Australia coach Darren Lehmann predicted Wednesday that sledging is likely to be part of the mix when they confront South Africa in a five-match one-day international series.
     Skipper Steve Smith had lamented the quiet, virtually shy approach of his Test team during a recent 3-0 series loss in Sri Lanka.
     "Steve hit it right on the head," said Lehmann after the Australian squad arrived in Johannesburg for a series, which begins at SuperSport Park in Centurion next Friday.
     Lehmann believes that the one-day side differ from the Test team in that they were more inclined toward sledging.
     "The one-day guys are pretty vocal," he assured reporters. "I think we can look forward to a pretty fiery series.
     "One of the great things about these two countries is that they play it really hard on the field, but get along really well off it. I do not think the noise will be an issue for both teams in this series."
     Lehmann said he chose a young team, including uncapped ...

No 'shy' Aussies in ODI squad, warns Lehmann

PTI Automatic

The death toll from devastating floods and landslides in Indonesia has risen to 26, an official said today, with hopes fading for 19 others still missing.
	Aid has begun pouring into Garut in the west of Indonesia's main island of Java, where 23 people died and 18 remain missing after torrential rain and fast-rising floods swept through the region, the national disaster agency said.
	Receding flood waters revealed scenes of destruction, with houses reduced to rubble and upturned cars and debris strewn throughout muddy streets.
	Among the dead or missing are more than a dozen children under 12 years of age, though several have yet to be formally identified, the agency said.
	Relief teams and army personnel have moved into Garut to search for those still missing, while drones are assessing the scale of destruction from the air, disaster agency head Willem Rampangilei said in a statement.
	"There is plenty of food and clean water available. The community is also helping out," Rampangilei 

26 dead, 19 missing in Indonesian landslides, floods: official

A protester in Charlotte, North Carolina has been critically wounded and on life support following a second night of unrest ignited by the fatal police shooting of a black man.
	The city said earlier that the person had died, then retracted the statement.
	"Civilian who suffered gunshot wound during protests is on life support, critical condition. Not deceased," the city said on Twitter.
	Authorities had said the protester was shot by a civilian, adding that police did not open fire.
	An AFP reporter at the scene of the protests outside the Omni Charlotte hotel saw a man who was apparently shot falling to the ground, bleeding heavily.
	Several hundred people taunted riot police last night amid clashes in the city center.
	Some demonstrators banged on windows, others threw objects at police and stood on cars. Police fired what appeared to be tear gas, sending the protesters scattering.
	"We are working to bring peace and calm to our city. We know this is not who Charlotte is," Mayor ...

Unrest flares anew in US city after police shooting

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today demanded that the world find a new way to halt the threat from North Korea after the long-sanctioned regime's nuclear and missile tests.
	Abe, addressing the UN General Assembly, said that calculations about North Korea needed to change after its latest actions including the state's test of what it said was a miniaturized nuclear bomb for a warhead.
	"There is no alternative but to say that the threat has now reached a dimension altogether different from what has transpired until now," Abe said.
	"The threat to the international community has become increasingly grave and all the more realistic. It demands a new means of addressing it, altogether different from what we applied until yesterday," he said.
	Abe did not spell out specific actions but said Japan would use its non-permanent seat on the Security Council to explore new options.
	The right-leaning leader first rose to power with tough talk on North Korea and has made revision of Japan's 

Japan PM demands world find 'new means' to stop N.Korea

Students from a school in northeast Nigeria, from where more than 200 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram, will resume lessons next month, more than two years after the mass abduction, the state government has announced.
	Chibok became synonymous with the Boko Haram conflict when fighters abducted 276 girls from the Government Secondary School (GSS) on the evening of April 14, 2014, sparking global outrage.
	A total of 218 are still being held.
	But residents in the town hit out at the plan, calling it unworkable, as it involves sharing an already overstretched building.
	Borno state commissioner for education Inuwa Kubo announced late yesterday that all public secondary schools would re-open on October 3 after being closed for more than two years.
	"All the damages done to the schools' infrastructure have been repaired," he told reporters in the state capital, Maiduguri.
	Some secondary schools in areas still deemed insecure because of militant and military activity will, however, be .

