New Zealand write to ICC over DRS not-out decision on Australia's Nathan Lyon in Adelaide Oval Test

New Zealand is still seething about Nigel Llong's baffling verdict in the day-night cricket Test and has written to the International Cricket Council.

Third umpire Llong ruled there was not conclusive evidence to dismiss Nathan Lyon during Australia's first innings at Adelaide Oval.

Lyon had all but walked off the field, the screen at the ground having shown a big Hot Spot mark on his bat.

However, Llong felt he was not certain Lyon edged the ball so he refused to overturn the original not-out verdict.

BlackCaps skipper Brendon McCullum was shocked the review was not successful as were most commentators at the game.

It proved a major turning point in the match, which Australia won by three wickets on Sunday.

Australia would have been 9 for 118 if Lyon was dismissed for a duck, instead it posted a first-innings total of 224.

NZ coach Mike Hesson could hardly hide his fury on Monday.

"It was excellent, wasn't it? I think everyone at the ground saw what unfolded," Hesson said.

"It's been spoken about a lot. We've certainly made a representation to the ICC and at present we're still awaiting an acceptable response."

Hesson contacted match referee Roshan Mahanama but was tightlipped on what his side was specifically demanding from the ICC.

"There's been official representation from New Zealand Cricket, and from the team management as well," he said.

"We're going through the proper channels and we're awaiting a response.

"There is a process that needs to be followed with these decisions and we need to make sure that process was followed correctly."

Hesson remains in favour of DRS

However, Hesson made his views on Llong and the Decision Review System (DRS) patently clear.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with the technology at all," he said.

"The technology has got a bit of a bad wrap.

"We've put our case forward and we are awaiting a response."

SOUNDCLOUD: Interview: Darren Lehmann

Darren Lehmann felt for his counterpart.

"If I was probably umpiring I probably would have let him keep walking," Lehmann told ABC Grandstand.

New Zealand veterans McCullum and Ross Taylor both suggested Llong's verdict had a clear impact on the game.

Hesson noted his side will "never know" whether it could have changed the result.

"The game carried on and took a number of other twists and turns after that, so it's something that I can't answer. But it certainly had an impact," he said.

Hesson did not seek out Llong during the match and said it would be wrong to do so.

"We don't talk to umpires involved in the game during the game," he said.

"We try and go through the appropriate channels. Roshan Mahanama's the match referee and he's the initial point of contact."

Davis Cup final: Andy Murray too good for Ruben Bemelmans and levels match

When the 2015 Davis Cup final began in this perversely atmospheric warehouse on Friday, anxiety penetrated beyond the usual frayed nerve endings of the participants – but background fears of terror quickly gave way to some enthralling tennis that saw eventual parity between Great Britain and Belgium.

Day one ended as we thought it might do: one rubber apiece – but Kyle Edmund came tantalisingly close to making history as the first final debutant in the 115-year history of the competition to win a live rubber, before suffering at the artful hands of David Goffin in five sets which one would hardly imagine belonged in the same match.

Rarely can a struggle lasting two hours and 47 minutes have swung so violently. It seemed after two sets the match was there for Edmund, ranked 100 in the world, to put in his pocket, leaving the 16th-ranked Belgian to explain to his distraught supporters how such a disaster had unfolded.

Instead, Goffin held firm to win 3-6, 1-6, 6-2, 6-1, 6-0. So the combined scores of the loser of each set came to all of seven games. Unbelievable but true. Not quite so accurate was Edmund’s expression of humble regret afterwards.

“You’re playing for your country, you’re playing for your team-mates. You feel like you’ve let them down.”

The quiet 20-year-old from Beverley should be reassured he let nobody down; perhaps his body let his heart down but he can only benefit from the experience, taking on board how to deal with such crushing disappointment as well as knowing he can extend a fine player ranked 84 places above him on his favoured surface in front of 12,000 of his own fans in a wickedly hostile atmosphere.

Edmund added: “I’ll look back on it and I’ll say I did my best. But you’re right in the moment, you’re emotionally attached to it. You’re just disappointed you couldn’t do it for your team.”

Andy Murray knows all about the expectations of a nation, of course. He has been burdened with them for a decade and more, first satisfying the hunger pangs wrought by 77 years of waiting for someone to emulate Fred Perry, then leading this team here to smash more Perry history and win the Cup for Great Britain for the first time since 1936.

