England wicketkeeper-batsman Jonny Bairstow believes New Zealand will be intent on exacting World Cup revenge in the Twenty20 series that begins in Christchurch on Friday.
The Black Caps suffered the cruellest of defeats in the final of the one-day showpiece, when the scores were tied after a Super Over but England won because they had hit more boundaries.
Cricket chiefs have since scrapped the obscure tie-breaker rule but Bairstow said the New Zealanders would still be seething at the result and out to prove a point in their first meeting against England since the decider.
"What happened at Lord's is going to be quite tough for those guys, and there will be a fire in their belly and a hunger to put things right," he said.
However, New Zealand have played down talk of payback, insisting their focus is on building momentum for the T20 World Cup being held in Australia in October-November next year.
"We obviously have a lot of T20 cricket on the horizon ahead of next year's World Cup ...

England wary of World Cup backlash from Black Caps

PTI Automatic

Proposals to bring Formula One racing to Miami hit a speed bump Tuesday after local officials voted in favour of two measures which potentially complicate plans to stage a race in the Florida city.
After a hearing lasting several hours, the Miami-Dade County Commission gave backing to resolutions which sought to put the brakes on Formula One's ambitions in Miami.
Formula One is hoping to stage a race on a temporary track surrounding the Hard Rock Stadium, home of the Miami Dolphins NFL team, in Miami Gardens, on the northern outskirts of the city.
However, the plans have run into opposition from protesters who have complained they will cause pollution and impact the quality of life of local residents.
The two resolutions passed by members of the Miami-Dade County Commission on Tuesday both concerned road closures.
One item prohibits road closures near residential neighbourhoods in Miami Gardens, meaning the proposed route of the race would need to be changed.
The second resolution ...

Miami F1 plans hit speed bump

Namibia will appear at the T20 World Cup for the first time after beating Oman in Dubai, joining the Netherlands on Tuesday in qualifying for next year's tournament.
All-rounder JJ Smit blasted 59 off 25 balls as Namibia beat Oman by 54 runs to progress to the eight-team first round of the World Cup in Australia in October 2020.  Namibia posted 161-7 after choosing to bat, with Smit smacking five sixes in a match-winning innings following a steady 45 from Craig Williams.
Oman, who took part in the 2016 T20 World Cup, began well in reply as Khawar Ali and Aqib Ilyas put on 57 for the second wicket after Jatinder Singh was removed for a first-ball duck.
Left-arm spinner Bernard Scholtz trapped Ilyas (18) in front and then had Ali (41) stumped as Oman staggered to 64 for 4 before folding meekly.  Scholtz finished with 3-14 while Namibia captain Gerhard Erasmus took three wickets of his own, including that of opposing skipper Zeeshan Maqsood (2), as Oman slumped to 107 all out.
"We got so 

Namibia, Netherlands secure T20 World Cup spots

Asian markets slipped Wednesday as traders play a wait-and-see game ahead of the Federal Reserve's latest policy decision, with expectations for another interest rate cut but focus also on its plans for the future.
Expectations for another drop in borrowing costs, along with optimism over the China-US trade talks and healthy corporate reports have provided much-needed support to equities of late after a volatile year.
However, while the general consensus is for a third reduction this year, there is a concern that the upbeat earnings, progress on trade and signs of resilience in the US economy could keep the central bank from further measures.
This makes Fed boss Jerome Powell's post-meeting statement crucial, with dealers poring over his every word.
"I don't think we should fear a hawkish cut, but I do think one of the things to keep in mind, relative to the prior cut periods, is the Fed starting from a much lower rate so there is a lot less room for the Fed to continue to cut," Carol 

Asian markets tick lower as focus turns to Fed meeting

The US House of Representatives took the historic step on Tuesday of passing a resolution officially recognizing the "Armenian genocide," a move sure to anger Turkey amid already-heightened tensions with Washington.
Cheers and applause erupted when the chamber voted 405 to 11 in support of the symbolic resolution "affirming the United States record on the Armenian Genocide," a first for the US Congress, where similar measures with such direct language have been introduced for decades but never passed.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was honored to join her colleagues "in solemn remembrance of one of the great atrocities of the 20th century: the systematic murder of more than 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children by the Ottoman Empire."
The Armenians say the mass killings of their people from 1915 to 1917 amounted to genocide, a claim recognized by some 30 countries. Turkey strongly denies the accusation of genocide.
But Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, delivered bold ..

