Opener Tom Latham followed in his father's footsteps as he ground out a century on day two of the first Test against Zimbabwe to give New Zealand a commanding first-innings lead at Queens Sports Club today.
     Almost 24 years after his father, Rod, scored 119 in New Zealand's first ever Test in Bulawayo, Latham made 105 as the Black Caps moved to 315 for four in response to Zimbabwe's 164 all out.
     "I only realised it when I came off," said Latham. "It is pretty nice for us to have both scored hundreds here."
     The left-hander shared a 156-run stand for the second wicket with captain Kane Williamson, who made 91, to continue New Zealand's dominance of the game following Neil Wagner's six-wicket haul on day one.
     For their part Zimbabwe did an admirable job with the ball and often restricted the New Zealand scoring, but on a placid pitch the hosts struggled to make regular breakthroughs.
     While Martin Guptill fell in the morning session when he reached for a delivery ..

Centurion Latham emulates father as Kiwis dominate Zimbabwe

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Briton Jenson Button was transferred to hospital in Mannheim after complaining of eye problems during this afternoon's second practice session for this weekend's German Grand Prix.
     The 2009 world champion, who drives for the McLaren Honda team, was sent to hospital by the circuit medical centre at the Hockenheimring after complaining of an eye irritation.
     A team spokesman said: "Jenson complained of an eye irritation during FP2 and he has gone to Mannheim hospital to have a precautionary check-up."
     The team's reserve driver Stoffel Vandoorne, who replaced two-time champion Fernando Alonso at the Belgian Grand Prix in April, is on stand-by.

Button hospitalised with eye complaint

Red flags will replace waved double yellows in the event of hazardous incidents in qualifying, Formula One's race director Charlie Whiting said today.
     Whiting made this newly-revised position clear following last weekend's controversy surrounding Nico Rosberg's pole position lap at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
     The German drove through a waved double yellow zone and only slowed by one-tenth of a second.
     The decision means that all drivers on track at the time of an incident that led to a red flag would have to stop.
     "That's what I intend to do in the future, just to remove any discussion about whether a driver slowed down or not," Whiting told reporters at the German Grand Prix.
     "I think most drivers decided to call it a day and stop their attempt at qualifying," he added, referring to the incident at the Hungaroring last Saturday.
     "But in Nico's defence, he had only one yellow sector to go through, and that was a short one -- whereas the other drivers had ...

Formula One: Red flags to replace yellow in qualifying

Scoreboard at the close of play
on the second day of the first Test between Zimbabwe and New Zealand today:
     Zimbabwe first innings 164 all out (D. Tiripano 49 not out, P. Masvaure 42, N. Wagner 6-41, M. Santner 2-16)
     New Zealand first innings
     M Guptill c Ervine b Chibhabha     40
     T Latham c Chari b Masakadza      105
     K Williamson c Masakadza b Cremer  91
     R Taylor batting                   38
     H Nicholls c Chari b Tiripano      18
     I Sodhi batting                     5
     Extras (6b, 2w, 10nb)               18
     Total (for 4 wkts, 100 overs)      315
     Fall of wickets: 1-79, 2-235, 3-272, 4-299
     Bowling: Chinouya 15-2-41-0, Tiripano 17-2-51-1, Masvaure 5-0-20-0, Cremer 35-4-113-1, Sikandar Raza 9-3-37-0, Chibhabha 10-0-22-1, Masakadza 9-1-25-1.

Bulawayo, July  29 (AFP) Scoreboard at the close of play

A maternity hospital supported by Save the Children was bombed today in an air raid in Idlib province of northwest Syria, causing casualties and heavy damage, the Britain-based charity said.
	"Save the Children supported maternity hospital in #Idlib bombed, casualties reported - numbers unconfirmed," it tweeted.
	The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said that the hospital in the rebel-held town of Kafar Takharim was heavily damaged and left barely operational.
	The monitoring group did not specify if the raid was carried out by Syrian regime aircraft or warplanes of its Russian allies.
	The bombing "hit the entrance to the hospital, which is the biggest in the area, serving over 1300 women monthly and carrying out over 300 deliveries a month", Save the Children said in an email.
	"This is the only hospital specialising in maternity and children in the northern western side of rural Idlib."
	Last week, air raids struck four makeshift hospitals and a blood bank over a 24-hour ...

