Messi quits Argentina following penalty miss in Cop America loss
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Lionel Messi has decided to retire from International football following a dramatic penalty shoot-out loss to Chile in the Copa America final.
The 29 year-old blazed his spot-kick over the bar at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, USA as Chile went on to claim the trophy 4-2 on penalties.
After the match, Messi was clearly disappointed with his own efforts.
“It’s tough, it’s not the time for analysis,” he said. “In the dressing room I thought that this is the end for me with the national team, it’s not for me. That’s the way I feel right now, it’s a huge sadness once again and I missed the penalty that was so important.
“I tried so hard to be [a] champion with Argentina. But it didn’t happen. I couldn’t do it. I think it’s best for everyone, for me and for many people who want it. The choice for me is over, it is a decision. I tried many times [to be a champion] but did not.”
DOHA A Bahraini woman died and three children sustained minor injuries when their car was hit by a bomb blast on Thursday that police said was carried out by "terrorists" in southern Bahrain.
WUKAN, China Hopes for democracy in the Chinese village of Wukan, where an uprising against corruption five years ago gained global notice and led to direct village-wide elections, have all but evaporated, with protest leaders either in detention, in exile, facing arrest or quitting their posts.
TOKYO From a shrinking population and a social welfare system creaking under huge ranks of retirees to a stagnant economy that is all they have ever known, Japanese youth have plenty to gripe about.
LONDON Former London mayor Boris Johnson abruptly pulled out of the race to become Britain's prime minister that he was once favored to win, upending the contest less than a week after he led a campaign to take the country out of the EU.
LONDON The leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has the support of half his party's grassroots members, a poll published on Thursday showed, as he faces intense pressure to resign or face a leadership challenge.
LONDON Britain's governing Conservative Party has begun the process of electing a new leader and presumptive prime minister, after David Cameron said he would resign following the country's vote last week to leave the European Union.
LONDON Britain should negotiate the preliminary terms of its exit from the European Union before triggering the formal Article 50 exit process, said Conservative lawmaker Michael Gove, who earlier on Thursday launched a bid to succeed Prime Minister David Cameron.
ATLANTA The United Kingdom's vote last week to exit the European Union should have little short-term impact on trade flows, as long as negotiations on the country's split with the trade bloc do not drag on too long, the top executive of UPS said on Thursday.
LONDON The number of hate crimes reported to British police online, including some assaults, has increased by more than 500 percent in the week after the country voted to leave the European Union, a senior police chief said on Thursday.
LONDON Britain will do everything it can to safeguard Japanese investment into the country in light of last week's vote to leave the European Union, a statement from Prime Minister David Cameron's office said on Thursday.
MIDDLE EAST
Egypt Coptic priest shot dead in IS-claimed Sinai attack
By AFP
Jihadists in Sinai have targeted Christians, security forces, Muslims they accuse of working with the gov't
An Egyptian Coptic priest was shot dead Thursday in the Sinai Peninsula where authorities are battling a jihadist insurgency, officials said, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
Raphael Moussa, 46, died instantly when a man shot him in the head as he was standing next to his car in El-Arish, the capital of North Sinai, said Boulos Halim, a church spokesman.
The Islamic State group's Egypt branch claimed responsibility for the murder in a statement posted on social media, accusing him of "combating Islam".
Moussa had earlier left a church where he attended mass, Halim said.
The interior ministry said the priest was gunned down after having gone to an area of El-Arish with mechanics to have his car repaired.
The IS affiliate in restive Sinai has waged an insurgency that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.
It has kept up the attacks, mostly roadside bombings and ambushes, despite a massive military campaign to uproot jihadists from the peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip.
Moussa was not the first priest killed in Arish.
Mina Aboud, a fellow priest, was shot dead on July 6, 2013, three days after the military toppled Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, unleashing clashes and a crackdown on his supporters.
Pro-Islamists attacked and torched dozens of churches and Christian properties a month later, after police killed hundreds of Morsi supporters in Cairo clashes.
Islamic State
"Islamic State militants in Sinai (File)"
They accused the Coptic minority of supporting the overthrow of Morsi, whom the army deposed after millions of Egyptians rallied to demand his resignation.
Leading Muslim clerics, as well as the opposition and the Coptic Orthodox Church, supported his overthrow after a year of divisive rule.
Apart from Christians and security forces, Jihadists in Sinai have also targeted Muslims they accuse of working with the government.
They have likewise attacked foreign tourists and beheaded a Croatian oil worker after abducting him near Cairo.
IS claimed responsibility for last October's bombing of a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from a resort in southern Sinai, killing all 224 people on board.
"The whole situation in El-Arish and North Sinai is under threat," said Halim. "Many people (Christians) have left."
Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 90-million population, faced persecution and discrimination during the 30-year rule of president Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled by a popular uprising in 2011.
Dozens have been killed in sectarian attacks and clashes across Egypt.
Rodrigo Duterte has been sworn in as the Philippines' 16th president, capping an unlikely journey for a provincial city mayor whose brash man-of-the-people style and pledges to crush crime swamped establishment rivals in May's election.
After making his pledge on Thursday at the presidential palace in Manila, with one hand on the Bible, Duterte delivered a short speech in which he promised a "relentless" and "sustained" fight against corruption, criminality and illegal drugs.
However, he said these ills were only symptoms of a virulent social disease cutting into the moral fibre of society.
"I see the erosion of the people's trust in our country's leaders, the erosion of faith in our judicial system, the erosion of confidence in the capacity of our public servants to make the people's lives better, safer and healthier," he said.
