Share on Twitter Share via Email Sign up to the Spin – our weekly cricket round-up news Since you’re here… Show Share on Pinterest Smith said: “When you see [Vince] bat well, boy does he look a Test player. However, there’s a bigger picture and this is what I said to him today: his cricketing history throughout his Tests and also levels below, he has not produced the runs he should have done. He has not defined enough matches in a way that a top-order batsman with his ability should.”On Root’s return to No 3 he added: “If you’d asked me, I’d have said I’d love Joe to want to bat there. Independently of that, Joe has said that’s what he wants to do – and I think it’s an excellent move. Joe wants what is best for the team.”The former Test Match Special commentator and Kent batsman went on to state that the door is not closed for Vince or Moeen Ali, who was dropped for the final Test of a harrowing winter both for England and personally, and has been at the IPL since. Was this helpful? Cricket Share on Facebook “The panel felt it was the ideal time to reintroduce Jos,” said Smith. “We felt that a player of his unique gifts – what he brings as a destructive batsman, as a competitive presence, as a dynamic athlete, as someone who has leadership skills and is playing with such confidence and flair – this was the right time. The decision has been made eyes wide open.”The starting point for Buttler’s inclusion was actually the promotion of Jonny Bairstow to No 5. While the Yorkshireman retains the gloves ahead of England’s one-day wicketkeeper – Smith cited his ability to perform both roles – it is hoped this will bolster the batting as the captain, Joe Root, returns to No 3 and James Vince misses out.While Mark Stoneman is afforded another chance as Alastair Cook’s opening partner, Vince’s demotion after 13 caps and an average of 24.9 comes despite a match-saving unbeaten 201 for Hampshire against Somerset compiled over eight and a half hours. England v Pakistan 2018 Instead Bess gets the spinner’s berth, having claimed 63 wickets at 22 apiece in his 16 games to date, albeit with only one of those games coming this season. Smith praised this excellent start to his career, the impression he made when with the England Lions and MCC during the winter and his sparky character.Commenting on the news of his first Test call-up, Bess said: “I was actually in Ikea with my girlfriend. I’ve just got a new house so we were looking for some sofas and I was having an argument with my missus.“I was really gutted for Leachy. He’s worked so hard. Luckily I’m very good mates with him and we work very well together at Somerset.”ECB and Surrey to meet over Hundred concernsThe England and Wales Cricket Board has called a meeting with officials at Surrey in a bid to address any ongoing issues with the new 100-ball competition.Colin Graves, the ECB chairman, appeared to threaten the club with the removal of the Oval’s host status during an interview with the Daily Telegraph on Monday in response to perceived sniping about the controversial new format’s rather hapless launch.Richard Gould, the Surrey chief executive, described some of the public reaction to the tournament as “mirthful” over the weekend, prompting Graves to say: “If they don’t want it, fine. But if they do want it, they have to be 100% committed.”Surrey insist they remain determined to make The Hundred a success but, much like the Professional Cricketers’ Association, they are also keen to get more detail and see their questions addressed when they meet with the ECB in the first week of June. Topics Joe Root (Yorkshire, capt), Jimmy Anderson (Lancashire), Jonny Bairstow (Yorkshire, wkt), Dom Bess (Somerset), Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire), Jos Buttler (Lancashire), Alastair Cook (Essex), Dawid Malan (Middlesex), Ben Stokes (Durham), Mark Stoneman (Surrey), Chris Woakes (Warwickshire), Mark Wood (Durham). … we have a small favour to ask. More people, like you, are reading and supporting the Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism than ever before. And unlike many news organisations, we made the choice to keep our reporting open for all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.The Guardian will engage with the most critical issues of our time – from the escalating climate catastrophe to widespread inequality to the influence of big tech on our lives. At a time when factual information is a necessity, we believe that each of us, around the world, deserves access to accurate reporting with integrity at its heart.Our editorial independence means we set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Guardian journalism is free from commercial and political bias and not influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This means we can give a voice to those less heard, explore where others turn away, and rigorously challenge those in power.We hope you will consider supporting us today. We need your support to keep delivering quality journalism that’s open and independent. Every reader contribution, however big or small, is so valuable. Support The Guardian from as little as $1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you. What county cricket can expect from ‘big dog’ Virat Kohli’s arrival Reuse this content The Spin: sign up and get our weekly cricket email. Quick guide England squad for first Test v Pakistan Read more Read more Hide Jos Buttler Support The Guardian England cricket team Share on LinkedIn Thank you for your feedback. Jos Buttler has earned his Test recall on the back of his “unique gifts” as a destructive batsman. This was the view from Ed Smith when he named his first squad as England’s national selector and handed an opportunity to the uncapped off-spinner Dom Bess.While the 20-year-old Bess comes in on the back of the broken thumb suffered by his Somerset colleague, Jack Leach, on Monday, it was the decision to bring in Buttler as a specialist No 7 batsman that hogged much of the attention out of the 12 picked for the first of a two-match series against Pakistan at Lord’s on 24 May.The 27-year-old certainly represents a wildcard pick where talent trumps County Championship form, with the last of his 16 caps coming in India 18 months ago, no first-class cricket since last year and the first part of the season spent thrashing five successive half-centuries for Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League. Share on Messenger Share on WhatsApp read more

APTN National NewsDawson City and the Tr’ondek Whitchin First Nation in the Yukon are working on a plan.The two groups are going to nominate the Klondike famous for its gold rush history as a world heritage site.And as APTN’s Shirley McLean reports, the First Nation says, it’s a shared history worth the designation.