He got off to a wonderful start. It is fair to say Ruben Bemelmans, Belgium’s third best player and ranked at 108, was thrown to him as a first-day sacrifice, but the long-haired left-hander did not lie down, which resulted in an often enthralling scrap.

Repeatedly both players had the crowd edging forward in anticipation of something special as they strained at the limit of their skills. While the 6-3, 6-2, 7-5 scoreline in favour of the world No2 baldly tells a story of dominance, within the narrative there were enough quality exchanges to justify a grand slam final.

And there was no little passion in both matches – on and off the court. Although bonhomie was at a premium among fans bonded in an unspoken pact of defiance of external threats – one comedian tried a bomb hoax in the morning that delayed the tram servicing the venue for at least an hour – Murray red-lined at the point of all-out anger a couple of times. He was docked a point for audible dissent but thereafter kept his emotions fairly well in check.

Murray was booed with some gusto for perceived time-wasting after taking a tumble in the fourth game of the first set but, having allegedly manufactured the distraction, he proceeded to take advantage of it and broke.

Some of his racket work was sublime (as is so often the case), including a delicious lob that bamboozled Bemelmans at the start of the second set, followed by an angled backhand winner that skimmed the net for another break.

But Bemelmans showed his skills too, particularly near the net, where he won a staggering 24 of his 73 points. He was artful and resolute, also, in getting to deuce on Murray’s serve in the fourth game but the Scot would not crack.

A passing forehand at 15-40 in the fifth game was memorable as Murray eased into a two-set lead. Surely he would not fold like his inexperienced team-mate had earlier ... Bemelmans thought he might, especially after breaking for 4-2 in the third, and the crowd went even crazier than the pitch they had already achieved.

In the stands, there were a few inhospitable whistles at the moment of service – as there had been during Edmund’s match – but on court the intensity of concentration and commitment provided a shield to all that.

Murray recovered from his brief setback to break back in the seventh game and it was the turn of the travelling 1,000 – led by the Sterling University fans, as ever – to raise the roof.

Raising the roof, incidentally, is what the International Tennis Federation might have considered before a ball was struck as the girders holding the unbearably bright TV lights were a few centimetres the wrong side of legal height and a couple of Murray lobs almost bounced off them.

The heights he reached, though, were at ground level. In what has been probably his finest season – despite the lack of a slam to add to his cabinet – he is hitting the ball as hard and as crisply as at any time in his career. When he lined Bemelmans up after manoeuvring him into a position of the greatest vulnerability, the ball left his racket with blinding force.

The drop-in clay has to be among the fastest of its type in the game, with precious little grip or give, allowing the ball to fly through. Murray had his own inexplicable blip near the end, mind, double-faulting to hand Bemelmans set point, before holding, breaking and serving it out to wrap up victory after two hours and 24 minutes. But, to borrow from Tony Blair on John Prescott, Andy is Andy

He had his wide-mouthed lion roar on at the end, fair roasting this icebox of an arena with his full-blooded commitment. What would Great Britain do without him?

Earlier, Edmund also profited in his early sparring with Goffin from the friendly clay. The Belgian, playing on his favourite clay surface, had not dropped a set in four Davis Cup singles rubbers all year but found Edmund at turns brilliant, resolute then vulnerable before taking the opening rubber.

Once Goffin recovered from the early onslaught, he made Edmund pay for not cashing in.Towards the end Edmund’s young face wore the heavy weight of despair.

Where, he imagined, had all the power gone – and the control? In the first hour and a half, he had hit only six unforced errors. It took him only five minutes to double that tally and, from that point to the end, Goffin ruthlessly deconstructed his game.

At the end, Edmund was distraught. Yet he should take comfort from his wholeheartedness.

“It’s a whole new experience for me,” he said. There is every chance it will not be his last representing Great Britain.

Police release photos of Wichita bank robber

Wichita police are searching for the man who held up a local bank Friday morning.

Officers were called to the Intrust Bank branch at 3433 E. Central around 10:30 a.m. Police said the suspect entered the bank and yelled at two tellers to give him the money.

No customers were in the bank.

The suspect is described as a black male in his early 20s, standing about 5-foot-10 and had a medium build. He was wearing a black bandanna on his face, a black hooded jacket, white gloves, and he was carrying a black backpack.