Save the Children-supported maternity hospital bombed in Syria

Online giant Amazon has said profit in the second quarter surged ninefold to USD 857 million, lifted by cloud services as the tech giant expanded its offerings.
	Revenues jumped 31 per cent to USD 30.4 billion, Amazon said in stronger-than-expected results.
	While Amazon developed a reputation for delivering little or no profit in its retail operations, its earnings have been growing over the past year as it expands into video and new delivery services and boosts its cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS).
	The strong profit came a year after earnings of USD 92 million which began a string of improvements for Amazon.
	Amazon shares rose 1.5 per cent in after-hours trade.
	The company has also been building loyalty with its Amazon Prime subscription service, which provides access to its online video and music as well as fast delivery for most items.
	Amazon has also been expanding globally, notably to India.
	"It's been a busy few months for Amazon around the world, and ...

Amazon quarterly profit jumps ninefold to $857 million

Eleven people have died in flooding in Niger and 30,000 left homeless after vast swathes of the country -- including arid desert locations -- were deluged with heavy rain, the UN said today.
	The worst affected regions are both desert areas: Tahoua in the west, where seven people died and 5,321 people were left homeless, and Agadez in the north where three people were killed and 18,448 lost their homes, according to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
	In the two areas, the freak weather claimed the lives of 19,536 cows, goats, sheep and camels while also devastating hundreds of acres of land, according to local authorities.
	Images broadcast by public television showed roads cut off by streams and land littered with rotting animal corpses.
	In the Agadez region annual rainfall seldom exceeds 130 millimetres and floods like those seen in recent days are rare.
	But since June, as much as 115 millimetres has regularly been falling in a matter of hours, ..

11 killed and 30,000 left homeless in Niger floods

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today accused a top US general of being on the side of Turkey's coup plotters after commenting that the country's turmoil could downgrade military cooperation with Washington.
	"You are taking the side of coup plotters instead of thanking this state for defeating the coup attempt," Erdogan said in angry remarks at a military centre in Golbasi outside Ankara, where air strikes left dozens dead during the failed putsch on July 15.
	Quoted by US media, US Central Command chief General Joseph Votel had said the coup bid and subsequent round-up of dozens of generals could affect American military cooperation with Turkey.
	In particular, Votel suggested the US had lost key Turkish military interlocutors who are now in jail and accused of being behind the coup.
	"Know your place!" Erdogan told Votel, using one of his favourite expressions of anger.
	"The coup plotter is already in your country, you are already feeding him," he said, referring to the US-based ...

Erdogan accuses US general of 'backing putschists'

Chinese regulatory authorities conditionally approved brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev's giant takeover of SABMiller today, clearing one of the last major hurdles for the USD 103 billion deal to go ahead.
	The commerce ministry "decided to approve" the sale on condition that SABMiller's own stake in China's biggest brewery was disposed of, its anti-monopoly bureau said in a statement on its website -- a transaction which has already been agreed.
	The takeover has previously been approved by regulators in the US, European Union and South Africa, where SABMiller has its origins.
	AB InBev has agreed to a series of concessions to win the authorities' green lights, including selling SABMiller's 49 per cent stake in Snow Breweries, China's biggest beermaker.
	The anti-monopoly bureau said the sale -- to a unit of China Resources, SABMiller's local partner -- had to go through within 24 hours of the overall merger.
	Otherwise, it said, the deal "would have the effect of eliminating and ...

China conditionally approves AB Inbev-SABMiller merger

Yemen's government delegation to UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait said it will leave tomorrow, signalling the collapse of four months of UN- brokered negotiations with Shiite Huthi rebels.
	"Today, we are holding some farewell meetings... And the delegation will leave on Saturday," delegation spokesman Mohammad al-Emrani told AFP.
	"There can be no more talks after the new coup," he said referring to the rebels' formation of a supreme political council to run war-torn Yemen.
	The Iran-backed Huthi rebels and the General People's Congress of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh yesterday jointly announced setting up the 10-member council.
	The job of the council would be to "manage state affairs politically, militarily, economically, administratively, socially and in security", a statement issued by the rebels said.
	UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said the rebels' move "contravenes" their commitment to the peace process and "represents a grave violation" of UN Security ...

Yemen govt team says leaving UN-backed peace talks

Myanmar's most heavily armed ethnic group held "positive" talks today with the country's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a spokesman for her office said, in a major boost for peace prospects.
	The United Wa State Army (UWSA) stopped fighting the government in 1989 in exchange for control of a remote portion of territory bordering China which is believed to be awash with drugs.
	But they have a 20-25,000-strong standing army and are yet to commit to a full nationwide ceasefire, undercutting Suu Kyi's aim of swiftly securing a lasting peace.
	Several complex ethic conflicts are rumbling across Myanmar's borderlands, hampering efforts to build the country's economy after the end of junta rule.
	Some groups who fought the army for decades have signed ceasefires but those are fragile, adding urgency to Suu Kyi's task.
	The Wa are accused of producing and trafficking huge amounts of methamphetamine and heroin from their secretive holdout and buying weapons with the proceeds.
	Today's ...

