Scoreboard in the first ODI
between Sri Lanka and New Zealand in Christchurch today. Sri Lanka
     D. Gunathilaka c Ronchi b Milne 8
     T. Dilshan c Nicholls b Henry 9
     L. Thirimanne lbw Henry 1
     D. Chandimal c Taylor b Henry 5
     A. Mathews c Latham b Henry 0
     M. Siriwardana c McCullum b Bracewell 66
     C. Kapugedera c Santner b Bracewell 8
     N. Kulasekera c Ronchi b McClenaghan 58
     A. Mendis c Ronchi b McClenaghan 4
     D. Chameera not out 13
     S. Lakmal c Latham b Bracewell 8
     Extras (w 8) 8
     Total (10 wickets; 47 overs) 188
     Fall of wickets: 1-13 (Gunathilaka), 2-20 (Dilshan), 3-23 (Thirimanne), 4-23 (Mathews), 5-27 (Chandimal), 6-65 (Kapugedera), 7-163 (Siriwardana), 8-164 (Kulasekara), 9-167 (Mendis), 10-188 (Lakmal)
     Bowling: Milne 10-0-30-1 (w3), Henry 10-1-49-4 (w2), McClenaghan 10-2-40-2 (w3), Bracewell 9-1-37-3, Santner 8-0-32-0.

Christchurch, Dec 26 (AFP) Scoreboard in the first ODI

PTI Automatic

Australia lost the threatening David Warner but were largely untroubled after being sent into bat by the West Indies in the rain-delayed second Test in Melbourne on Saturday.
     The home side was 70 for one at lunch with Joe Burns not out 27 and the fit-again Usman Khawaja on 18.
     Windies captain Jason Holder won the toss and sent the Australians into bat on a greenish MCG pitch, but a combination of attacking batting and wayward bowling negated any advantage the tourists might have had on winning the toss.
     Warner crashed boundaries off Kemar Roach's first three balls before plundering 15 off his opening over.
     But Warner was out three overs later when his attempted pull shot lobbed to Marlon Samuels in the covers.
     Samuels took three grabs at the ball before taking the catch for a crucial wicket for the Windies, removing Warner for 23 off 12 balls.
     The West Indies steadied the scoring rate as Burns and Khawaja put on 41 runs up to the lunch break.
     The ...

Aussies lose Warner in rain-delayed Test start

Scores at lunch on the opening
day of the second Test between Australia and the West Indies at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday:
     Australia 1st innings:
     J. Burns   not out                27
     D. Warner  c Samuels b Taylor     23
     U. Khawaja  not out               18
     Extras (lb2)                       2
     Total (1 wicket; 20 overs)        70
     Fall of wickets: 1-29
     Bowling: Taylor 5-1-22-1, Roach 6-1-27-0, Holder 5-3-2-0, C. Brathwaite 4-0-17-0.

Melbourne, Dec 26 (AFP) Scores at lunch on the opening

An obstinate Milinda Siriwardana and Nuwan Kulasekara partnership saved Sri Lanka from complete disaster after Matt Henry destroyed their top order in the opening one-day international against New Zealand on Saturday.
     The pair produced 98 runs for the seventh wicket at Hagley Oval in Christchurch as Sri Lanka folded for 188 with three overs remaining.
     After winning the toss and electing to bat, Sri Lanka were 27-5 after Henry's accurate opening spell in which he took four wickets for two runs in the space of 16 deliveries.
     Siriwardana stemmed the rot with 66 and Kulasekara added 58. Dushmantha Chameera, not out 13, was the only other batsman to reach double figures.
     Adam Milne, having fully recovered from the heel injury that sidelined him in the World Cup, struck first for New Zealand.
     He was quickly into his work and bowling around the 150 kilometres per hour (93 miles per hour) mark when he dismissed Danushka Gunathilaka in his second over.
     The caught .

