Zurich, Switzerland | AFP | Football’s lawmakers on Saturday approved video assistant referee technology (VAR) for this summer’s World Cup, in one of the biggest changes to the sport in years. The International Football Association Board (IFAB, meeting in Zurich, rubber-stamped a move already backed by FIFA’s top brass, including …

Bratislava, Slovakia | AFP | Slovak police on Saturday said they had released seven Italian businessmen detained after they were named by murdered journalist Jan Kuciak in an explosive report on alleged high-level political corruption linked to the mafia. “The investigator has, within the legal timeframe (48 hours) at his …

Moscow, Russia | AFP | President Vladimir Putin on Saturday promised “victories” for Russia at a star-studded rally attended by tens of thousands of supporters ahead of a March 18 election he is all but certain to win. Olympic athletes, celebrities and cosmonauts had taken to the stage to voice …

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso | AFP | Authorities in Burkina Faso were on Saturday hunting for clues about the masterminds behind Friday’s deadly twin attacks on the French embassy and the country’s military HQ. The coordinated attacks in Ouagadougou, which coincided with a meeting of regional anti-jihadist forces, underlined the struggle …

Lagos, Nigeria | AFP | Humanitarian work has been suspended until next weekend in a remote town in northeast Nigeria after a Boko Haram attack killed three aid workers, the UN said on Saturday. The attack happened on Thursday evening in Rann, near the border with Cameroon, where nearly 80,000 …

Jerusalem, Undefined | AFP | Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have a brief respite next week from the deluge of legal woes he faces when he heads to Washington to meet US President Donald Trump. Even as he prepared for his trip, Netanyahu was again questioned by police in …

Yaoundé, Cameroon | AFP | Drivers in one of Cameroon’s restive English-speaking provinces have been banned from driving at night for a month, as tensions run high between government forces and separatists. Vehicles in five of the Southwest Region’s six districts are not allowed on the road between 7:00 pm …

United Nations, United States | AFP | Insecurity in Mali “continues to rage” and is progressing toward the center of the country, according to an interim UN report. Members of Plateforme, an armed pro-government coalition, and the CMA rebel alliance, who were signatories to a 2015 peace deal, are seeing …

United Nations, United States | AFP | The United Nations on Friday conceded that an attack that killed 15 peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo late last year exposed “gaps” in how UN troops are trained. The December 7 attack in the Beni territory of North Kivu province was …

Bratislava, Slovakia | AFP | A global media watchdog on Friday warned EU leaders against undermining the security of journalists in the wake of the murder of a Slovak investigative reporter gunned down in his home. Jan Kuciak, who had been probing alleged high-level political corruption in Slovakia linked to …