Anyone with information is asked to call Wichita police or Crime Stoppers at (316) 267-2111.

As France mourns, it also looks ahead to major climate conference

As France bowed its head in official mourning Friday for 130 people killed by terrorists, it also braced for the challenge of hosting nearly 150 world leaders who will begin arriving this weekend for a critical global summit on the environment.

The events, separated by two weeks of shock and grief, of

fer a stark juxtaposition between the immediate danger of terrorism and the longer-term existential threat of climate change. They also contrast what many see as a dearth of security leading up to the terrorist attacks and the massive precautions surrounding the climate conference.

The U.N.-sponsored summit is sure to add to the strain on security forces that have already been stretched by an investigation of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks and a hunt for other extremist cells that could be plotting follow-up strikes.

French officials call the climate conference “the biggest peace summit ever organized,” with 147 heads of state and government expected to attend. They will be guarded by 2,800 French police officers at the conference venue, with thousands more officers deployed throughout the city.

Attendees are slated to include Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Obama, who has emphasized that he sees attendance at the summit as even more important following the attacks.

“I think it’s absolutely vital for every country, every leader, to send a signal that the viciousness of a handful of killers does not stop the world from doing vital business,” Obama said this week.

But some elements of the conference won’t go ahead as planned. Demonstrations have been canceled, with police citing security risks.

Preparations for the summit came as Paris continued to mourn. French President François Hollande fought back tears Friday morning as he led a somber remembrance of the attack victims at the gold-domed Hotel des Invalides, a former military hospital.

With wounded attack victims in wheelchairs and relatives of the dead looking on from a cobblestone courtyard, Hollande said France would “operate relentlessly to protect its children” from attack by “an army of fanatics.”

He also vowed that the country would respond with more music and sporting events following attacks on sites that included a concert hall and a stadium.

Security experts say that if the Islamic State or another group were to try to attack Paris during the climate summit, it is more likely that they would again aim for lightly guarded targets rather than attempt to penetrate multiple layers of security at the venue where the leaders are meeting.

“This generation of terrorists knows that attacking leaders or protected sites is probably out of reach,” said Camille Grand, director of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research. “That doesn’t mean they won’t try. But it’s extremely difficult.”

Grand said organizers are helped by the fact that the summit will be held just outside the city limits, at a conference center in Le Bourget, near Paris’s first airport. The world leaders will be staying on site.

Since the Nov. 13 attacks, France has declared a state of emergency, and security forces have conducted more than 1,000 raids and arrested more than 120 people on terrorism-related charges. Because of the heightened police activity, any would-be attackers “probably want to lay low and stay quiet” until the security crackdown eases, Grand said.

But organizers are not taking chances. Border controls have been tightened, and a section of the Boulevard Peripherique, the major highway that rings Paris, will be shut down during the days the world leaders are in town. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has urged city residents to use public transit, which will be free on those days.

Under regulations passed since the attacks, police have banned demonstrations, forcing nongovernmental organizations to create other options for protest.

Avaaz, a global campaign network whose name means “voice” in several languages, plans to cover the Place de la Republique, a square in central Paris, with shoes symbolizing the footsteps of those who had planned to take part in a demonstration that was being called the Global Climate March. The police have approved the installation of the shoes, which the group has been collecting for the past week. The square is both the city’s unofficial place of mourning and the traditional site for the expression of political discontent.

Other groups are planning to create a human chain between the Place de la Republique and another of the city’s squares, two miles away, or to join what some are calling a “great clamor for climate” by playing music and shouting from their windows for 15 minutes at 8 p.m. each night of the conference.

Several groups including the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace and France Nature Environment say they have developed an online tool to allow people to march in the Americas, Africa, Asia or elsewhere in Europe wearing the names and pictures of those who had planned to demonstrate in Paris.

And some say they will simply disobey the police crackdown.

“We need to fight the state of emergency,” said Benjamin Ball, a member of a group called the Les Désobéissants (the Disobedient). “Otherwise [the authorities] will extend it indefinitely.”

At the Place de la Republique on Friday, mourning citizens continued to pay tribute to the victims of the attacks. But they also looked ahead to a summit that many hope will help the world take a stand against an even greater long-term threat.

