London, Apr 29 : England’s opener Alastair Cook has backed Ravi Bopara to replace injured all rounder Andrew Flintoff.

Flintoff is missing once again after knee surgery on Monday saw him laid up until the Twenty20 World Cup in June.

Bopara, who came in for Flintoff on the recent tour of West Indies, smashed a sparkling century in Barbados before being dropped for the final Test.

Bopara is the likely man at No. 6, and Cook believes that his county teammate can continue giving the selectors a headache, The Sun reports.

London, Apr. 29 : The British Parliament's Home Affairs Committee has slammed new rules that deny heroic Gurkha veterans their right to stay in the country.

The Gordon Brown Government faces a Commons defeat thanks to a growing Labour revolt.

Over 40 Labour MPs have signed a Commons motion attacking the Government decision.

Former British Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher has thrown her weight behind The Sun's crusade for justice for the Nepalese heroes.

London, April 29 : Kylie Minogue and her Spanish beau reportedly shelled 40,000 pounds on golf gear after stepping into a silent English town by helicopter.

The stunning singer allegedly spent hours with model Andres Velencoso to bag the made-to-measure irons, woods and putters.

The couple then purportedly headed to a nearby club to play a few holes.

"Our top range of clubs works out at about 1,000-pound per set," the Sun quoted a source at club manufacturer Ping in Gainsborough, Lincs, as saying.

London, April 29 : French police were said to be looking for burglars who had broken into a Paris apartment and stolen hundreds of "highly intimate" pictures and video of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

The photographs, taken during the ex-model's romance with philosopher Raphael Enthoven, had been entrusted with Enthoven''s brother, the owner of the apartment, to keep them at bay from any possible embarrassment to the First Lady and her President hubby Nicolas Sarkozy, as per reports.

London - Amnesty International said Wednesday that the US administration of President Barack Obama has "failed to deliver" on human rights during its first 100 days in office. Marking the date with an assessment of Obama's policies, the London-based human rights organization said the US government had sent "mixed messages" on its counter-terrorism efforts and made "promises for change with only limited action."

London, Apr 29 : A Brit woman, who altered her name to Pudsey Bear after raising 4,000 pounds for Children In Need, has been refused a passport in her new name as the change was considered "frivolous."

Eileen De Bont, 37, a receptionist, had legally adopted the name of the BBC appeal''''s mascot and even updated it on all her documents, but when she applied for a new passport with the name, the application was turned down.