The New York Yankees will release Alex Rodriguez, one of the greatest players of his generation and one of baseball’s most polarizing figures, with his final game with the club set for Friday.Rodriguez has numbers that rank among the best in history, but has also seen his reputation tarnished by performance-enhancing drugs. He missed the entire 2014 season due to a doping suspension, the second doping offence in his 22-year Major League Baseball career.The Yankees signed Rodriguez, known as A-Rod, to a 10-year, $275 million contract that runs through 2017. At the time, it was the sport’s largest ever deal. Now 41, he has been mired in one of the worst seasons of his career, hitting just nine home runs with a batting average of .204.

He has 696 home runs in his MLB career, which began with the Seattle Mariners in 1994. He ranks only behind Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth on the league’s all-time home run list. His 3,114 career hits rank 20th.“This is a tough day. I love this game and I love this team,” an emotional Rodriguez told a Yankee Stadium news conference on Sunday. “Saying goodbye may be the hardest part of the job.”He will be unconditionally released by the club from his player contract in order to sign a contract to serve as a special adviser and instructor with the Yankees through Dec. 31, 2017, the Yankees said in a statement on Sunday.

Neither the team nor Rodriguez disclosed any financial considerations related to the move. His contract for this season and next put the American League’s three-times most valuable player and 14-times all-star at $21 million annually.This season, Rodriguez has largely been relegated to the bench on a Yankees team looking to rebuild with younger players. On Friday, first baseman Mark Teixeira, 36, announced he would retire at the end of the season primarily due to injuries.

When asked by a reporter what made him decide to step down nearly two months before the end of the season, Rodriguez said: “That was the Yankees’ decision and I am at peace with it.”“It has been very painful and embarrassing to sit on the bench,” he added.Rodriguez brought a combination of speed, power and defensive mastery to the shortstop position when be broke into baseball with the Mariners, who selected him as the first overall pick of the 1993 draft.

He switched to third base after signing with the Yankees, who already had their now-retired captain Derek Jeter at shortstop. Rodriguez was limited to playing designated hitter during his last two seasons.He signed what was then the richest contract in baseball when he joined the Texas Rangers in 2001 and was traded to the Yankees, joining the team in 2004 and playing on its 2009 World Series Championship team.

Retired neurosurgeon, once mocked by Donald Trump, stood beside the GOP front-runner on Friday to endorse him.\\\"Some people said: \\\'Why would you get behind a man like Donald Trump?\\\' I\\\'ll tell you why,\\\" Carson said at a press conference at Trump\\\'s Mar-a-Lago Estate in Palm Beach, Fla. \\\"First of all I have come to know Donald Trump. He\\\'s actually a very intelligent man who cares deeply about America. 

\\\"There are two different Donald Trumps. There is the one you see on the stage, and the one who is very cerebral, sits there and considers things very carefully. That\\\'s the Donald Trump you will start seeing more and more of right now.\\\" 
Trump mercilessly taunted and mocked Carson on the campaign trail, particularly over Carson\\\'s claim that he once tried to stab a fellow student but that the boy\\\'s belt buckle prevented the knife from breaking the skin.

\\\"Some people said, \\\'he said terrible thing about you, how can you support him,\\\'\\\" Carson said. \\\"We buried the hatchet. That was political stuff. And, you know, that happens in American politics.\\\"Carson also said he and Trump have more in common that he realized.

\\\"I have found in talking with him that there is a lot more alignment, philosophically and spiritually than I ever thought that there was,\\\" Carson said \\\"That actually surprised me more than anything. I realize how a person\\\'s image can be greatly distorted, having been the victim of that. I probably understand it better than anybody.\\\"The religiously conservative Carson\\\'s outsider campaign soared last year but ultimately lost steam as Carson stumbled over questions about the veracity of aspects of his compelling life story.

Carson also admitted he didn\\\'t always have the taste for the gritty politics that played out on the campaign trail.\\\"This whole process getting involved in the political process was something I never particularly intended to do,\\\" Carson said. \\\"But I listened to the people. It was really all about the people. It continues to be all about the people.\\\"

Tokyo: Japan\\\'s population declined for the first time in almost a century in 2015, compounding the government\\\'s concerns about the nation\\\'s mounting demographic woes in the face of a rapidly aging and shrinking society.

According to preliminary statistics released Friday by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Statistics Bureau, Japan\\\'s population as of October 1, 2015 totaled 127,110,047, a decline of 947,305 people, or 0.7 percent, from the previous census conducted in 2010, reports Xinhua.

The latest census revealed that the population in Japan had dropped for the first time since the survey began in 1920. And while Japan remains the world\\\'s 10th largest country, it is the only country among the top 20 whose population is declining.

The statistics bureau said Japan\\\'s male population stood at 61,829,237 and female population at 65,280,810, with the overall population dropping in 39 of Japan\\\'s total 47 prefectures.

Thirty-three percent of the prefectures have seen an accelerated rate of decline, the bureau said.

The data showed a population increase in Tokyo and some neighbouring prefectures.

The government is grappling to address the demographic crisis with structural reform policies aimed at boosting the rapidly declining national fertility rate, which fell to a record low of 1.42 in 2014.

The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research has said the declining birthrate will lead to Japan losing a third of its population by 2060.

Keio University\\\'s demographics specialist, Noriko Tsuya, has said there was no other industrialized country in the world that was experiencing such a rapid decline of its population.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump predicted that the United States is on course for a “very massive recession,” warning that a combination of high unemployment and an overvalued stock market had set the stage for another economic slump.

“I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble,” the billionaire businessman said in an interview with The Washington Post published on Saturday.Coming off a tough week on the campaign trail in which he made a series of missteps, Trump’s latest comments bring him back into the limelight ahead of Tuesday’s important primary in Wisconsin where he trails in the polls.

The former reality TV star said that the real U.S. jobless figure is much higher than five percent number released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.“We’re at a number that’s probably into the twenties if you look at the real number,” he said, adding that the official jobless figure is “statistically devised to make politicians — and in particular presidents — look good.”

Trump said “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, offering a more bleak view of the U.S. economy than that held by many mainstream economists.The interview was bylined by the Post’s Robert Costa and famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.

A real estate magnate, Trump has made appealing to blue-collar workers a hallmark of his bid for the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election, often blaming unemployment on the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and facilities to countries such as China and Mexico.Trump vowed in the interview to wipe out the more than $19 trillion national debt “over a period of eight years,” helped by a renegotiation of trade deals.

“I’m renegotiating all of our deals, the big trade deals that we’re doing so badly on,” he said.After making controversial statements about abortion last week, Trump has shown little sign of heeding calls from fellow Republicans to adopt a more presidential tone so as to avoid alienating voters in the November general election if he wins the nomination.

On Saturday, he questioned close U. S. ties to Saudi Arabia and again accused U.S. allies of not pulling their weight in the NATO military alliance.Trump told a campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin that partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “are not paying their fair share” and called the 28-nation alliance “obsolete.”

“Either they pay up, including for past deficiencies, or they have to get out. And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” Trump said.Tuesday’s Wisconsin nominating contest could be a turning point in the Republican race. Trump, 69, trails his leading rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, 45, of Texas in the state.A Cruz win would make it harder for Trump to reach the number of 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the Republican national convention in July. The winner will get to claim all of Wisconsin’s 42 delegates.