Manchester United were held to a 1-1 draw by Middlesbrough on Saturday, dropping two points in the Premier League title race. United midfielder Kieran Richardson gave the hosts the lead in the third minute, but Mark Viduka headed Middlesbrough level in the 45th.
In the last minutes of the last hour of the last day of the French election campaign — or at least its first knock-out round — Nicolas Sarkozy inspected a fife band, some sea defences, was photographed with holidaymakers, kissed a child, held an impromptu press conference and then disappeared in a cloud of dust, one hand waving from the window of his shiny Peugeot.
The United States military intends to proceed with its plan to erect concrete walls around Baghdad hot spots, the military said, even as one such experiment in a dangerous Sunni enclave faces criticism. Brigadier General John Campbell said these walls aimed to protect the people from ”terrorists” and the ”intent is not to divide the city along sectarian lines”.
furore surrounding World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz exposes the need for overdue reform of the six-decade-old development lender itself, according to experts. "It’s as much a crisis of governance as a crisis of leadership," said Dennis de Tray, who has worked at both the bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Virgin Atlantic chairperson Richard Branson has been airbrushed out of the James Bond film <i>Casino Royale</i> in edits of the movie screened on rival airline British Airways (BA), a newspaper reported on Saturday. The <i>Daily Telegraph</i> said the entrepreneur, and all references to his airline, had been airbrushed out by BA.
The clock is ticking for Pretoria, whose mediation in Zimbabwe’s political crisis is off to a sluggish start as looming elections leave little time to bring about results, according to analysts. International hopes are pinned on President Thabo Mbeki’s ability to initiate talks between President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party and the opposition.
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A Kevin Pietersen-inspired England kept their promise of winning the last World Cup match for coach Duncan Fletcher when they beat the West Indies by one wicket on Saturday. In-form Pietersen smashed a robust 100 and skipper Michael Vaughan regained form with a timely 79 as England surpassed their rivals’ total of 300 with one ball to spare.
Nigeria’s chaotic presidential and parliamentary elections began on Saturday with a failed attempt to blow up the country’s election headquarters using a petrol tanker as a bomb, and then descended into farce with the stuffing of ballot boxes on behalf of the ruling party. There was also a severe shortage of voting papers in some opposition strongholds.
Neoconservatives care about the poor. This proposition may not be entirely ludicrous: that poverty, underdevelopment and failed states breed jihadists with empty bellies and fiery eyes (or vice versa) is one of those claims with all the force of triteness working in its favour. Whether it is strictly true is a more complicated question.
One can’t speak for Dr Johnson’s experience of London, but certainly it seems true that the point at which one becomes tired of Londoners is also the point at which one tires, quite suddenly and distressingly, of life. Indeed, to be trapped at a dinner party next to a lawyer from The City, and to have to endure her earnest soliloquies on the sacrifices one must make to survive on £70 000 a year, is to be overcome by the urge to plunge a fish-knife into one’s eye.