NEW DELHI: Virat Kohli’s India have Sri Lanka in the firing line again as they seek a record equaling ninth straight series win when the third Test starts Saturday.
Already leading 1-0 in the three-match challenge, victory in the New Delhi Test would cap a dominant year and equal Australia’s record of nine successive series victories from 2005 to 2008.
As they build up the strength of their pace attack, India could break the record in South Africa where they arrive in January.
It was a 2015 tour of Sri Lanka that started India’s victory march that moved to eight series when they whitewashed the Sri Lankans on home territory in August.
India crushed Sri Lanka by an innings and 239 runs in the second Test in Nagpur on Monday.
They have laid out fast-paced pitches to prepare for their next tour.
Kohli said his team needs to be ready for a tougher challenge in South Africa. “That’s why we asked for pitches with help for the fast bowlers.
“There’s not enough time in between to prepare so we have to use the time we have now for a big tour coming up.”
India’s pace power has grown with the successful return of Ishant Sharma, who took five wickets in the second Test that was otherwise dominated by India’s spinners.
The 1.95-meter Sharma replaced Bhuvneshwar Kumar who in turn destroyed the Sri Lankan batting in the opening Test on a green Eden Gardens pitch in Kolkata.
Umesh Sharma seems the only weak link in the pace attack and Mohammed Shami, who sat out the second Test match, is expected to make his way back into the team.
“I think they (fast bowlers) have evolved immensely,” said Rohit Sharma, who will lead India in the three one-day matches against Sri Lanka when Kohli is rested.
“They have come of age,” added the senior batsman.
Sri Lanka came to India dreaming of a first ever Test win on Indian territory. Instead the tour has turned into a major reality check — Nagpur was Sri Lanka’s biggest Test defeat.
Their batting has floundered against the Indian spinners led by Ravichandran Ashwin who bagged eight wickets in the last Test.
On what should have been a good wicket for runs, senior batsman Angelo Mathews fell to the guile of left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja in each innings.
Coach Nic Pothas has warned that the bad results will lead to “repercussions” for the team, and the visitors are struggling to keep up their spirits.
“We need to score more runs in the first innings and that’s what we need to do in Delhi,” skipper Dinesh Chandimal said.
“Angelo is the one who is the most senior guys in the line-up. And if he is not scoring, our team goes down.
“As senior players you need to stand up and perform so the youngsters can follow. I’m sure he will stand up and make it count again,” he said.
Changes are expected for the Delhi Test, especially after veteran spinner Rangana Herath was ruled out with a back injury. Leg-spinner Jeffrey Vandersay or left-arm wrist spinner Lakshan Sandakan will take Herath’s place.
Kohli’s India look to cricket record books in Sri Lanka Test
Kohli’s India look to cricket record books in Sri Lanka Test
Israel, Hamas set to swap more hostages for prisoners in another test of the Gaza ceasefire
- Truce aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and Hamas
- What happens after the deal’s initial six-week phase is uncertain, but many hope it will lead to end of the war
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israel and Hamas were expected to swap more hostages for Palestinian prisoners on Saturday, the second such exchange since a ceasefire began in the Gaza Strip last weekend and another test for the deal.
The truce is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and the militant group. The fragile deal has so far held, quieting airstrikes and rockets and allowing for increased aid to flow into the tiny coastal territory.
When the ceasefire started Sunday, three hostages held by the militants were released in exchange for 90 Palestinian prisoners, all women and children. On Saturday, four hostages are expected to be freed for 200 prisoners, including 120 who are serving life sentences after being convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis. They will likely be released into Gaza or sent abroad.
The four Israeli soldiers, Karina Ariev, 20; Daniella Gilboa, 20; Naama Levy, 20; and Liri Albag, 19, were captured in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack that ignited the war.
They were taken from Nahal Oz base near the border with Gaza when Palestinian militants overran it, killing more than 60 soldiers there. The female abductees had all served in a unit of lookouts charged with monitoring threats along the border. A fifth female soldier in their unit, Agam Berger, 20, was abducted with them but not included in the list.
Israel’s military issued a statement Saturday morning saying that preparations had been completed to receive the hostages and provide them medical care and personal support at the initial reception points, then transfer them to hospitals and reunite them with their families.
After the swap, Israel is expected to begin pulling back from the Netzarim corridor – an east-west road dividing Gaza in two – and allowing displaced Palestinians in the south to return to their former homes in the north for the first time since the beginning of the war.
Palestinians will only be allowed to move north on foot, with vehicular traffic restricted until later in the ceasefire.
What happens after the deal’s initial six-week phase is uncertain, but many hope it will lead to the end of a war that has leveled wide swaths of Gaza, displaced the vast majority of its population, and left hundreds of thousands of people at risk of famine.
The conflict began with a cross-border attack led by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 others hostage.
