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Bavuma, lower order help South Africa to 191 after Asitha, Kumara share six
Lunch South Africa 191 in 49.4 overs (Temba Bavuma 70, Keshav Maharaj 24,; Asitha Fernando 3-44, Lahiru Kumara 3-70, VishwaFernando2-35, Prabath Jayasuriya 2-24) vs Sri Lanka
South Africa recovered from 117 for 7 – and the possibility of their lowest total against Sri Lanka at home (128) – but fell nine short of 200 in their first innings at Kingsmead. While blue skies and sunshine meant batting conditions should, in theory, have been easier, Sri Lanka’s excellent attack took 6 for 111 in the morning session and will feel they have given their side the advantage.
Sri Lanka were led by good pace from Lahiru Kumara, who maintained speeds in the 140s and finished with 3 for 70. Asitha Fernando and Vishwa shared five wickets between them, found movement and enjoyed operating on a surface with good bounce and carry. Add to that Sri Lanka’s good catching in breezy conditions and they won the morning session despite three lower-order partnerships in the 20s.
Temba Bavuma on comeback after two months on the sidelines from an elbow injury, scored his 22nd Test fifty and held South Africa together. His stroke-play, and particularly his drives, did not suggest he had not played a competitive match in almost eight weeks and with more support, he may have been able to build on what was a solid knock.
After just 20.4 overs were possible on a rain-hit first-day, Vishwa picked up where he left off and found early movement. He appealed for an lbw against Kyle Verreynne second ball but replays showed an inside edge. Verreynne only faced three more balls before Kumara fired in a 141kph ball that beat him and rapped him on the front pad. At first glance it looked as though the impact may have been outside the line but Verreynne did not consult with Bavuma and walked off. Replays showed he was out anyway.
Three balls later, Sri Lanka wasted a review as Wiaan Mulder inside-edged onto his pad but his troubles were only just beginning. In Kumara’s next over, he was hit on the right hand as he tried to defend a ball that nipped back in. He received treatment on field and tried to continue despite struggling to grip the bat. He kept out the next ball he faced and immediately wrung his hand in pain, left the last ball of the over and then retired hurt. He batted again in the session but will be taken for an x-ray during the lunch break.
Marco Jansen got his first runs when he clipped a Vishwa full toss off his legs for four and then punched Kumara wide of fourth slip. Kumara’s impressive first morning spell ended when Bavuma pushed him through the covers for four and his figures read 8-1-51-3.
Sri Lanka went for a double-change with Asitha replacing Kumara and Prabath Jayasuriya’s spin coming on for Vishwa. Jayasuriya had success with his 10th ball when Jansen missed a tossed-up delivery and was hit on the pad in front of leg stump. He reviewed unsuccessfully. Gerald Coetzee was also drawn in by one that was tossed up and recklessly hit Jayasuriya to deep mid-wicket where Kamindu Mendis ran forward to take a good catch. South Africa had lost 3 for 34 in 9.1 overs at that stage, with no real batting to come.
Keshav Maharaj joined Bavuma on the back of four successive Test ducks, and made his highest Test score in nine innings. He showed some fight against Jayasuriya, whose fourth over he hit for 15 runs, including a stunning six, straight down the ground. When Jayasuriya was replaced by Vishwa, Maharaj did not rein his instincts in, reached for a wide ball and drove it aerially to Dhananjaya de Silva at mid-off.
Bavuma had only just reached fifty but was running out of partners and took matters into his own hands. He left his feet to ramp Kumara for six, then drove him through extra cover and back past him for four more. The fun didn’t last long and when Kumara was replaced by Asitha and Bavuma swiped across the line, he top-edged to midwicket, where Kumara judged the catch well in the wind. Bavuma was dismissed on the stroke of what should have been the scheduled lunch break but as he was the ninth wicket to fall, the session was extended by half an hour. Sri Lanka only needed 17 minutes of that time before Kagiso Rabada hooked Asitha to deep backward square.
Brief scores:
Iran has warned it will retaliate if attacked by the US, as protesters defied a deadly government crackdown on Saturday night.
Videos verified by the BBC and eyewitness accounts appeared to show the government ramping up its response to the protests, which have spread to more than 100 cities and towns across every province in Iran.
Medics at two hospitals have told the BBC that more than 100 bodies had been brought in over a two day period. The nationwide death toll is feared to be far higher.
