A year ago, Rafa Benitez was preparing his Liverpool team for the Champions League final. Alan Pardew’s West Ham were playing in the promotion play-offs. Now they come face-to-face in the FA Cup final. However, Benitez refuses to accept his team are favourites, even though the Reds finished the season with 11 wins in a row.
Thousands of jubilant Sevilla supporters celebrated into the early hours of Thursday morning after their team won their first European trophy by trouncing Middlesbrough 4-0 in the Uefa Cup final. Fans fired rockets and danced in a noisy celebration held at downtown monumental tower, La Giralda, news agency Efe reported.
A mausoleum to Malawi’s founding president and one of Africa’s most repressive leaders, Kamuzu Banda, will be inaugurated on Sunday, stirring mixed emotions over the dictator’s legacy in the impoverished Southern African nation. Banda, popularly known as ”Ngwazi” or conqueror, died in South Africa in 1997 at the age of 99 and was one of Africa’s most controversial leaders.
Could there be a third president Bush? The current chief said on Wednesday that younger brother Jeb would make a great one, too, and has asked him about making a run. The first president Bush likes the idea as well. Jeb Bush, the Republican governor of Florida, has one asset that his presidential brother does not right now — approval from most of his constituents.
AM Rosenthal, a brilliant, demanding editor who lifted The New York Times from economic doldrums in the 1970s and moulded it into a journalistic juggernaut known for distinguished reporting of national and world affairs, died on Wednesday at age 84.
China on Thursday blasted the Libyan government for holding talks with Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian and letting him visit the country. "Regardless of China’s persuasion and strong opposition, Libya insisted on allowing Chen Shui-bian to stop over," said Chinese foreign-ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao.
A boy accused of killing the cousin of United States R&B singer Ashanti Douglas in a car accident last month was granted bail at the Randburg Magistrate’s Court, a court official said on Thursday. The 17-year-old minor was remanded into the care of his parents as part of the conditions of bail on Wednesday.
Eight KwaZulu-Natal road-traffic inspectorate officials were scheduled to appear in court on corruption charges on Thursday, media reports said. After eight months of investigation and observing the allegedly corrupt officials, police descended on the men while they were in a meeting at work.
An Egyptian suspected of involvement in the triple suicide bombings that killed 20 people in the Sinai peninsula last month surrendered to the security forces, police officials said on Thursday. The suspect, 25-year-old Khalil al-Menei from the northern Sinai town of al-Arish, was on a list of people wanted in connection with a string of terrorist attacks in the Sinai.
Two more security guards have been seriously assaulted in an incident linked to the security-industry strike, police said on Thursday. West Rand police spokesperson Captain Joseph Mogoai said the pair were accosted by a gang of 10 people, thought to be striking security guards.