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/ 28 October 2007
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Former England captain Lawrence Dallaglio has criticised Brian Ashton, saying he did not have the managerial skills to be head coach at the World Cup. ”I hope I’m not going to lose a friendship over what I say about Brian, a good coach who I believe was in the wrong role,” Dallaglio says in his autobiography, serialised in the Sunday Times newspaper.
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/ 28 October 2007
British Pro-life campaigners rallied outside Parliament on Saturday to demand changes to the law they say has led to 6,7-million abortions since it came into force 40 years ago. About 500 men, women and children stood under a steady drizzle with banners reading ”Protect Life” and ”Women deserve better than abortion”.
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/ 27 October 2007
World champions South Africa will be almost at full strength for next month’s Test match against Wales in Cardiff, the Welsh Rugby Union said on Friday. Springbok captain John Smit will lead South Africa, who won the World Cup last Saturday when they beat England in the final in Paris, in the Test at the Millennium Stadium on November 24.
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/ 27 October 2007
Led Zeppelin fans resorted to desperate measures on Friday to win a pair of tickets to see the legendary band’s one-off reunion concert in London next month. The three surviving members of the hard-rocking British group, which disbanded in 1980, are to play together for the first time in 19 years at the O2 Arena on November 26.
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/ 26 October 2007
A judge on Thursday blocked a British decision to deport a South African former police officer who claims he would face violence from gang members if he returned to his homeland. Former sergeant David Andreason, who stopped working as a police officer in 2001 due to stress, fled Durban for Britain after an attempt on his life in 2005.
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/ 26 October 2007
Tottenham Hotspur have sacked their Dutch manager, Martin Jol, the Premier League club said in a statement on Thursday. ”We can confirm that the board has this evening asked Martin Jol, the club manager, and Chris Hughton, the first team coach, to stand down from their positions with immediate effect,” the statement read.
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/ 25 October 2007
Britain’s Auditor General, the man charged with stopping government waste, announced he is stepping down on Thursday after criticism of his own lavish spending on foreign travel and top-notch restaurants. Sir John Bourn for 20 years served the British Parliament by making sure public money was not frittered away on frivolous projects.
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/ 25 October 2007
Human rights group Amnesty International accused state security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo of systematic torture and killings in a report published on Thursday. Amnesty blamed two government security forces — the special services police and the republican guard — for attacks on opponents of President Joseph Kabila.
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/ 24 October 2007
The parents of a British girl who disappeared while on holiday in Portugual will launch a 24-hour hotline on Wednesday for information to help find their daughter. Kate and Gerry McCann were to go on Spanish television to urge people to call the hotline if they have any information about their four-year-old, Madeleine.
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/ 24 October 2007
Arsenal and Manchester United moved closer to a place in the next round of the Champions League on Tuesday with big wins that extended the English duo’s perfect starts. Arsenal beat visiting Slavia Prague 7-0 to equal the competition’s biggest win, while English champion United won at Dynamo Kiev 4-2.
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/ 24 October 2007
In September 1987, Colin Pitchfork, a baker from central England, became the first criminal in the world to be caught by DNA evidence, for the rape and murder of two 15-year-old girls. He was sentenced to life imprisonment the following January. Twenty years on, analysing DNA from blood, hair, saliva or semen at crime scenes is ubiquitous and has helped solve hundreds of thousands of crimes.
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/ 23 October 2007
British police launched a website on Tuesday to warn children as young as eight about the dangers of putting their personal details on social networking sites such as MySpace and Bebo. The site has an online café where children can learn about the dangers of revealing too much about themselves online.
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/ 23 October 2007
Mining group BHP Billiton and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government would like to jointly build a -billion aluminium smelter using hydroelectric power, the firm said on Tuesday. BHP Billiton, the world’s largest diversified mining company, signed an agreement with the government of the DRC on Monday about the proposed project.
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/ 23 October 2007
British energy giant BP, reeling from fatal safety errors and a boardroom scandal, said on Tuesday that third-quarter profits slumped owing to lower output, weak United States gas prices and refinery outages. Net profit on a replacement-cost basis plunged 44,5% from a year earlier to $3,87-billion in the three months to September.
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/ 23 October 2007
A man was due to appear in court in London on Tuesday over the death of a South African rugby fan who was run over as he walked home after watching the World Cup final. Hugh Morton (34) was run over in the early hours of Sunday, after watching South Africa beat England at a pub in Wimbledon, south-west London.
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/ 22 October 2007
Former Mozambique president Joachim Chissano won a new -million prize for African leadership on Monday and was hailed as ”a powerful voice for Africa on the international stage”. Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan chaired the committee that selected the inaugural award by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.
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/ 21 October 2007
Arsene Wenger saluted Arsenal’s spirit after his Premier League table-toppers maintained their dream start to the season with a 2-0 win over Bolton. Second-half goals from Kolo Toure and Tomas Rosicky were enough to consolidate the London club’s two-point lead and provided a timely lift before encounters with Liverpool and Manchester United.
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/ 21 October 2007
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Britain’s newspapers on Sunday hailed the bravery and spirit of England’s defeated World Cup side, praising South Africa for their win but mulling over a controversial refereeing decision. For those who managed to squeeze match reports into their first editions, newspapers said South Africa were worthy winners in the game’s showpiece.
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/ 19 October 2007
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As a wax model of English rugby star Jonny Wilkinson joined the statue of national hero Horatio Nelson in London’s Trafalgar Square, attention in both England and South Africa was on Friday focused on the looming Rugby World Cup final between the two nations.
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/ 19 October 2007
A Nobel Prize-winning scientist who reportedly claimed black people are less intelligent than white people has pulled out of a British book tour and gone home, his publicist said on Friday. James Watson won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962 for his part in discovering the structure of DNA.
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/ 19 October 2007
Britain’s Northern Rock on Friday announced the resignation of chairperson Matt Ridley following a turbulent period at the crisis-hit bank. He will be succeeded by Bryan Sanderson, a former chairperson at British-based emerging markets bank Standard Chartered and healthcare firm Bupa, the company said in a statement.
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/ 19 October 2007
Canada’s Platinum Group Metals is scouting for more mining rights in South Africa, the world’s top platinum producer, and is seeking permits to start construction at its existing projects in the country. ”We have been very actively looking in South Africa,” R Michael Jones, president and chief executive of the company, said on Thursday.
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/ 19 October 2007
When Avram Grant sent his Chelsea players away for international duty last week, he must have thought he was beginning to get the troubled club back on track. The storm of controversy generated by Jose Mourinho’s dramatic exit and Grant’s ascension as his replacement had finally dissipated after wins over Valencia and Bolton.
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/ 19 October 2007
Scottish-born actress Deborah Kerr, best known for her performance as the adulterous wife alongside Burt Lancaster in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity, has died aged 86. ”She died on [October 16],” agent Anne Hutton said on October 18.
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/ 18 October 2007
An American scientist who won the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the molecular structure of DNA has caused an uproar in Britain by reportedly saying tests have indicated that Africans are not as intelligent as whites. A government minister, scientists and a human rights activist condemned James Watson’s comments as racist.
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/ 18 October 2007
European champions Greece, Czech Republic and Romania will join Germany in the European Championship finals next year after qualifying on Wednesday. It was Thierry Henry who grabbed the limelight on a busy night, however, scoring twice against Lithuania to break Michel Platini’s record of 41 goals for France and propel them to the top of qualifying Group B.
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/ 17 October 2007
The wife of President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday unveiled a new statue of anti-apartheid leader Oliver Tambo in the north London suburb where he was exiled for 30 years. Zanele Mbeki joined Britain’s Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, and other dignitaries to take the wraps off the bust in a park in Muswell Hill, near where Tambo lived from 1960 to 1990.
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/ 17 October 2007
Oil marched to a new peak of a barrel on Wednesday as investors fretted over possible military action in northern Iraq and a potential supply crunch this winter. Turkey’s Parliament on Wednesday granted its troops permission to launch an attack inside Iraqi territory, despite international pressure not to.
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/ 17 October 2007
British rock legends Led Zeppelin have performed only a handful of times since splitting in 1980 after the shock death of drummer John Bonham, and by their own admission each occasion was a ”shambles”. A reunion concert on November 26 offers the surviving members of one of rock music’s most and influential acts an opportunity to remind the world what they can do.
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/ 17 October 2007
Regular swearing at work can help boost team spirit among staff, allowing them to express better their feelings as well as develop social relationships, according to a study by British researchers. They assessed that swearing will become more common as traditional taboos are broken down.
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/ 17 October 2007
A delegation of rainforest pygmies from the Democratic Republic of Congo will fly to Washington this week to complain to the World Bank about its support for wholesale logging. The visit follows a leak of a report that criticised the bank for backing a number of logging projects without adequate consideration.
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/ 17 October 2007
Britain plans to submit a claim to the United Nations to extend its Antarctic territory by a million square kilometres, the foreign office said on Wednesday. The claim is one of five territorial requests planned by the Britain ahead of a May 2009 deadline and covers a vast area of the seabed around British Antarctica.