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Cricket: Bangladesh Bowls Out West Indies for 148

Alzarri Joseph (L) takes a run as Mehidy Hasan throws the ball during the second one-day international cricket match between Bangladesh and West Indies on Friday

 

Off-spinner Mehidy Hasan claimed a career best four wickets for 25 as Bangladesh bowled out the West Indies for 148 in their second one-day international on Friday.

The hosts, who won Wednesday’s opening match by six wickets, took early wickets before Rovman Powell hit 41 off 65 balls to boost the West Indies innings.

Debutant opener Kjorn Ottley (24) and Nkrumah Bonner (20) were other notable scorers for West Indies.

After West Indies skipper Jason Mohammed chose to bat, left-arm pacer Mustafizur Rahman claimed the first breakthrough by removing Sunil Ambris for six hitting a catch to Mehidy.

West Indies kept losing more wickets after Bangladesh introduced spin.

Mehidy removed Ottley and Joshua Da Silva (5) in the same over while Shakib Al Hasan bowled Andre McCarthy for only three.

Kyle Mayers, the highest scorer in the previous match, was run out for zero before Shakib trapped skipper Mohammed leg-before for 11 to leave the West Indies struggling at 67-6.

Powell and Alzarri Joseph put on 32 for the ninth wicket to help West Indies past 100 runs.

Mustafizur, who gave away just two runs in his opening four overs, returned to end West Indies’ resistance by removing Joseph for 17.

Mehidy stumped Powell to wrap-up the innings in 43.4 overs.

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5 Dead in Fire at World’s Biggest Vaccine Plant

New Delhi, India (CNN) A fire that broke out at a facility of the world’s biggest vaccine maker that killed five people would not affect vaccine production, the head of the company said Thursday.

The blaze at the Serum Institute of India (SII) in the western city of Pune was brought under control on Thursday though the cause is still under investigation, according to Murlidhar Mohol, the city’s mayor.

Four people were rescued from the six-floor building but five others died, Mohol said. They are believed to have been construction workers as the building was still under construction at the time of the fire.

Videos and images showed black smoke billowing out of the building at the company’s complex. Fifteen units of the municipal corporation and fire department worked to douse the fire, Mohol said.

Preliminary investigations suggest that “during the building’s construction, some welding work could have led to the fire,” he added.

Pune’s fire brigade chief Prashant Ranpise said Friday that the fire started on the second floor. As firefighters worked to put out the flames, the blaze reigned in another spot. The second fire was extinguished at 4:15 p.m. local time by 50 firefighters and personnel. Ranpise said they are still investigating the cause of the fire.

“We have learnt that there has unfortunately been some loss of life at the incident. We are deeply saddened and offer our deepest condolences to the family members of the departed,” SII CEO Adar Poonawalla tweeted Thursday.

SII, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, is in partnership with Oxford University and AstraZeneca to produce the Covishield vaccine. In December, the company said it was producing 50 to 60 million doses of Covishield per month, with production to be scaled up to 100 million doses in January or February.

A family business started by Poonawalla’s father 50 years ago to bring cheaper vaccines to the masses, the Serum Institute of India is aiming to produce hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccines for not only India, but also other developing countries.

In a tweet, Poonawalla said that despite a “few floors being destroyed,” production of the Covishield vaccine would not be affected.

“I would like to reassure all governments and the public that there would be no loss of COVISHIELD production due to multiple production buildings that I had kept in reserve to deal with such contingencies,” he said.

Cyrus S. Poonawalla, SII’s chairman and managing director, said in a statement that the fire broke out at a facility that was under constriction in the Special Economic Zone at Manjri. He said it was an “extremely sorrowful day” and the company would offer INR 2.5 million ($34,000) to each of the victims’ families.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his condolences Thursday: “Anguished by the loss of lives due to an unfortunate fire … In this sad hour, my thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives. I pray that those injured recover at the earliest.”

 

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MP fined over drunken brawl apologises after Premier's furious call

A Queensland Labor MP has apologised after he was fined over a drunken brawl inside a nightclub while celebrating his birthday that left him knocked unconscious.

Les Walker faced the cameras this morning, still sporting marks from the fight, and revealed his phone call with a furious Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

The first-term Townsville MP said he had no memory of the fight in the Mad Cow Tavern in the north Queensland city's CBD at 1am on Saturday.