Classes to resume in Chibok after Boko Haram shut-down

World leaders today called for governments, medical researchers and consumers to take action to stop super-bugs, which resist antibiotics and are posing a growing threat to public health.
	"Anti-microbial resistance poses a fundamental, long-term threat to human health, sustainable food production and development," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as he opened a first-of-a-kind meeting on the problem on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
	"We are losing our ability to protect both people and animals from life-threatening infections," he said.
	Super-bugs -- or bacteria that cannot be treated by the current crop of antibiotics and other drugs -- could kill up to 10 million people around the world by 2050, as many as cancer, according to a recent British study.
	Ban pointed to the outbreak of a tough strain of typhoid in Africa as well as growing resistance to AIDS treatments and a form of tuberculosis found in 105 countries that has proven impervious to antibiotics.
	"Some .

UN mobilizes to stop super-bugs

Islamic State group marriage contracts unearthed by pro-government forces battling the group in Libya reveal that the jihadists offered their brides unusual dowries: machineguns and explosive belts.
	Forces allied with the country's unity government discovered the archives as they searched buildings seized during their months-long battle to oust IS from its coastal bastion of Sirte.
	The documents belonged to the jihadists' "Judicial and Complaints Department".
	Published on pro-government forces' Facebook pages, they include marriage contracts and divorce rulings without any real name or personal information.
	In one example from November 31, 2015, Abu Mansour, a Tunisian born in 1977, married a Nigerian called Miriam, in the presence of Sudanese and Malian witnesses.
	In contrast to Islamic norms, Abu Mansour did not pay a dowry but vowed to pay compensation in the event of his death or the marriage being dissolved -- in the form of an explosive belt.
	Fatima, from Nigeria, was ...

Bombs for brides: IS dowries revealed in Libya

The Federal Reserve kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged for the sixth straight meeting today, saying it needs to see more signs of strength in the US economy.
	Although it hailed a pickup in economic activity since the sluggish first half of the year, the policy-making Federal Open Market Committee showed uncertainty about some persistent weak signs in the economy, and cut their 2016 growth forecast to 1.8 percent, down from 2.0 percent in June.
	Yet the policymakers also displayed confidence the rebound would continue through the second half, and indicated that they foresee one rate hike before the end of the year.
	Recent data "indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen and growth of economic activity has picked up from the modest pace seen in the first half of this year," the FOMC said in a policy statement.
	"Although the unemployment rate is little changed in recent months, job gains have been solid."
	However, they explained, they still needed more ...

US Federal Reserve keeps key interest rate unchanged

The UN said today it was ready to resume humanitarian convoys in Syria after an attack on aid trucks and a warehouse, which left 20 people dead, triggered a suspension of deliveries.
	"The preparation for these convoys has now resumed and we are ready to deliver aid to besieged and hard-to-reach areas as soon as possible," the UN's humanitarian office (OCHA) said in a statement.
	The Monday attacks came as relief supplies intended for desperate Syrian civilians were being unloaded at the warehouse Orum al-Kubra, a town in Aleppo province.
	Those killed included volunteers as well as a Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) staffer.
	The UN announced it was suspending all deliveries yesterday morning and called for an investigation.
	The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitor group, said the attack was the result of air strikes, which if confirmed, would strongly implicate Russian or Syrian aircraft as neither opposition nor jihadist groups have air power.
	An unnamed US official told 

UN says 'ready' to resume Syria aid convoys

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put aside past differences today in their first meeting since the United States promised its ally a USD 38 billion military aid package.
	The pair's relationship has often been frosty, but they exchanged warm words as they met for what may be the last time before Obama leaves office in January.
	Netanyahu complimented his host on "what I hear is a terrific golf game," and invited Obama to visit Israel after leaving the presidency to play a round.
	"I want you to know Barack that you will always be a welcome guest in Israel," Netanyahu said. "We'll set up a tee time," Obama joked.
	Netanyahu's government was an angry opponent of Obama's outreach to Iran, which last year delivered an accord to halt Tehran's ambition to develop nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief.
	Washington, meanwhile, has criticized Israel's ongoing and accelerating building of settler homes on occupied Palestinian land, arguing that ...

