Dubai, Jan. 21: The International Cricket Council has announced the referee and umpires who will officiate in the upcoming ODI series in Sri Lanka and Australia.

The five-ODI series between Sri Lanka and India will get underway in Dambulla on 28 January. The head of the playing control team for this series will be Chris Broad of the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Match Referees.

Brian Jerling of the Emirates International Panel of ICC Umpires will stand in all five matches along with local appointments.

Dubai - The United Arab Emirates and Japan have signed a memorandum of cooperation that will pave the way toward developing nuclear power plants in the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation, local media reported Tuesday.

"As we evaluate a peaceful civil nuclear power program in the United Arab Emirates, one of our fundamental principles is that we will work with responsible nations that are experts in the field," UAE Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Saif Sultan al-Aryani said

after signing the agreement on Monday.

Dubai, Jan. 19 : Sri Lanka will move up two places to fifth in the Reliance Mobile ICC ODI Championship table if it beats Pakistan in all three ODIs coming up in Karachi and Lahore.

According to an ICC media release, Mahela Jayawardena's team currently lies in seventh position following a tour of mixed results in Bangladesh. In a tri-series that also involved Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka lost one match to the home side but later exacted revenge in what was a thrilling and closely fought final.

Dubai, Jan. 15 : Work on the world''s tallest building in Dubai has come to a halt for at least a year thanks to the global financial crisis.

A Scotsman report says that developer Nakheel''s decision to shelve the project, which it unveiled only in October, came as a leading credit rating firm warned that falling property prices leave the outlook for the country''s banking sector looking negative.

A report this week showed home values in the Emirate tumbling eight percent in the past three months from the previous quarter, marking the first such decline in years.

The skyscraper - billed as at least two-thirds of a mile tall - was designed to top a rival''s nearly complete tower that will be the world''s highest.

Dubai, Jan. 15 : Matthew Hayden's position of 10th and 18th in the all-time Test and ODI Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings for batsmen is an impressive achievement by anyone's standards, but this has sparked off a debate on whether he is actually the 10th-best Test batsman or 18th-best ODI batsman in the history of the game.

The controversy seems to have erupted over the downgrading of India''s Sachin Tendulkar, who has been ranked 28th on the list of all time greats.