million users

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s <GOOGL.O> Google said on Monday it would shut down its Google+ social media service in April, four months ahead of schedule, after finding a software flaw for the second time this year that allowed partner apps to access its users’ private data. However, Google said in a blog post...

Israeli troops raid Palestinian news agency for footage

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli soldiers raided the official Palestinian news agency on Monday in the occupied West Bank, a day after suspected Palestinian gunmen opened fire on Israelis outside a nearby Jewish settlement. Wafa, the Palestinian Authority news service, said on its website that troops entered the server room and went through recordings...

Heavy snow kills three, snarls travel in U.S. Southeast

ATLANTA (Reuters) – An intense snowstorm headed out to sea on Monday after dumping up to 2 feet (60 cm) of snow on parts of the Southeastern United States, leaving three people dead in North Carolina and some 138,000 customers in the region still without power. School districts across North and South Carolina and Virginia...

Don’t use protests in France to curb climate ambitions: French officials

KATOWICE, Poland (Reuters) – Governments should not use the violent protests in France that were sparked by a carbon tax increase as an excuse to stem policies to curb global warming, French officials said on Monday. French Secretary of State for Ecology Brune Poirson, and Laurent Fabius, who presided over the 2015 Paris climate agreement,...

Cobblestones commemorating murdered Jews stolen in Rome

ROME (Reuters) – Twenty cobblestones commemorating members of two Italian Jewish families who were deported to Auschwitz or killed in Rome were dug up and stolen in the early hours of Monday in an apparent anti-Semitic attack. The bronze-capped cobblestones were embedded into the pavement outside a building in Rome’s central Monti neighbourhood that was...

Catalan hunger strikers sending message, not risking life – jailed separatist

MADRID (Reuters) – Jailed Catalan separatists who have gone on hunger strike are protesting against their treatment by the Spanish judicial system but have no intention of starving themselves to death, one told Reuters. Jordi Sanchez, one of nine Catalan politicians in pre-trial detention on charges including misuse of public funds and rebellion in relation...

European Jews feel under threat, think of emigrating – EU survey

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – More than one in three European Jews have considered emigrating over the past five years because they no longer feel safe amid a surge in anti-Semitism, a European Union study showed on Monday. The survey in 12 countries that are home to 96 percent of European Jews showed widespread malaise at a...

EU blacklists nine over rebel Ukraine vote, no new Russia sanctions for now

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union blacklisted nine locals involved in last month’s rebel elections in east Ukraine on Monday, but was unlikely to heed swiftly Kiev’s call for more reprisals against Moscow over the latest flare-up of tensions in the Azov Sea. Ukraine’s Pavlo Klimkin asked the EU’s 28 foreign ministers in Brussels to...

Climate change creates mutant fugu, a deadly Japanese delicacy

SHIMONOSEKI, JAPAN (Reuters) – The road, hemmed in on one side by empty warehouses and the other by a concrete seawall, ends abruptly in a desolate parking lot. Men step out of their cars and into the darkness, then slip behind the sliding doors of a warehouse. Inside, they huddle under floodlights and wait. A...

Tourism in Bethlehem booming as Christmas nears

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) – Bethlehem is enjoying its busiest Christmas season on record, the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism said on Monday, with hotels in the birthplace of Jesus almost fully booked for the holiday. Tourism has recovered following a fall in knife and car-ramming attacks which helped push visitor numbers in the biblical city...

Huawei CFO seeks bail, cites health fears behind bars: court documents

TORONTO (Reuters) – A top executive of China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL] argued that she should be let out on bail while awaiting an extradition hearing due to severe hypertension and fears for her health while incarcerated in Canada, court documents released on Sunday showed. Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou is fighting to...

Belgium’s Africa Museum reopens to confront its colonial demons

TERVUREN, Belgium (Reuters) – Belgium’s Africa Museum will reopen to the public on Sunday after five years of renovations designed to modernise the museum from an exhibition of pro-colonial propaganda to one that is critical of Belgium’s imperialist past. The museum, full of artefacts and stuffed wildlife, was often criticised for ignoring the brutalities of...

‘I can’t breathe’: Saudi journalist Khashoggi’s last words: CNN

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Journalist Jamal Khashoggi repeatedly told his killers “I can’t breathe” during his final moments in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, CNN reported on Monday. Quoting a source who said they had read the full translated transcript of an audio recording, CNN said that Khashoggi recognized one of the men, General Maher Mutreb,...