New Zealand's Henry the destroyer as Sri Lanka out for 188

African migrants rioted in a southern Spanish beach city, setting fire to garbage bins and cars, after a man from Guinea-Bissau was stabbed to death, local officials have said.
	Manolo Garcia, a city councillor in Roquetas del Mar in the province of Almeria, said the killing of the 41-year-old man in the city led to protests which descended into violence in the working class neighbourhood of Cortijos de Marin yesterday.
	"Garbage bins are being burned, cars have been burned, windows have been shattered," he told radio news station Cadena Ser.
	Local online newspaper Ideal published a photo of a garbage container engulfed in flames in the middle of a street near a pharmacy as well as a video of man pushing a garbage container onto a burning car.
	Police found the body of the man from Guinea-Bissau on a street in Roquetas del Mar in the early hours of Friday. Police suspect the man was stabbed following a dispute over a traffic accident, local media reported.
	About 30-40 people had ...

Immigrant death sparks riot in Spanish beach city

An out-of-control bushfire which flared in a scenic area of southern Australia on Christmas Day has destroyed 53 houses, officials said today.
	The blaze prompted evacuations in two towns popular with holidaymakers, Wye River and Separation Creek, southwest of Melbourne, yesterday.
	"I can confirm that 35 houses are gone in Wye River, 18 are gone in Separation Creek," Victoria State Premier Daniel Andrews said, adding that the fire stopped just 500 metres short of another town.
	Andrews said the consolation was that no lives were lost in the state which endured horrific bushfires in 2009, in which 173 people perished.
	"We can rebuild houses, of course. Things can be much worse than that," Andrews told a press conference.
	Hundreds of firefighters battling the blaze were helped by rainfall overnight, but winds are a cause for concern and some roads are closed.
	The fire near the coastal town of Lorne was started by a lightning strike on December 19 but flared up yesterday due to hot ..

Christmas wildfire destroys 53 houses in Australia

Jason Rezaian, the US journalist who has been held by Iran's government for nearly 18 months, was allowed a rare visit with relatives for several hours on Christmas Day.
	The Iranian-American reporter, convicted of espionage by a secretive Iranian court and serving an unspecified prison sentence, marked his 500th day in the notorious Evin prison earlier this month, the daily said yesterday.
	"This is the first time in the year that I have been visiting him in Evin prison that I could spend an extended time there and bring him his first home cooked meal in months," his mother Mary Rezaian said in an email to the newspaper.
	"We had a wonderful time together reminiscing of holidays past."
	Rezaian's wife Yeganeh Salehi, an Iranian citizen who works for a newspaper based in the United Arab Emirates, also attended.
	Rezaian, 39, was born in the United States and holds dual nationality. He was arrested in July 2014 at his home in Tehran, where he had worked for the Post for two ...

US reporter jailed in Iran allowed Christmas visit by family

Chile is carrying out a feasibility study for the construction of a permanent pier at one of its bases in Antarctica, an official was quoted as saying today.
	The move, being explored by the Ministry of Public Works, would facilitate access to the far-flung area for both scientists and tourists.
	The ministry said the first stage was to scout out a suitable place for the pier in Fildes Bay on King George Island where the small town of Villa Las Estrellas, part of the Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva base, is located.
	A pier there would be in a strategic location, close to the town as well as several Chilean and foreign bases, Jose Retamales, director of the Chilean Antarctic Institute, told the El Mercurio newspaper today.
	Villa Las Estrellas was built in 1984 and is home to families of service members stationed at the Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva base, one of three permanent Chilean bases in Antarctica.
	With a population of 80 in winter and 150 in summer, the hamlet has all ...

Chile eyes construction of permanent Antarctica pier

Powerful Syrian rebel chief Zahran Alloush was killed in a regime air strike east of Damascus today, dealing blows to both the nearly five-year uprising and a fragile peace process.
	Alloush, 44, was the commander of the Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) movement, the predominant opposition faction in the Eastern Ghouta rebel bastion east of Damascus.
	He and five other commanders were killed "in an air strike that targeted one of their meetings in Eastern Ghouta" today, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
	A senior member of Jaish al-Islam confirmed Alloush's death to AFP, saying three planes targeted a "secret meeting" of commanders.
	The Syrian government and its media regularly refers to Jaish al-Islam as "terrorists," and state television did so again in the news alert announcing Alloush's death.
	In a statement carried by state television, Syria's army command said it had conducted the "special operation" that killed Alloush as part of its "national mission."
	A Syrian ...

Regime air strike kills Syria rebel chief ahead of peace talks

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck northeast Afghanistan late tonight near the country's borders with Pakistan and Tajikistan, according to the US Geological Survey.
	The quake, which measured 203.5 kilometres deep, struck about 280 kilometres northeast of the Afghan capital Kabul, the USGS said on its website.