The US has threatened to strike Iran over the killing of protesters. Iran’s parliament speaker warned that if the US attacked, Israel along with US military and shipping centres in the region would become legitimate targets.
The protests were sparked in the capital, Tehran, by soaring inflation, and are now calling for an end to the clerical rule of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran’s attorney general said anyone protesting would be considered an “enemy of God” – an offence that carries the death penalty – while Khamenei has dismissed demonstrators as a “bunch of vandals” seeking to “please” Trump.
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US “stands ready to help” as Iran “is looking at FREEDOM”.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has blamed the US and Israel for the unrest.
“They have trained certain individuals inside the country and abroad, brought terrorists into the country from outside, set mosques on fire, and attacked markets and guilds in Rasht, setting the bazaar ablaze,” he said without providing evidence.
As protests intensify, the number of deaths and injuries recorded by human rights monitors continues to rise.
Footage authenticated by BBC Persian and BBC Verify shows security officers shooting at gatherings of protesters in Tehran, in the western Kermanshah province and the southern Bushehr region.
Multiple verified videos filmed in the centre of the western city of Ilam last weekend show security forces firing shots towards Imam Khomeini Hospital, where a group of protesters had been holding a rally.
Staff at several hospitals have since told the BBC they have been overwhelmed with the injured and dead.
BBC Persian has verified that 70 bodies brought to one hospital in the city of Rasht on Friday night, while a health worker reported around 38 people dying at a Tehran hospital.
Sources inside Iran have told BBC Persian that plain-clothes officers have been targeting people filming and on their own at the protests.
Iran’s police chief said on state TV that the level of confrontation with protesters had been stepped up, with arrests on Saturday night of what he called “key figures”. He blamed a “significant proportion of fatalities” on “trained and directed individuals”, not security forces, but did not give specific details.
More than 2,500 people have been arrested since protests began on 28 December, according to a human rights group.
The BBC and most other international news organisations are unable to report from inside Iran, and the Iranian government has imposed an internet shutdown since Thursday, making obtaining and verifying information difficult.
Nonetheless, some footage has emerged.
Several videos, confirmed as recent by BBC Verify, show clashes between protesters and security forces in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city.
Masked protesters can be seen taking cover behind bins and bonfires, while a row of security forces is seen in the distance. A vehicle that appears to be a bus is engulfed in flames.
Multiple gunshots and what sounds like banging on pots and pans can be heard.
A figure standing on a nearby footbridge appears to fire multiple gunshots in several directions as a couple of people take cover behind a fence.
In Tehran, a verified video from Saturday night shows protesters also taking over the streets in the Gisha district.
Other verified videos from the capital show a large group of protesters and the sound of banging on pots in Punak Square, and a crowd of protesters marching on a road and calling for the end of the clerical establishment in the Heravi district.
Internet access in Iran is largely limited to a domestic intranet, with restricted links to the outside world. But during the current round of protests, authorities have for the first time severely restricted that too.
An expert told BBC Persian the shutdown is more severe than during the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising in 2022.Alireza Manafi, an internet researcher, said the only likely way to connect to the outside world was via Starlink satellite, but warned users to exercise caution as such connections could potentially be traced by the government.
Trump did not elaborate on what the US was considering. However, he has been briefed on options for military strikes on Iran, an official told the BBC’s US news partner CBS.
The Wall Street Journal reports these were “preliminary discussions” and that there was no “imminent threat” to Iran.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday about the possibility of US intervention in Iran, they told CBS.
On Sunday, Reza Pahlavi , the exiled son of Iran’s last Shah, who lives in the US and whose return protesters have been calling for, told demonstrators that Trump had “carefully observed your indescribable bravery” in a social media post.
“Your compatriots around the world are proudly shouting your voice,” he wrote, pledging: “I know that I will soon be by your side.”
Pahlavi claimed the Islamic Republic was facing a “severe shortage of mercenaries” and that “many armed and security forces have left their workplaces or disobeyed orders to suppress the people”. The BBC could not verify these claims.
He encouraged people to continue protesting on Sunday evening, but to stay in groups or with crowds and not “endanger your lives”.
(BBC)
Rescue workers are racing to find dozens of people still missing following a landslide at a landfill site in the central Philippines that occurred earlier this week, an official has said.
