Dubai, Nov 20 ,2020: The ICC has confirmed that South African edition of the Women’s T20 World Cup will move from its current slot at the end of 2022 to February 9-26, 2023.
The tournament was scheduled in November 2022 but will now be held in February 2023.
In August this year, the ICC had postponed the 50 over Women’s World Cup slated in New Zealand from 2021 to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and women’s T20 cricket is also set to make its debut in the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
The move follows the decision in August to postpone the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2021 to 2022 meaning there would be three major events in 2022 with the Commonwealth Games in July 2022 and the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup due to be held in November 2022.
JERUSALEM/AMMAN ,Nov 19,2020: Israel launched air raids against what it called a wide range of Syrian and Iranian targets in Syria on Wednesday, sending a signal that it will pursue its policy of striking across the border despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s election defeat.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said at least 10 people were killed. Syria’s state news agency reported three military personnel killed and one wounded.
The Observatory said the dead included five Iranians from the elite Quds Force and at least two Lebanese or Iraqi Shi’ite militiamen. A commander of pro-Damascus forces denied Iranians or Lebanese were among the casualties.
Israel has regularly attacked what it says are Iranian-linked targets in Syria in recent years, and stepped up such strikes this year in what Western intelligence sources describe as a shadow war to reduce Iran’s influence.
But Wednesday’s attacks struck a far wider range of targets than usual, and the Israeli military was more forthcoming about the details than in the past, suggesting a clear aim to send a public message about Iranian involvement in Syria.
Nov 18,2020: Pfizer Inc PFE.N and BioNTech 22UAy.DE could secure emergency U.S. and European authorization for their COVID-19 vaccine next month after final trial results showed it had a 95% success rate and no serious side effects, the drugmakers said on Wednesday.
The vaccine’s efficacy was found to be consistent across different ages and ethnicities – a promising sign given the disease has disproportionately hurt the elderly and certain groups including Black people.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration could grant emergency-use by the middle of December, BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin told Reuters TV. Conditional approval in the European Union could be secured in the second half of December, he added.
“If all goes well I could imagine that we gain approval in the second half of December and start deliveries before Christmas, but really only if all goes positively,” he said.
The success rate of the vaccine developed by the U.S. drugmaker and German partner BioNTech was far higher than what regulators had said would have been acceptable. Experts said it was a significant achievement in the race to end the pandemic.
Of the 170 volunteers who contracted COVID-19 in Pfizer’s trial involving over 43,000 people, 162 had received a placebo and not the vaccine, meaning the vaccine was 95% effective. Of the 10 people who had severe COVID-19, one had received the vaccine.
ADDIS ABABA ,Nov 18,2020: Ethiopian forces pushed towards the capital of the rebel Tigray region on Wednesday, ignoring international appeals for talks to end the conflict and denying it was targeting any ethnic group.
Federal troops are locked in a two-week conflict against Tigray’s forces, which has killed hundreds on both sides, rocked the Horn of Africa, stirred ethnic frictions elsewhere in Ethiopia and sent 30,000 refugees fleeing into Sudan.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has billed the offensive as a campaign to restore rule of law in the northern state of more than 5 million people, saying victory would come in days.
He launched the offensive on Nov. 4 after accusing Tigrayan forces of an attack on a government base in the region.
Tigrayans who have fled to Sudan have told Reuters that militias from Amhara, the neighbouring state, attacked them because of their ethnicity and that government airstrikes were killing civilians. Abiy’s government denies that.
“The federal government… denounces, in the strongest of terms, mischaracterization that this operation has an ethnic or other bias,” its task force on the crisis said in a statement on Wednesday.
Tigrayans represent about 5% of Africa’s second most populous country. Their ethnic group dominated political leadership between 1991 and 2018.
On Tuesday, the government accused rebel forces of destroying bridges connecting the regional capital Mekelle with the rest of the country in attempts to hold back federal troops.
Forces loyal to Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), also destroyed the section of a main road eastwards to Mekelle between the towns of Shire and Axum. Shire was under federal control, the task force said.
Debretsion Gebremichael, elected Tigrayan president in polls that Ethiopia does not recognise, told Reuters in a text message that his forces had fallen back but denied they destroyed bridges.
On Tuesday, Abiy warned that a three-day deadline for Tigrayan troops to surrender had expired, paving the way for a military push against Mekelle. The war has killed hundreds of people – possibly thousands – and exacerbated suffering in a region where many already depended on food aid.
Nov 18,2020:The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) announced a provisional home schedule for 2021 on Wednesday with a five-match test series against India set to headline the English summer.
Sri Lanka and Pakistan are also penned in for limited overs matches between June and July before the first test against India on Aug. 4-8 at Trent Bridge. The final test is scheduled to be held in Manchester from Sept. 10 to Sept. 14.
England were the first side to invite teams after the COVID-19 hiatus this year, with matches held in bio-secure bubbles without fans but the ECB hopes to have spectators return to stadiums with general sale tickets available in January.
