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/ 17 January 2008
The teachers and taxi drivers of non-league Havant and Waterlooville bagged a dream FA Cup trip to Liverpool after beating Swansea in a third-round replay on Wednesday. The part-timers from the Conference South — the joint sixth tier of English football — overcame the League One leaders 4-2 to ensure they will travel to Anfield later this month.
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/ 16 January 2008
Kevin Keegan has been appointed as manager of Newcastle United for the second time in his career, the Premier League club said on Wednesday. Keegan (56), who played for the club in the 1980s and managed them for five years in the 1990s, succeeds Sam Allardyce, who left the club last week.
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/ 16 January 2008
Rafa Benitez finally got some good news as Steven Gerrard’s hat-trick helped Liverpool cruise into the FA Cup fourth round with a 5-0 win against crisis-ridden League One outfit Luton on Tuesday. Benitez’s position looks increasingly untenable after Liverpool’s American owners admitted they held talks with Jurgen Klinsmann over the manager’s job late last year.
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/ 15 January 2008
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has defied a ban on reporting from Zimbabwe by staging an undercover trip there which revealed challenges to President Robert Mugabe from within his own party, the broadcaster said on Tuesday. BBC world affairs editor John Simpson spent a week in the Southern African country carrying out interviews and filming.
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/ 15 January 2008
The price of gold is hitting new record highs owing to the troubled United States economy and a cocktail of other supportive factors, leading some analysts to predict  000 per ounce could happen soon. In recent days the precious metal has blasted past in a record-breaking run. On the London Bullion Market on Monday, gold blazed a trail as high as ,30 dollars per ounce.
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/ 15 January 2008
Three-dimensional images, which helped to show that double amputee Oscar Pistorius receives advantages from carbon-fibre blade attachments, have become a significant tool in the drive to improve athletic performances. The science of biomechanics — the study of the mechanics of animate structures — is already being applied to tennis.
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/ 14 January 2008
Former Newcastle boss Kevin Keegan has indicated he could be interested in a new spell in charge at the club. Speculation has been rife over who the new coach of Newcastle would be since last week’s sacking of Sam Allardyce and Harry Redknapp’s decision to remain at Portsmouth.
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/ 14 January 2008
South African double amputee Oscar Pistorius, who runs with carbon-fibre blades attached to his legs, will not be allowed to compete at this year’s Beijing Olympics. A report commissioned by the International Association of Athletics Federations and released on Monday concluded that the prosthetics used by Pistorius gave him a significant advantage.
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/ 14 January 2008
Jason Roberts’s last-minute winner secured a 2-1 win for Blackburn Rovers away to local rivals Bolton Wanderers as they battled back from going a goal down in dramatic fashion on Sunday. The Lancashire derby appeared destined for a draw when the striker burst clear from the halfway line and left several defenders behind him at the Reebok Stadium.
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/ 11 January 2008
French striker Nicolas Anelka has joined Chelsea from English Premier League rivals Bolton, the clubs announced on Friday. A statement on Chelsea’s website said: ”Chelsea Football Club and Bolton Wanderers can confirm that terms have been agreed between the clubs for the transfer of Nicolas Anelka.”
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/ 11 January 2008
Changes in the laws of rugby are to be given a trial at all levels of the game in South Africa from next month, the International Rugby Board (IRB) said on Thursday. The IRB has already conducted a series of trials on the Experimental Law Variations at lower levels in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, England and Scotland.
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/ 10 January 2008
Britain gave the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power stations on Thursday, setting no limits on nuclear expansion and adding momentum to atomic energy’s worldwide renaissance. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government argues Britain must build new nuclear plants to help meet its climate-change goals.
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/ 10 January 2008
Newcastle United have parted company with manager Sam Allardyce with immediate effect and by mutual agreement, the English Premier League side announced on Wednesday. Newcastle chairperson Chris Mort said in a statement on behalf of himself and owner Mike Ashley: ”Mike and I would like to place on record our thanks for Sam’s efforts.”
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/ 10 January 2008
North London rivals Arsenal and Tottenham saw the first leg of their League Cup semifinal end in a 1-1 draw at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday. In a match where both sides put together some slick passing moves, Tottenham took the lead eight minutes before half-time when Jermaine Jenas calmly slotted home after being played in by Robbie Keane.
Ernie Els is to cut back on his hectic international schedule in a bid to win more Majors. The 38-year-old South African is known to be among the most widely travelled of golfers on the circuits, regularly globe-trotting to events in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Shaun Wright-Phillips scored a goal and forced an own-goal in injury time to give 10-man Chelsea a 2-1 win over Everton on Tuesday in the first leg of the English League Cup semifinals. Wright-Phillips, who put Chelsea ahead 1-0 in the first half, duelled in front of the net for a high ball with Everton’s Joleon Lescott, who inadvertently knocked the ball into his own goal.
