Australia on Tuesday rushed Nathan Bracken and Daniel Cullen into their squad for the second Test in Bangladesh as the world champions faced an embarrassing loss against the sport’s minnows. Cricket Australia announced that left-arm paceman Bracken and uncapped spinner Cullen would join the team ahead of the second Test on concerns that injuries would force changes in the present team.
Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods met in Butler Cabin for the second straight year at the Masters for a role reversal not seen at Augusta National in more than 40 years. Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer — rivals briefly, driving forces as long as they played — took turns helping each other into the green jacket for three straight Masters ending in 1965.
Israel’s Cabinet on Tuesday declared ailing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon permanently incapacitated, marking the official end of his five-year tenure. Sharon (78) suffered a devastating stroke on January 4 and has been in a coma since. After the stroke, Sharon’s deputy, Ehud Olmert immediately stepped in as his temporary replacement.
The Italian elections split the nation in half, with a bitterly contested race failing to produce a clear winner in Parliament on Tuesday, more than 12 hours after polls closed, and threatening a new season of political instability. Near-final returns on Tuesday showed Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservatives holding a razor-thin lead in the Senate and Romano Prodi’s center-left winning the lower house by the smallest of margins.
Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela on Monday fired her provincial ministers for health and economic affairs, Dr Bevan Goqwana and Andre de Wet, both of whom she has clashed with in recent weeks. She named Mbulelo Sogoni to take over from De Wet, while social development minister Thokozile Xasa will temporarily take on Goqwana’s portfolio.
A South African grandmother was jailed for nearly eight and a half years on Tuesday after being caught trying to smuggle cocaine hidden in garden gnomes into New Zealand. Linda Martin (52) was sentenced in the Auckland High Court, after being caught with more than three kilograms of cocaine at Auckland Airport two years ago.
Cape Town city manager Wallace Mgoqi on Monday evening brushed aside a council decision to terminate his contract, saying he will be in the office as usual on Tuesday. A full council meeting on Monday morning resolved to revoke former mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo’s decision to extend Mgoqi’s contract for a year.
Air Force One, the presidential jet, is a near-mythical symbol of United States power, shrouded in so much secrecy that even foreign leaders invited on board are forbidden from seeing every corner. But the aircraft just became rather less mysterious after it emerged that detailed plans of its interior and exterior had been made publicly available on the website of an American air force base.
Jeffrey Skilling, Enron’s former chief executive, on Monday made an impassioned vow to fight the criminal fraud charges levelled against him ”until the day I die”. Skilling (52) took the witness stand for the first time at a court in Houston, Texas, to defend himself in one of the most infamous cases of corporate chicanery ever to come to light.
President Jacques Chirac caved in yesterday to France’s biggest street protests for decades and scrapped the controversial new youth employment law, handing a victory to the unions and a blow to his Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin. Chirac was desperate for a way out of France’s two-month political crisis which has seen millions march, students blockade schools and universities, and protesters occupy the Sorbonne for the first time since 1968.