“We are all submerged in grief,” said Hélène Gauterie, wiping away tears as she stood before mountains of fading flowers and candles soaked by days of rain. “It’s hard to imagine thinking of anything else.”

But Julie and Marc Motreux, visiting from the southern French city of Nimes, said the threat of climate change was ultimately “more important for the world.”

Thomas Garreau and Justine Baudier, both students from Versailles, west of Paris, came to the square to mourn Quentin Mourier, a professor who died at the Bataclan theater, the scene of the deadliest attack.

“The terrorism happened and could happen again,” said Garreau, who belongs to an organization affiliated with climate politics. The climate conference, he said, could provide “constructive change.”

“Something positive must come of it,” Baudier said.

Pope Francis visits Ugandan shrine amid gay rights debate

Pope Francis traveled to Uganda's holiest shrine on Saturday, paying tribute to 19th century Christian martyrs killed for their faith, including for protecting young boys in the royal court from abuse by the king.

Francis, on the second leg of his first African tour, said Mass for tens of thousands of people huddled on muddy hillsides surrounding the soaring modern shrine made of iron and cone-shaped to resemble a hut of the Baganda tribe.

Twenty-five Anglicans and 22 Catholic converts where killed during the persecutions, mostly by being burned to death, between 1884 and 1887 on the orders of King Buganda Mwanga II

The most famous of the Catholic converts and martyrs was Charles Lwanga, a prefect in the royal court who was in charge of the boy pages and was killed because he tried to protect the children from the sexual advances of the king.

After their conversion they tried to spread the faith to other groups. Catholics now make up about 40 percent of the population. Churches run many schools and hospitals around the country.

"They did this in dangerous times," the pope said during a Mass celebrated from a concrete island on an artificial lake on the shrine complex outside the capital Kampala.

Traditional singing and dancing gave way to a Western-style church choir as the pope walked to the altar via a gangway over the lake, which was guarded by police scuba divers in dinghies

"Not only were their lives threatened but so too were the lives of the younger boys under their care," he said.

Uganda has been seen as a bastion of anti-gay sentiment since 2013, when it sought to toughen penalties, with some lawmakers pushing for the death penalty or life in prison for some actions involving gay sex.

The law was overturned on procedural grounds, but not before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry compared it to anti-Semitic legislation in Nazi Germany. Other Western donors were outraged.

Gay rights activists in Uganda said before the visit that they hoped the pope would make a gesture of tolerance to homosexuals.

Failing to address the issue would be "a missed opportunity to protect LGBT persons," said activist Frank Mugisha

In the prepared text of his homily for the Mass, the pope praised the martyrs for telling the king "what the gospel does not allow," an apparent reference to homosexual acts.

The pope, however, did not read that part of the homily. It was not clear if he decided to remove it.

The Church teaches that while homosexual tendencies are not a sin, homosexual acts are. It also says homosexuals should be respected in the Church and society but that Catholic homosexuals should remain chaste.

The pope first visited a separate shrine to the 25 Anglican martyrs before saying Mass at the nearby shrine to the Catholic martyrs, who were made saints by Pope Paul VI in 1964.

Later on Saturday, the pope was due to hold a rally with Ugandan youth and visit a Church-run home for the poor.

On Sunday morning, he is due to leave for the Central African Republic, potentially the most dangerous stop on his trip.

For nearly three years, the Central African Republic has been embroiled in an inter-religious conflict that has effectively split it in two. Thousands have been killed and more than one in five have fled internally or sought refuge abroad

Gunman kills officer, two others at Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado

A suspect is in police custody following an hours-long shooting standoff at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, where at least one police officer and two civilians were killed Friday.

“The perpetrator is in custody,” Mayor John Suthers declared just after 5 p.m. Mountain time — more than five hours after an active shooter was first reported at the health-care clinic, spawning confusion that lasted through the afternoon over whether the gunman was at large or holed up at the medical facility with staff and patients.

Police were trying to determine the suspect’s identity and his motive after his capture at the clinic. They said the man was armed with a long gun and also brought into the building several “items” that could have been explosive devices.

Police described the gunman as a stocky, bearded white male wearing a trench coat.

Besides the three deaths, at least four other police officers and five civilians were injured. ­Authorities said those individuals were all in good condition.

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs said the officer who was killed was Garrett Swasey, 44, who had been with the department for six years and responded to the initial reports of an active shooter.