Strong 6.2 magnitude quake rocks northeast Afghanistan: USGS

Strong 6.2 magnitude quake rocks northeast Afghanistan:

A Palestinian woman tried to ram a car into Israeli border guards in a village in the occupied West Bank today, before being shot dead, the police said.
	"An attempted attack to ram a car into border guards deployed in the village of Silwad (northwest of Ramallah) failed. The border guards spotted the terrorist... Fired on her and killed her," a police spokesman said in a statement.
	Palestinian security sources identified the woman as Mahdiyah Hammad, a 38-year-old originally from Silwad.
	The attempted car-ramming came shortly after a Palestinian was killed in clashes with Israeli forces near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, said a spokesman for the Palestinian health ministry of the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.
	The ministry said Hani Wahdan, 22, was killed as he was throwing stones near the Nahal Oz crossing point.
	Around 40 Palestinians were wounded in the clashes that took place at several points along the barrier that separates Israel from the Gaza Strip.
	An ...

Palestinian tries to ram car into Israel border guards,killed

Long-delayed elections in volatile Central African Republic that were initially due this weekend have been postponed for three days until December 30, the country's National Election Authority (ANE) said today.
	"For technical reasons the first round of the presidential and legislative elections scheduled for Sunday 27 December 2015 is delayed until Wednesday December 30 2015," an ANE statement said.
	The postponement was due to problems sending ballot papers to election centres outside the capital.

C. Africa elections postponed till December 30

Arson is suspected in a fire that broke out at former US president Bill Clinton's birthplace early today morning, damaging the historical site, police said.
	"It's pretty logical it was purposely set," J R Wilson, the police chief in Hope, Arkansas, told AFP.
	The blaze ran up an exterior back wall of the white frame house where Clinton spent the first few years of his life, but the damage was minor, Wilson said.
	A motorist reported the blaze in the early hours today, which is Christmas Day, and police and fire crews arrived within minutes.
	Once there, they detected a smell of an accelerant near where authorities believe the fire began.
	"It sure smelled like gasoline to me," Wilson said, adding that evidence had been submitted to a crime lab for analysis.
	Police are also analysing some black graffiti at the scene for possible clues.
	There are currently no suspects, Wilson said.
	Built in 1917, the house belonged to Clinton's grandparents and it was in its yard that the future ...

Arson suspected at Bill Clinton's birthplace

As the winter sun sets on Pakistan's leafy capital Islamabad, residents of the city's largest Christian slum use bicycles, donkey carts and their backs to haul jerry cans filled with water to their homes.
	Situated on the capital's periphery, the neighbourhood that is home to around 10,000 people is now at the heart of a debate over the rights of Christians in this predominantly Muslim country of 200 million, with city authorities claiming such settlements threaten "the beauty of Islam".
	Local authorities, determined to put an end to what they call "illegal" settlements, have recently sealed the area's three tube wells in what residents say is an effort to drive them out -- despite a Supreme Court injunction temporarily barring their eviction.
	With the matter now resting before Pakistan's top judges, the slum-dwellers' sense of insecurity remains and many say all they want for Christmas is for their neighbourhood to become legalised -- and the taps turned back on.
	"We are worried, .

Islamabad's Christian slum dwellers pray for Christmas miracle

Russia is warming more than twice as fast as the average for the rest of the world, the environment ministry said today, sounding an alarm on the rise in floods and wildfires nationwide.
	A government report on environmental protection said temperatures in Russia had warmed by 0.42 degrees Celsius per decade since 1976, or 2.5 times quicker than the global warming trend of 0.17 degrees.
	"Climate change leads to growth of dangerous meteorological phenomena," the ministry said in a comment to the report published today.
	There were 569 such phenomena in Russia in 2014, "the most since monitoring began," the ministry said, specifically mentioning last year's ravaging floods and this year's "water deficit" east of Lake Baikal, which led to a "catastrophic rise in fires."
	Fires around Lake Baikal, including the nearby Irkutsk and Buryatia regions, tore through hundreds of square miles in the pristine area, with locals and campers forced to dig ditches as state media at one point offered .

