Islamabad, Nov 1 : Pakistan’s new cricket coach Intikhab Alam has said that playing top level domestic cricket is more important than dull paced camps.

He plans to prepare the national probables for the important Indian series following the same line.

Intikhab said that the forthcoming Test series against India would be an important one and there was no better way to prepare for the series than to put the probables into competitive cricket.

Washington, November 1 : Pete Wentz, who’s most famous for his work with the Chicago-based band ‘Fall Out Boy’, has revealed that he’s ‘on call permanently’ since his wife is due to give birth any minute.

The 29-year-old bassist told Ryan Seacrest that his wife Ashlee Simpson could hit the emergency button ‘at any point’.

“She is very pregnant. I am on call permanently right now. She''s at the very end, and it could happen at any point,” People magazine quoted him as saying.

Berlin - Efforts by Russia and other other countries to form an OPEC-style cartel for natural gas have run into difficulties, the German newspaper Die Welt said Saturday.

A spokesman for Russia's state-controlled energy company Gazprom told the daily a meeting of natural gas exporting countries planned for Moscow this month, had been postponed until 2009.

All members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum had agreed to the delay, Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kuprianov was quoted as saying.

London, November 1 : Michael Jackson has confirmed that he’s preparing to make a comeback with a tour soon.

The ‘King of Pop’ revealed his plans in a statement trashing rumours claiming that he will be joining his family on a reunion tour.

The 50-year-old, whose career had taken a beating in 2005 following a child abuse trial against him for which he was later acquitted, further said that he was already getting ready to offer his fans with something new.

Washington  - Addressing a 4,500-strong convention in Johannesburg, the leader of a group of breakaway members of South Africa's ruling African National Congress accused the former liberation movement of reviving the "terrible legacy" of apartheid.

New Delhi  - India's central bank on Saturday lowered its key short-term lending rate (repo) as well as banks' cash reserve requirements to inject additional liquidity of about 850 billion rupees (18 billion dollars) to help growth amid the global economic slowdown, officials and news reports said.

The repo rate has been cut by 50 basis points to 7.5 per cent and the cash reserve ratio (CRR) stands lowered by 100 basis points to 5.5 per cent, a notification posted on the Reserve Bank of India's website said.