Mayor Nestor Archival said on Saturday that signs of life had been detected at the site in Cebu City, two days after the incident.
Four people have been confirmed dead so far, Archival said, while 12 others have been taken to hospital.
Conditions for emergency services working at the site were challenging, the mayor added, with unstable debris posing a hazard and crew waiting for better equipment to arrive.
The privately-owned Binaliw landfill collapsed on Thursday while 110 workers were on site, officials said.
Archival said in a Facebook post on Saturday morning: “Authorities confirmed the presence of detected signs of life in specific areas, requiring continued careful excavation and the deployment of a more advanced 50-ton crane.”
Relatives of those missing have been waiting anxiously for any news of their whereabouts. More than 30 people, all workers at the landfill, are thought to be missing.
“We are just hoping that we can get someone alive… We are racing against time, that’s why our deployment is 24/7,” Cebu City councillor Dave Tumulak, chairman of the city’s disaster council, told news agency AFP.
Jerahmey Espinoza, whose husband is missing, told news agency Reuters at the site on Saturday: “They haven’t seen him or located him ever since the disaster happened. We’re still hopeful that he’s alive.”
The cause of the collapse remains unclear, but Cebu City councillor Joel Garganera previously said it was likely the result of poor waste management practices.
Operators had been cutting into the mountain, digging the soil out and then piling garbage to form another mountain of waste, Garganera told local newspaper The Freeman on Friday.
The Binaliw landfill covers an area of about 15 hectares (37 acres).
Landfills are common in major Philippine cities like Cebu, which is the trading centre and transportation gateway of the Visayas, the archipelago nation’s central islands.
[BBC]
US President Donald Trump has asked for at least $100bn (£75bn) in oil industry spending for Venezuela, but received a lukewarm response at the White House as one executive warned the South American country was currently “uninvestable”.
Bosses of the biggest US oil firms who attended the meeting acknowledged that Venezuela, sitting on vast energy reserves, represented an enticing opportunity.
But they said significant changes would be needed to make the region an attractive investment. No major financial commitments were immediately forthcoming.
Trump has said he will unleash the South American nation’s oil after US forces seized its leader Nicolas Maduro in a 3 January raid on its capital.
“One of the things the United States gets out of this will be even lower energy prices,” Trump said in Friday’s meeting at the White House.
But the oil bosses present expressed caution.
Exxon’s chief executive Darren Woods said: “We have had our assets seized there twice and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen and what is currently the state.”
“Today it’s uninvestable.”
Venezuela has had a complicated relationship with international oil firms since oil was discovered in its territory more than 100 years ago.
Chevron is the last remaining major American oil firm still operating in the country.
A handful of companies from other countries, including Spain’s Repsol and Italy’s Eni, both of which were represented at the White House meeting, are also active.
Trump said his administration would decide which firms would be allowed to operate.
“You’re dealing with us directly. You’re not dealing with Venezuela at all. We don’t want you to deal with Venezuela,” he said.
The White House has said it is working to “selectively” roll back US sanctions that have restricted sales of Venezuelan oil.
Officials say they have been coordinating with interim authorities in the country, which is currently led by Maduro’s former second-in-command, Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez.
But they have also made clear they intend to exert control over the sales, as a way to maintain leverage over Rodríguez’s government.
The US this week has seized several oil tankers carrying sanctioned crude. American officials have said they are working to set up a sales process, which would deposit money raised into US-controlled accounts.
“We are open for business,” Trump said.
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order that seeks to prohibit US courts from seizing revenue that the US collects from Venezuelan oil and holds in American Treasury accounts.
Any court attempt to access those funds would interfere with US foreign relations and international goodwill, the executive order states.
“President Trump is preventing the seizure of Venezuelan oil revenue that could undermine critical US efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet about the order.
Iran warns it will retaliate if US attacks as protesters defy crackdown
GENERAL WEATHER FORECAST FOR NEXT 36 HOURS
National Communication Programme for Child Health Promotion (SBCC) has been launched. – PM
Level I landslide early warnings issued to the Districts of Badulla, Kandy, Matale and Nuwara-Eliya extended
Rescuers race to find dozens missing in deadly Philippines landfill collapse
Trump seeks $100bn for Venezuela oil, but Exxon boss says country ‘uninvestable’
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