Latest News
At least 69 killed as magnitude 5.6 quake hits western Nepal
At least 69 people have been killed and dozens injured after a strong earthquake hit the west of Nepal.
The shallow quake struck at 11:47pm (18:02 GMT) on Friday around the western area of Jajarkot, a hilly district about 500 kilometres (310 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu, that is home to about 190,000 people.
The US Geological Survey put the magnitude at 5.6 and said it was just 18 kilometres (11 miles) deep. The tremors were felt as far away as Kathmandu and even about 600km (375 miles) away in the Indian capital New Delhi.
Jajarkot local official Harish Chandra Sharma said at least 34 people had been killed in his district while in neighbouring Rukum West district, police official Namaraj Bhattarai said at least 35 deaths had been reported. “Rescue and search teams have to clear roads blocked by dry landslides due to the earthquake to reach the affected areas,” Bhattarai said.
Writing on social media platform X, Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal expressed “his deep sorrow over the human and physical damage caused by the earthquake” and ordered security agencies to launch immediate rescue and relief operations.
Local media footage showed crumbled facades of brick houses, with large pieces of furniture scattered on the ground.
Local officials said it had not yet been possible to establish contact with areas near the epicentre in Ramidanda.
“Houses have collapsed. People rushed out of their homes. I am out in the crowd of terrified residents. We are trying to find details of damages,” police official Santosh Rokka told the Reuters news agency by phone.
At least 20 people were rushed to hospital with injuries, Jajarkot district official Suresh Sunar told Reuters.
“I am out in the open myself. We are collecting details, but due to cold and night, it is difficult to get information from remote areas,” he said.
Nepal lies on a major geological fault line where the Indian tectonic plate pushes up into the Eurasian plate, forming the Himalayas, and earthquakes are a regular occurrence.
In 2015, about 9,000 people were killed in two earthquakes in Nepal. Whole towns, centuries-old temples and other historic sites were reduced to rubble, with more than a million houses destroyed.
(Aljazeera)
Through Dane Paterson’s five-fer, Corbin Bosch’s four-wicket haul on debut and Aiden Markram’s gutsy 47*, South Africa ended Day 1 of the first Test against Pakistan in a better position compared to the visitors. They finished at 82 for 3 at Stumps, trailing Pakistan’s 211 by 129 runs.
Despite Kagiso Rabada being the best bowler in terms of line and length for the hosts, he remained wicketless after testing the batters on both sides of the willow.
The hosts quickly managed to pick up the last wicket of Khurram Shahzad three balls into the final session bringing a strange Pakistan innings to an end who were aggressive despite losing regular clumps of wickets.
Markram then got South Africa’s innings underway with an elegant straight drive to the boundary but Shahzad accounted for his partner Tony de Zorzi as he rattled the stumps. With a peach of a delivery, Shahzad got one to seam inwards and had de Zorzi bowled for just two. Ryan Rickelton survived a review after he shouldered arms to a ball which came inwards but fortunately for him was missing the off-stump.
Markram punished two poor deliveries for four off Mohammad Abbas as he moved into double digits but Shahzad scalped his partner, getting him to nick behind to the ‘keeper. Markram and new batter Tristan Stubbs steadied the ship with a 44-run partnership which was dominated by the former. Markram played the ball with soft hands and guided testing deliveries to the fence along with pouncing on any width on offer.
Stubbs, who made only nine, was dismissed in an unfortunate manner with the ball keeping low and trapping him LBW. Skipper Temba Bavuma and Markram then played out the remaining overs to take South Africa to Stumps without any further wickets.
Earlier on, Pakistan survived the first hour of play unscathed but the introduction of Bosch changed the course of the game immediately. Shan Masood drove loosely away from his body, edging one to Marco Jansen at gully, off Bosch’s first ball in Test cricket before Paterson picked up Saim Ayub.
Babar Azam scored only four while Saud Shakeel played a strange six-ball 14 in a mindlessly aggressive innings as Pakistan had fallen to 56 for 4 before Lunch.
Kamran Ghulam and Mohammad Rizwan resurrected the innings with an 81-run stand but the former threw his wicket almost immediately after reaching his milestone, as Paterson struck in the first over of his fresh spell. Ghulam had played a wild swipe to deep backward-square leg.
Salman Agha too raced off the blocks with a boundary but Rizwan fell soon after edging one to slips as Paterson picked up his fourth. Salman and Aamer Jamal attempted to resurrect the innings with a mini partnership of 47 runs in quick time before a mini collapse ensued as Jamal chopped one back on to his stumps before Salman and Naseem Shah departed within the next eight balls.
Brief Scores:
Pakistan 211 (Kamran Ghulam 54, Aamer Jamal 28; Dane Paterson 5-35, Corbin Bosch 4-24) lead South Africa 82/3 (Aiden Markram 47*, Tristan Stubbs 9; Khurram Shahzad 2-28, Mohammad Abbas 1-36) by 129 runs.
