The National Times - News around the clock from Sydney, Australia and around the world

World number one Ko Jin-young of South Korea fired a five-under-par 67 to share the second-round lead with compatriot Amy Yang on Friday at the HSBC Women's World Championship.

Host nation New Zealand lost the opening match of the Women's Cricket World Cup in dramatic fashion Friday when the West Indies claimed three wickets in the final over.

Brazil and Real Madrid great Roberto Carlos will get a taste of English grassroots football when he turns out for a pub team on Friday.

India's cricketing hero Virat Kohli fell for 45 in his 100th Test as Sri Lankan bowlers rattled the hosts' top-order in the opening match on Friday.

Pakistan lost opener Abdullah Shafique after a solid start before reaching 105-1 at lunch Friday on the opening day of the first Test against Australia in Rawalpindi.

Intel and Airbnb announced they were pausing business in Russia and Belarus on Thursday, joining a US tech freeze-out of Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

Sony is teaming up with automaker Honda to start a new company that will develop and sell electric vehicles, the electronics giant said Friday, its latest step into the rapidly growing sector.

Sri Lanka's central bank hiked interest rates by one percentage point on Friday and urged the government to increase taxes as the country skirts economic collapse.

Stromae's mix of dancey beats, quirky style and hard-edged rap lyrics took him to the top of the charts in more than a dozen countries in the mid-2010s.

After a series of administrative delays, US electric car pioneer Tesla is on the verge of receiving the go-ahead from German authorities on Friday to begin production at its "giga-factory" outside Berlin.

It's one of the few remaining routes from Russia to the EU: trains to Finland are packed with Russians fearful that now is their last chance to escape the impact of Western sanctions.

India lost their openers including new captain Rohit Sharma as they reached 109 for two at lunch against Sri Lanka in superstar cricketer Virat Kohli's 100th Test on Friday.

The United States should diplomatically recognise Taiwan as "a free and sovereign country," former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a speech while visiting the island.

Six lions and six tigers evacuated from near Kyiv arrived at a zoo in Poland on Thursday following a two-day odyssey skirting battle frontlines and coming face to face with Russian tanks, a zoo spokesman said.

Cheering fans in Virat Kohli shirts and face paints jostled to get inside India's Mohali stadium on Friday for the superstar cricketer and national hero's 100th Test match.

Russian troops attacked Europe's largest nuclear power plant on Friday, setting part of the Ukrainian facility ablaze in an assault the country's leader branded "nuclear terror" and said could endanger the continent.

Tensions in the athlete villages, threats of competition boycotts and an eleventh-hour reversal to ban Russian athletes have marred the lead-up to Friday's opening of the Beijing Winter Paralympics.

Melinda French Gates on Thursday criticized her ex-husband Bill Gates for having met multiple times with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier accused of child sex crimes who committed suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial.

In the oilfields of southern Iraq, billions of cubic feet of gas literally go up in smoke, burnt off on flare stacks for want of the infrastructure to capture and process it.

Phone makers and telecoms firms unveiled a series of gadgets and innovations at one of the industry's biggest get-togethers this week in Barcelona.

One is a former comic actor who became president in 2019 as a political novice. The other a one-time KGB agent now in power for over two decades.

Tadej Pogacar and Julian Alaphilippe will do battle on Saturday as a trio of Italian cycling races over the next two weeks begins with the Strade Bianche.

Asian markets tumbled Friday and crude bounced as news that Europe's biggest nuclear power plant was on fire after Russian shelling fuelled a flight to safety and ramped up fears about the Ukraine war.

With wooden spinning wheels and hand-drawn looms, Bangladesh is painstakingly resurrecting a fabric once worn by Marie Antoinette and Jane Austen but long thought forever lost to history.

Russian troops attacked Europe's largest nuclear plant on Friday, starting a fire at the Ukrainian facility, with the country's leader accusing Moscow of "nuclear terror".

The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank said it will suspend business related to Russia and Belarus, which have been hit with massive international sanctions over the Ukraine war.

Google on Thursday said it has stopped allowing reviews to be added to its online Maps service in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to prevent them from being used for war news.

Rod Marsh was remembered as "a colossal figure" in Australian cricket Friday who gave close to 50 years' service to the sport as tributes poured in after he died following a heart attack at a charity event last week.

The United States has returned a set of illegally obtained artifacts, including a skull from the Parisian catacombs and golden ingots from an Atlantic shipwreck, to their rightful owner -- the French state.

From a huge Russian military convoy snaking its way to Kyiv to missile strikes and refugee crossings, commercial satellite imagery of the Ukraine conflict is helping lift the fog of war, illuminating for the public what was previously the domain of spy agencies.

Ask Brazilian teen Yan Araujo who his idols are, and he doesn't hesitate. Not Neymar. Not Vinicius Junior. "Nobru and Cerol," he says -- superstars of the booming gamer scene in Brazil's favelas.

Europe's largest nuclear power plant was on fire Friday after Russian strikes hit the Ukrainian facility, with the country's foreign minister demanding an immediate ceasefire at the site to avoid disaster.