rickeyre.com

Ooh ahh Glenn McGrath!
Clarke and hussey fail to score.
Poms sing in the rain.

KEVIN RUDD: Does the Prime Minister recall his industry minister saying just six months ago: "I am a sceptic of the connection between emissions and climate change"? Does the Prime Minister support this statement?

Mr HOWARD: It is not only remarks made by people in this parliament. There is a farmer I know who is sceptical about that connection as well! But we can debate. Let me say to the Leader of the Opposition that the jury is still out on the degree of connection.

Wow. England take their winning streak to three and lead the Commonwealth Bank Finals Series 1-0. Can they make it four on Sunday?

The Guardian's OBO of the first final:
Australian innings;
England innings.

Man of the match: Ian Healy.

So who's a pretty bully boy then?

While Cricket Australia was crying foul over the world cup organisers' objection to their choice of sponsor, they had the boot on the other foot getting stuck into Queensland Cricket over a very similar issue.

Cricket Australia has responded within hours after losing their appeal to the ICC disputes committee (see my earlier posting today).

Emirates, the UAE-based airline best known in Australia for sponsoring Collingwood Football Club, will be the official team sponsor for the Australian team for the world cup in the Caribbean in March and April. Emirates, of course, is also the naming rights sponsor of the ICC Elite Umpire Panel and is the "official airline" of the Dubai-based ICC.

Travelex (Thomas Cook in a past life) has been the naming rights sponsor for Australian touring teams overseas since 2001, even to the point of the "Ashes Tour" officially becoming the "Travelex Tour of the UK and Ireland".

But with less than five weeks till the start of the one-day world championships in the Caribbean, Cricket Australia's arrangements with Travelex have been blocked under ICC ambush marketing rules, and confirmed yesterday by its Disputes Resolution Committee.

NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak is being held without bail after police say she attacked her rival for another astronaut's attention at Orlando International Airport Monday.

Nowak, who did a mission on the Space Shuttle last year, drove more than 12 hours from Texas to meet the 1 a.m. flight of a younger woman who had also been seeing the astronaut she was pining for, according to Orlando police.

Exhibit A: www.indystar.com

Exhibit B: www.chicagotribune.com

There can be few more disturbing documents released in quite a long time than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment report, published on Thursday.

The PDF of the 21-page "Summary for Policymakers" can be downloaded from here. There is more background on the IPCC website, but let me reproduce, in full, the press release issued by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) on Thursday: