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AFP

  • Ben Stokes says obstruction dismissal was act of self-defence

    England’s 64-run defeat by world champions Australia was overshadowed by the controversy that ensued early in the 26th over of their run chase.

    Ben Stokes, went down the pitch and played a Mitchell Starc delivery back to the left-arm fast bowler, who then aimed a powerful throw back in his direction as he tried for a run-out.

    As Stokes leaned back and turned to make his ground, the ball hit the Durham all-rounder’s arm.

    Australia appealed and, after lengthy deliberation involving the third umpire, Stokes was given out, much to the anger of England captain Eoin Morgan, who tried to take the matter up with opposing skipper Steven Smith.

    Batsmen are allowed to protect themselves but they must not, under the Laws of Cricket, “wilfully” obstruct the field.

    Stokes told ESPN Cricinfo on Monday: “A guy was standing there five feet away from me and it was just a complete reaction.

    “I didn’t put my hand there wilfully, it was purely out of human reaction to protect myself. But the decision was made, there’s nothing I can do but it wasn’t wilful whatsoever.

    “It’s one of those decisions where you can’t look back and have any regrets because it’s been made. You can’t change what’s happened it’s just a shame it came to the uproar it has.”

    The series continues at Old Trafford on Tuesday, with Australia 2-0 up with three to play.

  • Germany pledges 6 bn euros for refugees as France vows to take 24,000

    As European leaders stepped up efforts to tackle the historic crisis, France also said it would take 24,000 more asylum-seekers under a European plan to relocate 120,000 refugees from hard-hit frontline countries.

    Meanwhile, the poor and desperate kept coming, both on the land corridor through Turkey and the Balkans and on overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean on journeys that have claimed thousands of lives this year.

    Underscoring the danger brought home so graphically by last week’s picture of three-year-old Aylan lying drowned in the surf, a Greek passenger ferry on Monday sent its lifeboats to rescue 61 migrants whose boat was at risk of sinking off Lesbos island.

    And migrants rescued by Italian coastguards on Sunday said five of their group were still missing.

    Merkel, at a joint news conference with her vice-chancellor, said: “What we are experiencing now is something that will … change our country in coming years.”

    “We want the change to be positive, and we believe we can accomplish that.”

    Germany is expecting at least 10,000 more refugees to arrive on Monday, an official in the south of the country said, after 20,000 entered over the weekend.

    Merkel hailed as “breathtaking” the emotional and warm welcome given to thousands of migrants who arrived in packed trains in Germany after a gruelling odyssey through Hungary and Austria.

    Germany was now seen by many abroad as a place of “hope”, Merkel said, after citizens turned up in large numbers to shower the new arrivals with gifts, cash and toys.

    Europe’s top economy — which expects 800,000 asylum requests this year, four times last year’s total — faces extra costs estimated at 10 billion euros ($11 billion) this year and next.

    Merkel said that the federal government would contribute six billion euros for new shelters, extra police and language training in 2016.

    Schengen ‘collapse’ warning

    However, despite German solidarity, Merkel stressed that other EU countries must take in more migrants because “only with common European solidarity can we master this effort”.

    Europe has battled to overcome deep divisions on the migrant crisis and French President Francois Hollande warned that unless the EU makes a greater collective effort, the core European ideal of open borders will be in peril.

    “If there is not a united policy, this mechanism will not work, it will collapse, and it will … undoubtedly be the end of Schengen, the return of national borders,” he said about the passport-free zone across much of the continent.

    But Europe looked far from united as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has taken a hard line, said quotas would be futile so long as refugees kept streaming in.

    “As long as we can’t defend Europe’s outer borders, it is not worth talking about how many people we can take in,” Orban said in a speech in Budapest.

    Hungary, struggling with massive numbers arriving through the Balkans, had Friday and Saturday bussed refugees to the border with Austria, from where some 20,000 travelled on to Germany over the weekend.

    EU quotas

    Under pressure from Berlin and Paris, the European Union is readying fresh quotas that would see the two top EU economies take nearly half of the 120,000 refugees to be relocated, under a plan by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.

    According to Juncker’s proposal to be unveiled Wednesday, Germany would take over 31,000, France 24,000, and Spain almost 15,000 to relieve the burden on frontline countries Greece, Italy and Hungary, a European source told AFP.

    Hollande confirmed France would take in 24,000 refugees over the next two years and proposed to host an international conference on Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.

    In Berlin, hundreds of refugees and their children again sat on blankets and suitcases outside a registration centre, as volunteers brought them water and food, in scenes repeated across the country.

    “Germany is one of the best countries in Europe and the world, but it’s too slow here with the paperwork,” said a 25-year-old Syrian music student, waiting for his turn in the overwhelmed office.

    “I’ve been here for 12 days without anything happening.”

    The governor of the Bank of Finland, Erkki Liikanen, meanwhile said he would do his part by donating a month’s salary to help asylum-seekers.

    “That is 10,000 euros ($11,200),” he wrote on Facebook. “I know the funds will get across to those who are suffering the most.”

    And the UN High Commissioner urged Italian millionaires to help Syrian refugees in Jordan by donating 15,000 euros, enabling 10 families to live in dignity for a year.

  • KSE slump over anti-corruption crackdown fears

    The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange index of 100 shares lost 2.67 percent or 905 points to close at 32,986 points.

    The index had shed 4.11 percent during last month’s  international turmoil sparked by fears over China’s slowing economy, and had recovered little ground since then.

    “Today the rumours about the potential arrests ofstock (market)-related people intensified the panic,” said Mohammad Sohail, an analyst and the chief of Topline Securities.

    Pakistani authorities have in recent months embarked on an anti-corruption drive, with former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who held office from 2008-2012, facing 24 graft charges.

    He was Monday granted bail in 12 of the cases after a court issued an arrest warrant for him last week.

    Former petroleum minister Asim Hussain, a close aide to ex-president Asif Ali Zardari, was also remanded into the custody of Pakistan’s Rangers paramilitary force over another corruption case.

    Officials of the state-run Sui Southern Gas Company, one of the  exchange’s blue chips, were also being questioned by anti-corruption officials.

     

  • China cuts 2014 GDP growth: govt

    The new number remains the lowest since 1990, when growth plummeted to 3.9 percent. Global stock markets have been pummelled by concerns over slowing growth in the nation, a key driver of the world economy.

    The National Bureau of Statistics said on its website it reduced the gross domestic product (GDP) growth figure from the 7.4 percent announced in January after a “preliminary confirmation”. A final confirmation could come in January 2016, it added.

    After decades of double-digit expansion, authorities are trying to pull off a tricky rebalancing — from an investment- and export-led economic model to one where domestic consumer demand drives slower but more sustainable growth.

    Finance minister Lou Jiwei told a G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Ankara at the weekend that the economy had entered a “new normal”.

    Growth was “expected to remain at around seven percent and the situation may sustain for four to five years”, he said.

    Chinese growth slowed in the first two quarters of this year, reaching 7.0 percent in both periods.

  • Bangladesh cricketer faces arrest over alleged maid abuse

    Police raided the house of the pace bowler and his wife Nritto Shahadat on Sunday night after officers found the injured and crying maid on a street in the capital Dhaka.

    “She had injury marks on her eyes and some other parts of the body. She was crying when we rescued her,” police inspector Anwar Hossain told AFP.

    “She told us that she was working as a maid in cricketer Shahadat’s house and alleged that he and his wife tortured her,” he said.

    The maid, Mahfuza Akter Happy, who appeared to have a swollen black eye, alleged to private television Channel 24 on Sunday night that the couple beat her.

    Police have sent the girl to a Dhaka hospital for treatment and filed a case against the couple accusing them of child repression, local police officer Tanvir, who uses one name, said.

    “We raided the house of Shahadat on Sunday night but did not find them. This morning we continued our efforts to arrest the couple,” Tanvir told AFP.

