Craig Kieswetters an present hit! England eventually find bomb top-order batsman they hunger for

England"s four-year search for a sabre-rattling one-day opener in the mould of Marcus Trescothick could be over.

As Craig Kieswetter pounded his way to 143 from 123 balls on his senior England debut during Tuesday"s victorious tour opener against a Bangladesh Board XI, it seemed all the prayers of coach Andy Flower were being answered.

There were moments of luck. Kieswetter was dropped four times - on four, 28, 80 and 129 - en route to his highest one-day score, and should have been stumped moments before he finally departed.

Powerful start: Craig Kieswetter struck six sixes on the way to 143 from 123 balls

The bowling was not especially testing, either. But amid the caveats came strokes of the highest quality as England, boosted by a raucous 109 in 74 deliveries from Paul Collingwood and a run-a-ball 56 from Alastair Cook, racked up 370 for seven in 50 overs.

Four wickets for Graeme Swann sealed a comfortable 112-run win. Kieswetter hit six of the team"s 14 sixes and 13 of their 30 fours, booking an international debut in Sunday"s first one-dayer.

Centurion: Kieswetter impresses for the ODI side

Cook, who joined him in an opening stand of 127, admitted Kieswetter could replace Matt Prior behind the stumps in an attempt to squeeze in an extra bowler.

Cook said: "He"s made a massive claim for the one-day spot. I"d be very surprised if he"s not there at the top of the order on Sunday."

Meanwhile, on the day the Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi insisted his tournament would go ahead in India in spite of security concerns, Cook cited Collingwood"s hundred as evidence that the competition"s small English contingent would not be distracted.

Cook insisted the players, who have seen a report by England"s security advisor Reg Dickason warning of a credible threat in India, had to make their own minds up.

Cook said: "You can"t stop people talking about it, because then they"ll be like naughty schoolchildren, walking round the back for a chat. It will be a tough call."

However, it is understood Graham Napier has been advised not to join up with Mumbai Indians next week.

More...Craig Kieswetter blasts England to victory in Bangladesh with a brutal 143 off 123 ballsPietersen and England contingent await security go-ahead for IPLEngland"s Collingwood could miss Indian Premier League over terror fear Classy Craig Kieswetter embarrasses England"s best in Twenty20 warm-up

Gabby Logan admits she went in to meltdown after the French incited her afar from the Eurostar

Gabby Logan, at a ball in 2008, admits she went into meltdown after she arrived too late for her Eurostar

As the female face of BBC sport, Gabby Logan is famed for her unflappable composure.

But by her own admission she went into ;meltdown after anchoring coverage of the France-Ireland rugby clash in Paris last week.

The 36-year-old presenter was involved in an embarrassing altercation with station officials at the Gare du Nord after turning up 20 minutes too late to board the last train to England.

The confrontation ended in tears, recriminations and her trying to squeeze under the barrier before finally being escorted away from the departing train.

According to her blog, the row was all rather undignified. ;I had a meltdown, which involved me saying things I regret about French efficiency and crying in public, she wrote.

;I also regret climbing under the barrier, being escorted away and pretending I had a medical appointment to get back for.

;Of course I am laughing now, but only after a night in an airport hotel and a very early flight home.

She said her husband, former Scottish rugby international Kenny Logan, ;cringes every time I remember another detail from the meltdown.

Even before the station contretemps, Mrs Logan had endured a difficult day.

Elsewhere in the blog, Gabby, who also hosts the lunchtime show on BBC Radio Five Live, writes: ;The fact that I have not got frostbite is a miracle because I have never been colder in my life.

Gabby reporting at a sports event last week

"I had planned ahead, as we have an outdoor studio in Paris and it was predicted that the weather would drop to minus 3C, so I ordered silk thermals online.

All aboard: Mrs Logan was 20 minutes late for her Eurostar train

"They never arrived. So I packed an old vest, took a few extra layers and bought a new hat, how cold could it be? The answer is freezing.

Mrs Logan, who gave birth to twins in 2005, moved from ITV to the BBC in 2007 in a three-year deal. She now fronts Inside Sport and covers live sport events.

