Former South African umpire Rudi Koertzen killed in car crash
Cape Town, Aug 9: Former South African international umpire Rudi Koertzen was killed in a car crash on Tuesday morning near a town called Riversdale, a local website reported.
He was 73.
Koertzen is survived by his wife and four children.
One of the most respected umpires in world cricket from the late 1990s till 2010, Koertzen had officiated in nearly 400 international games.
"The world-famous cricket umpire, Rudi Koertzen, and three other people were killed in a head-on collision near Riversdale on Tuesday morning. The 73-year-old Koertzen from Despatch in Nelson Mandela Bay was on his way back home from Cape Town after a golf weekend," Algoa FM News reported.
The former umpire's son, Rudi Koertzen Jr, confirmed the tragic news.
"He went on a golf tournament with some of his friends, and they were expected to come back on Monday, but it seems they decided to play another round of golf," Koertzen Jr told the website.
Koertzen was inducted into the ICC's Elite Panel in 2002 and was a part of it for eight years.
During his tenure, he officiated as on-field and TV umpire in as many as 397 games, including 128 Test matches, a record 250 ODIs, and 19 T20 Internationals.
He had his share of controversies too, including continuing with the 2007 ODI World Cup final between Sri Lanka and Australia in near darkness due to a wrong interpretation of rule, which forced the ICC to not give him any assignment during the inaugural World T20, which was held in his own country, in 2007.
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Trump sues BBC for USD 10 billion, alleges defamation over edited Jan 6 speech
Washington (AP): President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Monday seeking USD 10 billion in damages from the BBC, accusing the British broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices.
The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 US presidential election.
It accused the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump's speech on January 6, 2021” in order to ”intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”
The lawsuit, filed in a Florida court, seeks USD 5 billion in damages for defamation and USD 5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
The broadcaster apologised last month to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejected claims it had defamed him, after Trump threatened legal action.
BBC chairman Samir Shah had called it an “error of judgment,” which triggered the resignations of the BBC's top executive and its head of news.
The speech took place before some of Trump's supporters stormed the US Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.
The BBC had broadcast the hourlong documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 US presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
Trump said earlier Monday that he was suing the BBC “for putting words in my mouth.”
“They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn't say, and they're beautiful words that I said, right?" the president said unprompted during an appearance in the Oval Office. "They're beautiful words, talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said. They didn't say that, but they used terrible words.”
The president's lawsuit was filed in Florida. Deadlines to bring the case in British courts expired more than a year ago.
Legal experts have brought up potential challenges to a case in the US, given that the documentary was not shown in the country.
The lawsuit alleges that people in the US can watch the BBC's original content, including the “Panorama” series, which includes the documentary, by using the subscription streaming platform BritBox or a virtual private network service.
The 103-year-old BBC is a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds (USD 230) paid by every household that watches live TV or BBC content. Bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial, it typically faces especially intense scrutiny and criticism from both conservatives and liberals.
