Latest in Qatar

Fox Sports, which will broadcast the 2022 World Cup in the U.S., has set the schedule for the 64 matches it will carry between November 21 and December 18. The quadrennial tournament is being held at the end of the year because its customary mid-summer berth would create unworkably hot conditions in the host nation of…

James Murdoch and Uday Shankar, formerly CEO of Star India and president of Walt Disney Asia Pacific, have formed Bodhi Tree, a new outfit backed by the Qatar Investment Authority. The venture will invest in media and consumer technology opportunities in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on India. The QIA has…

Ahead of the men’s World Cup in Qatar this fall and the women’s tournament next year in Australia and New Zealand, Fox Sports and Twitter are expanding their partnership. Building on the companies’ team-ups in 2018 and 2019, the new agreement will deliver match highlights in “near real time” to Fox’s handles on…

A former Egyptian footballer has described homosexuality as being “against humanity” and a “dangerous ideology that is becoming nasty” during a rant on Qatari network beIN Sports. Mohamed Aboutrika, who played 100 times for Egypt from 2001 to 2013, was responding to a question last weekend on the UK Premier League’s…

UPDATED to include comment from the Qatar government’s communications office. Big3 basketball league founders Ice Cube and Jeff Kwatinetz are suing a group of Qatari nationals for $1.2 billion, claiming the investors boasted of connections to the royal family and its riches, but paid little more than half of the money…

In a surprise move, Israel is looking to ban Al Jazeera from operating in the country and in occupied Palestinian territories after claims the Qatar-funded news network "supports terrorism." Israeli communications minister Ayoob Kara announced on Sunday that press cards for the company's reporters would be revoked, a…

In what is being viewed as the worst diplomatic crisis in the Middle East since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Qatar has been given a further 48 hours to comply with a list of demands – including closing down major news network Al Jazeera – from four neighboring Arab states that have cut ties to the country. The closure…

Miramax today joined the long list of companies protesting a new anti-gay law that the governor of North Carolina signed last week. But the new owner of Miramax, Qatari businessman Nasser Al-Khelaifi, is also a minister without portfolio in the government of the oil- and gas-rich nation of Qatar, where it…

The Doha Film Institute has launched a film fund designed to support Qatari filmmakers. The announcement, made during the Ajyal Film Festival, will see up to four features and up to eight short films supported by the Qatari Film Fund. At least one feature film from the development fund will also receive production…

Today’s sentencing of two Al Jazeera English journalists to seven years in jail, and another to 10 years, defies “logic, sense, and any semblance of justice,” Al Anstey, Al Jazeera English managing director,  said.  An Egyptian court sentenced the three journalists on charges including aiding the Muslim Brotherhood…