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Ngarava, Bennett and Musekiwa set up thrilling Zimbabwe win
A 13-ball over from Naveen ul Haq and a dramatic final over in which Tashinga Musekiwa found the boundary and sprinted between the wickets gave Zimbabwe a thrilling last-ball win in the opening T20I against Afghanistan.
With Zimbabwe chasing 145, frugal spells from Mohammad Nabi and Rashid Khan and a four-run 18th over from Mujeeb Ur Rahman brought the equation down from 60 off 42 balls to 21 off 12. But Naveen’s final over went for ten, and Azmatullah Omarzai’s changes in pace and length could not defend ten in the final over.
Musekiwa slogged a slower slot ball over cow corner and almost cleared the fence first ball of the 20th. He then rushed back for three twos, and with the scores level and the field up for the last ball, drove straight of mid-off to unleash celebrations with his partner in front of a vibrant Harare crowd.
The tension went up and down in the last seven overs beginning with a quicker ball from Mohammad Nabi leading to a miscued slog from the well-set Dion Myers. It broke a 75-run stand between Myers and Brian Bennett and took the asking rate to over nine runs an over.
Naveen returned for an over that didn’t exactly go as expected. The wide yorker was his default plan, and five of the first eight balls resulted in wides apart from a high full toss that Sikandar Raza flayed over short third for four. When he went full and wide again, Raza went across to lash the ball down the ground before a slower ball finally dismissed the Zimbabwe captain, whose innings only lasted five legal balls.
Rashid, who wasn’t as effective in his first three overs, knocked over the well-set Bennett for 49 with a slider. He then had Ryan Burl mistime a pull to deep backward square leg. But neither his nor Mujeeb’s stump-to-stump bowling was enough for Afghanistan to stop Zimbabwe from getting home.
The chase began with Zimbabwe under pressure because of Naveen, who started with a maiden before cramping Tadiwanashe Marumani for room on the pull.
But Naveen dropped Bennett on 8 off Azmatullah Omarzai in the fifth over. Rashid introduced himself in the final over of the powerplay but could not keep a lid on the scoring. He erred short and wide (both off and leg-side) to Myers, who picked up two fours.
The duo consolidated but a few quiet overs took the asking rate up to nine. They picked up a boundary in each of Fareed Ahmad’s first two overs and Myers deposited another Rashid long-hop over long-on in the 12th. Bennett continued the charge by smashing Omarzai for two fours before Nabi’s intervention set up a rollercoaster finish.
Earlier, Rashid had no hesitations in batting first. Rahmanullah Gurbaz wanted to take the early initiative but was undone by Richard Ngarava’s extra bounce off the third ball of the match. Sediqullah Atal was offered a chance by Wessly Madhevere in the third over but fell in the next trying to heave Trevor Gwandu over mid-on.
Hazratullah Zazai, meanwhile, was off to a promising start, carving Ngarava through point in the first over and launching Bennett down the ground in the third before holing out off Blessing Muzarabani.
Omarzai and Karim Janat lowered the risk post-powerplay but got a boundary each off Raza to lift the run rate towards run-a-ball again. But an attempt to launch Wellington Masakadza over the top led to Omarzai getting caught at long-on.
Nabi joined Janat with Afghanistan in trouble at 58 for 5 in the 11th over. Their start together was scratchy but was made easier by sloppy fielding from Zimbabwe. Burl’s misfield at long-off turned two into three in the 12th over before Muzarabani lost sight of the ball and gave Janat the first of two boundaries in the next.
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.
The US and its partner forces have carried out large-scale strikes against Islamic State (IS) group targets in Syria, the US Central Command (Centcom) has announced.
US President Donald Trump directed the strikes on Saturday, which are part of Operation Hawkeye Strike, in retaliation to the IS group’s deadly attack on US forces in Syria on 13 December, Centcom wrote on X.
The strikes were conducted in an effort to combat terrorism and protect US and partner forces in the region, according to Centcom.
“Our message remains strong: if you harm our warfighters, we will find you and kill you anywhere in the world, no matter how hard you try to evade justice,” Centcom said.
The US and its partner forces fired more than 90 precision munitions at more than 35 targets in an operation that involved more than 20 aircraft, an official told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.
The official added that aircraft including F-15Es, A-10s, AC-130Js, MQ-9s and Jordanian F-16s had taken part in the strikes.
The location of the strikes and the extent of any casualties is not yet clear.
“We will never forget, and never relent,” Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X on Saturday in reference to the military action.
The Trump administration first announced Operation Hawkeye Strike in December after an IS gunman killed two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter in an ambush in Palmyra, located in the centre of Syria.
“This is not the beginning of a war – it is a declaration of vengeance,” Hegseth said when announcing the operation in December.
“The United States of America, under President Trump’s leadership, will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people.”
Prior to the latest strikes on Saturday, US forces killed or captured nearly 25 IS group members in 11 missions between 20 December and 29 December as part of Operation Hawkeye Strike, Centcom said.
In the operation’s first mission on 19 December, US and Jordanian forces carried out a “massive strike” against the IS group, deploying fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery to strike “more than 70 targets at multiple locations across central Syria”, according to Centcom.
That operation, it said, “employed more than 100 precision munitions” targeting known IS infrastructure and weapons sites.
[BBC]
Rescuers race to find dozens missing in deadly Philippines landfill collapse
Trump seeks $100bn for Venezuela oil, but Exxon boss says country ‘uninvestable’
US military strikes Islamic State group targets in Syria, officials say
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