'Russia 'warming 2.5 times quicker' than global average'

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used his celebrated rhetorical skills to save a life today, preventing a man from jumping off Istanbul's Bosphorus Bridge.
	The man was apparently preparing to jump to his death when Erdogan's motorcade was passing over the bridge linking Europe with Asia after Friday prayers.
	News footage showed Erdogan's bodyguards bringing  the sobbing man, who appeared to be in his early 30s, to talk to him through the window of his car. After a few moments, the man can be seen kissing Erdogan's hand
	The man was then escorted to safety, the Dogan news agency reported.
	It said police had been trying for almost two hours to talk the man out of committing suicide after he abandoned his car on the bridge and climbed over the side railing.
	He has long been suffering from depression due to family problems, Dogan said.
	The iconic bridge spanning the Bosphorus at a height of 64 metres (211 feet) is a frequent suicide spot.

Turkey's Erdogan talks man on bridge out of suicide

Hundreds of African migrants stormed the border between Morocco and the Spanish territory of Ceuta today, and two migrants drowned and 12 others were hospitalised, officials in both nations said.
	The incident happened around 4:00 am (0300 GMT) near Benzu in the north of Ceuta with the migrants either scaling a barbed wire fence  or swimming across to the Spanish city located on Africa's northern coast.
	About 200 migrants tried to swim from Morocco into Ceuta, local authorities in northern Morocco told the state news agency MAP.
	Moroccan authorities intercepted 104 would-be migrants and recovered two bodies in the waters near the border post, they added.
	The would-be migrants threw stones and used sticks against police, the agency said.
	Red Cross volunteers in Ceuta treated 185 migrants who managed to get into the territory for injuries of different degrees, the organisation said in a statement.
	Twelve of them needed to be taken to hospital to treat injuries such as fractured ...

Two dead as hundreds of migrants storm Spanish border post

Pope Francis offered a Christmas message today of mitigated hope for an end to the world's conflicts, backing recent accords on Syria and Libya and praising those who shelter migrants.
	"We pray... That the agreement reached in the United Nations may succeed in halting as quickly as possible the clash of arms in Syria," he said, while urging that "the agreement on Libya be supported by all."
	Delivering his Christmas message from the balcony of St Peter's Basilica, the 79-year-old pontiff touched on several other conflict zones, including Iraq, Yemen, the DR Congo, Burundi and South Sudan following a year of violence and suffering that forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
	The pope, addressing tens of thousands of pilgrims in the sunny square, also decried "brutal acts of terrorism, particularly the recent massacres which took place in Egyptian airspace, in Beirut, Paris, Bamako and Tunis."
	After a year that saw more than one million migrants reach Europe, Francis ...

In Christamas message, pope speaks out on conflicts, migrants

Some 4,000 people, half of them jihadist fighters, will leave three besieged districts south of Syria's capital at the weekend as part of a landmark ceasefire, sources said today.
	Militants from the Islamic State jihadist group and its rival, Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front, will reportedly quit the districts of Qadam, Hajar al-Aswad and the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmuk.
	"An agreement was reached whereby 4,000 fighters and civilians, including members of Al-Nusra and IS, would leave" the neighbourhoods on Saturday, one government official close to the negotiations told AFP.
	They would then be transported to the northern cities of Raqa, held by IS, and Marea which is controlled by Islamists and Al-Nusra, the official said.
	The second phase of the deal would see government institutions reopen in the neighbourhoods and "the necessities of daily life would be secured", the official said.
	It will be the first time in more than two years that market goods have been ...

Jihadists 'to quit south Damascus suburbs': sources

China has refused to renew the press credentials of a French journalist, effectively expelling her, unless she recants one of her stories, the reporter said today, the first such case since 2012.
	Ursula Gauthier, a Beijing-based correspondent for French news magazine L'Obs, must issue a public apology for an article she wrote last month or China's foreign ministry will not renew her press credentials, set to expire on December 31, officials told Gauthier on Christmas Day.
	"They confirmed that if I did not make a public apology on all the points that had 'hurt the Chinese people' ... My press card would not be renewed and I would have to leave on December 31," she told AFP.
	Gauthier would be the first foreign correspondent in China to be expelled since the 2012 expulsion of Melissa Chan, correspondent for the English-language service of Al Jazeera.

AFP

AFP

Page 1835 - Afp