Both players were injured against Fiji and missed the defeat against South Africa last weekend but it had

Both players were injured against Fiji and missed the defeat against South Africa last weekend, but it had been hoped that they would recover in time to face the Wallabies.
Doubts hover over the 6ft 9in lock Luke Charteris, who missed the Springbok Test with a calf strain. There was also confirmation that the second-rower Brent Cockbain was out for the rest of the season and the back-row forward Ryan Jones would be out for a further six months.New Zealand are also suffering. Hot on the heels of the departing prop Tony Woodcock, who has returned home to deal with a family emergency, came news that the centre Aaron Mauger was also flying back to New Zealand after sustaining a shoulder injury that could sideline him for up to six weeks. But there is no disruption to All Black plans to complete their Grand Slam since neither player had been expected to start against Scotland at Murrayfield on Saturday.News on the open-side flanker Richie McCaw is brighter. He appears to have recovered from the effects of a blow to the head suffered against Ireland 10 days ago and a decision on whether he will be considered for selection against the Scots is expected today.The New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, is to appoint a minister to take charge of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. The favourite for the job is the Sports Minister, Trevor Mallard.If the All Blacks win the World Cup it could be that their union will be able to announce profits like those revealed by Twickenham yesterday.While the RFU suffered a £100,000 loss in 2003-04 – the year England became world champions, the positive effects are finally being reflected Twickenham revealed a pre-tax profit of £6.3m. The figures show a record operating profit of £23.2m – a rise of 52 per cent on the previous year.Ireland have added four Munstermen to their squad to cover for injuries: the hooker Jerry Flannery, the locks Mick O’Driscoll and Trevor Hogan and the wing John Kelly to their squad..

The NHS could run out of winter flu vaccines after fears of a flu pandemic triggered unprecedented demand, health officials have warned. The Department of Health said the “worried well” had besieged GPs demanding the flu jab even though it would be useless against bird flu.
David Salisbury, the department’s head of immunisation, has written to GPs warning that emergency stocks will soon run out.The Government ordered 14 million doses – more than enough to cover the 11 million people judged at risk from flu, those over 65, and younger people with chronic conditions such as asthma. But doctors have been requesting additional supplies.Dr Salisbury said: “There is concern that the vaccine may have been used on the ‘worried well’ rather than the pre-agreed risk groups.”There are still pre-ordered doses scheduled for delivery throughout November and into December, and the Department is to release its stock from its contingency reserve, “but we expect that this stock of 400,000 doses will soon be exhausted”, Dr Salisbury said.A further 200,000 doses will be delivered in late January, but further supplies are uncertain, he added. After all, what was on display at the World Summit on the Information Society earlier this month was only a mock-up.The inventor Trevor Baylis, who created the clockwork radio, has doubts. After being invited to MIT Media Lab to view the prototype, he commented: “It could have been put together with a Lego kit Nothing worked. I was expecting him to show me the screen in action or the wind-up feature, but I saw nothing but a basic prototype.”Another worry is what will happen to the laptops after they’ve been handed out free. Also, the United Nations Development Programme has agreed to help with the distribution of the machines to countries whose orders fall below the million-unit bar.Expectations are high, with mass distribution expected late next year or early in 2007 But some are sceptical.

Negroponte has specified that each country orders a million units minimum, in order to keep costs down, and half a dozen developing countries have already expressed serious interest. The laptops will be full-colour, capable of wireless connection to the internet, and encased in rubber. Even the machines’ AC adaptors double as carrying straps.Five corporate sponsors, including Google and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), have chipped in $2m (£1.2m) apiece to the project. The machines will have a modest 500MHz processor (slow by today’s standards, but not much of a problem when running Linux OS), and will be fitted with 1GB of flash memory rather than a hard drive, which is more delicate due to its moving parts. It is the whole theory that learning is seamless,” said Negroponte.To save money, green machines will run off the open source Linux operating system, which is free, instead of a proprietary system such as Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X. The device will have an 8in screen, and it will be possible to hold it much as you would a hand-held games console It will also function as a TV “The idea is that it fulfils many roles.

The idea is that the governments will then distribute the machines for free.Children will have a choice as to how to use the green machine – as a conventional computer or as an electronic book. According to Negroponte, access to IT will make all the difference to education in the developing world. “Studies have shown that kids take up computers much more easily [than adults] in the comfort of warm, well-lit, rich-country living rooms, but also in the slums and remote areas all around the developing world,” he said.The technology visionary – who founded Wired magazine – has set up a not-for-profit organisation called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) to sell the laptops for $100 to the governments of developing nations. As Negroponte told the Summit, his aim is to put an internet- and wi-fi-enabled laptop in the hands of every child in the developing world by 2010.The proposed laptop, which was announced in January this year, will be powered by a wind-up mechanism (for areas where no electricity is available) and will have very low power consumption. But, fortunately, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was able to hide his embarrassment when he accidentally snapped the crank-handle off the prototype, lime green-coloured laptop he was helping to showcase at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis last Thursday.
He had little cause to worry, though: the laptop, which he described as an “expression of global solidarity”, was actually a non-functioning model of a design dreamed up by Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. And when you’re unveiling such a piece of technology, you clearly don’t want any mishaps.

Dubbed the “green machine”, MIT’s crank-handle-powered laptop is being hailed as an invention that will revolutionise education in the developing world. We are stuck with each other because we have two beautiful children. I’d definitely like to give it another go.”‘Tommyland: The Ride’ is out now on Rocket Science; ‘Tommy Lee Goes to College’ is on E4 tomorrow night at 10.30pm. “I guess we are just trying to figure out what the hell we are doing We are going through a weird phase, but we love each other. That would be nice.”Any chance of a reunion with Anderson? “Probably – her and the boys came to the Rolling Stones show a few days ago We are crazy about each other,” he says. A few days ago, I took the kids in a helicopter to the drag races.”"I’m a passionate person who loves life,” he says, going on to describe himself as “very single.