2014 | featured news

Afghanistan will hold its next presidential election on April 5, 2014, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday. President Hamid Karzai, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, had denied speculation that security problems and the exit of foreign troops that year would delay the poll.

Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver will replace Stern, who has been commissioner since February 1984.

Scottish voters will be able to vote in a referendum in 2014 on the question of whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom. The terms of the referendum were reached Monday in a deal between British Prime Minister David Cameron and Alex Salmond, the first minister of Scotland, the BBC reports.

The U.S. designation Saturday of Afghanistan as its newest "major non-NATO ally" amounts to a political statement of support for the country's long-term stability and solidifies close defense cooperation after American combat troops withdraw in 2014....

College football will finally have a playoff. Come 2014, the BCS is dead. A committee of university presidents on Tuesday approved the BCS commissioners’ plan for a four-team playoff to start in two years.

Afghan and U.S. officials said Sunday they had agreed to the broad outlines of an accord governing the long-term American presence in Afghanistan after the Western combat role ends in 2014. The heads of the two countries' negotiating teams, Afghanistan's national security advisor Rangin Spanta and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, initialed a draft of the "strategic partnership agreement" that the two sides have said they plan to finalize prior to a landmark NATO summit in Chicago next month. That gathering is expected to provide a blueprint for the final phase of the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday said he was considering bringing forward by a year the presidential election set for 2014 to reduce the pressure on the conflict-plagued country during the period when majority of NATO coalition troops are scheduled to withdraw.

According to Brazil’s Ministry of Sports calculations, the FIFA World Cup in 2014 is going to be a cash cow for the country. The nation’s economy is forecast to grow by at least $70 billion as a result of its hosting the World Cup, the Brazilian Ministry of Sports said July 6 in a statement. The figure is based on the country’s investments in private and public investment in infrastructure, heightened consumption, increased activity in the services sector and, of course, tax collection.

NATO is ready to begin turning security over to Afghan forces next year, U.S. leaders said on Friday, as the first step in a plan to withdraw almost all foreign troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

A federal judge on Thursday rejected an attempt to stop some key provisions of the new national health-care law, saying Congress has the authority to require people to get insurance by 2014.