In historic vote, US House recognizes 'Armenian genocide'

Lebanon's prime minister submitted his government's resignation on Tuesday, bowing to nearly two weeks of unprecedented nationwide protests against corruption and sectarianism.
Saad Hariri's sombre televised address was met by cheers from crowds of protesters who have remained mobilised since October 17, crippling the country to press their demands.
"It has become necessary for us to make a great shock to fix the crisis. I am going to the Baabda Palace to submit the government's resignation," said Hariri, who had already stepped down twice from the same post.
He said his decision comes "in response to the will of many Lebanese who took to the streets to demand change".
The move, the demonstrators' most significant win yet, will trigger the complicated task of parliament forming a new government -- if the president accepts it.
Hariri's announcement came after days of apparently unfruitful efforts to reshuffle posts within his uneasy coalition, as tension mounted on the ground between ..

Lebanon government falls, protesters say 'more'

WhatsApp on Tuesday sued Israeli technology firm NSO Group, accusing it of using the Facebook-owned messaging service to conduct cyberespionage on journalists, human rights activists and others.
The suit filed in a California federal court contended that NSO Group tried to infect approximately 1,400 "target devices" with malicious software to steal valuable information from those using the messaging app.
WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said the lawsuit was filed after an investigation showed the Israeli firm's role the cyberattack, despite its denials.
"NSO Group claims they responsibly serve governments, but we found more than 100 human rights defenders and journalists targeted in an attack last May. This abuse must be stopped," Cathcart said on Twitter.
The lawsuit said the software developed by NSO known as Pegasus was  designed to be remotely installed to hijack devices using the Android, iOS, and BlackBerry operating systems.
The complaint said the attackers "reverse-engineered the ..

WhatsApp sues Israeli firm NSO over cyberespionage

The United Nations has called for an urgent de-escalation of tensions in Bolivia, where rival supporters of President Evo Morales and opposition leader Carlos Mesa have clashed since a disputed election.
The UN office in La Paz said in a statement on Tuesday that it was making a "resounding and urgent" call on politicians, social leaders and all Bolivians "to reduce tensions and reject all acts of violence".
Riots broke out after the controversial October 20 election won by Morales but described by Mesa as a "fraud," as rival supporters clashed with each other and security forces.
The UN office expressed "major concern about the serious acts of violence" between citizens throughout the country.
Several people were injured in clashes in the central city of Cochabamba, a Morales stronghold, local media reported.
Morales was re-elected in an election that was marred by a sudden and unexplained shift in the vote tally that benefitted the 60-year-old socialist leader.
Mesa and his allies ..

UN urges 'urgent' de-escalation of Bolivia violence

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Tuesday refused to accept an environmental award, saying the climate movement needed people in power to start to "listen" to "science" and not awards.
The young climate activist, who has rallied millions to her "Fridays for Future" movement, was honoured at a Stockholm ceremony held by the Nordic Council, a regional body for inter-parliamentary cooperation.
Thunberg had been nominated for her efforts by both Sweden and Norway and won the organisation's annual environment prize.
But after it was announced, a representative for her told the audience that she would not accept the award or the prize sum of 350,000 Danish kroner (about USD 52,000 or 46,800 euro), the TT news agency reported.
She addressed the decision in a post on Instagram from the United States.
"The climate movement does not need any more awards," she wrote.
"What we need is for our politicians and the people in power start to listen to the current, best available science." ...

Climate activist Greta Thunberg declines environmental award

At least 42 people were killed after their houses were swept away on Tuesday in a landslide caused by torrential rain in the western Cameroon city of Bafoussam, state media reported, showing images of rescuers desperately sifting through rubble for survivors.
"Searches are ongoing. We fear there are further deaths," a senior local official told AFP on condition of anonymity as nightfall neared.
A total of 42 bodies were taken to the hospital in the city, according to an official statement read on Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV).
Media reports had earlier spoken of about 30 dead, with the radio reporting that four pregnant women were among the victims.
Pictures of the tragedy in Bafouassam posted on social media showed ramshackle houses having crumbled into the ochre-coloured terrain and men clad in hard hats digging away at piles of mud in the search for survivors.
"The houses that collapsed were built on the side of a hill in a risk zone," said the local official in the West Region, 

At least 42 perish in Cameroon landslide

An Indian man is facing up to seven years in prison after hashish was found in his bag at a Moscow airport, his lawyer said Tuesday, in the latest in a series of similar arrests.
The case of Aashish Bhadourya, 21, echoes that of an Israeli-American woman, Naama Issachar, who was jailed this month for seven-and-a-half years over a larger amount of marijuana found in her luggage at the same airport as she changed flights en route from Delhi in April.
Police found the drugs in Bhadourya's checked luggage while he was in the transit zone at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport en route from Delhi to Prague.
He was detained in July and is facing drug smuggling charges, his lawyer Nikita Taranishchenko told AFP. A Moscow court on Tuesday threw out an appeal of his pre-trial detention.
In September a court in Saint Petersburg convicted a 19-year-old US woman, Audrey Elise Lorber, of drug possession after she was stopped at a city airport with marijuana and a permit for medical use. She was ...