READ MORE: Queensland tradie will keep working after $10m Powerball win

"I was knocked unconscious, so I can't recall the incident," he said.

Mr Walker was celebrating his birthday at the bar – and it ended with him being knocked out, fined, and banned from Townsville's CBD.

He said his phone call with Ms Palaszczuk had been "frank" and he accepted the standard for MPs had to be "very high".

"Just to be mindful of the position I carry in the community," he said.

READ MORE: Men fined over campfire that burned half of Fraser Island

His behaviour was condemned by Ms Palaszczuk and opposition leader David Crisafulli.

The latter said he condemned alcohol-fuelled violence and that Mr Walker had a standard to set as an MP.

Ms Palaszczuk said she was "very disappointed".

"I don't think he wants another conversation with me like that because I'm not happy," she said.

James Bond Film Now Delayed Until October

The much-anticipated James Bond flick had already been pushed back twice due to the coronavirus pandemic, with Daniel Craig’s final jaunt as the suave spy first slated for release in April 2020, before being moved to November 2020, and then again to April 2021.

And now it has been confirmed that the motion picture won’t hit screens until October 8, 2021.

A new poster for the film was shared to the official Twitter page for the movie and is captioned: “NO TIME TO DIE 8 October 2021.”

‘No Time To Die’ was one of the first blockbusters to delay its release when the pandemic first hit back in March.

Meanwhile, the film’s director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, previously explained how he won’t be able to move on from the project until it is seen by an audience.

The 43-year-old filmmaker said: “I have never been able to predict how people react to something I’ve made … It could fly or completely fall. It doesn’t change how I view the film. God, I have no idea whether people have an appetite for that or not right now.

“It doesn’t feel like the film’s journey is complete until it’s been shared. Until then, it’s a secret … I’ve never seen it with an audience. I would love to watch it with an audience the first opportunity I get … And that will probably be the next time and last time I see it.”

However, he added that delaying the movie means little in the grand scheme of things.

He said: “I look at it unemotionally right now … There are so many bigger things happening. I have friends who are losing businesses, restaurants, and other friends who have lost family members.

“The film will come out when it’s right, and it will perform in the context of this new world, in which no one really can define what success or failure means.”

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US Senate: Different Leadership, Same Hostility?

US Senator Mitch McConnell (L) and new Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer

The leaders in the Senate are switching places amid questions over whether their tepid relationship will change as Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) becomes majority leader and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) becomes minority leader.

The two have as icy a relationship as there is in Washington, and few observers would predict a warming trend. Asked about the relationship, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Wednesday it has nowhere to go but up.

“It will go up,” he quipped.

Other senators are expressing hope that the Senate will become more functional under President Biden, who served 36 years in the upper chamber before becoming Barack Obama’s vice president.

“Everything is possible. You know, we have, we have administrations come and go, sometimes every four years, sometimes every eight years, and we can work with Democratic administrations and vice versa,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a key centrist, said Wednesday.

McConnell regularly shut Schumer out of planning the Senate agenda in recent years. Most notably, he declined to negotiate a bipartisan organizing resolution for former President Trump’s first impeachment trial in the first months of 2020, a striking difference from the bipartisan resolution that passed unanimously before President Clinton’s 1999 impeachment trial.

For months last year, McConnell refused to meet with Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), when Democrats were pushing for a multitrillion-dollar COVID-19 relief bill.

Broadly speaking, both men are villains for one of the  political parties. Democrats are angry at McConnell for blocking Obama’s final nominee to the Supreme Court in 2016 for months, only to quickly confirm President Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in the fall.

McConnell and Schumer have served in the Senate together since 1999, when Schumer came to the upper chamber from the House.

A low point in their relationship came in 2008 when Schumer, who was then the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), used McConnell’s support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which critics dubbed a Wall Street bailout, against him in his 2008 reelection race.

McConnell felt Schumer, who represents New York’s financial services industry, acted in bad faith by asking for Republican support to keep banks solvent and then allowing the DSCC to blast McConnell for his vote.

The first order of business for Schumer and McConnell is to negotiate an organizing resolution to set the ratio of seats on Senate committees and divide committee resources, something likely to be difficult given the relationship between the two men.

Schumer can’t add new Democratic members to committees without such an agreement, and on some panels Republicans would continue to have more members than Democrats.

For example, there are 12 Republicans and only nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee after Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president on Wednesday. Those numbers were set by the organizing resolution of the last Congress.

Durbin, the incoming chairman of the Judiciary panel, said Wednesday it’s not clear if he could advance Merrick Garland, Biden’s nominee for attorney general, without a new resolution. Garland is also the man Obama nominated to the Supreme Court who was blocked by McConnell and the Senate GOP.

A Republican aide said nominees can be moved through committee right now by obtaining unanimous consent from a panel’s entire membership. But that higher bar could slow the processing of Biden’s picks significantly.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a potential candidate for the White House in 2024, announced Tuesday he would put a hold on Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s choice to head the Homeland Security Department.

McConnell this week raised the stakes of the organizing resolution by telling GOP colleagues that he would insist it include a deal to protect the legislative filibuster, which some Democrats want to eliminate to make it easier to pass Biden’s agenda.

“I believe we need to also address the threats to the legislative filibuster,” McConnell wrote in a note to GOP senators.

“Having an equally divided Senate means that we have to work together to get anything done and the spirit of true bipartisan compromise is possible only when each side realizes they must come to the table together,” he wrote.

That demand will likely delay a deal on the organizing resolution until next week, according to Senate aides.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), another key centrist, said Wednesday she supports McConnell’s effort to settle questions about keeping the legislative filibuster as part of the organizing resolution.

She noted that 61 senators, including Harris, signed a letter in April 2017 pledging support for preserving “the ability of members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor.”

Schumer and McConnell also need to negotiate an agreement laying out the schedule and procedures for Trump’s second impeachment trial. Democrats hope to conduct the trial swiftly so that it doesn’t hold up Biden’s agenda and nominees. But limiting the amount of floor time sucked up by a trial will depend on GOP cooperation.

Republicans would need to agree unanimously to allow nominees to receive votes before the trial convenes each day at noon.

Schumer could try to pass a partisan impeachment resolution solely with 50 Democratic votes and Harris casting the tie-breaker — but he criticized McConnell harshly last year for passing an organizing resolution for Trump’s first trial without Democratic support.

He slammed McConnell’s resolution as “completely partisan” and complained “it was kept secret until the very eve of the trial” because it was “designed by President Trump for President Trump” and asked “the Senate to rush through as fast as possible

Schumer acknowledged Tuesday he will need substantial cooperation from McConnell and other GOP senators to get through a mountain of work in the next few weeks.

“Rarely — rarely — has so much piled up for the Senate as during this particular transition,” he said.

A new ingredient in the relationship is McConnell’s signals that he might vote to convict Trump in an impeachment trial. The GOP leader hasn’t ruled out a vote to convict, and if he did so it would carry heavy weight with his conference.

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High-ranking bikie arrested outside court for separate offence

Police have arrested a high-ranking bikie boss outside a Sydney court over an alleged assault at a fine dining restaurant at Crown's Sydney casino.

Comanchero Tarek Zahed, 40, had just been slapped with a good behaviour bond at Sydney's Downing Centre and walked out of the courtroom thinking he was a free man when police arrested him yesterday afternoon.

NSW Police's Criminal Group detectives took the gang's sergeant-at-arms into an interview room and informed him he was going to be charged with affray after he allegedly assaulted a bikie affiliate at A'mare, an Italian restaurant at the Crown's Barangaroo casino about 8.30pm on Saturday, January 16.

READ MORE: Bikie arrests, homes raided in police crackdown in Sydney

In the lead up to his arrest, Mr Zahed had spent the entire day in court where he pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice.

He had spent much of the day happy and hamming it up in front of the media, blowing a kiss and roaring like a lion as he walked to and from court.

Once snapped in a designer shirt, Mr Zahed told journalists he wanted the record corrected: the shirt he wore was Versace, not Gucci.

Mr Zahed, who has an affinity for designer clothes, was once convicted of dealing with proceeds of crime after police seized fluffy Louis Vuitton slippers and a Gucci backpack from his Sydney home.

READ MORE: Homes raided as cops crack down on crime gangs in Sydney

After he was bundled into a car by detectives he was later charged with affray and entering a casino where he was listed as being excluded.

His matter was mentioned at Central Local Court today but Mr Zahed did not apply for bail and it was formally refused by magistrate Robert Williams.

