Luis Garcia scored in the fourth minute on Tuesday to give Liverpool a 1-0 victory over English champion Chelsea and put the four-time winners into the Champions League final. The 1-0 aggregate loss ended Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho’s reign as European champion. He led FC Porto to the title last season.
Plans to expand Australia’s rugby player pool and make the Wallabies more internationally competitive have been having an unintended divisive effect with the formation of the Western Force. The Perth-based franchise will become Australia’s fourth team in next season’s expanded Super 14 competition.
An Australian mother fed up with cleaning up after her kids’ cat has taken matters into her own hands and built a device which teaches felines to use the toilet. Jo Lapidge of Sydney said on Wednesday that after watching the movie Meet the Fockers, in which a cat uses a toilet, she decided to train her own Burmese kitten to do likewise.
Brazil on Tuesday became the first country to take a public stand against the Bush administration’s massive Aids programme which is seen by many as seeking increasingly to press its anti-abortion, pro-abstinence sexual agenda on poorer countries.
The French President, Jacques Chirac, warned on Tuesday night that France would no longer be taken seriously on the international stage if it rejected the European Constitution on May 29. Chirac said the Constitution was the ”daughter” of the 1789 French revolution and enshrined the country’s values of human rights and democracy.
China’s campaign to woo Taiwan away from declaring independence took another turn on Tuesday with an offer of two giant pandas to mark the first meeting of the leaders of the Communist party and its historic foe, the Kuomintang, since the civil war ended in 1949.
North African leaders mixed criticism of journalists who allegedly sidestep the law with promises of more press freedom on Tuesday. The presidents of Tunisia and Algeria — countries that have faced criticism from media advocacy groups — made the comments to reporters as part of the worldwide observance of World Press Freedom Day.
The Labour Court on Wednesday postponed judgement on the interdict brought by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) against gold miner Harmony Gold with regards to the laying-off of about 5 000 mineworkers. NUM said that the court had indicated that it would make an announcement at 10am on Friday.
The strong trend in new vehicle sales growth continued last month, with the industry recording its best-ever figures for the month of April. New vehicle sales for April 2005 amounted to 40 477 units — an improvement of 11 796 vehicles or 41,1%, compared with the 28 681 new vehicles sold during the corresponding month last year.
ChevronTexaco’s Nigerian subsidiary said it would overhaul its aid projects in the country’s oil-rich south after finding much of the tens of millions of dollars spent yearly was fueling violence and wasted by corruption. ChevronTexaco said its projects have stoked communal jealousy, contributing to unrest that has cost the company over half a billion dollars.