Twins Separated from Bangladesh Intensive Care: Hospital

SYDNEY news update: Bangladeshi twins Trishna and Krishna have left intensive care as they continue their remarkable recovery from surgery to separate their conjoined heads, the hospital said.
The two-year-old girls, rescued from a Dhaka orphanage, moved to a shared room on the normal ward on Monday, just a week after the 32-hour operation to disconnect their fused skulls, brains and blood vessels.

“They are sharing a room together and settling into their new environment,” Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital said in a statement.

“The girls are getting to know the new staff who will be caring for them now that they have left intensive care.”

The twins’ heads remain heavily bandaged but they have appeared otherwise well, with Trishna awake and talking two days after surgery and Krishna blowing a signature raspberry when she was woken from a medical coma on Saturday.

Their condition has amazed medical staff who nursed them back to fitness after they arrived in fading health from Bangladesh two years ago, and gave them just a 25 percent chance of both recovering completely from the separation.

“We’re all so proud of our children’s hospital and we’re so proud of the quality of the nurses and the staff and the doctors that we’ve got there,” Victoria state Premier John Brumby told Fairfax radio.

“This was just another great example where these two children, who I think, to be honest, many of us thought were not going to get through, have come through, fingers crossed at this stage, with flying colours.”

The girls’ 22-year-old mother, who was unable to care for the sickly babies and handed them to an orphanage soon after their birth, has said she hopes to travel to Australia to see them.

ICC Announces World Cup 2011 Schedule

MUMBAI: ICC Announces World Cup 2011 Schedule, Pakistan, who were wary of playing in India due to political tensions between the two nations, will play its six league matches of the World Cup 2011 in Sri Lanka.

India will clash with Bangladesh in the opening match of the 2011 World Cup in Dhaka on February 19, the International Cricket Council (ICC) said on Monday.

The first match takes place two days after the opening ceremony of the 14-nation showpiece at the same venue in Dhaka on February 17, according to the schedule released by the ICC here.

The final of the 43-day tournament, being co-hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, will take place at the renovated Wankhede stadium in India’s financial capital of Mumbai on April 2.

The teams have been divided into two groups of seven each for the preliminary league, with the top four from each group advancing to the quarter-finals.

Defending champions Australia head group A which includes Pakistan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and two qualifiers, Canada and Kenya.

The other group comprises India, South Africa, England, West Indies, Bangladesh and qualifiers Ireland, Netherlands.

India will host 29 matches at eight venues, Sri Lanka 12 at three venues and Bangladesh eight at two places, after Pakistan were removed as co-hosts by the ICC due to security fears in the volatile nation.

Pakistan, who were wary of playing in India due to political tensions between the two nations, will play its six league matches in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka will host five of its matches at two new venues in southern Hambantota and Pallekele, near the hill town of Kandy, where cricket stadiums are under construction.

The remaining seven games in the island nation will be held at the Premadasa stadium in Colombo.

India has picked eight regular Test centres — Mumbai, Mohali, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi — for its matches.

The Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka will host six matches and the opening ceremony, while two games will be played in the port city of Chittagong.

The 2011 event is a week shorter than the one held in the Caribbean in 2007 and will have 49 matches, two less than the previous tournament.