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It was not the moment when England actually won the second Test against Australia that will stick longest in the memory.

When Andrew Flintoff - surely bowling as well as any man has at Lord's - picked up the ninth wicket of the Australian innings, he dropped to one knee, and with his arms outstretched held the pose as he faced the spectators in the Mound and Tavern Stands.
Every day, every single little thing he did had been raucously cheered by spectators inebriated by his brilliance. So it was ironic that he was the one genuflecting to them, his besotted followers.

The fans had come knowing that in the years to come they would be able to tell their grandchildren that they watched Flintoff's last Test at Lord's. The cherry on the trifle, of course, was that their hero was providing the man-of-the-match performance in England's first win against Australia at headquarters since 1934, and only their second since 1896.

There had been criticism of the timing of Flintoff's announcement that he would play no further Test cricket after this current series, Australia's captain Ricky Ponting pointing out that this tour of last hurrahs might turn into a distracting "circus".

But if the Lord's experience is anything to go by, spectators can look forward to seeing performances that are less Coco the Clown and more Maximus Decimus Meridius. How appropriate, then, that Russell Crowe attended a day of this Test.

In his 77th Test, Flintoff had pulled out only the third five-wicket haul of his career. Having already sent down 29 overs previously in the match, he bowled another 60 deliveries early on Monday, plus the odd no-ball, at an average speed of 90mph. Did he bowl a single ball that did not ask serious questions of every batsman who faced him? I doubt it.

But it was not all about Flintoff. Andrew Strauss's big century, James Anderson's four wickets on Friday, the confident batting of Alastair Cook and Matt Prior, and Graeme Swann's 4-87 were all important pieces of an England jigsaw that is coming together nicely.
source: bbc.com/sposts

COLOMBO: Khurram Manzoor and Mohammad Yousuf narrowly missed scoring centuries as they led Pakistan's recovery on the opening day of the final cricket Test against Sri Lanka here on Monday.
Pakistan, sent in to bat in overcast conditions by Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara, collapsed to 34-2 within the first hour as left-arm seamer Thilan Thushara grabbed two wickets in four balls.
Manzoor (93) and Yousuf (90) lifted the beleaguered tourists with a 167-run partnership for the third wicket as Pakistan moved to 289-7 by stumps at the Sinhalese sports club here.
Manzoor, a 23-year-old from Karachi, fell short of his maiden Test century in only his fifth match, while the seasoned Yousuf missed his 25th ton after the pair had stayed together for more than a session.

Shoaib Malik (45) and Misbah-ul Haq (27) put on 75 for the fifth wicket to carry the total to 285-4 before the second new ball taken shortly before stumps claimed three wickets for two runs.
Thushara trapped Malik leg-before for his third wicket of the day, before Nuwan Kulasekera had Misbah caught behind and bowled Umar Gul to open up the Pakistan tail.
When stumps were drawn, Kamran Akmal and Danish Kaneria were at the crease on one run apiece.
Pakistan are hoping to deny Sri Lanka a clean sweep of the series after losing the first Test in Galle on the fourth morning and the second at the P. Sara Oval here in three days.
Openers Fawad Alam and Manzoor had put on 34 within the first hour when Thushara struck twice in his third over.
Left-handed Alam, who hit a brilliant 168 on debut in the previous Test, made 16 when he edged Thushara to wicket-keeper Tillakaratne Dilshan.
Three balls later, Pakistan captain Younus Khan chopped a delivery wide of the off-stump on to his stumps after making two.source: geo.tv

Bangladesh Vs West Indies
Second Test, Grenada (day four, close):
Bangladesh 232 and 217-6 beat West Indies 237 and 209 by four wickets
Date: 17-21 July Coverage: Scores and reports on the BBC website and mobiles
Match scorecard
Raqibul Hasan hit 65 in Bangladesh's successful run chase
Captain Shakib Al Hasan hit an unbeaten 96 to steer Bangladesh to a four-wicket victory over the West Indies and secure the nation's second-ever series win.

Left-arm spinner Shakib ended with figures of five for 70 as Bangladesh bowled out the weakened West Indies side for 209 in the morning session.

