World Cup week, and it’s a question of frontmen: Puff Diddy or Biggie Smalls. Sven-Goran Eriksson takes his bruised and battered England into battle against Austria at Old Trafford on Saturday without the suspended Wayne Rooney. Uncomfortable options remain for the icy Swede before a game England dare not lose.
So, Roy Keane is in his last season as a Manchester United player. Given that he is 35 next birthday, that hardly counts as a surprise and, given that he has his heart set on a career in management, it will be no great surprise either if he turns up on the Old Trafford payroll again at some date in the future.
If ever there was doubt that 2005 marked a watershed in South African football, some newspaper stories doing the rounds ahead of this weekend’s qualifier, served as confirmation of how times have changed. In normal times, the words ”World Cup” would have preceded ”qualifier” when referring to the match against the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Hundreds of Britons and South Africans living in the United Kingdom joined international dignitaries, including Annie Lennox, former UK Cabinet minister Chris Smith and author Gillian Slovo, in central London on Wednesday night to show their support for the Treatment Action Campaign.
The 2005 Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to the United Nations’s International Atomic Energy Agency and its Egyptian director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, for their efforts against nuclear-weapons proliferation, the Nobel committee said.
The Israeli high court on Thursday ruled that the army’s long-standing practice of using Palestinian civilians as human shields in combat is illegal under international law. It said the military’s claim to have amended the procedure to allow civilians to ”volunteer” to work with the army was still unacceptable because it was unlikely anyone would freely do so.
Months after initially announcing its intention to go into the heavy passenger bus market, Volkswagen South Africa is to immediately start marketing and selling its first bus, the "Volksbus". Volkswagen said the initial range will comprise 9,17 and 18 tonne buses with a passenger capacity between 16 and 65 depending on the configuration.
The Democratic Alliance has pulled out of talks to design a framework governing political donations, sparking an attack from the Institute for Democracy in SA (Idasa) over the party’s ”superficial” commitment to democracy, media reports said on Friday.
Kimi Raikkonen suffered a disaster ahead of this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix when his McLaren failed halfway through opening practice as his teammate Pedro de la Rosa topped the times here on Friday. Finn Raikkonen has become accustomed to problems with his rapid but unreliable McLaren this year.
Australian skipper Ricky Ponting won his second successive toss and decided to bat in the second Super Series cricket one-dayer against a World XI at Docklands stadium in Melbourne on Friday. The world team, which must win to keep the series alive after losing the opening game by 93 runs on Wednesday, was unchanged but made West Indian Chris Gayle its super sub replacing Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi.