Liverpool's undermanned defence held out for a precious clean sheet but Bayern Munich will also be confident of progress to the Champions League quarter-finals after a 0-0 draw in the first leg of their last 16 tie at Anfield.
Sadio Mane wasted the best chance for the hosts on Tuesday, when the Senegalese forward fired wide during an open first 45 minutes, but a cagey second half left it all to be decided when the sides meet again in Munich on March 13.
Without the talismanic presence of Virgil van Dijk through suspension and the injured Joe Gomez and Dejan Lovren, Liverpool were forced to name a make-shift central defence with Brazilian midfielder Fabinho moved back to partner Joel Matip.
That unfamiliarity showed in the early stages as the hosts started nervously at the back.
Matip breathed a sigh of relief when he turned Serge Gnabry's driven cross towards his own goal only for the ball to bounce to safety off Alisson Becker's chest.
However, the Brazilian goalkeeper played his ...

Stalemate leaves Liverpool and Bayern plenty to play for

PTI Automatic

Steve Stricker will be named the captain of the US 2020 Ryder Cup team on Wednesday, according to multiple reports, becoming the first American in the role without a major title.
ESPN and Wisconsin.golf reported that Stricker, a Wisconsin native whose home state will host the event next year at Whistling Straits, will be handed the post by the PGA of America.
Stricker, 51, would become the 29th US captain and be charged with reclaiming the trophy from holders Europe after the Americans were routed 17 1/2-10 1/2 last September in France. The Europeans have won four of the past five Ryder Cups.
Stricker was a member of the 2014 task force that revamped the US Ryder Cup program and has served as a vice-captain for the past three editions and served as the 2017 Presidents Cup captain when the hosts won over an International side at Liberty National.
"It would be a huge honor and being right there in my home state would be super cool," Stricker said at the PGA Phoenix Open three weeks ...

Stricker to be named US 2020 Ryder Cup captain: reports

The children playing cricket in the unlikely setting of London's Trafalgar Square could have been forgiven for not knowing the identity of the grey-haired gentleman loping between the wickets.
Yet even wearing a heavy coat to guard against the chill of an English winter morning, the tall, bespectacled and slightly stooping figure of Clive Lloyd was still instantly recognisable to generations of cricket fans.
Lloyd was in London on Tuesday at an event marking 100 days until the start of the 2019 World Cup in England and Wales.
But unlike all the England cricketers past and present also involved, including Nasser Hussain, Graeme Swann, Alastair Cook and James Anderson, Lloyd knows what it is be a World Cup-winner, having led West Indies to victories in Lord's finals in 1975 and 1979.
The 1975 edition, the inaugural men's World Cup, saw West Indies captain Lloyd make a superb century during a 17-run win in the final against Australia.
"It was the first World Cup -- they'll never be ...

World Cup 'firsts' still vivid for West Indies hero Lloyd

Barcelona coach Ernesto Valverde shrugged off his team's struggles in front of goal after they were held to a 0-0 draw away at Lyon in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie.
The Spanish side had most of the chances at the Groupama Stadium on Tuesday, with Luis Suarez firing just wide in the second half, although it was Lyon who came the closest when Martin Terrier hit the bar early on.
Lionel Messi and co. were once again left frustrated on the road at the business end of the competition, and have now gone six away matches without winning in the Champions League knockout rounds, scoring just a single goal in that time. It is a run that goes back three years.
Desperate to end Real Madrid's recent European dominance, Barca must now finish the job when the teams meet again at the Camp Nou on March 13, but Lyon remain in the tie.
Barcelona's form needs to improve between now and then, though -- they have drawn four of their last five matches in all, and have scored just ...

Valverde finds positives as Barcelona draw blank in Lyon to leave tie open

Ross Taylor became New Zealand's highest scoring one-day international batsman Wednesday as the Black Caps set Bangladesh an imposing 331 target to win the third one-dayer in Dunedin and avoid a series whitewash.
Taylor scored 69 off 81 balls as the Black Caps cruised to 330 for six after losing the toss and being sent in to bat, with Henry Nicholls and Tom Latham also making half centuries.
Mustafizur Rahman was the only Bangladesh bowler to take two wickets, but they came at a price as he conceded 93 runs from his 10 overs.
Taylor's 47th ODI half-century took his career tally in the 50-over format to 8,026 runs, overtaking Stephen Fleming's 8,007.
The 34-year-old, who made his ODI debut in 2006, reached his milestone in 203 innings with a superb average of 48.34.
"I definitely would have taken that when I played my first match donkey's years ago," he said.
"If you play long enough I guess these records come along but it's nice to set the bar for the next guy.
"I'm still enjoying ...

