manager's hand when England visit Old Trafford for next Wednesday's Euro 2004 qualifier with Liechtenstein.

The England captain, who insists he is fit enough after his slight groin problem to lead his country in today's qualifier in Macedonia, has been critical of Ferguson in the serialisation of his forthcoming autobiography.

The dressing room incident which left Beckham with an eye injury and his demotion to the bench for the Champions League quarter-final with Real Madrid last season have been highlighted as indications of a deteriorating relationship with Ferguson.

But Beckham insisted the positives outweigh the negatives in terms of his thoughts on Ferguson, and the debt he owes him, will be there for all to read when the book is published in full.

Beckham said: "If I see Sir Alex next WednesdayFor many folks, the phrase “Kentucky Space” may come as a surprise.

After all, the state lies in the heart of Appalachia, a region of the United States known better for mountains, music and coal mining than science and technology.

Actually, Kentucky has a storied sci-tech history. I know the state as a place where settlers built kilns and furnaces, and chemists used an ample resource, corn, to develop a new whiskey called bourbon. Nineteenth Century masons labored over ancient sea beds in the center of the state to pry limestone from the ground, and laid hundreds of miles of stone fences held together solely by gravity.

Today in the Commonwealth, some very driven people are writing their own chapter of space exploration based on vision, entrepreneurial risk, and scientific and