She has also covered for Gary Lineker on Match Of The Day and appeared in Strictly Come Dancing.

Last Saturdays match between France and Ireland ended at about 7pm and the final Eurostar service to London departed at 9.13pm.

A Eurostar spokeswoman said: ;All leisure tickets have a minimum 30-minute check-in. Business Premier ticket-holders have a ten-minute check-in and, of course, they are prioritised as they have paid for this.

;Our staff try to do what they can with late arrivals but it will depend on the volumes of passengers being checked in, going through passport checks and then through X-ray screening.

;We will not check passengers in after the cut-off point if they will not make the train. It was extremely busy at the Gare du Nord that evening because of the rugby match.

The BBC declined to comment on the incident.

Speaking through an intercom at the presenters detached gated home in Kew, South-West London, Mr Logan said: ;Shes not here. Youll have to come back another time.

When asked about his wifes blog entry, he said: ;She wont want to talk about that. Thank you very much.

Shell set to sell stakes in 9000 motor fuel stations worldwide

Robert Lindsay and Robin Pagnamenta & , : {}

Royal Dutch Shell has voiced that a serve 1,000 jobs will be lost among plans to strew a third of the tellurian motor fuel hire network.

The changes, voiced at the group"s annual plan lecture today, will take the excess total underneath Peter Voser, the arch executive, to 7,000.

Shell will cut 2,000 jobs over the subsequent dual years, stand in the series voiced last month. The initial turn of 1,000 jobs will save $1 billion (663 million) in overheads. Mr Voser has already cut 5,000 jobs since he was allocated in Jul last year.

"The association had turn as well difficult and slower to reply than we"d like," he pronounced today. "So we are heightening up. The priorities are for a some-more rival performance, for expansion and for crook smoothness of strategy. We have some-more to do to expostulate out cost and urge the handling opening in the company."

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Mr Voser pronounced that the company"s motor fuel retailing and selling operation had a participation in some-more than 100 countries, with motor fuel stations in about 90. "This portfolio is as well sparse and not focused sufficient on profitability and growth," he said.

The association intends to repel from 35 per cent of the motor fuel hire markets. In the United States Shell has softened profitability by relocating to a indiscriminate supply indication chartering the code at motor fuel stations to franchisees and Mr Voser pronounced that he longed for to replicate that indication elsewhere.

Shell will revoke the enlightening genius by fifteen per cent and is formulation item sales of in in in between $1 billion to $3 billion a year.

Upstream prolongation is approaching to reach 3.5 million barrels of oil homogeneous per day in 2012, an enlarge of eleven per cent from 2009, Shell pronounced in a statement. Production was approaching to grow in to 2020 since the association was assessing some-more than 35 new projects with a foresee of eight billion barrels of oil-equivalent resources.

Mr Voser attempted to ease worries over the company"s comparatively diseased cashflow in propinquity to the complicated collateral expenditure, observant that this would grow by about 50 per cent up to 2012 even if oil, at benefaction about $80 a barrel, was labelled at $60.

"Shell should be in a over-abundance cashflow on all sides in 2012, after collateral investment and division payments, presumption $60 oil prices and a some-more normal sourroundings for healthy gas prices and downstream," Mr Voser said.

The association additionally scrapped the couple to acceleration in the on-going division policy, pegging destiny rises instead to "underlying commercial operation gain and cashflow of the group".

Mr Voser pronounced that Shell"s oil pot in 2009 had increasing by 3.4 billion barrels, representing 288 per cent of the oil that it pumped in the year, as a effect of new investments and discoveries. "This was the most appropriate year for scrutiny in a decade,"he said.

The association expects to outlay in in in between $25 billion and $27 billion a year on collateral investment in in in between 2011 and 2014. Mr Voser has already put a little Nigerian resources on the marketplace and is behest for Arrow Energy, an Australian writer of coal-seam gas.

He said: "Our 2009 gain were neatly marked down by the recession, notwithstanding Shell"s self-help programmes and $2 billion of cost savings."

Mr Voser that Shell had been "disadvantaged recently, due to the higher bearing to enlightening and healthy gas, where margins are hard-wired to the economy". He added: "Near-term pressures on downstream and gas margins remain. However, the medium-term upstream fundamentals are robust. We design oil to traffic typically in a $50 to $90 range, and to direction to the upside."

