Australia complete innings win over England

Australia completed a comprehensive victory over England in the fourth Ashes Test at Headingley, Leeds, winning by an innings and 80 runs inside three days to level the series at 1-1 with just the deciding Test match at The Oval still to play. Resuming the third morning in a seemingly impossible position, trailing by 261 runs on 82 for five after Australia’s first innings 445, England’s daunting task became all the more difficult when they lost two wickets inside the first hour.

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England collapse again at Headingley

England are heading for a humiliating defeat in the fourth Ashes Test at Headingley after crumbling to 82 for five wickets in their second innings by the close of the second day. Marcus North made his second century of the Ashes series and shared a 152-run stand with vice-captain Michael Clarke as Australia took a first innings lead of 343 and then turned the screw in the final session.

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Ronnie Biggs, the self-styled ‘gentleman crook’

Britain’s most celebrated fugitive — "the last of the gentlemen crooks," as he liked to describe himself — was born Ronald Arthur Biggs in Lambeth, south London, on August 8, 1929. The youngest of five children, his criminal career began at the age of 15 when he was arrested for stealing pencils from a local shop.

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33 missing as ferry sinks near Tonga

Searchers rescued at least 53 people and about 33 are missing after a ferry capsized in the Pacific Ocean overnight near Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, a search and rescue officer said early Friday. The surprise measure takes the total sum injected into the economy via government-backed “quantitative easing” to £175 billion ($294 billion).

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Beckham special but Barca win friendly

David Beckham silenced even his most vocal critics with a trademark goal from a free-kick but his Los Angeles Galaxy team were beaten 2-1 by European champions Barcelona on Saturday night. The prestige friendly was watched by a massive 93,137 crowd at the Pasadena Rose Bowl and the 34-year-old Beckham was again subjected to catcalls and barracking from disenchanted Galaxy fans

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Soccer in Seattle: A New Kind of Football Team Woos Fans

The more than 65,000 fans who filled the seats at Seattle’s Qwest stadium on a recent Saturday made clear by their neon-green body-paint and their buzzing South African-style vuvuzela horns that this was no Seahawks game. They had come to see a different kind of football, the kind that speaks the word with a foreign accent: Chelsea, erstwhile champions of England’s Premier League, vs. the Seattle Sounders, the Emerald City’s new Major League Soccer franchise.

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Record-breaker Steyn sinks All Blacks

Morne Steyn scored all South Africa’s points as the world rugby champions beat New Zealand at home in the Tri-Nations for the second successive match in Durban on Saturday. The recalled fly-half broke the record for the most points scored by a Springboks player in a single match as he converted his own try and kicked eight penalties in a 31-19 victory. He also broke New Zealander Andrew Mehrtens’ 1999 record of 29 for the most points scored in a Tri-Nations match as the hosts won a series against the All Blacks for the first time since the 1970s, having beaten Graham Henry’s team 28-19 in Bloemfontein last weekend

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Study: Tamiflu causes nausea and nightmares in children

More than half of children taking antiviral drug Tamiflu suffer side-effects such as nausea, insomnia and nightmares, UK researchers have said. Two studies from experts at the Health Protection Agency (HPA) showed a “high proportion” of British schoolchildren reporting problems after taking the anti-viral drug

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