“Next year we’ve got another big international programme to look forward to, with the thrill of a five-test series against India as the centrepiece,” ECB CEO Tom Harrison said in a statement.
“While COVID means there’s still a great deal of uncertainty, we really hope to be able to welcome fans back into the grounds safely next year to bring that unique atmosphere to stadia across the country.”
The England women’s team also plans to host South Africa and New Zealand while the Visually Impaired team takes on Australia in a limited-overs series in August.
Washington, Nov 18,2020: US President-elect Joe Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris have received a briefing from the national security experts about the diplomatic, defence and intelligence challenges facing the country.
The US government agency that launches the transition process – the General Services Administration (GSA), headed by a Trump appointee – has not yet recognised Democrats Biden and Harris as winners of the November 3 presidential election.
The administrator of the GSA, Emily W Murphy, an appointee of incumbent Republican president Donald Trump, has so far refused to take the legally necessary step to begin the transition process, which would give Biden’s team a budget, intelligence briefings and access to federal agencies.
The Biden-Harris Transition said on Tuesday that the experts briefed them on the diplomatic, defence and intelligence challenges the administration will inherit on day one, focusing on both the strategic landscape as well as the readiness of our foreign policy and national security departments and agencies.
Such a briefing comes in the absence of an official daily intelligence briefing by the outgoing Trump administration to Biden and Harris.
Since President Donald Trump has refused to concede the November 3 election, the administration is unable to provide the daily intelligence and national security briefing to Biden and Harris.
Trump has launched a slew of lawsuits in key states, but has not provided any evidence to back his claims of fraud.
Washington, Nov 18,2020: China has no theological basis to pick the next Dalai Lama, according to a top US diplomat, asserting that the Tibetan Buddhists have successfully picked their spiritual leader for hundreds of years.
I travelled to Dharamshala, India to speak to the Tibetan community that were assembled there in exile and to tell them that the US is opposed to China picking the next Dalai Lama, Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Samuel D Brownback told reporters on Tuesday during a conference call, recalling his visit to India in October.
They have no right to do that. They have no theological basis to do that. The Tibetan Buddhists have successfully picked their leader for hundreds of years, if not longer, and they have the right to do that now, he said in response to a question.
Brownback said the US supports that religious communities have the right to pick their own leadership.
That certainly includes the next Dalai Lama. So we’ve pushed back against that. We’re going to continue to push back against that. We think that’s completely wrong of the Chinese Communist Party to assert that they have that right, he said.
The 14th Dalai Lama, now 85, has been living in India ever since he fled Tibet in 1959 following a Chinese crackdown on an uprising by the local population. The Tibetan government-in-exile operates from Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh. Over 1,60,000 Tibetans live in India.
Brownback accused China of one of the worst religious persecution situations in the world today, if not the worst.
It will not help them in their fight on terrorism, he said, adding, that the Chinese are trying to sell it to the world that this is an effort to prevent terrorism, but they’re going to create more terrorists.
The answer to terrorism isn’t locking up everybody. The answer to terrorism is religious freedom, allowing people to freely practice their faith, and they won’t fight you as much. If the Chinese weren’t at war with faith, they would have a more open society, but they’d also have a more satisfied citizenry that seeks to practice their faith and be left alone and left in peace, he said.
He called on China to stop their war on faith, which will not be successful anyway, but against the Uyghurs, against the Tibetan Buddhists, against the Christian house church, against the Catholic Church, against Falun Gong.
Nov 17,2020:Saudi Arabia reserves the right to arm itself with nuclear weapons if regional rival Iran cannot be stopped from making one, the kingdom’s minister of state for foreign affairs has said.
“It’s definitely an option,” Adel al-Jubeir told the DPA news agency in a recent interview. If Iran becomes a nuclear power, he said, more countries would follow suit.
“And Saudi Arabia has made it very clear, that it will do everything it can to protect its people and to protect its territories.”
Tehran has been working on the use of nuclear power for decades. In 2015, it signed a landmark nuclear deal with world powers to stop the development of a bomb in exchange for lifting sanctions.
But US President Donald Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew his country from the deal and brought it to the brink of failure.
Trump’s administration wants a more far-reaching programme and an end to Iran’s regional interference – a position supported by Saudi Arabia.
“We believe the Iranians have only responded to pressure,” said al-Jubeir.
Asked what changes he anticipates could come once President-elect Joe Biden takes charge in January, he said: “We will have to see.”
Biden has promised to return to the nuclear deal but has said he will seek to put pressure on Iran’s regional activities and missile programmes, among other things.
Last week, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud urged the world to take a “decisive stance” to address Iran’s efforts to develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
In response, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh called on the kingdom to refrain from “baseless allegations and hate-mongering”.
ADDIS ABABA,Nov 17,2020: Ethiopia’s government said on Tuesday its troops had achieved significant victories on the eastern and western fronts of its war against the leaders of Tigray and its army was marching to the region’s capital Mekelle.
“The force of the junta is now retreating, and the army is marching to bring the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) junta to justice,” said a statement from the government’s task force for the Tigray conflict.
Tigrayan leaders were not immediately available for comment.