He additionally warned: "The tellurian enlightening industry might be in oversupply for a little time."

Shell shares rose in reply to the lecture by 25.5p to 18.56.

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Mortgage lending falls as buyers leave market

Rebecca O"Connor & , : {}

Homebuyers deserted the housing marketplace in Jan after the finish of the legal legal holiday on stamp duty.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders pronounced that the series of all home loans released in Jan had depressed by 49 per cent to 32,000 mortgages. The sum was, it said, an fatiguing proof of the proxy lift that the stamp avocation mangle had since the housing market.

The CML pronounced that lending was approaching to sojourn diseased over the subsequent couple of months.

The series of loans to first-time buyers fell even some-more steeply, by 54 per cent to 11,300.

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Demand for properties that had benefited from the stamp avocation holiday, labelled in in between 125,000 and 175,000, tumbled with the series of first-time customer mortgages, descending by 80 per cent.

Michael Coogan, director-general of the CML, said: It was a still begin to the year. Lending volumes in Jan were low, but we had expected this would occur due to the finish of the stamp avocation legal legal holiday distorting Decembers figures.

"We design lending over the entrance months to sojourn diseased as doubt over of the state of the economy and the arriving choosing are expected to go on to hold behind housing marketplace activity.

The worth of mortgages fell by 45 per cent to 4.7 billion in in between Dec and January, whilst remortgage loans declined by twelve per cent to 3 billion.

However, brokers pronounced that there was a little justification that lenders had started to suggest improved deals.

Brian Murphy, head of lending for the Mortgage Advice Bureau, said: "The debt marketplace as a total is trending upwards. There are some-more products, some-more products at higher loan to values and some-more foe on rate between the main players.

"February, for example, was the busiest month for scarcely dual years. Despite this, it will, of course, sojourn formidable for any one who doesn"t prove the claim borrowing criteria to acquire a loan."

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President Zuma chooses a mother to encounter the Queen

Nico Hines & , : {}

For hundreds of years, universe leaders have agonised over practice at state banquets with the Queen. The President of South Africa additionally faced a some-more personal dilemma: that mom should I take?

Jacob Zuma has opted for newness and he arrived in London currently with his fifth and majority new mom Thobeka Madiba. Mr Zuma, thought to be the father of twenty children, has 3 stream First Ladies, the ultimate of whom he tied together in January.

This is roughly a honeymoon for her. They did not have time for one in Jan so hes motionless to take her to London with him, pronounced Jonathan Clayton, Africa Correspondent for The Times.

Multiple marriages are authorised in South Africa and form a piece of Zulu culture, the largest genealogical organisation in the country. However, a array of scandals and a rape claim have dented the credit of Mr Zumas surprising lovelife.

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Some South Africans are broke by the Presidents made at home arrangements but he has pronounced that he would select in between his wives for opposite duties on merit, Clayton said.

His initial mom is comparatively elderly and doubtful to suffer long-distance travel, whilst theres a feeling that the second mom is angry with the President after she unsuccessful to attend his new wedding.

One of his wives, Kate Mantsho, the mom of five of his children, committed self-murder elderly 44.

Another wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, 60, the mom of 4 of his children, divorced him in 1998. She is right away home affairs apportion in Mr Zumas government.

The newlyweds landed at Heathrow this sunrise forward of a three-day state visit. The President looked loose as he walked opposite the tarmac in a dim suit, whilst his mom wore a bluish skirt and relating jacket.

The integrate and their environment were greeted at the airfield by Viscount Brookeborough, Lord-in-Waiting, on interest of the Queen.

Speaking after his arrival, Mr Zuma pronounced that he would make use of his revisit to urge Britain to dump sanctions imposed opposite the system of administration of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

Britain, the European Union and the United States have all imposed targeted sanctions opposite Mr Mugabe and comparison total in the statute Zanu-PF party. But, after the antithesis Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) assimilated a togetherness supervision a year ago, there has been flourishing vigour to rivet with Harare.

