The Africa Cup of Nations was a catalyst for an Arsenal player to build his house in the right-back spot. Late last year, Emmanuel Eboué had difficulty making the Arsenal bench. Whether he would ever make the grade was an open question. Yet going into the Champions League semifinal with Villarreal the 22-year-old is the most talked-about full-back in Europe.
Customers using Vodacom’s 3G data-connect card can upgrade to the new 3G HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) for free from April 21, the company said on Thursday. Any customer who owns a locally purchased Vodacom 3G data-connect card may swap their card at any Vodacom approved outlet for a 3G HSDPA, on condition that they produce a proof of original purchase in South Africa.
Thank God for the FA Cup, for the chance to puncture the increasingly arrogant Jose Mourinho’s expensive bubble. On Saturday it’s the semifinals, where Liverpool can dislodge that cocky Chelsea sneer. The fascinating match-ups on Saturday are submerged beneath a growing feeling that Mourinho and the richer-than-royalty Roman Abramovich must be stopped.
The race card will be used in attempts to cling to the lucrative Eastern Cape franchise, argues Andy Capostagno. So the madness is over and the Southern Spears will not participate in next year’s Super 14. Instead, the South African Rugby Union (Saru) will spend time, money and resources on putting ”measures in place to help the franchise and the region reach acceptable levels of readiness”.
When the Highbury stadium was built 93 years ago, few would have predicted a European farewell along the lines of Wednesday night’s 1-0 win over Villarreal. Amid the diving and the feigned injuries from the ”Yellow Submarine”, the star of the all-foreign north London outfit in maroon shirts was a man from Côte d’Ivoire, Kolo Touré, who scored the only goal as Arsenal fans began their long goodbye to the compact art-deco stadium.
Tens of thousands of protesters marched on the outskirts of the Nepalese capital on Friday, again defying a government-imposed curfew a day after security forces opened fire on demonstrators. An anti-king protester wounded in Thursday’s violence died, raising the death toll for that day to four.
Bowing to intense pressure, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has agreed to allow Shi’ite lawmakers to find someone else to head the new government, abandoning his claim on another term in the face of Sunni and Kurdish opposition. Al-Jaafari’s abrupt reversal was an apparent breakthrough in the struggle to form a national unity government.
Skyrocketing energy prices will figure prominently on the agenda of the world’s seven largest economic powers when they gather on Friday. Discussions on worldwide economic matters will carry over into the weekend meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Zimbabwe ruling party Zanu-PF’s plan to amend the Constitution to delay the 2008 presidential election until 2010 to facilitate Vice-President Joice Mujuru’s succession to President Mugabe appears to have collapsed in acrimony after its designated architect, justice minister Patrick Chinamasa, confirmed it is no longer on the cards.
A major earthquake hit a distant, sparsely populated region of Russia’s far east early on Friday, causing unknown damage and possible injuries, emergency officials said. The United States Geological Survey and Japan’s Meteorological Agency estimated the temblor to be about 7,7-magnitude.