Graeme Smith, the South Africa captain, in action during day one of the first Test match between South Africa and Bangladesh in Bloemfontein.
Graeme Smith, the South Africa captain, in action during day one of the first Test match between South Africa and Bangladesh in Bloemfontein.
Graeme Smith, the South Africa captain, in action during day one of the first Test match between South Africa and Bangladesh in Bloemfontein.
Graeme Smith, the South Africa captain, in action during day one of the first Test match between South Africa and Bangladesh in Bloemfontein.

Record breakers stun Bangladesh


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BLOEMFONTEIN // Graeme Smith stroked a half-century as South Africa made a solid start on the first day of the first Test against Bangladesh. South Africa had reached 154-1 when rain brought an early tea, with the captain Smith unbeaten on 73. Bangladesh, who won the toss and elected to bowl, made an encouraging start as they limited the home side to just 22 runs in the first hour.

But Smith, assisted by Neil McKenzie in an opening stand of 102, wrested control and began to bat with more fluency as he stroked 10 fours off 130 balls. Smith and McKenzie extended their world record of successive Tests with an opening stand of more than 50 to a 10th successive match. In the final Test against England at the Oval in August, the pair bettered the previous mark of eight between the West Indians Roy Fredericks and Gordon Greenidge in 1976-77, while the Englishmen Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe twice achieved seven half-century stands in successive Tests.

McKenzie was dismissed nearly an hour after lunch, his innings of 42 ending with a disappointing stroke as he steered a long half-volley from Shahadat Hossain straight to backward point. Hashim Amla then came in and immediately dominated the bowling as he reached 33 not out off 37 deliveries before the rain break. The Proteas triumphed 2-0 in the recent three-match one-day series between the nations.

The second match of the two-Test series starts on Nov 26 at Centurion. * Agencies

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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets

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UPI facts

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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts

Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.

The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.

Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.

More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.

The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.

Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:

November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

April 2017Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.

February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.

December 2016A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.

July 2016Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.

May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.

New Year's Eve 2011A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.