A glorious chapter in county cricket and the most successful era in Sussex's history was brought to an end yesterday when Mushtaq Ahmed, the Pakistan leg-spinner, announced his retirement from first-class cricket. The decision, enforced by a persistent knee injury, finishes the career of the most influential cricketer in the modern day county game.

Fourteen people were killed today when a roadside bomb hit a Pakistan air force truck as the military pounded insurgent positions in a nearby tribal region.

Pakistani troops seized control of a town just outside Peshawar yesterday after a one-day shelling offensive cleared militants who were threatening the city.

Military changes tactics to launch mortar strikes on militants threatening to take control of Peshawar

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a peace meeting of tribal elders in north-west Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 40 people and injuring more than 100.

Rachel Bilson is from an old Hollywood family and stars in 'The OC' - so why has it taken her so long to get into movies? Lesley O'Toole finds out

Finding that someone has taken your number-plate may not be the trivial nuisance it seems. Paul Kelbie investigates a spreading crime

Yesterday's report on the effects of the Government's inclusion policies offers further powerful evidence of the damage caused by a blinkered approach to the education of children with special needs. The report, published by the National Union of Teachers, reveals teaching staff having to undertake all manner of duties for which they are untrained and ill-equipped. Indeed, it is not too far-fetched to say, as has the union's general secretary, that youngsters in classes where their needs are not catered for suffer a form of child abuse.

THE GANGS of men on the road from the Afghan capital, Kabul, to Peshawar in Pakistan are not, as first appears, mending the suspension- shattering surface with their spades and picks. That is a charade: they are just going through the motions.

In a remote, mountainous region of Pakistan there sits a Buddha wearing a toga. He is part of the remains of a great, lost culture initiated by Alexander the Great

Late summer 1977 had been chaotic. After A-levels, most of my friends had holed-up in a squat in St John's Wood, London, experimenting with various drugs and sleeping on flea-ridden mattresses copped from the street. The only way to get Nicky out of this vice-ridden, public- schoolboy environment was to offer her a trip olive-picking on the Greek island of Crete - hitch-hiking there and back, of course. Once alone among the Hellenic sights and smells, romance would naturally bloom, or so I imagined.

World Cup Diary: Stephen Brenkley

This week's random co-ordinates chosen by the computer are: