When 13 presidents and the United Nations secretary general combine their energy to deliberate on an issue they are simply not allowed to fail — particularly if their meeting is extended by 24 hours. So the deal on Côte d’Ivoire wrung out of the Accra summit last Friday bears close scrutiny. In essence, the former rebels and opposition figures have agreed to rejoin the government of President Laurent Gbagbo.
Tottenham’s build-up to the season has been a maelstrom of bad results and bad news, with Robbie Keane providing the latest blow when he broke down with an ankle ligament injury in the 2-0 defeat at Rangers a week ago. Just more than a week remains before the televised season opener against Liverpool at White Hart Lane.
The retirement of Paul Scholes from international football is one of those shocks that quickly makes sense. The image flashes to mind of an exhausted midfielder tottering off after only 57 minutes of his final appearance for England, the defeat to Portugal in Euro 2004.
Sunday, sunny Sunday. It’s the height of the one-week-long English summer and already we are awaiting the start of another frantic 10-month football season. Arsenal, unbeaten on their way to the Premiership title last season, take on arch-rivals Manchester United in the Community Shield “friendly” at Cardiff’s Millennium stadium.
The world looks beautiful from the summit of the Premier Soccer League and champions Kaizer Chiefs, who clinched last season’s title after 12 barren years, will be going all out to become the only club other than Sundowns to defend the championship. But Chiefs do not look capable of retaining the title
It has become too easy – and too common – for cricket writers to vandalise the well-intentioned and badly conceived commentary of their televised counterparts. It is a well-established hypocrisy by now, writers heaping scorn upon a mispronunciation or a stammer, as monosyllabic redundancies pour from their laptops.
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Police and soldiers are manning roadblocks in the Somerset East area of the Eastern Cape to enforce a quarantine following a suspected outbreak of avian influenza. Test results determining the nature of the virus are expected by the end of the week. A particular strain of the avian flu virus can be transmitted to humans.
Torrential rain on Thursday brought chaos to Cape Town, flooding shack areas and roads and causing major traffic snarl-ups. Several people were ferried to higher ground by boat from the aptly named River Club in Observatory when the nearby Liesbeeck River burst its banks. Informal settlements were also affected.
A basic income grant is affordable, sustainable and desirable, a coalition arguing for the adoption of such a scheme said on Thursday. The coalition told journalists at a press briefing at the Turffontein racecourse that giving every South African a basic income of R120 a month would cost between R10- and R24-billion a year.