    Shahadat, who played 38 Tests and 51 one-day internationals for Bangladesh, missed out on the recent series against India and South Africa after twisting his ankle during a Test match against Pakistan in May.

    Abuse of domestic servants is widespread across South Asia.

  • Beijing admits stock bubbles, says routs almost over

    The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index by more than 150 percent in the year to June 12, fuelled by debt rather than fundamentals and encouraged by authorities.

    It has since plummeted nearly 40 percent since then, with official interventions to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars failing to arrest the declines.

    People’s Bank of China (PBoC) Governor Zhou Xiaochuan pointed to the March-June period in particular, when the Shanghai index leaped 70 percent.

    “Bubbles continued to build up until mid-June,” he told a G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Ankara at the weekend, according to a statement on the PBoC website.

    “Since mid-June, three rounds of corrections took place in China’s stock market,” he went on. “The first two did not have international impact, while the third one in late August (had) some global influence.”

    Chinese bourses are largely separated from the rest of the world’s financial system by limits on investment from overseas. But news last week of a contraction in an official gauge of Chinese factory activity sent domestic and world markets into a tailspin on worries the economy was headed for a “hard landing”.

    “The correction in the stock market has now come close to an end,” Zhou said in the statement, refraining from using the word “burst” and adding the Chinese economy was not “much affected” by the rout.

    The market regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), echoed his comments in a statement on Sunday.

    “Gains on the stock market had been too rapid and large, forming stock market bubbles, therefore subsequent plunges and adjustments were inevitable,” it said.

    “At present, market risks and bubbles have been released to some extent,” it added.

    Analysts estimate Beijing has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up stock prices, including funding state-backed China Securities Finance Corp. (CSF) to buy shares.

    But investors worry the government will reduce its intervention, given the huge cost for little effect, and the market’s limited impact on the real economy.

    The CSRC sought to reassure traders, saying: “When fierce and abnormal volatilities take place in the stock market and may trigger systemic risks, the government will absolutely not sit back.

    “We will take decisive and multiple measures to stabilise the market in a timely manner,” it said, adding the CSF will “continue to play a stabilising role”.

    “Market transactions are basically normal and the liquidity is ample,” it added.

    The state-owned China Securities Journal reported last week that securities firms were transferring more funds to the CSF to help stabilise the market, with the additional amount estimated at more than 30 billion yuan ($4.7 billion).

    The benchmark Shanghai stock index edged up 0.16 percent to 3,165.33 in mid-morning Monday, on the first day of trade after an extended holiday weekend.

  • Queen goes low-key for record reign landmark

    The queen will ride on a steam train in Scotland to inaugurate a new railway line and will host a dinner at Balmoral Castle with her grandson Prince William and his wife Kate in attendance.

    According to calculations by royal officials, at around 1630 GMT Elizabeth will beat her great-great grandmother Victoria’s time on the throne: a total of 63 years, seven months and two days which she served between 1837 and 1901.

    The exact hour has been difficult to determine because the exact start of her reign — the moment when her father George VI passed away — is difficult to work out as the king died at night in his sleep.

    The 89-year-old Elizabeth, also the world’s oldest monarch, had originally not planned anything special for the day itself but reportedly agreed to a public appearance due to public pressure.

    “You need to remember for the queen this is a date whose calculation rests on the death of her father and great-great grandmother. That naturally colours the way she sees it,” a royal source said.

    “While she acknowledges it as an historic moment, it’s also for her not a moment she would personally celebrate, which is why she has been keen to convey business as usual, and no fuss,” the source said.

    Buckingham Palace will mark the day with a photo display of her reign and the Royal Mint has designed a new silver £20 coin (27 euros, $30) with the five official portraits since she became queen in 1952.

    Queen Elizabeth II’s reign in figures

    Queen Elizabeth II will on Wednesday pass the landmark for longest-reigning monarch set by Queen Victoria. Here are some figures about her reign, which has lasted more than 63 years:

    – 33,446,430 minutes or 23,226 days, 16 hours and 30 minutes is the amount of time the queen will have spent on the throne when she breaks the record on September 9 at roughly 5:30 pm (1630 GMT).