Warm words as Obama and Netanyahu put aside rift

The mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina appealed for calm today after a night of violent protests and looting sparked by the fatal police shooting of a black man said to have been armed with a handgun.
	Police said 16 officers and several demonstrators were injured in clashes after the shooting death of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott, the latest in a string of police involved killings that have fueled outrage across the United States.
	"We are calling for peace, we are calling for calm, we are calling for dialogue," Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts said. "We understand that with these events everyone has different viewpoints and perspectives."
	"That makes it even more important for us to treat each other with dignity and respect and to wait until we have all the information."
	The shooting occurred at 4:00 PM yesterday in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Charlotte after officers arrived in search of a suspect wanted for arrest, police said.
	They spotted a man with a handgun 

Appeal for calm after US police shooting sparks unrest

A Washington Post editorial arguing for the prosecution of intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has sparked an outcry in the media community -- including from some of the newspaper's own journalists.
	The weekend editorial provoked a heated response, with some pointing out the irony that the newspaper was calling for criminal charges against a source who helped it win a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service reporting.
	The editorial board "has no say on news, and just showed why," said a tweet from Barton Gellman, the Post reporter who led the team that shared the Pulitzer with The Guardian for the reporting on global surveillance based on Snowden's leaks of National Security Agency documents.
	Gellman added that Snowden's "disclosures served the public. WP journalists are proud of our role."
	Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, said the Post's editorial view comes as a shock to the media community even if there is a separation of the ...

Washington Post takes heat for Snowden prosecution call

Britain is poised to take a major hit next year from its momentous decision to leave the European Union, the OECD said today, halving its growth forecasts for the world's fifth-biggest economy.
	The British economy will grow by 1.0 percent in 2017, said the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development as it published revised forecasts.
	In June, before Britain's EU referendum, it had projected the economy would grow by 2.0 percent.
	Growth in 2017 is likely to be "well below the pace in recent years and forecasts prior to the referendum," the OECD said.
	In addition, "uncertainty about the future path of policy and the reaction of the economy remains very high and risks remain to the downside."
	Britain's finance minister, Philip Hammond, said on Twitter the "underlying strength in the UK economy will support growth this year".
	While he acknowledged "that there may be some difficult times ahead", Hammond said the government had the tools to support the economy as Britain ...

OECD slashes British growth forecast over Brexit

France urged the UN Security Council today to impose sanctions on those such as Bashar al-Assad's regime who have carried out chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
	"No crime should be allowed to pass in silence, even in exchange for honoring a truce. There can be no peace if there is impunity," Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said.
	Ayrault reminded his colleagues on the council that a UN-mandated expert report had blamed the Damascus regime for two attacks with banned chemical agents in northern Syria in 2014 and 2015.
	But Assad is protected on the Security Council by his ally, the veto-bearing permanent member Russia, which has deployed military force to protect Assad from a revolt by armed opposition groups.

France urges UNSC to punish chemical weapons use in Syria

Russia today said a Predator drone from the US-led coalition flew over an aid convoy in Syria when it was destroyed, denying again that it bombed the humanitarian column.
	"The evening of September 19 in the sky over that area at a height of 3600 metres and moving at a speed of 200 kilometres per hour there was an attack drone from the international coalition that took off from the Incirlik air base in Turkey," Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
	"What is more the aircraft entered the area over the town of Orum al-Kubra, where the convoy was located, several minutes before it burst into flames and left 30 minutes later," he said.
	Russia's military did not directly accuse the US-led coalition of carrying out a drone attack on the column but pointedly said that the aircraft is capable of "carrying out high-accuracy strikes".
	Moscow and Washington are locked in a bitter war of words over the attack on the aid trucks and a warehouse on Monday that killed around 20 ...

