Barcelona hopes to recover Lionel Messi from injury by Wednesday with its Champions League quarterfinal against Paris Saint-Germain poised 2-2, but Cesc Fabregas' first career hat trick over the weekend showed they have a Plan B just in case.
If Messi can't heal a right hamstring he pulled during the last week's first leg in Paris, Barcelona may opt to use Fabregas in the position of "false nine" that has proven to be successful with the Spanish national team.
Full Story
Manchester United has sold the naming rights to its training ground as part of a sponsorship deal with insurance firm Aon estimated to be worth $230 million, a further sign of the Premier League leader's off-field money-making abilities.
The eight-year agreement with Aon starts in July and includes having the company's logos emblazoned on the training kit at United, which is on course to win a record-extending 20th English title in the coming weeks.
Full Story
Israel shut a crossing with Gaza after rockets were fired from the Hamas-ruled territory at the Jewish state on the day it commemorated the Holocaust.
The military said it closed the Kerem Shalom terminal Monday. Another crossing would be open for humanitarian cases only, it said.
Full Story
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Turkish leaders Sunday to speedily restore full diplomatic relations with Israel, two American allies the U.S. sees as anchors of stability in a Middle East wracked by Syria's civil war, Arab Spring political upheavals and the potential threat posed by Iran's nuclear program.
Turkey, however, demanded that Israel end all "embargoes" against the Palestinians first.
Full Story
Hackers launched a massive international cyber attack campaign against Israeli government websites on Saturday and Sunday, amid numerous threats from the Anonymous hacker collective.
The global hacker group had promised a mass assault to protest Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. The attack appeared timed to coincide with Israel's annual Holocaust memorial day, beginning at sundown Sunday.
Full Story
Facebook Home, the new application that takes over the front screen of a smartphone, is a bit of a corporate home invasion. Facebook is essentially moving into Google's turf, taking advantage of software the search giant and competitor created.
Facebook Home will operate on phones running Google Inc.'s Android software and present Facebook status updates, messages and other content on the home screen, rather than making the user fire up Facebook's app. The software will be available for users to download on April 12 and will come preloaded on a new phone from HTC Corp., sold by AT&T Inc. in the U.S.
Full Story
Thousands of members of a hardline Muslim group are rallying in Bangladesh's capital to demand authorities enact an anti-blasphemy law punishing people who insult Islam.
Saturday's rally is taking place amid heightened security in Dhaka and elsewhere after the Hifazat-e-Islam members targeted a group of bloggers who they say are atheists. The bloggers, who deny they're atheists, are seeking capital punishment for those found guilty of war crimes during the nation's 1971 independence war and also want a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamic party.
Full Story
The U.S. space agency is planning for a robotic spaceship to capture a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator disclosed Friday.
The plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth, Sen. Bill Nelson said.
Full Story
Nancy Bertler and her team took a freezer to the coldest place on Earth, endured weeks of primitive living and risked spending the winter in Antarctic darkness, to go get ice — ice that records our climate's past and could point to its future.
They drilled out hundreds of ice cores, each slightly longer and wider than a baseball bat, from the half-mile-thick ice covering Antarctica's Roosevelt Island. The cores, which may total 150,000 years of snowfall, almost didn't survive the boat ride to New Zealand because of a power outage.
Full Story
Former Leeds and Liverpool winger Harry Kewell has signed a short-term deal with Qatar's Al Gharafa, ending a year-long spell without a club.
Kewell left Melbourne Victory at the end of last year's A-League season for family reasons.
Full Story