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John Malkovich attempted murder melodrama tops Barbican check Stage The Guardian

John Malkovich. Photograph: Lori Ann Cook/AP

It competence not be the cheeriest night out, examination John Malkovich as a resurrected Austrian sequence torpedo on entertainment with a antique band and dual sopranos singing arias about attempted murder and abandonment, but it will, the Barbican"s inventive executive cheerfully suggests, be one of his personal highlights.

"It"s a kind of 21st-century version of an 18th-century melodrama," pronounced Graham Sheffield. "Absolutely shining and utterly unique."

The Malkovich piece, The Infernal Comedy – piece drama, piece unison – is formed on the loyal story of Jack Unterweger, who killed at slightest eleven prostitutes. "Probably not a thing to take a chairman on a initial date," Sheffield conceded.

The show was voiced currently as piece of the Barbican"s plans for the entrance year, along with the lapse of big-name regulars such as Peter Brook, with The Magic Flute; Michael Clark, with the subsequent complement of his prolongation come, been and gone; and Robert Lepage, with a new multimedia prolongation called Blue Dragon.

The centre"s handling director, Sir Nicholas Kenyon, embellished a flushed design of the Barbican"s last twelve months. "We are construction on success given last year the Barbican had the most appropriate year ever with 1.2m tickets sole and attendances 13% up, and that is stability this year. People are shopping tickets by the recession. We are in a duration of conspicuous success opposite the arts."

Other highlights voiced currently embody screening the ultimate Nasa outdoor space footage for the Houston Symphony"s opening of The Planets; the Dutch entertainment organisation Toneelgroep Amsterdam restaging 3 Antonioni films; a new version of Peter Pan from the National Theatre of Scotland; and Peter Sellars directing his version of György Kurtág"s Kafka Fragments.

The Barbican"s move in to easterly London will continue: for example, when the jazz fable Wynton Marsalis arrives with the Jazz at Lincoln Centre band from New York there will be jam sessions at Dalston"s Vortex and a family unison in Hackney.

"We are formulating a new indication for the destiny of what an humanities centre can be," pronounced Kenyon. "It depends on the communication of glorious names with as different an assembly as possible."

In visible arts, the Barbican art gallery"s big summer show will be an scrutiny of the attribute in between surrealism and architecture, with the architects Carmody Groarke conceptualizing a "house" in that there will be the work of artists from Man Ray to Dalí to Louise Bourgeois. Then in the autumn the art studio will host the initial European muster clinging to fashionable Japanese conform from the early 1900s to the present.

The Barbican"s main proprietor orchestra, the London Symphony orchestra, will see the principal conductor, Valery Gergiev, take on Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich as well as a less informed name, the vital Russian composer Rodion Schedrin.

Sir Colin Davis will go on his array of Nielsen symphonies, Bernard Haitink will control Schumann, André Previn will control Strauss and Vaughan Williams and Sir Simon Rattle will control the LSO for the initial time given 2000.

Uganda landslides kill dozens World headlines

Ugandan infantry and villagers poke where a landslide buried an complete village. Photograph: Peter Busomoke/AFP/Getty Images

Landslides have swamped 3 villages in Uganda, murdering at slightest 86 people and withdrawal hundreds blank after rivers of sand swept by a church and hospital.

Uganda"s emergencies minister, Musa Ecweru, pronounced 50 students who took retreat in a sanatorium were between the passed or missing.

James Kasawi, 20, told the Associated Press from a sanatorium in Bududa, where he was recuperating from a damaged leg and arm: "All of a remarkable the church collapsed. Mud lonesome the total place. Five people seated subsequent to me died. I usually survived since my head was on top of the mud."

Kevin Nabutwa, a Red Cross official, pronounced 86 bodies had been recovered so far, with military and the armed forces still acid in remote villages that officials pronounced were a three-hour travel from a main highway.

"The supervision is you do all it can to rescue those still alive," pronounced Ecweru. "President [Yoweri] Museveni has educated the armed forces to stick on the organisations and volunteers who are carrying out rescue work."

On Monday complicated rains began triggering landslides in the Bududa region, 170 miles (275km) easterly of Kampala. The segment is disposed to landslides but frequency has the genocide fee been so high.