Oil at a barrel should give exporters every incentive to pump more, but their difficulty in doing so shows the world is struggling to sustain production. A growing number of leading industry figures now question mainstream forecasts for supply, suggesting the era of ”plateau oil” is nearer than many had admitted.
A British adventurer who reached Timbuktu in a truck fuelled by chocolate said on Tuesday he now wants to travel to China on a rubbish-powered aircraft. Andy Pag (34) and his sidekick, John Grimshaw, made it back from the remote city in Mali on Monday. The engineer-turned-journalist wasted no time in announcing his next expedition aimed at highlighting the benefits of biofuels.
Weeks before her death Princess Diana said that her relationship with Dodi Fayed was finished, a British jury heard on Monday as the inquest into the couple’s fatal car crash resumed. Speaking at the first session of the inquest since the Christmas break, Rodney Turner, a friend of the princess, said she told him a few weeks before the crash that the relationship had finished.
Rafa Benitez has enjoyed hero status among Liverpool fans for much of his reign but he looked distinctly mortal as he trudged across Kenilworth Road’s sodden turf on Sunday. Benitez, brow furrowed and hands thrust deep into his pockets, cut a dejected figure and understandably so after a day he will want to forget in a hurry.
A second-string Arsenal side proved strong enough to secure a 2-0 victory at Championship (second division) club Burnley on Sunday and with it a place in Monday’s FA Cup fourth-round draw. The Premier League leaders won with goals by Eduardo da Silva and Nicklas Bendtner, but four other top-flight sides were held by lower league opposition.
High-flying Everton were knocked out of the FA Cup 1-0 by third division Oldham Athletic in the third round on Saturday, becoming one of four Premier League sides to go out to lower league opposition. Birmingham City, Blackburn Rovers and Bolton Wanderers were the other upset victims.
Martina Hingis was banned for two years on Friday for testing positive for cocaine at Wimbledon last year. The International Tennis Federation said an independent anti-doping tribunal found that Hingis, who announced her retirement November 1 on the day she revealed the positive test, had committed an offence.
Lawrence Dallaglio has announced his England retirement with immediate effect and intends to end his club career at the end of the current northern hemisphere season. Number eight Dallaglio made the last of his 85 England appearances during October’s World Cup final defeat against South Africa in Paris.
Gold struck a new all-time peak of almost $868 dollars on Thursday as the precious metal benefited from its safe-haven status amid record high oil, a struggling dollar and Pakistan tensions, analysts said. The price of gold reached a historic $867,90 an ounce on the London Bullion Market. It later slipped slightly to stand at $866,90.
Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand is looking to put an ”awful Christmas” behind him as the English champions continue their quest to retain the Premier League title. A narrow 1-0 New Year’s Day win at home to Birmingham City kept United in second place, two points behind leaders Arsenal.
England fast bowling duo Sajid Mahmood and Simon Jones are among several Test cricketers set for on-screen roles in a new Bollywood movie about cricket. Victory is a film that charts the story of a boy fulfilling his dream of playing for India. Shooting will start this month in Australia.
Manchester City added to the pressure on the shoulders of Newcastle United manager Sam Allardyce with a 2-0 Premier League away win at St James’s Park on Wednesday that saw them leapfrog Liverpool into fourth place on the table. Defeat meant Newcastle had taken just one point from a possible 12.
Patients were evacuated on Wednesday as a renowned cancer hospital in London was ravaged by a major fire that destroyed a large part of its roof, emergency services and witnesses said. No casualties were reported at the Royal Marsden Hospital in west London after dozens of ambulances and firefighters rushed to tackle the blaze in the plush Chelsea district.
Motherwell captain Phil O’Donnell died of heart failure, according to a post-mortem examination. The 35-year-old collapsed while being substituted towards the end of Motherwell’s 5-3 Scottish Premier League win against Dundee United on Saturday and later died in hospital.
It was a case of as you were at the head of the English Premier League as the top three sides all enjoyed a winning start to 2008. Leaders Arsenal remained two points in front with a 2-0 New Year’s Day victory over West Ham at the Emirates Stadium. Elsewhere on Tuesday, Manchester United stayed hot on Arsenal’s heels after a 1-0 success at home to Birmingham City.
A British MP had his Facebook account suspended in December after the popular social-networking site decided he wasn’t real. Steve Webb, of the Liberal Democrats, tried to log on but received a message saying his account had been disabled following complaints he didn’t exist.