Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday named a new 30-strong Cabinet, recycling most of the loyal stalwarts who have presided over the Southern African nation for last two decades. Among the few new faces is the former ambassador to the United Nations, Tichaona Jokonya, who was named Information Minister and replaces the controversial Jonathan Moyo sacked early this year.
The Michael Jackson trial reached what is expected to be its pivotal moment on Friday when defence attorneys for the 46-year-old singer began their cross-examination of the mother of the teenage accuser. Discussing her early belief that Jackson did not drink alcohol, Janet Arvizo told the jury: ”I now know different. I now know that Neverland is all about booze, pornography and sex with boys.”
Britain and the United States reacted angrily on Friday to accusations by the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, that they were partly to blame for the oil-for-food scandal because for years they had overlooked the illegal trade in Iraqi crude.
Former Independent Democrats Western Cape leader Lennit Max on Thursday sought to link the party’s national leader, Patricia de Lille, to the Travelgate affair. De Lille heatedly denied any wrongdoing, and said that as one of a number of clients of one of the implicated travel agencies, she had given her full co-operation to investigators.
James Vaughan may have been heralded as the new Wayne Rooney after becoming the Premiership’s youngest ever goalscorer on Sunday but he will have to wait a while before sending his girlfriend on shopping trips to Milan. The 16-year-old has been handed a whopping £10-a-week pay rise but will have to wait until June before that finally kicks in.
For once none of the FA Cup semifinalists, queuing up somewhere down the westbound M4 to Cardiff as I write, is on for a double. Ever since Chelsea fell to Newcastle on the night the great Jose Mourinho lost count of his substitutes, the Premiership leaders have been out of this particular race.
As a football columnist, you are expected most weeks to be a newspaper’s guardian voice, its moral conscience on matters of significance for the game. When you see Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer at each other’s throats, you should be outraged at a scene that tells of a decline in the game’s standards of behaviour and the shocking example it sets to youngsters.
Uli Hoeness has thrown in the towel. So far as he is concerned it is all over for Bayern Munich. The club’s general manager was not just talking about the Champions League quarterfinal loss to Chelsea, his fatalism was more severe than that. The gloom descended over the long-term outlook for German clubs in European competition.
Were there a device by which fixed smiles could be measured — a pressure pad, perhaps, to be placed between gritted molars — it would have been intriguing last week to determine whether the rapprochement between Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer concealed a more or less obvious loathing than that between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
A number of teachers from government-run schools in the Philippines are being given crash courses ahead of the new school year because they lack proper training in certain subjects they teach. The remedial classes are being given for those who have to teach science, mathematics, chemistry, biology, as well as in English.