CANBERRA, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Cricket Australia has on Wednesday released its summer schedule of cricket, with four nations to tour Australia over 41 days of international cricket.
South Africa, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will all make the trip down under, with the Proteas to play Australia in a three-Test series throughout November, while Pakistan will also contest three Tests throughout December and January.
South Africa will clash with Australia in Perth, Hobart and Adelaide, while Pakistan will contest the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, while also making appearances in Brisbane and Sydney. 2016 is the first year that Perth will host the first Test of the summer.
Between the two Test series, New Zealand will visit from across the Tasman to take part in a set of three One Day Internationals (ODIs) in early December.
Following the Test series against Pakistan, Australia will host a second ODI series against the Pakistanis across five dates in January. South Africa will not play a ODI series in Australia over the 201617 summer.
To round out the summer, Sri Lanka will visit Austrlia's shores for a three-match T20 series, with venues to be confirmed at a later date.
Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland said the summer's cricket calendar is one of the most action-packed in recent memory.
"We believe that there is something for all cricket fans in the upcoming program," Sutherland said on Wednesday.
"We have two highly-regarded Test nations in South Africa and Pakistan touring Australia this summer and both series promise to be great contests.
"The decision to start the international season in Perth allows us to do so with a bang. It gives Western Australian cricket fans, including a strong local South African community, the chance to see two of the world's best sides, while allowing us to broadcast the match in prime time to the east coast of Australia."
ATHENS, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- Greece ended Friday a much-debated marathon auction for four licenses of TV broadcasting nationwide, which were tendered to business moguls and private media companies.
Among the winners who paid a total of 246 million euros (275.4 million U.S. dollars), are two newcomers, businessmen Vangelis Marinakis and Ivan Savvidis, owner of a popular football club, as well as construction mogul Ioannis Vladimiros Kalogritsas, government spokesperson Olga Gerovassilis said.
Besides, ANT1 TV of Kyriakou Group and SKAI of Yannis Alafouzos, two of the existing private TV channels which have been operating since the 1990s with provisional licenses without paying fees, also secured licenses.
The starting price for each license valid for a decade was set at 3 million euros.
Gerovassilis hailed as a new start to clear a dysfunctional TV broadcasting landscape suffering from corruption, stressing that for the first time in three decades Greece is gaining revenues from private television channels.
However, opposition parties, representatives of the so-called old media system and other critics who questioned the legitimacy and transparency of the auction process, warned that the "war of the television landscape" is not over.
They accused the government of attempting to control the media by granting licenses to businessmen who have close ties with the ruling Radical Left party and ousting others.
The auction started under strict rules and security measures on Tuesday morning with the participation of eight contenders. It was supervised by a special committee composed of academics and senior state officials.
The State Council, Greece's supreme administrative court, is expected to rule on the legitimacy of the auction in the second half of September.
In Greece, TV channels which are currently on air without a license face a 90-day grace period before they go off air.
The government has said that more TV licenses will be auctioned off in the future.
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