Foreign News
Hobart’s new stadium designed to host indoor Test cricket
There are ambitions to host indoor Test cricket at a new stadium proposed in Hobart as part of a Tasmanian team joining the Australian Football League (AFL).
The Tasmania Devils are due to become the AFL’s 19th team in 2028 and part of the deal is based around there being a new stadium constructed. It is being earmarked as a multipurpose 23,000-seater venue at Macquarie Point with a transparent roof to allow daytime cricket as well as floodlit T20.
“We want to get to red-ball [cricket], that’s our focus,” Macquarie Point Development Corporation CEO Anne Beach told SEN Tassie. “The tricky thing is…we can’t be accredited until it’s built so what we need to do is keep working through the detail and design process with Cricket [Tasmania] and Cricket Australia and work with them to brief ICC to make sure they have all the information available.
“We are work-shopping with them through detailed design so we are making sure we are factoring in everything they need, so they have a clear understanding of how it’s coming together then hopefully that sign-off process is pretty smooth. But we do want to get that red-ball sign-off and that’s critical I think to enable that full content to be in the stadium.”
Concept designs of the Macquarie Point stadium were released earlier this week. Ball-tracking data has been used in developing the plans to ensure the roof would be high enough for cricket.
“Cricket’s biggest concern was the height of the roof…they cited concerns with Marvel Stadium in Melbourne where the ball could potentially hit the roof,” Cox Architecture CEO Alistair Richardson said. “What we’ve done is we’ve worked through looking at Hawk-Eye and the ball-tracking technology, to actually assess the maximum height that anyone’s hit a ball, which is quite interesting. “Then, actually, we’ve pushed the roof to 50 metres, which cricket was really happy with, because there’s no instance of anyone hitting a ball at 50 metres.”
Experts have said that the design of the roof means there will be very little impact from shadows on the playing surface.
Marvel Stadium hosted indoor ODIs back in the early 2000s and BBL matches can be played with the roof closed, but Test cricket has never taken place at an enclosed ground.
Cricket Tasmania chair David Boon reiterated the state’s aim of playing cricket at the new stadium although it would likely lead to debate around the future of Bellerive Oval.
“There is a wonderful opportunity for Tasmania to be a leader in innovation for the future of the game,” Boon said. “We want to play cricket in this stadium and look forward to working collaboratively with all parties over the coming months as the design is finalised.”
Tasmania last hosted a Test in the 2021-22 season – its first since 2016 – when the final match of the Ashes was switched to Bellerive Oval from Perth due to Covid travel restrictions into Western Australia. It is unlikely to stage another Test in the remainder of the current Future Tours Programme. Australia’s men will play a T20I against Pakistan in November followed by the third ODI of the Women’s Ashes in January.
[Cricinfo]
The chief executive of the Washington Post is stepping down, the newspaper has announced, days after overseeing mass lay-offs.
William Lewis said it was the right time to leave, saying in a message to staff that was shared online that “difficult decisions” had been made to ensure the paper’s future.
On Wednesday the newspaper announced it was cutting a third of its workforce, dramatically scaling back its coverage of sport and international news.
The decision was condemned by many journalists and prompted criticism of the Post’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. Executive editor Matt Murray said the cuts would bring “stability”.
Jeff D’Onofrio, who joined as chief financial officer of the newspaper last year, will serve as acting publisher and CEO, the Post said as it announced Lewis’s departure.
A former Dow Jones chief executive and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Lewis was appointed to the role at the Washington Post in 2023.
He has faced criticism from subscribers and employees as he tried to reverse financial losses at the daily.
Hundreds protested in front of the paper’s headquarters in Washington DC on Thursday after the mass lay offs, which included the paper’s entire Middle East staff and its Kyiv-based Ukraine correspondent.
Marty Baron, the Post’s executive editor until 2021, said the cuts ranked “among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organisations”.
The departure of Lewis marks the latest upheaval for the leading US newspaper, which has seen a series of staff cuts and controversial editorial decisions in recent years.
Shortly before the 2024 US presidential election, Bezos, the founder of Amazon, broke with decades of tradition by deciding the newspaper would not endorse a presidential candidate.
The newspaper had endorsed a candidate in most presidential elections since the 1970s – all of whom had been Democrats.
The move caused widespread criticism and led to the loss of tens of thousands of subscribers.
Meanwhile, the opinion editor resigned in February last year when Bezos decided to focus the paper’s comment section on “personal liberties and free markets”.
Bezos, who acquired the newspaper in 2013, said pieces opposing those views would not be published.
[BBC]
King Charles III and Queen Camilla will host Nigeria’s president in the country’s first state visit to the UK in 37 years, Buckingham Palace has announced.
Bola Tinubu and First Lady Oluremi Tinubu have accepted an invitation to be guests of the King at Windsor Castle from 18 to 19 March.
State visits are considered a form of soft-power diplomacy, using the pomp of royal hospitality to strengthen relations with important international partners.
The last Nigerian state visit to the UK took place in 1989, when military ruler Gen Ibrahim Babangida travelled to meet the late Queen Elizabeth II for a four-day trip.
Although this will be Tinubu’s first formal state visit to the UK, he has already met the King since taking office following Nigeria’s disputed election in 2023.
Tinubu and his wife were received at Buckingham Palace in September 2024 and also held a bilateral meeting with the King on the sidelines of the COP28 summit in Dubai.
But a state visit allows for ceremonial pageantry aimed at elevating the occasion and demonstrating the importance with which the UK views those visiting.
The visit comes at a time of improving diplomatic and economic links between the UK and Nigeria – with trade between the two worth more than £8bn in the year to October, government figures show. This makes the African nation one of the UK’s most important partners in the continent.
In 2024, the two countries signed a new trade and investment partnership designed to expand opportunities for business.
The agenda for the March visit has not been disclosed, nor details of the events planned for it – but state visits typically include carriage processions and a state banquet, and usually coincide with visiting leaders having political meetings.
In 2025 alone, the King presided over three state visits – those of French President Emmanuel Macron, US President Donald Trump and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier – the first time the UK had held such a number in a single year since 1988.
The King has longstanding ties to Nigeria, a Commonwealth country, having expressed a love for Pidgin English and Nigerian Afrobeats music.
Before becoming monarch, he visited the country four times as the Prince of Wales – in 1990, 1999, 2006 and 2018. Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, joined him on the latter trip.
In 2023, the King’s Trust International – formerly the Prince’s Trust – officially launched in Nigeria, announcing a project aimed at tackling youth unemployment.
[BBC]
The co-owner of a Colorado funeral home where nearly 200 decaying bodies were found has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for corpse abuse.
Before Jon Hallford was sentenced, he apologised in court and listened to family members describe having nightmares about their loved ones decomposing in his care. They called him a “monster” who should rot in jail.
His ex-wife and co-owner Carie Hallford has pleaded guilty to similar charges and is awaiting sentencing.
The Return to Nature home, in the town of Penrose, Colorado, had given fake ashes to grieving relatives instead of their loved-ones’ remains. Prosecutors said 189 bodies were improperly stored in the building over four years.
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