British music group EMI said on Thursday that it would not pursue its proposed takeover of United States rival Warner Music "for the time being". EMI said the decision followed a move by a European Union’s court to annul the European Commission’s approval of the music merger which was to create Sony BMG.
PCs are cheap today, and soon they’ll be even cheaper, thanks to a price war between the two leading chip suppliers, AMD and Intel. Thursday’s expected launch of Intel’s next-generation Core 2 Duo range leaves AMD needing to halve the prices of many processors in order to stay competitive. And on Tuesday it did it, more than halving Athlon 64 prices.
Real-time strategy games are usually the preserve of PC owners who have the mouse, keyboard and patience to effectively manipulate the miniature armies at their disposal. But <i>Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2</i> bucks the trend by releasing on the Xbox 360, complete with high-definition support.
This first-person shoot-’em-up suffered from one of the most protracted development periods in videogame history, but was keenly anticipated. Sadly, although <i>Prey</i> stands out from the first-person shooter crowd, it fails to satisfy. It contains interesting ideas — a native American sub-plot that sees you shooting wraiths with arrows when you die.
Britain’s most convicted driver, described by his lawyer as a ”likeable idiot”, was sent to prison on Wednesday for five months for flouting his 48th driving ban. Bouncer Jamie Manderson (33) from Swindon, south-west England, has nearly 200 previous convictions, mostly for motoring misdemeanours.
Quinton Fortune looks set to join Premiership club Bolton and manager Sam Allardyce cannot wait to add the South African to his squad. The former Manchester United midfielder played his second game for the club in the 1-1 draw against Rangers behind closed doors.
The world record for the biggest ensemble of spoon players has been set in Britain, the organiser of the event announced on Tuesday. Amateur street-theatre group Stripey-Jumper rounded up 345 people to bash out a version of pub favourite <i>Knees Up Mother Brown</i> before an eagle-eyed panel of adjudicators.
The collapse of the Doha round of trade talks on Monday is just one more pressure point on financial markets already bruised by interest rate uncertainty, fear of economic retrenchment and escalating geopolitical tension. It robs investors who believe in the wealth creating properties of globalisation of the prospect of yet more openness, replacing it instead with worries about growing protectionism.
The world’s largest auction houses have seen sales surge in the first half of the year, boosted by record prices for rare paintings and increased interest from buyers in emerging markets like China and Russia. Privately-held Christie’s said on Monday it earned a record £1,2-billion (,1-billion) in worldwide sales in the first six months of the year.
A British parliamentary committee has concluded that English football’s governing body should abolish rules that prevent girls playing in mixed teams with boys after the age of 11, The Guardian said on Tuesday. The current restrictions were imposed in 1921 because the Football Association deemed the game ”unsuitable for females”.
The United Kingdom hopes a peace plan for Lebanon can emerge within days that could lead to a cessation of hostilities, Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday. But he said details need to be worked out for an international force before a ceasefire could be declared that would hold on both sides.
Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso is confident he can stop Michael Schumacher’s winning run in his Ferrari rival’s home German Grand Prix this weekend. ”I am feeling very optimistic. We had a strong first half of the season, and the key thing now is to keep going and finalise the job,” the Spaniard said in a Renault team preview to Sunday’s race at Hockenheim.
SABMiller, the world’s second-biggest brewer, said on Monday that its Chinese affiliate CR Snow had agreed to buy Yinyan Brewery in China for ,3-million dollars. China Resources Snow Breweries had decided to also buy the brewing assets of Xiangwang Brewery for ,1-million dollars, United Kingdom-based SABMiller said in an official statement.
Ruud van Nistelrooy, who has been linked with both Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, returned to training with Manchester United early on Monday but doubts still remain over whether he will be at Old Trafford for the start of the season. After his bust-up with Alex Ferguson, it was widely assumed the 30-year-old Dutch striker would have moved on by now.
The first men on the moon had to use a pen to fix a broken switch on their lunar module and return home to earth, British newspaper the <i>Daily Mirror</i> reported on Monday. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, and Buzz Aldrin, his fellow astronaut, accidentally snapped off the switch of a circuit breaker, and found they could not take off without it.
A new James Bond novel will be published in 2008 to mark the centenary of creator Ian Fleming’s birth, but the identity of the new author is being kept under wraps. Fleming is credited with writing 13 or 14 Bond novels, starting with Casino Royale in 1953 and ending with Octopussy and the Living Daylights in 1966, two years after his death.
