DHAKA http://www.buffalosabresteamstore.com/a … pin-jersey , Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- The 12th Asia Cup one-day cricket tournament began at the Khan Shaheb Osman Ali Stadium at Fatullah on the outskirts of Bangladesh's capital Dhaka on Tuesday.

The five-way battle for regional supremacy will be fought between four Test-playing nations -- Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and an ICC (International Cricket Council) associate Afghanistan.

Sri Lanka take on the defending champions Pakistan in the opening match of the 12th edition of the competition on Tuesday.

Host Bangladesh will play India on Wednesday in their first match.

The tournament will adopt a round-robin format with four points for a win and 2 points for tie or no result for defeat.

After the preliminary round, the two teams with the maximum points will qualify for the final.

The 2012 Asia Cup was the 11th edition of the tournament that was also held in Bangladesh. Pakistan won the tournament by beating Bangladesh in the final by 2 runs.

The 2014 Asia Cup participating teams, however, get an opportunity to fine-tune themselves for the grand event -- the World T20 -- which is slated for March 16 to April 6.

The fifth World Twenty20 will also be held in Bangladesh.

TOKYO, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- One of the major Japanese daily newspapers, the Yomiuri Shimbun, on Friday apologized for explaining "comfort women" as "sex slave or servitude" in the previous stories of its English-language daily, calling the explanation a misnomer that led to misunderstandings.

The apology said that the Daily Yomiuri, now known as the Japan News, used the expression "sex slave or servitude" to explain " comfort women" in 97 stories from 1992 to 2013, adding it apologizes for the misunderstandings caused by the improper wording.

The Yomiuri said it was difficult for foreigners who had no relevant knowledge to understand the word "comfort women," which is an euphemism for women forced into sex slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, and therefore the newspaper cited foreign reports and added explanations.

The newspaper took a report released on Aug. 30, 1997 as an example, saying the story used the explanation as "the issue of ' comfort women,' who were forced into sexual servitude by the Imperial Japanese Army," emphasizing the explanation was added based on wrong recognition after referring to foreign reports and the Yomiuri maintains a different view on the explanation.

A staff of the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace, which fights for the rights of "comfort women" victims, told Xinhua Friday that the so-called apology by Yomiuri proved that the newspaper totally neglected the fact that women under the Japanese wartime military brothels were in a status of "sex slavery."

Japan's right-wingers have spared no efforts to whitewash or deny the country's wartime wrongdoing, including the "comfort women" issue. In August, Japan's Asahi Shimbun acknowledged "major errors" in many articles on the "comfort women" issue, retracting all stories dating back decades ago that quoted Seiji Yoshida, a Japanese man who claimed he kidnapped about 200 Korean women and forced them to work at wartime Japanese military brothels.

Although Japan issued the 1993 "Kono Statement," in which then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoheo Kono admitted the Japanese army involved in recruiting women "through coaxing, coercion, etc.," the current Japanese government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denies that the women were "forcibly recruited" as Abe defined " forcibly recruitment" as Japanese soldiers took those women directly from their houses.

Japan's relations with neighboring countries, particularly South Korea and China, frayed by its attempts to distort history, with the two countries constantly urging Japan to face up to its past.

The United Nations in July urged Japan to take "immediate and effective legislative and administrative measures" to ensure that all allegations of sexual slavery are investigated and perpetrators prosecuted.

The Yomiuri Shimbun is conservative and sometimes considered a central-right newspaper. It had a combined morning and evening circulation of almost 13.5 million for its national edition as of mid-2011.

With slowing iPhone sales in China, Apple Inc is having to take India more seriously, but investors hoping for a stock price fillip from CEO Tim Cook's week-long Asia trip instead were given a taste of the daunting challenges that lie ahead.

The second leg of Cook's trip, to India, the world's third-largest smartphone market, comes at a crucial time as Apple battles slowing growth in China, its second-biggest market. But the challenges suggest it will be years before India is anything close to a major earnings pillar for the U.S. tech giant.

Tim Cook in China

"With China saturating, everybody has no choice but to look at India, and Apple's rivals have been strengthening there in the last two years. Apple is playing catch-up," said Ville-Petteri Ukonaho, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics.

While the numbers in India suggest huge potential - fewer than two in every 10 of the country's 1.3 billion people have a smartphone - the world's fastest growing major market operates differently to other markets where Apple has enjoyed stellar growth and high margins.

Apple's traditional model is to sell its phones at full price to local telecoms carriers, which then discount them to users in exchange for charging them for data as part of a multi-month contract. Not so in India.

"In India, carriers in general sell virtually no phones and it is out in retail - and retail is many, many different small shops," Cook told analysts recently. "Because smartphones there are low-end, primarily because of the network and the economics, the market potential has not been as great," added Cook, likening India to the Chinese market 7-10 years ago.

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