Struggling English Premiership side Aston Villa, reeling from the departure of manager David O’Leary, on Thursday said they had received takeover approaches from ”various parties”, both from Britain and overseas. The Birmingham-based football club has been in an official offer period since September 19, when the AVIL consortium made an initial approach to the company.
Manchester United’s Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy wants to play for Bayern Munich next season according to Bild newspaper, though Spanish press claim he will join Real Madrid. Bayern club president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, quoted by Thursday’s Bild, said the offer was for â,¬13-million.
The five-person panel appointed by the Treasury to study the possibility of imposing a windfall tax on petrochemicals group Sasol and state-owned PetroSA on Thursday issued a 102-page discussion document. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel first mooted the possibility of a windfall tax during his Budget speech in February.
South Africa’s woeful performance against Australia last weekend has baffled the All Blacks who admit to being unsure of what to expect in their Tri-Nations rugby Test in Wellington on Saturday. When the Springboks’ backline failed to function, and the forwards were aimless, they appeared to have run out of ideas as they submitted to a 0-49 drubbing in Brisbane.
The Indian High Commissioner to South Africa, Satyabrata Pal, said on Thursday that a wake-up call was needed on economic relations between South Africa and India. Pal listed numerous areas of substantial growth in India where South African companies could come to the party, but were not doing so.
Nigerian rescuers battled with shovels and picks to save people trapped for a second day beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in Lagos on Thursday as the Red Cross said the death toll stands at 24. Hopes were fading that anyone could survive another night trapped in the debris as rains fell on the area and shortages of equipment hampered diggers.
Marat Safin crashed out of the ATP Indianapolis Open in spectacular style on Wednesday, falling in straight sets to world number 512 Wesley Whitehouse of South Africa. Safin, the two-time Grand Slam champion from Russia, held his head in his hands as he tried to explain what when wrong in a 6-1, 6-4, second-round loss to the 27-year-old journeyman.
United States authorities are raising the stakes against internet gambling with their biggest prosecution effort to date, but backers of online wagering are not yet ready to fold. An indictment unsealed on Monday charges the operators, British-incorporated BetOnSports, with illegally taking bets from US residents and failing to pay US taxes on $3,3-billion in wagers from the United States.
The call comes over the radio just a few minutes after Officer Kristina Cappello’s patrol car has crested the National Mall, the white dome of the Capitol gleaming in the darkness as she turns the wheel towards the less touristy streets of Washington DC. A fellow officer needs backup at the scene of an assault.
A maverick fertility expert has revealed hard evidence of a controversial attempt to produce the world’s first cloned human baby. Panos Zavos, a reproductive scientist, created a storm in 2004 when he called a press conference in London to announce he had cloned a human embryo from the skin cells of an infertile man and transferred it to the uterus of the man’s wife.