Another survivor, Mohamed Mudindi, described a stage of panic.

"I listened a shrill crash and we saw smoke, afterwards the landslide," he said. "So we proposed using afar from the scene, we afterwards went to the rescue place withdrawal majority people and animals behind. So when we went behind majority of the people were gone."

In 2007, complicated rains that charitable officials pronounced were the misfortune for 35 years smashed eastern Uganda, forcing 2,000 people from their homes and inspiring 50,000.

Plan to switch to cheaper medicines will mistreat patients contend experts

Sam Lister, Health Editor & , : {}

Patients health could be put at critical risk by plans to have pharmacies suggest the cheapest version of any drug prescribed by a doctor, a organisation of health professionals warns today.

A pull by ministers to have the general version of medications automatically replaced for some-more costly brands could upset patients, wear disease government and enlarge the possibility of sanatorium admission, they say.

In a minute to The Times, seventeen doctors, nurses, pharmacologists and studious member write that studious reserve would be compromised if the Governments offer were adopted. A conference on involuntary general transformation (AGS) is due to finish at the finish of subsequent month.

In the letter, the signatories lift concerns about a offer [that] could severely imperil studious wellbeing. There are majority cases where general prescribing is entirely suitable and beneficial to containing costs but there is transparent justification that it might be dangerous to surrogate a duplicate disinfectant for the one privately prescribed for a sold patient, they write.

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Patient reserve should be ... the initial priority in each case. Only the prescribing alloy or helper knows the patients healing story substitutions should never be done but their agree and awareness.

Among the signatories are member of patients with brain, heart, liver and skin-related illnesses, that are deliberate to lift larger risks of side-effects from small variations in the rates at that opposite medicines are absorbed.

Concerns additionally approximate the elderly, who could be confused by changes to packaging, colour and figure of remedy caused by a switch from a branded disinfectant to general versions.

Doctors already write majority prescriptions utilizing the general drug name. However, they can direct a code if they hold it to be of worth to a patient.

The Department of Health hopes to save about �37 million a year from the involuntary make use of of generics. Pharmacists would have to allot general versions unless a do not surrogate box had been ticked. But experts contend this will not be a enough safeguard, quite when repeat prescriptions might not be released by the doctor.

Of larger regard is that general medicines are not regularly identical. Some drugs, for e.g. those for epilepsy, can furnish a opposite greeting in patients. Variations in size, colour and ambience can additionally affect patients correspondence with the prescription.

Mary Baker, boss of the European Federation of Neurological Associations, said: When people are on lots of pills, and the names and colours begin changing, it can get really confusing. Management of seizure gets worse, and the costs are likewise.

She combined that with conditions such as Parkinsons, a slight movement in remedy resulted in patients apropos diskinetic with extreme twitchiness when as well high, and dull when underdosed.

In England in 2008, 83 per cent of equipment were prescribed generically. For drug such as statins, the general simvastatin costs 95p for a pack of twenty-eight pills (20mg). Branded statins such as Zocor and Lipitor cost around �25 for a identical quantity.ru

The NHS spends about �9 billion a year on branded drugs.

The poser of the 100-tonne whale Environment The Guardian

View of a outrageous whale cleared up on the beach at Porthtowan, Cornwall, that the Cornwall Wildlife Trust Marine Strandings Network believes to be a fin whale. Photograph: Cornwall Wildlife Trust

Of all the deputations from the deep, a beached whale is the majority ­astounding. Not usually ­because of the size, but additionally given of the ­terrors it binds for the humans who might confront it. A stuck whale was once regarded as an ill omen; a right whale that stuck in the Thames in 1658 was at large seen as an prognostication of the genocide of Oliver Cromwell. Even now, the attainment this week of a 100-tonne, 56ft (16.9m) fin whale onPortowan Beach in Cornwall is a ­remarkable materialisation – not slightest given Balaenoptera physalus is ­second usually to the blue whale in size, reaching up to 85ft in length.