Suu Kyi meets leaders of notorious Myanmar rebel group

Turkey today insisted its military will keep up the fight against Islamic State jihadists and other militants after the failed coup, saying the armed forces would emerge stronger from a purge of its top ranks.
	A senior US military commander had been quoted by American media as saying that the turmoil in post-coup Turkey could affect its role in the US-led coalition fighting IS jihadists in Syria.
	But Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara that he found such statements "ridiculous" and "unfortunate".
	Turkish forces face the challenge of fighting both IS jihadists and guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
	Cavusoglu said making the military's capacity to fight such groups an issue in the wake of the coup "stemmed from a lack of knowledge and ignorance, if there is no ill intention".
	Turkey has embarked on a major military reshuffle after the putsch, which Ankara blames on US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen and his followers.
	Authorities accuse the ..

Turkey says army to keep up fight against IS after coup

The UN's human rights body said today it was "gravely concerned" by a new Malaysian security law coming into force next week that grants the government extraordinary emergency powers.
	The government rammed the National Security Council Act through parliament last December, giving it powers to declare virtual martial law in areas of the country determined to be under security threat.
	But critics of Prime Minister Najib Razak say he enacted the law as ammunition against any moves to oust him over a huge financial scandal.
	The law, which comes into force on Monday, allows a National Security Council headed by the prime minister to suspend civil liberties in certain areas, giving government forces sweeping powers of search, seizure and arrest.
	"We are gravely concerned that... The act may encourage human rights violations," Laurent Meillan, acting head of the UN Human Rights Office for Southeast Asia, said in a statement.
	Meillan also expressed concern that the act could lead to ...

UN rights body raps Malaysian govt over security law

Australia faced an uphill struggle to save the first Test against Sri Lanka's rampant spinners after losing three early second innings wickets today while trying to chase down a formidable target of 268.
     The tourists were precariously placed at 83 for three, with skipper Steve Smith unbeaten on 26, when bad light forced an early end to play for the fourth day running in Pallekele.
     The world number one Test team still need another 185 runs for victory on the final day tomorrow, when Sri Lanka's trio of spinners will expect to capitalise on their early inroads against the tourists.
     The hosts' leading left-arm spinner Rangana Herath struck in only the second over of the Australian innings when he bowled vice-captain David Warner for one.
     Usman Khawaja started positively with three fours but he was ruled leg before wicket to off-spinner Dilruwan Perera when he attempted a sweep shot after making 18, leaving Australia reeling at 33/2.
     Then the debutant Lakshan ...

Lanka spinners corner Aussies in tricky chase

Turkish authorities today widened their post-coup crackdown to the business sector, detaining three top tycoons as part of investigations into the activities of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen.
	Twenty-one journalists also appeared in an Istanbul court after being rounded up in the sweeping purge, which has seen almost 16,000 people detained since the failed July 15 putsch.
	Turkish authorities blame Gulen for the rebellion, which aimed to unseat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and they are now seeking to erase the reclusive cleric's influence from all aspects of Turkish life.
	But the scale of the crackdown has sparked international alarm, with the EU enlargement commissioner implicitly warning the bloc would freeze Turkey's accession talks if it violated the rule of law.
	Johannes Hahn said he needed to see "black-and-white facts about how these people are treated".
	"And if there is even the slightest doubt that the (treatment) is improper, then the consequences will be ...

Turkey widens post-coup crackdown to businessmen

Scoreboard at stumps
on the fourth day of the first Test between Sri Lanka and Australia in Pallekele today:
     Sri Lanka 1st innings: 117
     Australia 1st innings: 203 all out
     Sri Lanka 2nd innings (Overnight 282 for six)
     K Perera lbw b Starc              4
     K Silva lbw b O'Keefe             7
     D Karunaratne lbw b Starc         0
     K Mendis c Nevill b Starc       176
     A Mathews c Burns b Lyon          9
     D Chandimal lbw b Marsh          42
     D de Silva c Khawaja b Lyon      36
     D Perera not out                 12
     R Herath c Henriques b Hazlewood 35
     L Sandakan b Starc                9
     N Pradeep not out                10
     Extras (B-1, LB-11)              13
     Total: (all out in 93.4 overs)  353
     Fall of wicket: 1-6, 2-6, 3-45, 4-86, 5-203, 6-274, 7-290, 8-314, 9-323, 10-353.
     Bowling: Starc 19-4-84-4, Hazlewood 18.4-3-59-2, O'Keefe 16.2-3-42-1, Lyon 27-2-108-2, Warner 1-0-10-0, Voges 1.4-0-3-0, Marsh 9-1-33-1, Smith .