    – 12 prime ministers have been in power during her reign. The first was Winston Churchill, who mentored her when she first took the throne aged 25 in 1952, and the most recent is David Cameron.

    – 10 hours spent delivering her 62 Queen’s Speeches, delivered at the state opening of parliament and written for her by the government of the day to outline its legislative plans.

    – 56 Christmas messages delivered to the nation. It is a ritual for many British families to sit and watch the queen’s festive message on television after eating their Christmas lunch.

    – 97 state visits, the first to Norway in 1955 and the most recent to Germany in June. Despite her extensive travels, the queen does not possess a passport.

    – 50,000 people on average are invited every year to garden parties, dinners and other events hosted by the queen.

    – 67 years of marriage to Prince Philip whom she has called “my strength and stay”. The couple were married on November 20, 1947.

    – The world’s longest-serving living monarch is Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has reigned for six years longer than the queen.

  • US Military Academy pillow fight leaves 30 injured: report

    The brawl left 24 young cadets with concussions, the West Point military academy told the paper, after reports that some stuffed their pillows with hard objects.

    A total of 30 cadets were injured, and students reported that the list of wounds included one broken leg as well as dislocated shoulders.

    The yearly right of passage is meant to foster class spirit and celebrate the first-year “plebe” class’s completion of its rigorous summer training.

    However, the August 20 pillow fight took a turn for the worse when some cadets reportedly stuffed the helmets they were encouraged to wear during the fracas inside their pillow cases.

    “Mitigating measures” had been put in place by the upperclassmen who oversaw the event, such as requiring cadets to wear helmets, academyspokesman Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Kasker said in the Times.

    Video posted on YouTube showed several hundred students vigorously socking each other with pillows during the free-for-all in a courtyard. Pictures of bloodied cadets were also posted on Twitter.

    “West Point applauds the cadets’ desire to build esprit and regrets the injuries to our cadets,” Kasker said. “We are conducting appropriate investigations into the causes of the injuries.”

    No disciplinary measures have been taken against the cadets and there were no plans to end the yearly brawl, the Times said.

    Some cadets told the paper that one student who was knocked unconscious had not yet returned to class, however Kasker insisted all cadets were back on duty.

    West Point has a long history of pillow fights, dating back to at least 1897, the Times added.

    The military academy’s 2013 fight was canceled after a cadet put a lockbox in a pillow case the previous year, it said.

  • Australia's Watson announces Test retirement

    The last of the 34-year-old’s 10-year Test career came in the Ashes opener at Cardiff which England won by 169 runs.

    Watson made 30 and 19 with the bat, and failed to take a wicket, causing him to lose his place for the rest of the series.

    Watson’s Test retirement was announced on Cricket Australia’s official website.

    BREAKING: Shane Watson has announced his retirement from Test Match cricket - What are you favourite memories of Shane Watson from his 59 Test Matches for Australia? Posted by ICC - International Cricket Council on Sunday, September 6, 2015
    "It’s been a decision that hasn’t come lightly, over the last month especially," he said. "I know it’s the right time to move on and still hopefully play the shorter formats of the game, one-dayers and T20s. "I've been through a lot of different waves of emotion about what is right for myself, my family and most importantly the team as well. "Over the last couple of days there was a lot of clarity (for me) of what the right decision was. I just know that I've given everything I possibly can to get the best out of myself." Watson, who captained his country in one test and nine one day internationals, steps down after being ruled out of the rest of the one-day international series by a calf injury sustained in the tourists' victory at Lord's on Saturday. An Ashes winner in 2013/14 and this year's World Cup -- who had his run ins with the cricket authorities being one of four players to be dropped from the squad during the 2013 tour of India for not doing their homework -- he informed his teammates of his decision on Sunday morning. It follows Australia Test captain Michael Clarke's move to retire from all forms of cricket in the wake of the Ashes series defeat in England. Watson played 59 Tests for Australia, scoring 3,731 runs and taking 75 wickets.