Set 215 to win, Bangladesh wobbled at 67-4 but Shakib and Raqibul Hasan (65) put on 106 for the fifth wicket.
Bangladesh sealed the win in style when Shakib smashed Kemar Roach for a six.

"In our nine years, this is the biggest thing that has happened to Bangladesh cricket," said Shakib, who also hit 13 fours in his innings.

"This series victory will give a boost to our confidence, and will help to take us to the next level, and with God's help, we shall go forward.

"There was not too much pressure on us (on Monday), since the boys have been playing really, really well. It was a good victory."

Bangladesh won the opening Test of the two-match series last Monday in St. Vincent by 95 runs.

The series win came against a much weakened and inexperienced West Indies side as most of their stars had boycotted the series in a dispute with their governing body over pay.

It was the first overseas win for Bangladesh, whose only previous series win was against Zimbabwe in 2005.

In a low-key series hit by poor attendances in the Caribbean, slow left-armer Shakib at least provided genuine Test quality with bat and ball.

He and Hasan played with little sign of nerves, despite the precarious position of their team, picking off the bad balls with ease and punishing without mercy, particularly Al Hasan.

Hasan was removed by Darren Sammy with a smart caught and bowled after his 65 to offer a glimmer of hope to the West Indies.

Sammy also got rid of Mushfiqur Rahim in the same fashion near the end as he finished with 5-55.

But Bangladesh comfortably secured just their third test win in style when Shakib smashed two fours, a two and then a six off of Roach to end the match in emphatic fashion.

The only positives for West Indies coach John Dyson will have been the bowling of Sammy and paceman Roach along with the all-round play of Dave Bernard, who scored three half-centuries and delivered some than useful medium pace. source: bbc.com.sports

We're increasingly living in a world where physical activity has stopped being a day-to-day part of our lives. We have domestic appliances to wash and dry for us and cars to get us around, and with the decline in manual labour many of us spend our working day sitting at desks.
In this article
Strenuous, moderate or mild?Recommended activity levels Older peopleSafety first - avoiding illness and injury
When we get home, we think nothing of spending the evening sitting or even lying down in front of the TV. If that sounds like your routine, then it's important to remember any exercise at all is better than none.

Many people's views on sport and exercise were formed during school PE lessons – endless laps of a muddy field, or standing around shivering in T-shirt and shorts, hoping the ball didn't come near you. Most of us have seen film of people running a marathon who look ready to keel over.

Not surprising then that many people regard exercise as something miserable that has to be very, very hard to do you any good. It doesn't.

In fact, there's a well-established theory that mild to moderate physical activity is, for most people, the best way to better health. Apart from anything else, unless you do something you enjoy – or can at least put up with – you won't stick at it. Similarly, if you start off doing too much too soon, you'll get fed up and stop, get injured or even make yourself ill.

So what's the right amount of exercise to get fit and healthy without injuring yourself in the process?

Strenuous, moderate or mild?
The intensity at which you workout can be described as strenuous, moderate or mild. What constitutes a strenuous, moderate or mild exercise workload for you will depend on your current fitness.

If you're an Olympic 10,000m runner, jogging one mile in nine minutes would count as mild activity. For most people, though, it would be strenuous, if not impossible. Experts recommend that for purposes of general health, mild to moderate levels of physical activity are all that's required.

For many of us, this means brisk or purposeful walking, or the equivalent level of effort in another activity. Again, what brisk means will depend on your current state of health or fitness. It's a pace at which you feel you're making good progress while still being able to hold a conversation.

As a rule of thumb, exercise of moderate intensity will make you a little warm or sweaty, and slightly out of breath, but no more than that.