Leviathan by Philip Hoare 352pp, Fourth Estate Ltd, £8.99 Buy Leviathan at the Guardian bookshop

It belongs to the family of rorqual whales, supposed for the pleated ridges (from the Norwegian for furrow) that line their bellies. Foraging wholly on small fish, fin whales take good gulps of sea H2O to trap their prey, ­expanding their stomachs similar to ­concertinas and ­filtering their food by plates of baleen in their mouths (the whalebone once cherished by corset-makers). Fin whales are singular between whales in ­being ­assymmetrically marked: the ­righthand side of their reduce tools is a soft, dove-like grey; the left, most darker. Scientists hypothesize that the whales make make use of of this dark side to "flash" their chase and flock them in to place.

I"ve seen these animals most times off Provincetown, Cape Cod: to have one float underneath the vessel is a deeply bizarre feeling. Diving below, the quadruped never seems to end, ­until it emerges at the alternative side with an bomb whoosh! from the identical tiwn blowholes. Watching the neat dorsal fin scythe by the water, I"m regularly reminded that fin whales are the ­fastest of all good whales, dubbed the greyhounds of the sea and means to float at twenty-four knots.

Too fast for 19th-century ­hunters of Herman Melville"s era; usually with the invention of the explosive device ­harpoon did these rapid cetaceans (the name for this suborder) come inside of reach. The 20th century saw an ­unprecedented winnow of rorqual whales in the ­Southern Ocean, by bureau ships from the ­Falklands and South Georgia, as well asNorwegian, Soviet and ­Japanese fleets. And fin whales suffered the misfortune ­casualties of all: 720,000 were killed in the Southern Hemispherealone.

This sold animal probably died as a outcome of a shipstrike in the Bay of Biscay – where propitious packet ­passengers might spasmodic see these­leviathans swimming opposite the bows. The ­skeleton of one such casualty, found in Andalucia, was used by the ­contemporary Mexican artist Gabriel Orozoco in an designation in ­London"s White Cube art studio in 2006. The ­Cornish whale, however, has drifted in to stately hands. Extraordinarily, a still working 14th-­century revelation determines that any whale, dolphin, sturgeon or porpoise cleared on to English shores is the skill of the monarch, a vestige of an age when a whale represented greatwealth.

Since whales are of small make make use of of to Buckingham Palace these days, that shortcoming right away devolves to the ­Receiver of Wreck, Alison Kentuck. From her bureau in Southampton, ­Kentuck tells me that the whale, a female, had been seen floating at sea for a day or so, and is right away in a rocky, untouched cove. "We"re watchful for a likely charge to come along and wash it along to somewhere where it will be simpler to understanding with," she says. "It"s already utterly really bad unkempt – ­apparently you can smell it from the clifftop. Although given it"s right away on Duchy of Cornwall land, it"s essentially the skill of the Prince of Wales – orperhaps that should be the Prince ofWhales?"

Apart from enormous bad jokes, one of Kentuck"s tasks is to forestall open communication with beached whales. The carcasses can promulgate zoonotic, or inter-species disease (as can live whales, a notice for any one inside of rising area of a cetacean), or worse. The buildup of gases in an ­animal"s go through can means a whale to enhance to ripping point – in 1617, a spermatazoa whale beached at Scheveningen in the Netherlands exploded, fatally infecting bystanders. Indeed, the ­artist Albrecht Dürer, in his zeal to reach a further stuck whale on Denmark"s Zealand coast, held a fever from the marsh, and further perished as a result. It seems that in the box of the whale, the ­meeting of human story and healthy story is occasionally a happy one.

Kentuck"s initial avocation is to suggest a beached whale to the Natural ­History Museum; a necropsy might be ­carried out by the Zoological Society of London. But generally, the animal is unfailing for the dump. In the past, Kentuck has systematic plant machine to rip the carcasses in to ­manageable chunks prior to ordering in a internal ­landfill. It is an ignominous finish for such an artistic creature; but maybe a improved predestine than that ­facing the cousins in the Southern Ocean where, underneath the guise of "scientific research", a Japanese whaling swift is even right away ­harpooning fin whales ­destined not forthe laboratory, but for the ­supermarket counter.

• This essay was nice on twenty-four Feb 2010. The strange pronounced that fin whales are means to float at twenty-four knots an hour. This has been corrected.