Indian man facing Russian jail over airport drugs charge

Russia has informed Turkey that Kurdish fighters in Syria have completed their withdrawal from areas near the border, in accordance with a deal agreed between Ankara and Moscow, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday.
"Russia informed our competent authorities of the terror groups' complete withdrawal from there," Erdogan said in a televised speech in Ankara marking Turkey's Republic Day.
Under the agreement reached last week in the Black Sea resort of Sochi between Turkey and Russia, a 150-hour deadline was given for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters and their weapons to be withdrawn from a zone extending 30 kilometres (18 miles) back from the Turkish border.
That deadline expired at 1500 GMT Tuesday.
Russia earlier said that Kurdish forces in northern Syria had withdrawn as planned.
"The withdrawal of armed units from territory where a security corridor should be created has been completed ahead of time," Russian news agencies quoted Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu as saying on a ...

Russia confirms to Turkey that Kurdish forces have left Syria border area

Coastal areas currently home to 300 million people will be vulnerable by 2050 to flooding made worse by climate change, no matter how aggressively humanity curbs carbon emissions, scientists said Tuesday.
By mid-century and beyond, however, choices made today will determine whether Earth's coastlines remain recognisable to future generations, they reported in the journal Nature Communications.
Destructive storm surges fuelled by increasingly powerful cyclones and rising seas will hit Asia hardest, according to the study.
More than two-thirds of the populations at risk are in China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.
Using a form of artificial intelligence known as neural networks, the new research corrects ground elevation data that has up to now vastly underestimated the extent to which coastal zones are subject to flooding during high tide or major storms.
"Sea-level projections have not changed," co-author Ben Strauss, chief scientist and CEO of Climate Central, a .

300 million face annual coastline flooding by 2050: study

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a strict abortion ban in Alabama that would punish doctors with up to 99 years in prison for performing the procedure.
The ban was set to go into effect November 15 but US District Judge Myron Thompson granted an injunction pending resolution of a lawsuit that argues the law is unconstitutional.
"The plaintiffs have shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their claim," Thompson said.
"Enforcement of the ban would yield serious and irreparable harm, violating the right to privacy and preventing women from obtaining abortions in Alabama," he said.
The law equates abortion to homicide and bans it in nearly all cases, including rape or incest, and at all stages of pregnancy.
The only exceptions under the law would be in cases that present "serious health risks" to the woman or in which a fetus is deemed not to be viable.
Under the law, the penalty for performing an abortion in all other cases is up to 99 years in prison.
Planned ...

US judge blocks Alabama's near-total abortion ban

Israel is not responsible for all Palestinian hardships, US presidential advisor Jared Kushner said on Tuesday, as the Palestinian Authority faces a crippling financial crisis.
"Israel is not the cause of all the suffering of the Palestinian people," Kushner, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, told the Future Investment Initiative conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
"If you want to go and invest in the West Bank or Gaza, the issue that's holding you back is the fear of terrorism and that your investment could  be destroyed."
Kushner unveiled the economic aspects of a US Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative in June with a conference in Bahrain, in which he dangled USD 50 billion in investment for the region if the Palestinians agree on a political deal.
The Palestinian leadership boycotted the conference, accusing the administration of ignoring key issues and trying to buy its acceptance of Israeli rule.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas' PA has been in ...

Israel not responsible for Palestinian suffering: Kushner

Gas tycoon Leonid Mikhelson is normally seen inking deals and meeting President Vladimir Putin, but on Tuesday Russia's richest man rubbed elbows with the cultural crowd as he showcased a new Moscow arts centre.
The GES-2 venue in central Moscow, financed by Mikhelson's VAC foundation, is located in a century-old power-plant that is being redesigned with great pomp by Italian 'starchitect' Renzo Piano.
The enormous space is set to house galleries, cafes and art residencies, and is to open its doors in September 2020, Mikhelson told a press-conference.
The billionaire toured the cathedral-like site Monday, accompanied by daughter Victoria and the frail-looking, 82-year-old Piano.
At the press conference, Piano recounted that when the two first saw the power plant, he told Mikhelson "he had to buy all the buildings around to demolish them and let light flood the place," a major task in a neighbourhood just across the river from the Kremlin.
"And he did it," Piano said.
"The owner is a ..