Twitter CEO criticised for no mention of Rohingya plight in Myanmar tweets

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has come under fire for tweets about his meditation retreat in Myanmar and encouraging people to visit the country without mentioning what the United Nations has described as “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya Muslim minority. More than 730,000 Rohingya fled a sweeping army crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state...

Bug business – Cockroaches corralled by the millions in China to crunch waste

JINAN, China (Reuters) – In the near pitch-dark, you can hear them before you see them – millions of cockroaches scuttling and fluttering across stacks of wooden boards as they devour food scraps by the tonne in a novel form of urban waste disposal. The air is warm and humid – just as cockroaches like...

Investors managing $32 trillion in assets call for action on climate change

LONDON (Reuters) – Global investors managing $32 trillion in assets have called on governments to accelerate steps to combat climate change, as policymakers meet for talks at a United Nations conference in Poland. A total of 415 investors from across the world including UBS Asset Management and Aberdeen Standard Investments signed the 2018 Global Investor...

Australian voters shun conservative government in widely watched poll

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s conservative government is on course for a landslide election defeat, a widely watched survey showed on Monday, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison struggles to win favour with voters less than six months out from a national poll. A Newspoll for The Australian newspaper showed Morrison’s government was on course to lose...

Saudi foreign minister rules out extraditing suspects in Khashoggi case

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister on Sunday ruled out the extradition of suspects in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, after Istanbul’s chief prosecutor filed warrants for the arrest of two former senior Saudi officials. Turkish officials said last week that the prosecutor’s office had concluded there was “strong suspicion” that Saud al-Qahtani,...

Motion filed to impeach Somali president – statement

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – The top official of Somali’s parliament administration said on Sunday he had filed a motion with the speaker of parliament to impeach the country’s president, Mohamed Abdullahi. “We have filed an impeachment against the president of the federal republic of Somalia,” Abdikarim H. Abdi Buh said in a statement. Constitutionally, 92 lawmakers have...

Armenians vote in election testing revolution’s power shift

YEREVAN (Reuters) – Armenians voted for a new parliament on Sunday as acting prime minister Nikol Pashinyan sought a stronger mandate, having been elected by lawmakers to the post in May following a peaceful revolution earlier this year. Pashinyan came to power in the wake of weeks of mass protests against corruption and cronyism in...

Macron to blame for French protests, Italy’s Salvini says

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on Sunday President Emmanuel Macron was to blame for the “yellow vest” protests that have rattled France and urged Brussels to take heed of what was happening. Salvini, head of the rightist League, has clashed repeatedly with Macron in the past over immigration policy and...

U.S. winter storm knocks out power to 140,000 in North Carolina

(Reuters) – A powerful winter storm that hit the U.S. Southeast over the weekend knocked out power for more than 140,000 customers in North Carolina, a utilities company said early on Sunday. Authorities urged residents to stay off the roads as snow, sleet, and freezing rain were expected to continue into Sunday morning, the National...

Nobel Peace prize winners seek justice for war rape victims

OSLO (Reuters) – This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners on Sunday called for justice for the victims of sexual violence in conflicts around the world, a day before they will receive the award for their efforts to put an end to rape as a weapon of war. Denis Mukwege, a doctor who helps victims of...

German rail union calls strike for Monday in pay row

BERLIN (Reuters) – German railway workers will stage a four-hour nationwide strike on Monday that will hit morning commuters, a spokesman for the EVG union said on Sunday, as it steps up pressure in a pay dispute. The spokesman said the strike would start at 0500 local time (0400 GMT) and affect local, regional and...

FBI investigated four Americans on Russia collusion suspicions: Comey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI launched investigations of four Americans in July 2016 into whether they helped Russia’s alleged efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, former FBI Director James Comey said in remarks released on Saturday. Comey also appeared to suggest the investigations were looking into ties between Russia and U.S. President...

Volkswagen denies allegations chairman knew early about emissions cheating: report

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Volkswagen <VOWG_p.DE> has denied allegations that Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch knew about the carmaker’s emissions test cheating almost three months before U.S. authorities made it public in September 2015. Citing internal documents from investigators, German weekly Bild am Sonntag reported that Poetsch, VW’s finance head at the time, learned about the carmaker’s...

As election nears, religious tensions surge in an Indian village

NAYABANS, India (Reuters) – Nayabans isn’t remarkable as northern Indian villages go. Sugar cane grows in surrounding fields, women carry animal feed in bullock carts through narrow lanes, people chatter outside a store, and cows loiter. But this week, the village in Uttar Pradesh state became a symbol of the deepening communal divide in India...

World

12th December

EU court says UK can U-turn on Brexit if it wants