ne of English cricket’s senior administrators said on Sunday the British government had instructed them not to go ahead with the tour of Zimbabwe. Tim Lamb, chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, said a letter from Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was ”tantamount to an instruction not to go”.

Age triumphed over youth as French schoolgirl Tatiana Golovin was taught a lesson by Lisa Raymond at the Australian Open on Monday. Raymond, who played in the first round of the 1989 US Open just a year after Golovin was born, booked her place in the quarter-finals with an emphatic 6-2, 6-0 win.

The Ministry of Sport has hit out at a City Press report on Sunday that claims that Deputy President Jacob Zuma was involved in the conflict between former national soccer coach Shakes Mashaba and the South African Football Association. ”The lies and distortion machinery of City Press is at it again,” said a ministry spokesperson.

Eight years after winning an emotional African Nations Cup crown on home soil, South Africa open their 2004 finals campaign against little Benin in Tunisia on Tuesday with the team split over financial rewards and with their build-up wrecked by a late change in coach.

Leeds United hoped to agree a stay of execution with creditors on Monday after it emerged that a group of local businessmen were ready to buy the English Premiership club for £25-million. Chief executive Trevor Birch is said to be hopeful over the package, but wants more time to examine it.

Xolile Maliti, a former driver, bulldozed his way past attempts by onlookers to extract pompous comments last week when he became the first HIV-positive patient to receive medicine in the long-awaited national roll-out of anti-retrovirals.
He steered straight to the core of the matter: ”It will let me live longer,” said Maliti (57).

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has called on international investigators to probe an illegal underground traffic in nuclear secrets, stretching from Asia to Europe. Pakistani investigators are investigating nine scientists, officials and senior soldiers on suspicion of selling nuclear technology to Iran and other countries.

Scientists believe that they may soon discover lakes beneath the arid surface of Mars. Some of these subterranean pools could provide homes for primitive life forms. Researchers’ hopes of finding liquid water on Mars has been raised by the dramatic discovery of evidence of ice on the planet’s surface.