With his family and well-wishers watching along from the Queens Sports Club balcony, Zimbabwe’s veteran batter Sean Williams celebrated his fifth Test ton in Bulawayo to give the hosts the upper hand in the Boxing Day Test against Afghanistan, as they finished on 363 for 4.
Williams not only negated Afghanistan’s spin challenge comfortably but also dominated the other bowlers to finish unbeaten on 145. His control percentage of 90 on a surface that offered decent turn right from the start of play displayed just that, with the inexperienced Afghanistan bowling attack – the visitors were missing Rashid Khan for the Test owing to personal reasons – looking both deflated and bruised by the end of it.
Walking in at the start of the second session to face his first ball with Zimbabwe at 92 for 2, Williams relied on his footwork to get on top of the bowling. Usually a frequent sweeper, Williams, on this occasion, took to the cuts, drives and pulls to shepherd the Zimbabwe innings. With Afghanistan not offering anything too full knowing Williams’ love for the sweep, he countered the bowlers’ lengths by rocking back or going on to the front foot with equal ease.
When Williams charged down the track, he lifted sixes over long-on and long-off. When he hung back, he created the time to slap boundaries through the off side. Williams’ enterprising batting earned him a half-century off 58 balls, and a century off 115.
But Williams’ innings wasn’t the only one to help Zimbabwe finish the day on a high. Opener Ben Curran, one of three Zimbabwe debutants and one of six across the two XIs, set the tone early with 68 off 74 balls. He welcomed fellow debutant Azmatullah Omarzai into Test cricket with a boundary off the allrounder’s first ball in the format, before unleashing ten more boundaries.
Curran was the majority contributor in a 43-run opening partnership with Joylord Gumbie (9), and a 49-run second-wicket stand with Takudzwanashe Kaitano (46), but fell to teen debutant AM Ghanzafar in the last over before lunch after a wrong’un sneaked through his defence to knock his stumps back.
Kaitano and Dion Myers (27), batting at No. 5, could not make full use of their starts, but their time in the middle ensured Zimbabwe lost just one wicket apiece in the two sessions after lunch. With Williams, Kaitano added 78 for the third wicket, while Myers put on 50 for the fourth.
Myers’ dismissal in the 56th over, caught and bowled by Ghazanfar for his second strike, brought in Zimbabwe’s captain Craig Ervine at No. 6, and he made certain that Afghanistan finished the day with way more questions than answers. With Williams showing how to score freely, Ervine dug in and quietly brought up his sixth Test fifty with a leg-side dominant innings.
Ervine’s knock was chanceless, unlike Williams, who, when on 124, needed the aid of a no-ball from Zahir Khan to continue batting. However, Ervine’s 56 in an unbeaten partnership of 143 for the sixth wicket was equally crucial for Zimbabwe to stamp their dominance on the day.
Play was called off five overs before the scheduled stumps owing to bad light, with Zimbabwe ending the day with a run rate of 4.27.
Brief scores:
Zimbabwe 363 for 4 in 85 overs (Sean Williams 145*, Ben Curran 68, Takudzwanashe Kaitano 46, Craig Ervine 56*; AM Ghazanfar 2-83) vs Afghanistan
[Cricinfo]
Former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh has died at the age of 92.
Singh was one of India’s longest-serving prime ministers and he was considered the architect of key liberalising economic reforms, as premier from 2004-2014 and before that as finance minister.
He had been admitted to a hospital in the capital Delhi after his health condition deteriorated, reports say.
Among those who paid tribute to Singh on Thursday were Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who wrote on social media that “India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders”.
Modi said that Singh’s “wisdom and humility were always visible” during their interactions and that he had “made extensive efforts to improve people’s lives” during his time as prime minister.
Priyanka Gandhi, the daughter of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and a Congress party member, said that Singh was “genuinely egalitarian, wise, strong-willed and courageous until the end”.
Her brother Rahul, who leads Congress, said he had “lost a mentor and guide”.
Singh was the first Indian leader since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after serving a full first term, and the first Sikh to hold the country’s top post. He made a public apology in parliament for the 1984 riots in which some 3,000 Sikhs were killed.
But his second term in office was marred by a string of corruption allegations that dogged his administration. The scandals, many say, were partially responsible for his Congress party’s crushing defeat in the 2014 general election.
Singh was born on 26 September 1932, in a desolate village in the Punjab province of undivided India, which lacked both water and electricity.
After attending Panjab University he took a master’s degree at the University of Cambridge and then a DPhil at Oxford.
While studying at Cambridge, the lack of funds bothered Singh, his daughter, Daman Singh, wrote in a book on her parents.