Mr Zahed is expected to make a bail application when his matter returns to court on January 27.

Burgess' ex, father-in-law accused of trying to 'destroy' him

Sam Burgess' ex-wife and father-in-law have been accused of engaging in a campaign to destroy the former NRL star.

Burgess was in Moss Vale Local Court for day two of his hearing, denying allegations he intimidated his father in law after a visitation with children at Mitch Hooke's property near Bowral in 2019.

In his closing submissions Burgess' barrister Phillip Boulten SC referred to the current court case and a 50 page affidavit Ms Burgess handed to The Australian newspaper which alleged drug use and domestic violence, allegations he has denied.

"Mitchell Hooke and Phoebe Burgess have tried to destroy my client's career, this case is part of it. And it's not going to stop here" he said.

He argued the Prosecution hadn't proved Burgess said "I'll get you" which meant the Magistrate was left with "two grown men arguing about the end of the access visit and that is not intimidation."

Giving evidence earlier Burgess says the disagreement began when he was told it was time to leave the property after the two hours allotted.

"I told Mitch that I thought this was inhumane, there was a better way for us to do it and I think he knows that."

"He then said if you'd like to talk about inhumane, we can talk about what's inhumane Sam."

"I said to Mitch, Mitch please not in front of the children, let's just leave it" Burgess said.

He told the court as he walked out the front door he said to Mr Hooke "Mitch I think you're a bad person inside and out and that's the result why Phoebe is the way she is…"

Outside he said voices were raised and they swore at each other.

"I said f*** you Mitch, you're a piece of s***."

Sam Burgess of the Rabbitohs in 2019

"He said Sam no one loves you… we love you and you're throwing it all away."

Mitch is then alleged to have said "I'm going to make sure I ruin your career if it's the last thing I do."

Burgess said he had been concerned about leaving the children at home with Mr Hooke and that was reinforced when he saw the children had made their way out of the house as he drove away.

After she arrived home Ms Burgess texted her ex husband.

"You're a pig…we're done. At least people have now seen who you really are, you f***."

The court heard she also called triple zero.

Police phoned later that evening.

The court was previously shown vision of Burgess drinking schooners before he went to the house but a pharmacologist report says the mid strength beers would have left him with a blood alcohol reading of 0.00 or slightly above.

The Magistrate will hand down his decision on February 5.

Margaret Court not fazed by Australia Day honours backlash

Tennis great Margaret Court says she is not fazed by the immense backlash and criticism she has copped after being recognised in the 2021 Australia Day honours list.

Court will be made a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AC) on Tuesday – the nation's highest honour – for her success as a player and as a mentor to athletes.

However, her recognition has been the subject of criticism due to her controversial views on same-sex marriage and homosexuality.

Speaking to 9News this afternoon, Court said she was honoured to receive the prestigious title and she did not care about the backlash.

Court said she would be praying for those who did not support her and blessing them.

"I think over the years, I've had so much criticism that it doesn't really affect me," she said.

"I call them blessed because I pray for them and I pray for my nation."

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was among those to say he does not support the recognition of Court today.

READ MORE: Daniel Andrews expresses disdain over Margaret Court Australia Day honour

Mr Andrews expressed his disdain over the decision to honour Court, while adding he was "sick of talking about that person every summer".

"I do not support that," Mr Andrews said.

"You know my views on a whole range of issues. I don't believe she has views that accord with the vast majority of people across our nation, that see people particularly people from the LGTBI community, as equal and deserving of dignity, respect and safety.

"I don't believe she shares those views and I don't believe she should be honoured because of that. I would prefer not to be giving oxygen to some of these views."

When asked what she would say in response to the premier's comments, Court said:

"I call him blessed. I pray for him, I pray for our premiers."

Court did not apologise for her religious views, emphasising she was entitled to speak freely about her opinions.

"I think for freedom of speech, I should be able to have a say for what I believe," she said.

Margaret Court.

"I teach what the bible says. That's my beliefs and I stand with that.

"There's a lot of people who agree with me. The bible has been around for thousands of years."

Honours lists are sent under embargo to media outlets prior to Australia Day for preparation purposes.

However, the news Court was set to be honoured was made public on social media this morning by a Melbourne columnist, who said 'other sources' had made him aware of the decision.

Court said the award was a "great honour" and she had not expected to receive it.

"I'm just so thankful that this honour has come."