France on Monday unveiled five new faces in a 28-strong squad for the three-Test tour of South Africa and Australia from June 12 to July 4. Deprived of 101-time capped skipper Fabien Pelous, the team will have two co-captains in Biarritz duo Jerome Thion and Dimitri Yachvili.
Reports of the imminent death of the print media may be premature, or even dead wrong, as ”tabloid fever” has gripped the industry in a trend that is gaining speed, a media conference was told on Tuesday. One of the pioneers, Le Matin, a modest Swiss Francophone daily, went tabloid in September 2001. The heavyweights soon began lining up to follow.
Frustrated with his play, Marat Safin said he did what any normal person would do: He whacked his changeover chair with his racket, leaving a gaping hole in the wooden base. ”I destroyed the chair, I destroyed the racket because I couldn’t take it anymore,” said Safin, who lost his fourth-round match on Monday at the French Open — but not without putting on a show.
The oldest, most populous township in Zimbabwe’s capital was filled with debris on Monday as police pressed on with a highly unpopular drive to clean up Harare, while resident complained they were hit by a ”tsunami”.
Members of Parliament found guilty in Parliament’s so-called Travelgate scandal will be fired, the African National Congress said on Monday. In a meeting over the weekend, the party’s national executive committee said the ANC had a central role to play in fighting corruption and the abuse of power.
Rival factions in Somalia on Monday battled for control of the southwestern city of Baidoa, where President Abdullahi Yusuf plans to establish a temporary capital. The heavy fighting, which involved truck-mounted anti-aircraft missiles, mortars and heavy machine guns, is blamed for the deaths of 19 people and injuries to 28.
The chief of police in Basra admitted on Monday that he had effectively lost control of three-quarters of his officers and that sectarian militias had infiltrated the force and were using their posts to assassinate opponents. General Hassan al-Sade said half of his 13 750-strong force was secretly working for political parties in Iraq’s second city and that some officers were involved in ambushes.
At 1pm every Sunday, Mrs Shen goes hunting for a husband. Equipped with photos, a resume and oodles of charm and enthusiasm, the 50-something spends the entire afternoon looking for Mr Right among the cypress and ginkgo trees of Sun Yat-sen Park in Beijing.
Creating more business opportunities to counter rising unemployment is expected to take centre stage at an upcoming jobs summit in Swaziland. The summit, scheduled to take place in July, follows a pledge by King Mswati III to initiate a R1-billion public-private fund to bankroll the development of small- and medium-scale enterprises.
With little time left before the end of the school year and exams, 1Â 600 Togolese refugee children went back to school on Monday in camps set up in Benin for refugees who have fled Togo’s post-election unrest. Children of all ages, flopped down on mats laid out on floors of makeshift classrooms provided by the United Nations Children’s Fund at the Lokossa refugee camp.