Abu Dhabi (UAE), Dec. 6 : The England cricket team has arrived in Abu Dhabi for a practice session over the weekend, at the end of which, a decision will be taken on whether to tour or not to tour India.

Kevin Pietersen and company checked into their Abu Dhabi hotel at 4.15 a. m. on Friday, and just nine hours later, the players were in the nets preparing for the return to India.

According to The Sun, England’s white Test kit and equipment is currently in Baroda, where a practice match was originally scheduled for yesterday.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 -- A U. S. grand jury has indicted five employees of Blackwater Worldwide for their part in a deadly shootout in Baghdad, The New York Times reported Friday.

The indictments were sealed after being handed up Thursday but could be announced Monday, sources told the newspaper. A sixth employee was reportedly negotiating a plea agreement.

Under the current agreement with Iraq, U. S. contractors cannot be prosecuted in Iraq. The Blackwater employees were charged under a law aimed at drug dealers involving the use of weapons in violent crimes, the newspaper said.

Washington, Dec 6 : In a new research, an international team of geologists has determined that the decline of the Roman and Byzantine Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 1,400 years ago may have been driven by unfavorable climate changes, like, dry spells.

Based on chemical signatures in a piece of calcite from a cave near Jerusalem, a team of American and Israeli geologists pieced together a detailed record of the area’s climate from roughly 200 B. C. to 1100 A. D.

Their analysis has revealed increasingly dry weather from 100 A. D. to 700 A. D. that coincided with the fall of both Roman and Byzantine rule in the region.

DOYLESTOWN, Pa., Dec. 5 -- A Philadelphia-area woman was sentenced to life in prison Friday for shooting another parishioner because she was jealous of the woman.

Mary Jane Fonder, 66, once again denied killing Rhonda Smith, 39, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. She denied resenting the attention that Smith was getting.

"I'm sorry, so very sorry this poor woman was murdered," Fonder told Judge Rea Boylan. "But in the name of God ... I did not kill Rhonda Smith."

Smith was shot in the office of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, where she was working. Fonder was convicted of first-degree murder Oct. 31 and faced an automatic life sentence with no parole.

London, December 6 : Eyewitnesses’ likelihood of giving false information about any crime in subsequent retellings increases if they had described the offence to someone just after it occurred, according to a new study.

The finding attains significance as it suggests that eyewitness accounts of crimes can be more untrustworthy than earlier believed.

Washington - Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said late Friday that Congress was considering a short-term funding deal for the US automotive industry and that a vote on some sort of bail-out for the Big Three was expected by next week.

Congressional leaders are to spend the weekend ironing out a deal over how to help the US automotive industry survive the economic recession.