2016 is coming to a close, and Geek.com is taking a look back at the year in pop culture. With that amazing Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer that dropped last night, we figured it would be best to start with a look at some of the best, must-read Marvel Comics series of 2016! This list can include any series from the publisher that was ongoing in 2016, whether it began, ended, or ran throughout the year.1. VisionSuperstar writer, Tom King (Batman, Omega Men) with artist Gabriel H. Walta and colorist Jordie Bellaire, have just recently wrapped their twelve issue run on Vision for Marvel Comics. Surely a modern classic, Vision takes a dark look at the avenging android, taking him and his new family to their lowest points. A look at humanity, grief, and sacrifice, Vision managed to be one of the most human books of the year despite, well, being about synthezoids.Both Volumes #1 and #2 are available now.2. Black PantherWriter Ta-Nehisi Coates, known for his work on The Atlantic and his book, Between The World And Me, was tapped by Marvel to write the newest launch of Black Panther, meant to launch alongside his appearance in the Captain America: Civil War. A superhero story ingrained with all of the politics of Game of Thrones; the new Black Panther series is exactly the kind of series we need right now. A spin-off, World of Wakanda, recently released its first issue as well.Black Panther Book 1 is out now.3. Black WidowComing off of their Eiser award-winning run on Daredevil, writer Mark Waid and writer/artist Chris Samnee have set their aim on Marvel’s woman of mystery. The new Black Widow series, which began in March of this year, reads like a spec script for a Black Widow standalone movie. Sending Natasha back to fight her past in the Red Room works extremely well, and Chris Samnee is a master of visual storytelling.Black Widow Volume 1 is available for purchase now. 4. Civil War II: KINGPINFan-favorite writer Matthew Rosenberg and artist Ricardo Lopez Ortiz put out one of the most compelling books of the year in the Civil War II: Kingpin mini-series. A story focusing on what makes the man who he is, Kingpin is the series we have needed since the character’s starring role on the Daredevil Netflix series. Rosenberg’s series was so well received that he has gotten his own Kingpin ongoing that will begin in February 2017.The first 120 pages have been collected and are on sale now.5. Patsy Walker aka HELLCAT!While Marvel has had no shortage of great women lead titles in recent years, with Ms. Marvel, Thor, and Squirrel Girl to name a few, Patsy Walker aka Hellcat! really stood out as something special. One of the most genuine comics coming out from the publisher, Hellcat! focuses on the superhero antics of a young woman just trying to find her place in the world, while also trying to do right by those close to her. A breath of fresh air, Hellcat! by writer Kate Leth and artist Brittney Williams has been on the publisher’s most consistent titles every month, always a breath of fresh air.Hellcat had two volumes out now for you to buy.6. Howard the DuckHoward the Duck may have recently reappeared in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but the character had faded into the background in recent years. The newest series by writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Joe Quinones brought the feathery curmudgeon back into the spotlight, giving him a solid supporting cast of his own and dragging him into every nook and cranny of the Marvel Universe. A ridiculously fun story of finding your place in the world, Howard recently wrapped up its run with two volumes. Follow writer Chip Zdarsky to his new Star-Lord series which begins later this month, and artist Joe Quinones to his Miss America Chavez series coming out next year.Three Volumes are out now for purchase.7. The UltimatesWriter Al Ewing has been writing Marvel team books consistently for the past few years, and while they have all been great, his masterpiece is the recent Ultimates series. A team of cosmic scale Avengers, featuring Captain Marvel, Blue Marvel, Miss America, Black Panther, and Monica Rambeau, the book featured the team going up the cosmos in an effort to save the fabric of reality. One of the most fun series coming out, it was recently relaunched as Ultimates2.Volume one is available now, while Volume 2 will be hitting shelves January 3rd, 2017.8. Darth VaderEver since Marvel relaunched the Star Wars series at the beginning of 2015, Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca’s Darth Vader stood above the rest. A space epic that really explored not only Darth Vader’s place in the galaxy but the true scope of his power, the series was a constant joy to read and a great love letter to the source material. It recently wrapped up with issue #25, with a Doctor Aphra spin-off recently beginning.Volume 4 is out now for purchase. read more