  • Refugees arrive in Germany to cheers, 'welcome' signs

    Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann warned his country’s admittance of thousands of refugees crossing from Hungary was just a “temporary” measure and urged the 28-member European Union to collectively deal with the record numbers.

    Masses of people fleeing war and misery from Syria, Iraq and beyond have rushed from Hungary through Austria into Germany, which expects to take in 800,000 refugees this year at a cost of 10 billion euros ($11 billion).

    In moving scenes the newcomers, clutching their children and sparse belongings, stepped off trains in Munich, Frankfurt and elsewhere to cheers from well-wishers who held balloons, snapped photos and gave them water and food.

    “The people here treat us so well, they treat us like real human beings, not like in Syria,” said Mohammad, a 32-year-old from the devastated town of Qusayr, his eyes welling up with tears.

    With the EU divided along east-west lines on how to handle the record numbers, Pope Francis called for every Catholic parish to take in a refugee family.

    On Saturday alone about 8,000 migrants crossed German borders, federal police told AFP.

    In Munich, some 1,200 came in early Sunday, a day after trains brought 6,800 to the southern German city.

    As refugees got off trains, police directed them to waiting buses bound for temporary shelters, which have been set up in public buildings, hotels and army barracks across the country.

    “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here,” crowds chanted at the Frankfurt railway station overnight.

    While Germany has seen a spate of ugly xenophobic rallies and attacks against foreigners, it has also seen an outpouring of support, donations and volunteer efforts by people who believe the country, given its dark history and current wealth, has a special obligation to help refugees.

    Humanitarian emergency

     

    Nonetheless, politicians in Germany and elsewhere in Europe have voiced growing concern about the record numbers, and warned the influx would spell both logistical and political problems.

    In Austria, Faymann said that Vienna’s assistance was a temporary manifestation of Vienna’s “goodwill” in the face of a humanitarian emergency.

    “There is no alternative to a common European solution,” said Faymann, calling for a summit of EU leaders “immediately after” an interior ministers’ meeting on September 14, the APA news agency reported.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday spoke by phone with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has called the refugee wave a “German problem” caused by Berlin’s public statement saying it would welcome Syrians.

    “Both sides agreed that both Hungary and Germany must meet their European obligations, including their obligations under the Dublin agreement,” said Merkel’s spokesman Georg Streiter.

    Under the EU’s so-called Dublin rules, asylum applications must be processed by the country where a person first arrives.

    Orban and Merkel had agreed that the weekend influx was exceptional, due to the emergency situation in Budapest, Streiter said.

    Merkel also faces political pressure at home, where her Bavarian sister party CSU criticised the eased travel rules as “a wrong decision”, according to its party secretary Andreas Scheuer.

    Members had warned that this had created “an additional pull-factor” – aside from push factors such as war, poverty and repression in their home countries.

    Merkel was set to hold a crisis meeting on the refugee issue later Sunday with her coalition partners.

    Europe divided 

    Europe is deeply divided over how to handle the continent’s biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II, and Hungary’s and other eastern European nations’ hard line has contrasted with a show of solidarity elsewhere in Europe.

    Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila has evern offered to put up refugee families in his country home.

    Under intensifying pressure at home and abroad, British Prime Minister David Cameron is set to admit 15,000 refugees from Syria, the Sunday Times reported.

    Pope Francis called for “every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe take in a family.”

    The UN refugee agency UNHCR on Saturday said 366,402 migrants had crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year, with 2,800 dying or going missing en route.

    European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has proposed relocating 120,000 refugees from overstretched Italy, Greece and Hungary, a European source has told AFP.

    The plan — which comes on top of a Commission proposal in May for the relocation of 40,000 migrants — is expected to be formally unveiled by Juncker on Wednesday after being approved by Commissioners, the source said.

    Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported that under Juncker’s plan, Germany would take in about 31,000 people, followed by France with 24,000 and Spain with almost 15,000. – AFP