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/ 20 October 2006

What does this Frenchman know about football?

The famous back four, all in their thirties when Wenger arrived, gave each other an old-fashioned look. Lee Dixon thought the new manager looked like a geography teacher. Tony Adams wondered: ”What does this Frenchman know about football? He’s not going to be as good as George [Graham]. Does he even speak English properly?” Ray Parlour did impressions of Inspector Clouseau.

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/ 20 October 2006

Schwarzenegger looks set for second term

The moment came towards the end of the uncompromisingly boring debate between Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor, and the Democrat challenger, Phil Angelides. Schwarzenegger, in the only televised debate of this election, had just listened to a lengthy answer from the challenger about some obscure point of policy.

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/ 20 October 2006

Arms deal man raided by UK cops

The London home and the offices of an arms broker linked to a supplier in South Africa’s multibillion-rand arms deal have been raided by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, it was reported on Thursday. The Guardian said the raids were part of a probe into corruption allegations against Britain’s biggest military hardware exporter, BAE Systems.

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/ 20 October 2006

We’ve lost battle for Baghdad, US admits

A day after United States President George Bush conceded for the first time that the US may have reached the equivalent of a Tet offensive in Iraq, the Pentagon on Thursday admitted defeat in its strategy of securing Baghdad. On Thursday the number of US troops killed since October 1 rose to 73, deepening the sense that the country is trapped in an unwinnable situation.

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/ 20 October 2006

Slim prisoner back behind bars

An Australian prisoner shed 14kg so he could slip between the bars of his cell and escape, a court in Sydney was told on Friday. Robert Cole (37) spent three days at large after escaping in January despite breaking his leg when he jumped from a high perimeter wall.

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/ 20 October 2006

Paris Club cancels most of Malawi’s debt

The Paris Club of creditor nations agreed on Thursday to cancel almost all of Malawi’s debt, reducing the small Southern African nation’s remaining debt to just -million (R67-million). National representatives to the informal group, which meets monthly in Paris, agreed to recommend to their governments that about -million in debt owed by the impoverished country be cancelled.

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/ 20 October 2006

Beware of grandmasters bearing yoghurt

”Like madmen they were,” my friend’s mother said. It was the late 1970s and she was explaining why she had banned chess grandmasters from her house. They were an émigré family from the Eastern bloc, the father was a talented chess player and for years the house had been a port of call for visiting checkmate greats. But not any more.

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/ 20 October 2006

Smith in a flat panic

Cricket people pride themselves on the equanimity that their infamously fair game implies about their souls; and this adoration of evenhandedness is never more explicit than in the sport’s idiom. A cross-cultural lingua franca thick with yin and yang, cricket’s discourse is so accepting and stoic that it can seem to verge on some sort of Victorian Buddhism.

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/ 20 October 2006

How the DGs were graded

The overriding theme of our first directors general report card is that it is a hard job to do. Why? Most directors general are new; many have been in office for less than a year. The only director general who has spent more than one term in office is Frank Chikane, the head of the Presidency. Have a look at our assessments of Chikane and his colleagues.