England captain Andrew Flintoff has been ruled out of action for 12 weeks after being told on Saturday that he needs surgery on his injured left ankle. The all-rounder will have the operation next week and will miss the three remaining Test matches against Pakistan and all of the five-match one-day series scheduled for this English summer.
Three-quarters of British sport fishermen would rather go fishing than go to bed with their partners, a survey showed on Thursday. More than half of the 1 000 anglers surveyed by bookmaker Totesport also said they would rather catch a record-breaking trout or salmon than spend a night with a supermodel.
An ill-tempered parrot left English police a vital clue as to the thief who took the bird from a pet shop. Tristand Maidment (23) pleaded guilty on Thursday to stealing a macaw named Mickey from a pet shop in Frome, south-western England, last month.
Struggling English Premiership side Aston Villa, reeling from the departure of manager David O’Leary, on Thursday said they had received takeover approaches from ”various parties”, both from Britain and overseas. The Birmingham-based football club has been in an official offer period since September 19, when the AVIL consortium made an initial approach to the company.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said on Tuesday the Gunners won’t get involved in the race to pick up bargain buys at scandal-hit Juventus because they can’t afford it. The Italian giants were relegated to Serie B and were penalised 30 points for their part in the country’s match-fixing scandal that saw Lazio and Fiorentina also demoted.
Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson saw his transfer kitty boosted on Tuesday and immediately set his sights on the potential clear-out of players at scandal-hit Italian giants Juventus. Under a complex refinancing scheme, the Old Trafford club said that an agreement has been made that will see their annual interest payments slashed by almost 30%.
Captain Inzamam ul-Haq steered Pakistan to the safety of a draw in the first Test against England at Lord’s on Monday with an unbeaten 56 in his team’s 214-4 on the final day. Pakistan, set 380 to win from 80 overs, made no effort to go for the runs after swing bowler Matthew Hoggard dismissed both openers with only 33 on the board.
During an official check to certify that Namibia remained polio-free a decade after it declared it had conquered the disease, officials made a surprising find: a 39-year-old man stricken with the virus. On Tuesday, Namibia launches a three-day nationwide immunisation drive aiming to vaccinate the entire population.
The British government moved on Monday to ban for the first time two Islamist militant groups based in Britain under new laws prohibiting the glorification of terrorism, officials said. Home Secretary John Reid named the outlawed groups as al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect, Home Office officials said.
British prosecutors said on Monday that they had ”insufficient evidence” to charge police officers with any crime for shooting to death a Brazilian man they mistook for a suicide bomber last year. However, the Crown Prosecution Service said London’s Metropolitan Police will be prosecuted as a whole under health and safety laws for the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes.
A British drug company is seeking permission to conduct the first human trials of an experimental vaccine against the avian flu virus. The vaccine will target the lethal H5N1 strain of avian flu, which has spread rapidly throughout bird popu-lations in Asia and has been brought to Europe by flocks of migrating waterfowl.
England were ill prepared for the World Cup and will not win the trophy until the Football Association undergoes radical changes, said an Englishman who has lifted the top prize in rugby. ”The FA need to take a long hard look at themselves. Do they even know what has to be done?” said former England rugby coach Clive Woodward.
Pakistan paid a high price for a series of dropped catches as unbeaten hundreds from Alastair Cook and Paul Collingwood put England in a strong position on the first day of the first Test at Lord’s on Thursday. At stumps England were 309-3 after Cook, dropped three times, and Collingwood, missed once, both scored their second Test centuries.
A half-smoked cigar enjoyed by Sir Winston Churchill, Britain’s war-time prime minister, was sold at auction on Wednesday for £365 (about R4 800). Churchill had been puffing on the cigar when he arrived for a meeting in Blackpool, north-west England, on October 14 1950.
‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, what’s all this, then? Police are telling booze-fuelled British women to wear nice knickers and wax their bodies, newspapers reported on Thursday. The latest attempt by the police to get hip with the kids is aimed at hammering home a responsible drinking message to irresponsible young women.
More than 100 000 knives, including machetes, meat cleavers and axes, were handed over to police during Britain’s five-week knife amnesty which ended last month, the country’s Home Office said on Friday. Another 12 645 were handed over in Scotland.