Outgoing President Benigno Aquino brought the country an average annual growth rate of 6.3 per cent in his six-year term, the fastest of Southeast Asia's five main economies.
Duterte said on Thursday that he would give specifics of his economic policies later, but some already fear that his defiance of convention could pose a danger to the country's health.
In the election campaign, Duterte railed against the country's political elite and tapped into voters' disgust with a succession of governments that failed to tackle poverty and inequality even when the economy was bounding ahead.
His campaign focused almost entirely on the scourges of murder, rape, drug abuse and corruption, and voters were not deterred by his repeated warnings, in profanity-peppered speeches, to have offenders killed.
Duterte conceded in his maiden speech that many critics believe his methods of fighting crime "are unorthodox and verge on the illegal".
However, the 71-year-old former prosecutor said that he knew right from wrong and would be uncompromising in adhering to due process and the rule of law.
Duterte was mayor for 22 years of the far-south city of Davao, where, according to human rights groups, death squads have killed at least ,400 people since 1998, most of them drug-pushers, addicts, petty criminals and street children.
He denies any involvement in the vigilante killings.
In keeping with his unsophisticated manner, the inauguration ceremony was far less elaborate than those of his predecessors.
Aides said there would be no sumptuous banquet and no champagne corks popping, just a meal of homely dishes for the roughly 600 guests showcasing the country's culinary heritage, including coconut pith spring rolls, a white cheese made from unskimmed carabao milk and durian tartlets.
For his inauguration, Duterte wore a formal 'barong' shirt but without the embroidery that would normally be expected for such an occasion.
It is still not clear if he will keep a promise to spurn the luxury of the palace and commute daily from his hometown in the south of the country, which is two hours from Manila by air.
Video Purports to Show Airstrike on ISIS Convoy in Iraq0:35
Airstrikes destroyed around 200 vehicles believed to be carrying ISIS fighters fleeing one of their former strongholds, a senior Iraqi official told NBC News on Thursday.
The attack targeting a convoy killed an unknown number of people.
Brig. Yahya Rasool, a spokesman for Iraq's Joint Operation Command, said helicopters and warplanes fired at vehicles on road about 12 miles south of Fallujah on Wednesday.
"All ISIS militants traveling in these vehicles were killed," he said without providing a number of people who died.
Although the Iraqi military initially said that it had acted alone, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad later confirmed the U.S. had participated in the strikes.
"We started to chase ISIS convoys on Tuesday. On the same day, the U.S.-led coalition destroyed those convoys alongside Iraqi F-16s," the embassy tweeted in Arabic on Thursday.
A senior American defense official said U.S. strikes had "hit a large number of vehicles."
Speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press, the official said initial U.S. estimates suggested that aircraft involved in the operation may have killed as many as 240 people in more than 50 vehicles. However, the official cautioned that those numbers could change.
Reuters quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying a preliminary estimate suggested at least 250 suspected fighters had been killed.
Suspected ISIS vehicles that were targeted by U.S. and Iraqi airstrikes on Wednesday. Sadiq Taher
It was unclear how the convoy was identified as being made up entirely of vehicles belonging to ISIS militants. Civilians are known to have been displaced in the area where the attack occurred.
The discrepancies in numbers and details offered by the U.S. and Iraq could not immediately be reconciled. NBC News was unable independently confirm the different accounts.
Sadiq Taher told NBC News he witnessed part of the attack on the suspected ISIS convoy. The 25-year-old volunteer aid worker had bedded down for the night on the highway with other members of his team after their food-laden trucks got stuck in a rut south of Fallujah.
It was still dark early Wednesday when gunfire and explosions in the distance woke up the group. Soon, a convoy of vehicles traveling at speed with their lights off approached the stranded trucks, Taher said.
A screengrab showing an airstrike near Fallujah, Iraq, on Wednesday. Iraqi Ministry of Defense
The cars were carrying militants and some were equipped with mounted machine guns, according to Taher. Terrified, the three men abandoned the aid trucks and ran into the desert to hide, stripping to their underwear and covering themselves in dirt. A few of the fighters stopped to investigate — some were 14 feet from the trio — but eventually drove on, Taher said.
Within minutes, the hiding men heard helicopters overhead and saw flashes as airstrikes hit the alleged ISIS vehicles.
"I heard the sounds of the explosions and I saw the light of the burning vehicles," Taher said.
He recalled their dilemma — if they ran, they feared the Iraqi helicopters would also attack them.
"I was afraid of being discovered by ISIS militants or to be targeted by Iraqi military helicopters," he said. "But I had to think wisely, calmly and keep silent."
As dawn broke, Taher could still see militants abandoning their cars and fleeing by foot into the desert.
The airstrikes over, the men waited until the afternoon and then returned to Baghdad.
ISIS did not confiscate the food aid, according to Jeremy Courtney, the co-founder and executive director of aid group Preemptive Love Coalition.
"Our team is determined to still deliver this much-needed support to women and children the elderly and families who have been waiting for its arrival for days," he told NBC News from Baghdad.
In a separate incident on Wednesday, Iraqi helicopter strikes killed some 150 alleged ISIS militants as they tried to reach neighboring Syria, Rasool said.
"They were trying to escape in order to reach Syria then the Iraqi helicopters found a place ISIS were hiding," he added.
That attack occurred around 2 miles west of Amiriyah Fallujah, according to Rasool.
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