Taylor-made record as Black Caps flay Bangladesh attack

Cyclone Oma intensified to a damaging category three storm, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said Wednesday, warning that it could bring severe weather to the continent after hitting the Pacific Islands.
In the early hours of Wednesday Oma produced winds of up to 185 kilometres (115 miles) per hour, roughly equivalent to a category one hurricane.
It is currently gusting far off the Australian coast, having passed New Caledonia, where high winds cut electricity, destroyed crops, downed trees and shuttered schools and businesses.
New Caledonia's Civil Security agency reported on Tuesday that around 3,000 people were without power and dozens of telecoms towers were affected.
The storm also produced torrential rain in Vanuatu, where clean up operations are under way.
"Severe Tropical Cyclone Oma is expected to move slowly southwest over the Coral Sea during the next few days," the Bureau said.
The storm is expected to bring "abnormally high tides" to parts of southern Queensland on ...

Cylone Oma strengthens, Australian coast warning triggered

An avalanche at a ski station in the Swiss Alps engulfed up to a dozen people on Tuesday, a local official and media reports said, with hopes fading of finding survivors in a disaster that hit a resort busy with skiers on school holidays.
The avalanche hit the Plaine-Morte ski slope in Crans-Montana, southwestern Switzerland, in the early afternoon, local police said in a tweet.  A local newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, quoted the head of Crans-Montana's municipal government, Nicolas Feraud, as estimating that "between 10 and 12 people" remained buried under the snow.
There was no official confirmation of any deaths.
"We are shocked and hope for good news about these people," Feraud was quoted as saying.
A first attempt at locating victims using sniffer dogs was unsuccessful, a rescue worker told Le Nouvelliste, with four helicopters joining the search from the air.
Pierre Huguenin, of the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, described the snow in the area as damp and dense.
"These ...

Avalanche engulfs around a dozen people at Swiss ski station

Several Islamic State group jihadists and dozens of civilians, including foreigners, quit the last IS-held pocket in eastern Syria on Tuesday, US-backed forces said.
IS, which in 2014 declared a cross-border "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq, has been expelled from all the land it held except for a patch of Baghouz village.
Backed by air strikes by the US-led coalition, the Syrian Democratic Forces have already retaken most of the village.
SDF spokesman Adnan Afrin said a convoy of trucks entered Baghouz on Tuesday to transfer jihadists and their relatives out to SDF-held territory.
"Dozens of civilians and some fighters have handed themselves over to the SDF," he told reporters at nearby Al-Omar oil field.
The spokesman said foreigners were among leaving but did not specify their nationalities or if they were civilians or fighters.
"This is the first time civilians will make it out in four days," Afrin said.  Thousands of people -- mostly women and children related to IS members .

Jihadists, civilians quit IS holdout in east Syria: US-backed force

US First Lady Melania Trump, a former model, on Tuesday paid brief tribute to iconic designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died Tuesday at age 85.
"Today the world lost a creative genius. We will miss you Karl! #RIPKarlLagerfeld," tweeted Trump, a longtime fan of the prolific couturier who had helmed the label Chanel since 1983.
The wife of Donald Trump posted a photo of Lagerfeld and herself wearing a beige dress-jacket combo in Chanel's signature boucle, and another from a 2017 White House conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when she sported a white cashmere skirt suit Lagerfeld designed for her.
Trump also posted Lagerfeld's original sketch of the design, which featured a pearl-buttoned, belted peplum jacket and pencil skirt.
The First Lady notably wore Chanel to her first state dinner, donning a shimmering, sleeveless gown to host France's Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron in April 2018.
In 2017 Lagerfeld told WSJ Magazine that Americans need to "deal with" the election ..

Melania Trump salutes 'creative genius' Karl Lagerfeld

French police on Tuesday killed a man who wounded two pedestrians in a knife attack in the southern city of Marseille, officials said.
A third person suffered leg wounds from bullet fragments, police said.  The knife attack occurred in the afternoon on a busy street in the centre of the port city, the second largest in France.
Police said they opened fire on the assailant when he threatened them with a weapon.
The reason for the attack was not immediately known.

Police kill man who injured two in Marseille knife attack

Fentanyl, a highly dangerous painkiller at the heart of the US opioid epidemic, has been overprescribed by doctors, according to a report Tuesday that accused medical authorities and producers of being too lax in their oversight.
The drug is a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more powerful than morphine and which is largely sold on the black market.
But it is prescribed in certain rare cases of cancer under what are supposed to be very tight restrictions, in the form of pills, lozenges or sprays under the tongue. It is supposed to be used only on cancer patients for whom other opioid painkillers have been insufficent.
The report in Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, said that this was not the case, however.
The investigation, carried out by experts from Johns Hopkins University, said that of the thousands of patients who had been prescribed fentanyl, between a third and half of them should never have received the drug.
One doctor in five did not know that fentanyl ..