Pallekele (Sri Lanka), July 29 (AFP) Scoreboard at stumps

Austria has handed over to France two suspected members of the same Islamic State cell that massacred 130 people in Paris last November, prosecutors said today.
	The Algerian and Pakistani men, now aged 29 and 35 and who have not been named, were arrested in Austria in December.
	Austrian and French authorities believe they travelled to Greece along with two men involved in the November 13 atrocities, posing as refugees.
	While the eventual assailants continued on to France, the two were detained by Greek authorities for 25 days because they had falsified Syrian passports.
	Once let go, they made it to Salzburg at the end of November -- after the Paris atrocities -- and Austrian police arrested them at a migrant centre on December 10.
	Following a French request, a court in Salzburg in western Austria approved at the beginning of July their transfer to France.
	"Both suspects have now left the country," prosecutors said in a statement today.
	They had said in April that they were ...

Austria hands over Paris attacks 'accomplices' to France

Austria hands over suspected Paris attacks accomplices to

China has urged Vietnam to investigate claims that a Chinese visitor's passport was defaced with profanities by officials at Ho Chi Minh city airport, in an apparent reference to a bitter territorial spat between the nations.
	Photographs circulated in online Chinese media this week purported to show a Chinese passport with the words "fuck you" scribbled on two pages next to maps of China and its hotly contested "nine-dash line".
	Beijing says the line demarcates its territory in the South China Sea.
	But Hanoi, which alongside several other nations has competing claims to the strategically key waters, rejects it.
	Earlier this month a UN tribunal said China's line had no legal basis, reviving the acrimony between the two countries.
	A Chinese citizen, identified only by the surname Zhong, entered Vietnam on July 23 and found their passport was "defaced while crossing the border", according to a statement posted on the website of Beijing's consulate in HCMC.
	Decrying the "shameless ..

China accuses Vietnam officials of passport profanity

France's prime minister said today he would consider a temporary ban on foreign financing of mosques, urging a "new model" for relations with Islam after a spate of jihadist attacks.
	Manuel Valls, under fire for perceived security lapses around the attacks, also admitted a "failure" in the fact that one of the jihadists who stormed a church and killed a priest on Tuesday had been released with an electronic tag pending trial.
	In an interview with French daily Le Monde, Valls said he was "open to the idea that -- for a period yet to be determined -- there should be no financing from abroad for the construction of mosques."
	Valls also called for imams to be "trained in France, not elsewhere."
	He said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, whose portfolio also includes religious affairs, was working on building a "new model" for France's relations with Islam.
	Both Valls and Cazeneuve have faced calls to resign after the second jihadist attack in less than a fortnight raised questions .

French PM moots temporary ban on foreign-funded mosques

Scoreboard at tea on the fourth day of the first Test between Sri Lanka and Australia in Pallekele on Friday:
     Sri Lanka 1st innings: 117
     Australia 1st innings: 203
     Sri Lanka 2nd innings (Overnight 282 for six)
     K Perera lbw b Starc               4
     K Silva lbw b O'Keefe              7
     D Karunaratne lbw b Starc          0
     K Mendis c Nevill b Starc        176
     A Mathews c Burns b Lyon           9
     D Chandimal lbw b Marsh           42
     D de Silva c Khawaja b Lyon       36
     D Perera not out                  12
     R Herath c Henriques b Hazlewood  35
     L Sandakan b Starc                 9
     N Pradeep not out                 10
     Extras: (B-1, LB-11)              13
     Total: (all out, 93.4 overs)     353
     Fall of wicket: 1-6, 2-6, 3-45, 4-86, 5-203, 6-274, 7-290, 8-314, 9-323.
     Bowling: Starc 19-4-84-4, Hazlewood 18.4-3-59-2, O'Keefe 16.2-3-42-1, Lyon 27-2-108-2, Warner 1-0-10-0, Voges 1.4-0-3-0, Marsh 9-1-33-1, Smith ...

AFP

AFP

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