Ireland fell agonisingly short of a first-ever win over a Test-playing national in Dublin as the opening RSA Insurance one-day international against Pakistan ended in a tie.

A MAN appeared in a London court yesterday charged with planning to kidnap and kill a member of the armed forces in a plot apparently aimed at Muslims who had served with British troops in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Explosive experts today defused a bomb in a small van parked next to the heavily guarded US Consulate in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, sparing the building from “big destruction”, police said.