US doctors overprescribed deadly drug fentanyl to patients

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday slammed the "shocking" anti-Semitic vandalism of a French cemetery, which prompted a cabinet colleague to urge French Jews to "come home" to Israel.
"Today something shocking happened in France. Eighty Jewish graves were desecrated with Nazi symbols by wild anti-Semites," Netanyahu said in a video clip released by his office.
"I call on the leaders of France and Europe to take a strong stand against anti-Semitism. It is a plague that endangers everyone, not just us," he said.
The graves were daubed with swastikas at a Jewish cemetery in the village of Quatzenheim, close to the border with Germany in the Alsace region.
Photos show the Nazi symbols in blue spray-painted on the damaged graves, one of which bears the words "Elsassisches Schwarzen Wolfe" ("Black Alsatian Wolves"), a separatist group with links to neo-Nazis in the 1970s.
Immigration Minister Yoav Gallant said the vandalism "conjures images of dark times in the history of .

Netanyahu slams 'shocking' anti-Semitic vandalism in France

Germany and France on Tuesday vowed to seek reform of European competition rules that prevent blockbuster mergers of homegrown companies, with French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire saying there is "sometimes nothing more stupid than European rules".
Smarting from the EU's veto of an Alstom-Siemens rail merger, the two European powerhouses proposed in a new strategy to build European industrial "champions" that national authorities should in some cases be able to override decisions made by Brussels.
Critics of the EU's decision had argued that it was based on competition regulations that they said were obsolete in the face of growing rivalry from Chinese giants.
"The choice is simple when it comes to industrial policy: unite our forces or allow our industrial base and capacity to gradually disappear," the two economy ministers, France's Bruno Le Maire and Germany's Peter Altmaier, said in a joint statement.
"Competition rules are essential but existing rules need to be revised to be ..

Germany, France take aim at EU anti-trust rules in new industrial strategy

Karl Lagerfeld's cat Choupette was already the most famous cat in fashion.
Now the white fluffy Burmese cat that the late fashion designer doted on could be about to become the richest feline on the planet.
The pampered eight-year-old puss has enjoyed a jetset lifestyle eating off silver platters since Lagerfeld "kidnapped" her in 2011 from his young friend male model Baptiste Giabiconi.
Long before his death on Tuesday, Lagerfeld said he had made sure that she would go on living in the style that she had become accustomed to, with her own personal bodyguard and two maids.
"Choupette is a rich girl," he once told French television, hinting that had written her into his will.
"She has her own fortune," he added, thought to be around three million euros ($3.4 million) which she earned with him doing adverts for a German car firm and a Japanese cosmetics brand.
"If anything happens the person who looks after her will not go without," said Lagerfeld, who designed for Chanel, Fendi and his 

Could Lagerfeld's cat Choupette inherit his millions?

London Fashion Week mourned Karl Lagerfeld on Tuesday, with designers paying tribute to the "irreplaceable" German icon who helped define the industry.
"It's such a loss. I know he wasn't that young, but I didn't expect it," said fashion student Edson Toniato, dressed in a black suit and burgundy turtleneck.
The news hit around midday, throwing 180 Strand, Fashion Week's central London nerve centre, into a sombre mood.
"We literally just found out on our way here, so it was quite a shock," said fellow student Niamh Kerins, wearing a leopard coat.
"I've not really had the time to process it properly," she added, as buyers, photographers and models shuttled from show to show around her.  Singer "Girly" said she was struggling to digest the news of the 85-year-old's death.
Lagerfeld's unchanging look, with his ever-present sunglasses and white mane, made people think "he just wasn't human, you thought he was ageless," she added.
"The very idea that he's mortal is shocking. Really ...

London Fashion Week stops to honour 'genius' Lagerfeld

Opening bowler Vernon Philander has been ruled out of the second Test between South Africa and Sri Lanka starting at St George's Park on Thursday.
South African coach Ottis Gibson said on Tuesday that Philander, who did not bowl in the second innings of Sri Lanka's one-wicket win in Durban last weekend, had a grade one hamstring tear, which would keep him out of action for 10 to 12 days.
Gibson said uncapped all-rounder Wiaan Mulder would be considered as a "like for like" replacement, depending on conditions.
Gibson defended South Africa's tactics during a world record last wicket winning stand of 78 between Kusal Perera, who made 153 not out, and number 11, Vishwa Fernando.
"I didn't see that happening, to be honest," said Gibson of his team's defeat, "but credit has to go to them, particularly Perera.
"I thought our tactics were spot on. We threw everything at him and he withstood all of that. We tried spin, we bowled over the wicket, we bowled around the wicket, we bounced him, we 

South Africa's Philander ruled out of second Test

Seven children from the same family lost their lives in a fire that ravaged their home on Canada's Atlantic coast, police said Tuesday.
The victims were Syrian refugees, according to public broadcaster CBC.
"There are seven fatalities resulting from the incident," Halifax police, who are investigating the cause of the blaze, said in a statement.
"All deceased are believed to be young children from the same family. A woman and a man remain in hospital." A neighbour, Danielle Burt, told CBC that she heard an explosion in the middle of the night before seeing the flames ravaging the home.
"I heard a huge bang, and I was laying in bed with my daughter, followed by a woman screaming, so I jumped up out of bed and looked out the back window and all I could see was flames shooting out from the back door going out onto their deck," she said.

Seven children from same family die in Canada house fire

An avalanche at a ski station in the Swiss Alps buried several people on Tuesday, local police said.
The avalanche on the Plaine-Morte ski track in Crans-Montana occurred at about 2:15 pm (1315 GMT) and left "several people buried", police said in a tweet.
Officers said rescue teams were at the scene.
Plaine-Morte, at an altitude of about 3,000 metres, is the highest ski track at the Crans-Montana resort.
Crans-Montana's website had listed the risk of an avalanche at two on scale that runs from one (lowest risk) to five.
Tuesday's avalanche was unusual in that it affected a designated ski track, while the vast majority of deadly avalanches in the Alpine nation hit people skiing off-piste.
Traffic is higher than normal at ski resorts across Switzerland this week because of mid-term school holidays.

Several people 'buried' in avalanche at Swiss ski station

A Tanzanian court on Tuesday sentenced a Chinese woman dubbed the "Ivory Queen" to 15 years in jail for her role in trafficking tusks from more than 400 elephants.
Yang Fenlan, 69, was convicted in Dar es Salaam of trafficking 860 tusks between 2000 and 2014, a haul representing the slaughter of dozens of herds of elephants.
Two Tanzanian men were also found guilty for their role in the illegal commerce. They were also sentenced to 15 years each.
"The prosecution proved the case against the accused beyond a reasonable doubt," Judge Huruma Shaidi told the court.
The prosecution showed the two men had collected elephant tusks across Tanzania, bringing them to Frenlan.
"The testimonies proved that all three accused worked hand in hand," Shaidi said.
The trio were also ordered to pay a joint fine of 13 million dollars (11.5 million euros) -- roughly equivalent to twice the market value of the ivory they profited from -- or face an additional two years in jail.
Defence lawyers said they ...

Tanzania jails Chinese 'Ivory Queen' trafficker for 15 years

The trial of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's brother, who was arrested two years ago on charges of financial violations, opened Tuesday in Tehran, the judiciary's news website Mizan Online reported.
Hossein Fereydoun, a key adviser to Rouhani, was arrested in July 2017 following long-running corruption allegations, with the judiciary saying at the time that he was the subject of "multiple investigations".
At the first hearing on Tuesday Fereydoun and four associates were present in court with their lawyers for a session that lasted more than two hours, Mizan Online said.
During the hearing a representative of the state prosecutor read out the indictment, it said, without giving further details.
A new hearing will be held next week, Mizan Online said without giving an exact date.
Fereydoun and his brother do not share the same name because Rouhani changed his when he was younger.
A day after his arrest in 2017, Fereydoun was released on bail, reported by local media to be millions ..

Trial opens for Iran president's brother

Honda will shut its UK plant with the loss of 3,500 jobs, the Japanese car maker announced Tuesday as the global auto industry faces "unprecedented changes" and the UK economy hits the skids on Brexit uncertainty.
The factory in Swindon, southwest England, which is Honda's only EU plant, will shut in 2021 "at the end of the current model's production lifecycle", the company said as carmakers worldwide increasingly invest in greener electric vehicles over diesel cars.
Business Secretary Greg Clark described Honda's decision as "devastating" and "a particularly bitter blow to the thousands of skilled and dedicated staff who work at the factory, their families and all of those employed in the supply chain".
Prime Minister Theresa May spoke to Honda's president to "express her disappointment at the decision," according to her Downing Street office.  Katsushi Inoue, Honda's chief officer for European regional operations, said the decision had "not been taken lightly".
The firm blamed ...

AFP

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