Recommended activity levels
According to the government, only 37 per cent of men and 24 per cent of women take enough exercise to get any benefit from it. To avoid obesity, heart disease and other life-limiting conditions, the chief medical officer (the government's top doctor) recommends the following:

Adults should do a minimum of 30 minutes moderate-intensity physical activity, five days a week.
You don't have to do the whole 30 minutes in one go. Your half-hour could be made up of three ten-minute bursts of activity spread through the day, if you prefer.
The activity can be a 'lifestyle activity' (in other words, walking to the shops or taking the dog out) or structured exercise or sport, or a combination of these. But it does need to be of at least moderate intensity.
People who are at specific risk from obesity, or who need to manage their weight because of a medical condition, need 45-60 minutes of exercise at least five times a week.
For bone health, activities that produce high physical stresses on the bones are necessary.
Older people
These recommendations also apply to older adults, assuming they're healthy and mobile enough to manage them.
In fact, older people should take particular care to retain their mobility through daily activity. Specific activities to improve strength, coordination and balance are particularly beneficial for older people.
Safety first - avoiding illness and injury
Remember you're taking up exercise to improve your health, not to make yourself ill or injured. Bear the following in mind: for more detail visit bbc.com
source: bbc.com/health

British airlines have put into effect measures to stop people with swine flu boarding flights in a bid to prevent the virus from spreading further.

Medical screening for the swine flu virus has been introduced at many airports.
British Airways said there had been a "very small number of cases" where people who had checked in with symptoms of H1N1 had been advised not to travel after having medical checks.

Virgin Atlantic also said victims would not be allowed to board one of its planes without a fit-to-fly certificate from their doctor or a hospital, though there had been no cases yet.

The World Health Organization declared the virus a global pandemic June 11. More than 120 countries have reported cases of human infection. About 98,000 cases have been documented worldwide, with 440 deaths, according to the WHO. source: cnn.com

SARGODA, Pakistan (CNN) -- Mohammed Iqbal said he has been told by his landlord to pay up on debts and is left with a choice facing others in this impoverished corner of Pakistan: Sell your children or a kidney.

This man's landlord forced him to pay off money he borrowed for his children's medical bills.
more photos » For the 50-year-old Iqbal, there is only one option. Despite a law passed in late 2007 banning transplants for money, he has decided to sell his kidney and has already been for pre-operation tests. The sale will net him between $1,100 and $1,600.

"What's incredible here is the law that bans the operation he's going to go through came into place in 2007," said CNN's Nic Robertson. "He's still able to go to a doctor, the doctors given him advice, that's what he has to do under law... He's going to make money out of it 100,000-150,000 rupees, and that is absolutely illegal. Yet, in just a few days, he's expecting to sell his kidney."

Iqbal was not alone in facing this difficult decision. Others in Pakistan's rural heartland have opted to sell their kidneys.

One of them was Rab Nawas, who was deep in debt about a year ago to his landlord after borrowing money to pay for his wedding and to cover medical bills for his wife and six children. He, too, faced the choice: sell his children, his wife or a kidney.

Zeba Raman is a 28-year-old Pakistani sex worker. Born into the profession in Karachi's red light district of Napier Road, she plies her trade all over the city.
I did not know that precautionary measures should be taken during sex

Nadia, sex worker
She is celebrating the launch of an initiative to promote health awareness among sex workers.
"We are now revealed to society," says Ms Raman.

But prostitution remains illegal and anathema to many in Muslim-majority Pakistan. It is an ever-present fact of life, but never really acknowledged.
The last two decades, given the increasing Islamisation of Pakistani society, have further reinforced stereotypes about such women.
But the profession has only grown.
Karachi alone has at least 100,000 female sex workers, according to data gathered by local welfare organisations.
Lahore has 75,000 sex workers while the military garrison town of Rawalpindi has at least 25,000.

HIV rates among gay men in some African countries are 10 times higher than among the general male population, says research in medical journal the Lancet.

The report said prejudice towards gay people was leading to isolation and harassment, which in turn led to risky sexual practices among gay communities.

But the risks are not limited to gay men, as many of the infected also have female sexual partners.

The report called for greater education and resources in the fight against HIV.

The Oxford University researchers found that the prevalence of HIV/Aids among gay men in sub-Saharan African has been "driven by cultural, religious and political unwillingness to accept [gay men] as equal members of society".

Lead researcher Adrian Smith told the BBC there was "profound stigma and social hostility at every level of society concerning either same-sex behaviours amongst men, or homosexuality".

"This has the consequence that this group becomes extremely hard to reach," he said.
source:bbc.com/health

A silk scarf bearing the image of a horse race was a suitably cryptic gift for a Polish mathematician to receive from a British code-breaker.