More than 100 hostages were freed in a weeklong truce the following month. But dozens have remained in captivity for over a year with no contact with the outside world. Israel believes at least a third of the more than 90 captives still inside Gaza were killed in the initial attack or died in captivity.
Israel’s air and ground war, one of the deadliest and most destructive in decades, has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not say how many were militants. They say women and children make up more than half the fatalities.
Pakistan minister criticizes opposition for ‘unilaterally’ ending talks with government
- Information Minister Ataullah Tarar says Imran Khan’s party ended talks “in a hurry with ill intention”
- Khan’s PTI has ruled out further talks unless government forms judicial commissions to probe protests
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Information Minister Ataullah Tarar this week criticized former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party for ending negotiations “unilaterally” with the government, saying it should have waited for the other side’s response.
PTI leader Omar Ayub Khan announced the party’s decision to end further talks with the government on Thursday, saying that it would only resume negotiations to break political tensions if authorities established judicial commissions to investigate violence at anti-government protests organized by the PTI.
Negotiations between the two sides kicked off in December 2024 after Khan threatened a civil disobedience movement. Both sides held three rounds of talks, and the government was expected to submit a formal response to the PTI’s demands on Jan. 28.
“Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar says Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf unilaterally terminated the dialogue process without any reason,” state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported on Friday.
The minister said the PTI should have waited for the government’s response to their demands, lamenting that it took the decision to end talks in a “hurry with ill intention.”
Khan’s ouster in a parliamentary no-trust vote in 2022 has plunged Pakistan into a political crisis, particularly since he was jailed in August 2023 on corruption and other charges. His PTI party has regularly held protests to demand his release, with many of the demonstrations turning violent.
But despite the government-opposition stalemate, Junaid Akbar Khan, a lawmaker from the PTI, was elected on Friday unopposed as the head of the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), according to a statement issued by the National Assembly Secretariat. The post of the PAC chairman had been vacant since the general election in February last year.
The PTI’s demands to the government revolve around the release of all political prisoners including Khan, and the formation of two judicial commissions to probe into violent protest rallies, including one on May 9, 2023, when PTI supporters rampaged through military offices and installations, and a second one on Nov. 26, 2024 to demand Khan’s release, in which the government says four troops were killed.
So far, the government has remained tight-lipped on whether or not it would form the judicial commissions as per the PTI’s demands.
Nearly 250 million children missed school last year due to extreme weather— UNICEF
- Heatwaves, cyclones and other extreme weather interrupted schools in 85 countries in 2024, says report
- Around 74 percent of the total children affected in 2024 were in middle- and low-income countries, says UNICEF
CAPE TOWN, South Africa: At least 242 million children in 85 countries had their schooling interrupted last year because of heatwaves, cyclones, flooding and other extreme weather, the United Nations Children’s Fund said in a new report Friday.
UNICEF said it amounted to one in seven school-going children across the world being kept out of class at some point in 2024 because of climate hazards.
The report also outlined how some countries saw hundreds of their schools destroyed by weather, with low-income nations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa hit especially hard.
But other regions weren’t spared the extreme weather, as torrential rains and floods in Italy near the end of the year disrupted school for more than 900,000 children. Thousands had their classes halted after catastrophic flooding in Spain.
While southern Europe dealt with deadly floods and Asia and Africa had flooding and cyclones, heatwaves were “the predominant climate hazard shuttering schools last year,” UNICEF said, as the earth recorded its hottest year ever.
More than 118 million children had their schooling interrupted in April alone, UNICEF said, as large parts of the Middle East and Asia, from Gaza in the west to the Philippines in the southeast, experienced a sizzling weekslong heatwave with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
“Children are more vulnerable to the impacts of weather-related crises, including stronger and more frequent heatwaves, storms, droughts and flooding,” UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said in a statement. “Children’s bodies are uniquely vulnerable. They heat up faster, they sweat less efficiently, and cool down more slowly than adults. Children cannot concentrate in classrooms that offer no respite from sweltering heat, and they cannot get to school if the path is flooded, or if schools are washed away.”
Around 74 percent of the children affected in 2024 were in middle- and low-income countries, showing how climatic extremes continue to have a devastating impact in the poorest countries. Flooding ruined more than 400 schools in Pakistan in April. Afghanistan had heatwaves followed by severe flooding that destroyed over 110 schools in May, UNICEF said.
Months of drought in southern Africa exacerbated by the El Niño weather phenomenon threatened the schooling and futures of millions of children.
And the crises showed little sign of abating. The poor French territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean off Africa was left in ruins by Cyclone Chido in December and hit again by Tropical Storm Dikeledi this month, leaving children across the islands out of school for six weeks.
Cyclone Chido also destroyed more than 330 schools and three regional education departments in Mozambique on the African mainland, where access to education is already a deep problem.
UNICEF said the world’s schools and education systems “are largely ill-equipped” to deal with the effects of extreme weather.