Russia's richest man unveils new Moscow arts centre

From the Sacred Valley of the Incas, threatened by a proposed airport, to a Yazidi shrine in Iraq, a foundation warned Tuesday of 25 sites in urgent need of protection.
Unveiling its watch list for 2020, the World Monuments Fund highlighted locations in 21 countries, including Chile's Easter Island, which is home to renowned rock carvings created by indigenous people.
WMF said in a statement that the sites "are facing daunting threats such as encroaching urbanisation, political turmoil, natural disaster, and violent conflicts, or present compelling conservation opportunities."
It referenced Paris's Notre-Dame cathedral, which was badly damaged in a fire this year, and the San Antonio Woolworth Building in Texas, significant in the African-American civil rights movement but threatened by a redevelopment plan.
The non-governmental organisation said Peru's Sacred Valley near Machu Picchu was in danger because of plans to build a new airport and noted that rebuilding a destroyed shrine in 

Incas valley, Yazidi shrine: foundation warns of threatened sites

At least 30 people were killed in a landslide caused by heavy rainfall in the western Cameroon city of Bafoussam on Tuesday, state media reported.
"At least 33 bodies" have been removed from the mud, the state-run Cameroon Tribune newspaper said on its Facebook page.
Cameroon Radio Television gave the death toll at around 30, a number confirmed to AFP by a senior local official on the condition of anonymity.
"The houses that collapsed were built on the side of a hill in a risk zone," said the official of the West Region, of which Bafoussam is the capital.
He said the landslide was caused by the "torrential rain" that has fallen in the country over the past few days.

At least 30 killed in landslide in west Cameroon

More than 200 killings of journalists are unsolved in 13 countries cited by a media watchdog group for enabling "impunity" for the crimes.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said the  countries on its list were home to the majority of journalist killings over the past 10 years.
The countries "represent a mix of conflict-ridden regions and more stable countries where criminal groups, politicians, government officials, and other powerful actors resort to violence to silence critical and investigative reporting." Somalia was the worst country for the fifth year in a row in a ranking based on deaths as a percentage of each country's population -- 25 unsolved killings in a country of 15 million people.
Syria was second and Iraq third on the list; the country with the largest number of unsolved killings was the Philippines with 41, followed by Mexico with 30, the New York-based group said.
The 13 countries accounted for 222 of the 318 deaths in the last 10 years, CPJ said, with many of ...

13 countries cited for enabling 'impunity' in journalist deaths

Late entry Kiki Bertens stunned world number one Ashleigh Barty with a comeback three-set victory to shake-up the season-ending WTA Finals in Shenzhen Tuesday.
All four players can still qualify from Red Group after Belinda Bencic's three-set victory over Petra Kvitova in the later match.
Bertens looked in deep trouble at a set and break down, but turned the tide with ruthless returning and aggressive play at the net to overwhelm a deflated Barty, who could have sealed a spot in the semi-finals with victory.
The world No.10 won 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 in two hours and nine minutes in a see-saw match featuring 12 breaks of serve.
"Of course you're always ready to play, but I did not see it coming today," Bertens said of her late call-up. "In the beginning I was struggling. As the match continued, I felt better and better."
Bertens was a late replacement for world No.3 Naomi Osaka, who earlier in the day withdrew from the round-robin tournament due to a shoulder injury.
She appeared nervous under 

Bertens stuns world number one Barty in WTA Finals

They borrowed thousands of dollars to fund their children's illegal trips to Europe, and now the Vietnamese parents of missing migrants feared dead in Britain have no idea how to pay off the crippling loans.
Their kids planned to send back money after getting hoped-for jobs in the UK, where 39 people were found dead in a truck last week.
Families in central Vietnam think their loved ones might have been in the refrigerated container, leaving behind mountains of debt borrowed from relatives or credit unions.
The money was handed over to smugglers for flights, fake passports and truck rides into Europe, a prime destination for migrants escaping remote villages and dreaming of better lives abroad.
Some of their children were already working in Europe, sending hundreds of dollars back every month to families in an impoverished part of Vietnam where most people are farmers, fishermen or factory workers.
"We still owe nearly USD 8,600," said Nguyen Dinh Gia, who believes his son Nguyen Dinh 

AFP

AFP

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