Sydney, Dec 18: Recent failures to score runs by Australian opener Matthew Hayden has put his Test future in doubts with retirement whispers growing that he may not last to fulfill his dream to play a farewell Ashes tour in England next year.

As Australia's batting strongman failed again in Perth, his former opening partner Justin Langer admitted that he did not know what the future held for his best friend and is unsure if the struggling opener wants to play his farewell Ashes tour.

Prague  - Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's big test in 2009 will be juggling the nation's historic trans-Atlantic ties, his reserve toward the European Union and the task of chairing the EU.

Topolanek, whose country was occupied by Soviet troops during the Cold War, made it clear in 2008 that he sees strong US ties as the most reliable guard against Moscow.

In July, his government struck a deal with President George W Bush's administration to host a missile-defence radar base on Czech soil and was rewarded with visa-free US travel for its citizens.

Moscow  - Russia set out its development goals until 2012 this year, but the four-year budget plan hardly matched reality - something which even the Finance Ministry had to admit.

Economists have halved the country's growth forecast as the real cost of the credit freeze and a dive in the price of Russia's main export commodities set in, but Moscow appears to be rolling ahead with an expansive foreign policy and ambitious domestic infrastructure and social spending.

While governments all over the world scrambled to legislate bail- outs for flagship sectors in distress, Moscow's initial reaction was to cast the country as immune to the crisis.

Lahore, Dec 18: Pakistani authorities have unearthed a plot to kill former President Pervez Musharraf, and have claimed busting a clandestine terror network set up by jailed killer of Daniel Pearl inside the Hyderabad Jail.

The Sindh Government has suspended senior police and jail officials after a large number of cell phones, SIMs and other equipment were recovered, The News reported.

Tbilisi/Kiev  - The Russo-Georgian War in August of this year demonstrated a basic truth about the Russian army: it is a sledgehammer, not a rapier, and a fairly effective sledgehammer at that.

The five-day conflict left few doubts that, when it came to high tech and training, Russia's fighting men are behind modern armed forces. Western experts routinely pointed out during the conflict how antiquated some parts of the Russian military are.

However, the well-orchestrated, lightning invasion also made clear that the Kremlin's soldiers are more than capable of using ingenuity and overwhelming numbers to crush an opponent like the Georgian military.

Bratislava  - A decade after Slovakia set out to abandon its reputation of a thuggish post-communist backwater the country is only weeks away from crowning its new image of central Europe's economic tiger.

Slovakia is making the last preparations to switch to the euro on January 1 in a feat for the country of 5 million whose recent history serves as a blueprint for economic success.