Stay on target MovieBob Reviews: ‘Shadow’MovieBob Reviews: ‘The Curse of La Llorona’ Is IT good?Is what good?The movie.Which movie?IT.It what?The movie.Which movie?IT!It what?The movie. IT.The movie it… what?Stop that.Sorry. Yes, IT is very good – I’m as surprised as you are.Yeah… why is it that Stephen King (horror) movies usually aren’t good?Welll… King is reall good at writing a book – but he’s great at writing a lot. Stephen King books are packed: People, places, details, backstories, concepts, descriptions, regressions, digressions, geneaology, history, geography… packed. Stephen King describes a desk the way other authors describe their entire cast of main characters. That’s why his stuff works: Whatever story he decides to tell, he’s gonna pack it with nuance and detail and depth and otherwise-extraneous worldbuilding detail until it feels complete and full and omnidimensional even if the actual boiled-down solid “content” is “only” your basic ghost story.…but scary movies are different from scary books – is that the idea?Pretty much. A scary book can digress at length away from the visceral scary business because the game tends to be mounting existential dread, whereas scary movies tend to work best at a faster clip leaving only enough breathing room between scares. So all the details and nuance that make Stephen King “Stephen King” tend to be the first stuff you have to cut for the movie – and a lot of the time that’s meant winding up with “only” the basic-level campfire-story premise at the center.So why does this one work?Good filmmaking. Also, they toss out about half the story and save it for the sequel.Come again?IT was always considered one of the most unfilmable King books because it’s basically two complete books worth of story set in two different alternating non-linear time periods (the main characters as children and the same characters as adults). It runs over a thousand pages and comprises an uneasy fusion of realistic horror, supernatural horror, Lovecraftian cosmic-horror, childhood drama, adult nostalgia, abuse-survival melodrama, and deconstructionist Americana. And even regarding pure “genre” leaps back and forth between serial-killer, ghost-hunting, and monster-on-the-loose narratives… but if you trim it down too much, you just end up with another scary clown movie. So the solution here is to shuffle all the adult-timeline stuff (and most of the “what’s actually happening?” mythology stuff) off to a sequel to be made later and just focus on the kids-versus-monster story.So then what’s THIS movie about?It takes place over the summer of 1988 in Derry, Maine. Our heroes are a group of misfit schoolkids nicknamed “The Losers,” who believe that a malevolent evil clown called “Pennywise” that they’ve all been seeing in nightmares/visions/etc is responsible for Derry’s unusually high number of missing children cases (including their nominal leader’s younger brother a year ago).  They come to suspect that Pennywise is actually something much worse than a mere evil clown and is, in fact, responsible for Derry’s dark history of unexplained tragedies over several centuries. Ultimately, they resolve to figure out where “IT” lives and find a way to kill it.Sounds kind of… familiar?Yeah, that is an issue. King likes to revisit certain specific tropes over and over, and he used a lot of them together in IT. Things like Haunted New England towns, cosmic horror masquerading as demonic horror, misfits forming surrogate families, clingy mothers, abusive fathers, bullied nerdy kids, beautiful-but-damaged girls who befriend awkward geeky boys who “get them,” 50s nostalgia (here reimagined as nostalgia for 80’s nostalgia for the 50s) fear of disease/death… it’s all in here, and it’s all feels unavoidably similar to other King-based movies and the countless movies, books and TV shows that have “borrowed” from IT over the years. Also, one of the kids from Stranger Things is in this too, so… yeah.Does that hurt it?Shockingly, not really. It’s not the most original narrative of all time (and not just because they already filmed this once as a so-so TV miniseries best remembered for an iconic Tim Curry performance as Pennywise) but it’s a well told, well conceived story with terrific characters and really strong payoffs. There’s some dynamite filmmaking on display from director Andres Muschietti, and the kids are all very solid – which is never a guarantee when you’re doing ostensibly “adult drama” with child actors. As movies about kids fighting off supernatural evil because adults won’t believe them go, it’s up there with The Devil’s Backbone – or perhaps a not-funny cousin of The Monster Squad.So it’s scary?Very – which is quite a feat considering Pennywise could easily become “not scary” given how big and “showy” of a monster he (and his various powers and abilities) tend to be from scene to scene. It helps that Muschietti understands that this is more of a monster movie than a “spectral” horror movie like Insidious or The Conjuring; so Pennywise can be tactile and aggressive and the good guys can be afforded cathartic “applause moments” of escape and/or triumph. And, it must be said, Bill Skarsgard’s turn as Pennywise is almost certainly an iconic, potentially star-making performance.I’ve heard the “kid section” of the book storyline ends in a really, really, really, REALLY uncomfortable way…Yeah, they don’t do that here.So you recommend it?Absolutely. One of the year’s best horror films.Let us know what you like about Geek by taking our survey. read more

Watch: Dolphin Leaps Feet Away From Unsuspecting SurferWatch: Deep-Sea Octopus ‘Billows Like a Circus Tent’ Stay on target Florida residents, you have a new neighbor — and it has the body of an eel and the spots of a leopard. It also has two small arms with gills sticking out of its body, and lives in the swamps of the Panhandle.The creature is actually a new species of legless salamander or siren. It is being officially called Siren reticulata, or the Reticulated Siren, and its discovery was published in the journal PLOS One journal last week.Scientists say the two-foot-long Reticulated Siren is among the largest species discovered in the United States in over 100 years.“In this study we use morphological and genetic evidence to describe a previously unrecognized species from southern Alabama and the Florida panhandle,” the authors wrote in their paper.“We name this species the Reticulated Siren, Siren reticulata. Future studies will enable more precise phylogenetic information about S. reticulata and will almost surely reveal additional undescribed species within the family.”It took the authors about five years of searching the Florida Panhandle before they could collect enough specimens to describe the species.The Okaloosa County, Florida location of the Siren reticulata captured in 2009 by one of the paper’s authors, David Steen. (Photo Credit: PLOS One)One of the research authors, David A. Steen, who works at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, captured the first specimen of the Reticulated Siren in 2009 while trapping turtles within Eglin Air Force Base in Okaloosa County, Florida.The authors then attempted to collect more specimens at Eglin Air Force Base as well as at Conecuh National Forest and in Lake Jackson, but failed. In 2014, however, they were finally successful when they found more specimens in a freshwater marsh adjacent to Lake Jackson in Walton County, Florida.According to National Geographic, there have been rumors for decades that an eel-like creature with leopard spots lurked in the swamps of Florida and Alabama. “It was basically a mythical beast,” Steen told NationalGeographic.com.The Reticulated Siren was so hard to find because it spends its entire life below the surface of the water, the scientists said. It also likes turbid water, which makes observations difficult.“What immediately jumps out about the reticulated siren that makes it so different from currently-recognized species is its dark and reticulated [or net-like] pattern,” said Steen. “It also seems as though they have a disproportionally-smaller head, as compared to other sirens.”According to the paper, the Reticulated Siren has “an elongate, eel-like body shape, two forelimbs, no eyelids, a lateral line, enlarged external gill fimbriae associated with gill slits, and a horny beak in place of the premaxillary teeth typical of other salamanders.”The authors are hoping the discovery of the species opens the doors for more researchers: “We hope the data we present here inspire others to prioritize further study of this group of fascinating amphibians and fund associated research.”Read the research paper here.More on Geek.com:Monk Seal With Eel Stuck Up Its Nose Caught on CameraBadass Bobcat Kitten Named Mr. Murderbritches Released Back Into the WildHow Do Spiders Survive the Winter? read more