Russia: coalition drone was in area when Syria aid convoy hit

More than 100 disgruntled Tesla owners in Norway have sued the US automaker because the electric cars don't accelerate as quickly as promised, their lawyers said today.
	The 126 plaintiffs claim their electric vehicles don't accelerate from 0 to 100 kph in 3.3 seconds, as marketed.
	"At the core of the matter is that there are consumers seeking compensation because the cars have less horsepower than promised," one of the lawyers for the owners, Kaspar Thommessen, told AFP without specifying the amount of damages sought.
	They are suing Tesla for breach of consumer law.
	The dispute concerns the Tesla S P85D, a sedan featuring one of the fastest accelerations in the world, listed at 700 horsepower by the carmaker.
	But according to the dissatisfied owners, the real horsepower is only around 469, making accelerations a little less spectacular than expected.
	"Some may think that this is just whinging," Tesla owner Frode Fleten Jacobsen told business daily Dagens Naeringsliv.
	"But many .

Tesla sued in Norway over sluggish cars

The world is facing a "make or break moment" in Syria, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a crisis meeting of the Security Council today.
	Ban urged world powers to use their influence to help re-start political talks between Syrians and allow them "to negotiate a way out of the hell in which they are trapped.

World faces 'make or break moment' in Syria: Ban

A top British undercover reporter known as the "Fake Sheikh" for his elaborate disguises when meeting celebrities went on trial today accused of doctoring evidence in a pop star's drug case.
	Mazher Mahmood, 53, was known for his scoops for The Sun on Sunday newspaper in which he would pose as a wealthy figure from the Middle East and encourage celebrities into making embarrassing revelations.
	He and his driver Alan Smith deny conspiracy to pervert the course of justice over the 2014 trial of Tulisa Contostavlos, a former member of hip-hop group N-Dubz and "X Factor" talent show judge.
	Contostavlos was accused of arranging for Mahmood to be supplied with half an ounce of cocaine, a story which landed him an exclusive for The Sun on Sunday and, when he handed evidence to police, led to her prosecution.
	Prosecutors claim Mahmood, who dubbed himself "King of the Sting", and Smith altered a police statement from Smith to remove negative comments by Contostavlos about cocaine which ...

Trial opens for UK's 'Fake Sheikh' undercover reporter

Russia's defence minister today said that Moscow was dispatching its flagship aircraft carrier to bolster its forces in the eastern Mediterranean off Syria.
	The Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier would be sent to join Russia's current naval deployment there, minister Sergei Shoigu said during a televised meeting.
	"Currently the Russian naval deployment to the east Mediterranean consists of no less than six battleships and three or four support vessels," he said.
	"In order to bolster the military capabilities of the group we plan to add the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier to the group," Shoigu said, without specifying a timeframe.
	Russia has been flying a bombing campaign in Syria for the past year in support of Bashar al-Assad and has deployed a naval contingent to back up its operation.
	This is the first time that the Soviet-era Kuznetsov -- Russia's only aircraft carrier that is part of its Northern fleet based in Murmansk -- will join the Russian deployment after undergoing 

Russia says to send flagship aircraft carrier to Syria coast

Airbus today said it had obtained a first license from the US to supply passenger jets to Iran, a key step towards fulfilling a multi-billion-dollar deal.
	Airbus reached the deal in January to sell Iran 118 aircraft but it required approval from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control because some of the planes' components are made in the United States.
	"Airbus applied for two licenses and the first one was granted yesterday night," an Airbus spokesman said.
	"We expect the second license to be granted in the coming weeks," the spokesman added.
	The deal was initially valued at USD 25 billion but Iranian officials say it is worth nearer USD 10 billion.

Airbus says has first US license to deliver planes to Iran

The father of a Chinese man killed while driving a Tesla sedan has sued the US electric car maker over an alleged fault with its Autopilot system, the family's attorney said today.
	Gao Yaning, the 23-year-old driver, died in January after his Tesla Model S slammed into a road-sweeping vehicle on a highway in the northern province of Hebei. His father Gao Jubin filed the case against the company in June, lawyer Cui Qiuna told AFP.
	The family believed the son was driving in Tesla's Autopilot mode and accused the firm of overstating the function's capabilities, she said.
	During the trial's opening session in Beijing yesterday, Gao applied for an investigation into whether the autopilot was activated when the accident occurred, she added.
	Gao has demanded Tesla stop using the phrase "automatic driving" in its promotion of Autopilot, publicly apologise for false advertising and pay 10,000 yuan (USD 1,500) in compensation for the family's grief caused by the son's death, Cui ...

AFP

AFP

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