US migrant deportation flights arrive in Latin America
- A total of 265 Guatemalans arrived on three flights – two operated by the military, and one a charter
- Donald Trump promised a crackdown on illegal immigration during the election campaign
GUATEMALA CITY: US military planes carrying dozens of expelled migrants arrived in Guatemala, authorities said Friday, as President Donald Trump moved to crack down on illegal immigration.
A total of 265 Guatemalans arrived on three flights — two operated by the military, and one a charter, the Central American country’s migration institute said, updating earlier figures.
Washington also sent four deportation flights to Mexico on Thursday, the White House press secretary said on X, despite multiple US media reports that authorities there had turned at least one plane back.
The Mexican government has not confirmed either the arrival of flights or any agreement to receive a specific number of planes with deportees.
But Mexico’s foreign ministry said Friday it was ready to work with Washington over the deportation of its citizens, saying the country would “always accept the arrival of Mexicans to our territory with open arms.”
The flights came as the White House said it had arrested more than a thousand people in two days with hundreds deported by military aircraft, saying that “the largest massive deportation operation in history is well underway.”
Some 538 illegal immigrant “criminals” were arrested Thursday, it said, followed by another 593 on Friday.
By comparison, under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden deportation flights were carried out regularly, with a total of 270,000 deportations in 2024 — a 10-year record — and 113,400 arrests, making an average of 310 per day.
The Guatemalan government did not confirm whether any of the migrants arrested this week were among the deportees that arrived Friday.
“These are flights that took place after Trump took office,” an official in the Guatemalan vice president’s office said.
A Pentagon source said that “overnight, two DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft conducted repatriation flights from the US to Guatemala.”
Early Friday the White House posted an image on X of men in shackles being marched into a military aircraft, with the caption: “Deportation flights have begun.”
And Trump told reporters that the flights were to get “the bad, hard criminals out.”
“Murderers, people that have been as bad as you get. As bad as anybody you’ve seen,” he said.
Friday’s deportees were taken to a reception center at an air force base in Guatemala’s capital, away from the media.
Trump promised a crackdown on illegal immigration during the election campaign and began his second term with a flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling entry to the United States.
On his first day in office he signed orders declaring a “national emergency” at the southern border and announced the deployment of more troops to the area while vowing to deport “criminal aliens.”
His administration said it would also reinstate a “Remain in Mexico” policy under which people who apply to enter the United States from Mexico must remain there until their application has been decided.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Friday on X that program had been reinstated, and that Mexico had deployed some 30,000 National Guard troops to its border.
The Mexican foreign ministry did not confirm either claim in its statement.
The White House has also halted an asylum program for people fleeing authoritarian regimes in Central and South America, leaving thousands of people stranded on the Mexican side of the border.
Gwen Stefani to perform in the UAE in February
DUBAI: US pop star Gwen Stefani is set to perform in Abu Dhabi on Feb. 21 as part of the city’s Saadiyat Nights, marking her first-ever performance in the UAE capital.
The triple Grammy Award winner will take the stage just 24 hours before legendary US singer Lionel Richie closes the event on Feb. 22.
The three-month open-air music series will also feature performances by Egyptian composer Omar Khairat on Feb. 1, British musician Sting on Feb. 3, Lebanese music icon Magida El-Roumi on Feb. 10 and US pop star Christina Aguilera on Feb. 15.
Artists who have already performed include Grammy-winning Michael Buble, Russian band Leningrad, US R&B group Boyz II Men, British singer Robbie Williams and Iranian singer Ebi.
Stefani has achieved global recognition as a songwriter, performer, and frontwoman of the US rock band No Doubt, and as a multi-platinum solo artist. Over the course of her career, she has received numerous awards, including four MTV Video Music Awards, two Billboard Awards, an American Music Award and a Brit Award.
Stefani has sold over 60 million records worldwide, combining her success with No Doubt and her solo career. Her 2004 debut solo album, “Love. Angel. Music. Baby.,” achieved multi-platinum status and included chart-topping hits like “Hollaback Girl,” which became the first digital download to sell over 1 million copies in the US.
Stefani is no stranger to Emirati culture. In 2019, she performed in Dubai at the Dubai World Cup. During her visit, the singer immersed herself in Emirati culture, embracing the quintessential tourist experience by taking a desert safari, dining in a desert tent, watching a falcon show, riding a camel, covering her face and hair with a headscarf, shopping at the perfume souk, and visiting the iconic Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.
Saadiyat Nights is part of the Abu Dhabi Calendar’s year-round schedule of events, which includes music, sports, comedy, family-friendly shows, cultural festivals and art exhibitions.
Held on Saadiyat Island, the concert series is set against the backdrop of the Saadiyat Cultural District, pristine beaches, and luxurious resorts.
The inaugural edition of Saadiyat Nights, which ran from January to March 2024, featured a lineup of artists, including American stars Mariah Carey, John Legend, and Alicia Keys, Iranian singer Googoosh, and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