The Poles had got there first - that seemed to be the message.

Dillwyn "Dilly" Knox was delighted with the Polish copy of an Enigma - a top secret German military cipher machine.

But his meeting with code breakers in Poland in July 1939 - just weeks before Hitler invaded their country - had initially put him in a sour mood. He had been struggling to figure out the machine's wiring - a key part of the complex jigsaw puzzle called Enigma.

Marian Rejewski, a talented Polish mathematician, had guessed correctly that the wiring connections between the machine's keyboard and encoding mechanism were simply in alphabetical order.
source: bbc.com/technology

It captivated millions of people around the world for eight days in the summer of 1969. It brought glory to the embattled U.S. space program and inspired beliefs that anything was possible.
It's arguably the greatest technological feat of the 20th century.

And to some, it was all a lie.
Forty years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, a small cult of conspiracy theorists maintains the historic event -- and the five subsequent Apollo moon landings -- were staged. These people believe NASA fabricated the landings to trump their Soviet rivals and fulfill President Kennedy's goal of ferrying humans safely to and from the moon by the end of the 1960s.

"I do know the moon landings were faked," said crusading filmmaker Bart Sibrel, whose aggressive interview tactics once provoked Aldrin to punch him in the face. "I'd bet my life on it." Sibrel may seem crazy, but he has company. A 1999 Gallup poll found that a scant 6 percent of Americans doubted the Apollo 11 moon landing happened, and there is anecdotal evidence that the ranks of such conspiracy theorists, fueled by innuendo-filled documentaries and the Internet, are growing.
source: cnn.com

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth instalment in the boy wizard series, has debuted at the top of the North American box office.

The movie has raked in $159.6m (£96.7m) since it opened on Wednesday, according to early estimates.

The Half-Blood Prince beat the opening figures for The Order of the Phoenix, which was released in 2007 and took $139.7m (£84.6m) in its opening week.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs held steady at number two.

The third film in the animated series took $17.7m (£10.7m) over the weekend.

The Transformers sequel, Revenge of the Fallen, is at number three.
source: bbc.com/entertaiment

When David Halberstam wrote his 1979 book, "The Powers That Be," about four powerful news organizations and how they shaped the national dialogue, he focused on three print publications -- Time magazine, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times -- and one television network: CBS.
The reason for CBS was obvious. The "Tiffany Network" had the most renowned television news division in the country, and its heart, soul and face was the man whose carefully modulated tones defined its propriety. That man was called -- without irony -- "the most trusted man in America."
Walter Cronkite.
In the splintered, frantic, snark-happy, 500-channel multimedia universe in which we now live, it's hard to imagine one man with the kind of almost universal regard Cronkite, who died Friday at the age of 92, had in the 1960s and '70s. In retrospect, Cronkite seemed a little taken aback by his status; in his 1996 memoir, "A Reporter's Life," he is consistently self-deprecating and rarely fails to mention a writer, producer or CBS staffer who helped him nail a story.
source : cnn.com/entertainment

The leading suspect in last November's deadly attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) has pleaded guilty.

Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab is reported to have stood up before the court and admitted his role in the killings.

Mr Qasab, who is a Pakistani, faces 86 charges, including waging war on India, murder and possessing explosives.
It is not clear why he has changed his plea. In May, he pleaded not guilty to all charges. More than 170 people died in the attacks, nine of them gunmen.
Prosecutors say Mr Qasab is the sole surviving attacker.

'Shocked'
"Yes, he has pleaded guilty in court today [Monday] for the November attacks during a hearing," Reuters news agency quoted Rakesh Maria, a senior police officer, as saying.
MAIN QASAB CHARGES
Waging war on India
Murder
Conspiracy to murder
Destabilising the government
Kidnap
Robbery
Smuggling and possessing illegal arms and explosives
Suspect relaxed in court
Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said: "We were not expecting this. We were all shocked when he made a plea of guilt.
"It is for the court to decide whether to accept his plea or not. It was all of a sudden. The court is now recording his plea."
source: bbc.com

Latest scores

Monday, 20 July 2009
Test Match Series
Sri Lanka: Yet to bat
Pakistan: 260-4 (79.0 overs)