“His tuition and living expenses came to about £600 a year. The Panjab University scholarship gave him about £160. For the rest he had to depend on his father. Manmohan was careful to live very stingily. Subsidised meals in the dining hall were relatively cheap at two shillings sixpence.”
Daman Singh remembered her father as “completely helpless about the house and could neither boil an egg, nor switch on the television”.
His unexpected appointment capped a long and illustrious career as an academic and civil servant – he served as an economic adviser to the government, and became the governor of India’s central bank.
In his maiden speech as finance minister he famously quoted Victor Hugo, saying that “no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come”.
That served as a launchpad for an ambitious and unprecedented economic reform programme: he cut taxes, devalued the rupee, privatised state-run companies and encouraged foreign investment.
The economy revived, industry picked up, inflation was checked and growth rates remained consistently high in the 1990s.
Manmohan Singh was a man acutely aware of his lack of a political base. “It is nice to be a statesman, but in order to be a statesman in a democracy you first have to win elections,” he once said.
When he tried to win election to India’s lower house in 1999, he was defeated. He sat instead in the upper house, chosen by his own Congress party.
The same happened in 2004, when Singh was first appointed prime minister after Congress president Sonia Gandhi turned down the post – apparently to protect the party from damaging attacks over her Italian origins. Critics however alleged that Sonia Gandhi was the real source of power while he was prime minister, and that he was never truly in charge.
The biggest triumph during his first five-year term was to bring India out of nuclear isolation by signing a landmark deal securing access to American nuclear technology.
But the deal came at a price – the government’s Communist allies withdrew support after protesting against it, and Congress had to make up lost numbers by enlisting the support of another party amid charges of vote-buying.
A consensus builder, Singh presided over a coalition of sometimes difficult, assertive and potentially unruly regional coalition allies and supporters.
Although he earned respect for his integrity and intelligence, he also had a reputation for being soft and indecisive. Some critics claimed that the pace of reform slowed and he failed to achieve the same momentum he had while finance minister.
When Singh guided Congress to a second, decisive election victory in 2009, he vowed that the party would “rise to the occasion”.
But the gloss soon began to wear off and his second term was in the news mostly for all the wrong reasons: several scandals involving his cabinet ministers which allegedly cost the country billions of dollars, a parliament stalled by the opposition, and a huge policy paralysis that resulted in a serious economic downturn.
LK Advani, a senior leader in the rival BJP party, called Singh India’s “weakest prime minister”.
Manmohan Singh defended his record, saying his government had worked with “utmost commitment and dedication for the country and the welfare of its people”.
Singh adopted the pragmatic foreign policies pursued by his two predecessors.
He continued the peace process with Pakistan – though this process was hampered by attacks blamed on Pakistani militants, culminating in the Mumbai gun and bomb attack of November 2008.
He tried to end the border dispute with China, brokering a deal to reopen the Nathu La pass into Tibet which had been closed for more than 40 years.
Singh increased financial support for Afghanistan and became the first Indian leader to visit the country for nearly 30 years.
He also angered many opposition politicians by appearing to end relations with India’s old ally, Iran.
A studious former academic and bureaucrat, he was known for being self-effacing and always kept a low profile. His social media account was noted mostly for dull entries and had a limited number of followers.
A man of few words, his calm demeanour nevertheless won him many admirers.
Responding to questions on a coal scandal involving the illegal allocation of licences worth billions of dollars, he defended his silence on the issue by saying it was “better than thousands of answers”.
In 2015 he was summoned to appear in court to answer allegations of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust and corruption related offences. An upset Singh told reporters that he was “open for legal scrutiny” and that the “truth will prevail”.
After his time as premier, Singh remained deeply engaged with the issues of the day as a senior leader of the main opposition Congress party despite his advancing age.
In August 2020, he told the BBC in a rare interview that India needed to take three steps “immediately” to stem the economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic, which had sent the country’s economy into a recession.
The government needed to provide direct cash assistance to people, make capital available for businesses, and fix the financial sector, he said.
History will remember Singh for bringing India out of economic and nuclear isolation, although some historians may suggest he should have retired earlier.
“I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament,” he told an interviewer in 2014.
Singh is survived by his wife and three daughters.
[BBC]
Several spells of showers may occur in Northern, North-central, Eastern provinces and in Matale district during the day
Brutality of underworld attacks has intensified over past few years
SJB accuses govt. of politicising public service ahead of elections
-
Sports5 days agoPathirana set to sling his way into Kiwi hearts
-
News3 days agoOffice of CDS likely to be scrapped; top defence changes on the cards
-
News6 days agoSL issues USD 10.4 bn macro-linked bonds
-
Editorial6 days agoRanil’s advice
-
Editorial5 days agoThe games they play
-
Features3 days agoAn Absurd play in Parliament: Qualifications versus education
-
Features5 days agoThe Government’s Term Tests & Results: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
-
Opinion4 days agoWhat AKD and NPP should bear in mind