President Obama was briefed on the situation, a White House official said. Local police were joined at the scene by state investigators and federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI.

Health centers associated with Planned Parenthood have been the target of threats and violence because of the organization’s role in providing abortions and lobbying for reproductive rights. Abortion rights groups say threats against abortion providers rose sharply this summer in the wake of an undercover “sting” mounted by an antiabortion group that filmed one of its videos at a clinic in Denver.

At least four Planned Parenthood clinics have been targeted with arson since the videos were released. The increase in threats has led abortion rights groups to increase cooperation with local police and the FBI.

“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of the brave law enforcement officers who put themselves in harm’s way in Colorado Springs,” Cecile Richards, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “We are profoundly grateful for their heroism in helping to protect all women, men and young people as they access basic health care in this country.”

Earlier, Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said in an interview on CNN that she believed all the staff members and patients of the Planned Parenthood clinic were safe.

“We’re very pleased that our own security systems were operating at top-notch,” she said. “Our staff were able to monitor our internal cameras and actually assist the local law enforcement folks to understand what was happening inside the center as it was happening.”.

Cowart said that “we don’t yet know the full circumstances and motives behind this criminal action, and we don’t yet know if Planned Parenthood was in fact the target of this attack.”

In New York, Detective Brian Sessa said the police department had deployed response vehicles to Planned Parenthood locations throughout the city out of “an abundance of caution.” He added that there were no specific threats.

The incident in Colorado began on a traditionally quiet day of post-Thanksgiving relaxation about 11:30 a.m. Mountain time when police responded to a call for help from the Planned Parenthood clinic. The clinic sits in a bustling area near a shopping center, a medical building, a grocery store and restaurants.

A burst of gunfire early on gave way to relative calm in the afternoon, but witnesses said gunfire started again in the evening.

Police warned media not to set up too close to the scene because it was not secure. Many workers and shoppers in the area were told to hunker down in place, whether it be in the kitchen of their restaurant or the back seat of their car. Some remained there for hours as snow accumulated and the sky darkened

As of 4 p.m., police had not identified or made voice contact with the shooter. Buckley said officers then managed to get into the building and shout at the suspect to give himself up, after which he emerged from the building with his hands raised.

Before that, police had evacuated a number of people from the building, and they were taken to a hospital for evaluation. Footage from television stations showed people in medical jackets and scrubs being ushered through the snow into waiting vehicles.

Sydney Downey, 20, who works at Sally Beauty Supply nearby, said people inside the store heard gunshots about 11:45 a.m.

“A lot of gunshots,” Downey said, “like, too many to even count.”

She said police and firefighters swarmed Centennial Boulevard, where the clinic is located, and crowded around a nearby bank.

An officer came by the beauty supply store to make sure that the doors were locked and that those inside were safe, she said.

“He said, ‘Get back away from the windows,’ and left, and that was it,” Downey said.

After that, Downey said, she remained huddled in a back room with the store manager and a customer.

Brigitte Wolfe, who works at a Japanese restaurant across the street from the clinic, said she first learned something was amiss when police SWAT and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives vehicles pulled up out front.

She heard no gunshots. “We just thought it was some random whatever happening, and then we turned on the news and started seeing what was going on,’’ she said.

Suddenly, about 3 p.m., police and ATF agents banged on the restaurant’s door “and told us to hide where there was no windows because the shooter was active,’’ Wolfe said.

She and several employees and customers hid in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Wolfe said the police and agents commandeered the restaurant’s dining room.

Gunshots were audible as police used an armored vehicle to evacuate people from the Planned Parenthood clinic.

Wolfe said that the medical facility had been the scene of protests most weekends but that there had never been any violence until Friday.

The Latest: German authorities arrest arms dealer suspect

German prosecutors say they have arrested on illegal weapons charges a 34-year-old man who local media report was located as part of an investigation into the attacks in Paris.

Stuttgart prosecutors said Friday the man, whose name was not given in line with privacy laws, is accused of converting legal starter pistols to fire live ammunition and selling them on the Internet, the dpa news agency reported.

The prosecutor's office would not confirm, however, a Bild newspaper report that he is also suspected of selling four AK-47 type assault rifles at the beginning of November that might have been used in the Paris attacks.

Citing investigative documents, Bild reported that the man's phone contained data that led to the suspicion.